English Tea Store

Yep, sad to say this is fairly flavourless. It was still an okay cup with some cake yesterday, but it was mostly, if not all, the base tea.

I had recollections of enjoying this one, but given my previous tasting notes… I think I’m misremembering. It tasted okay this time – like a flavoured British tea (nondescript flavouring), but nothing special, and it sounds like I had similar thoughts previously. Perhaps it was already DOA. But it was still pleasant enough to drink, so I’ll see how the rest goes.

Drank this a while back and forgot to log it… oops! It was better that time… but I’ll have to try it again to write a proper review.

Thanks to Azzrian for a sample of this tea!

Unfortunately, we had another case of flavourless tea this morning… Again, I swear I didn’t underleaf, but the result doesn’t taste like much (except there’s some astringency with this one). I really don’t know what I did wrong. Luckily, I have enough of this to try and fix my obvious mistake(s)! Putting this in the travel mug may have been mistake #1…

give me this zesty assam because i got like NO sleep last night and have a long and busy day ahead of me so help me gawd.
brew brew brew!!
Traveling Tea Box lives on!

Black & Blue (Savage Skulls Remix) by Miike Snow
http://grooveshark.com/s/Black+and+Blue+Savage+Skulls+Remix/2vrnZE?src=5

Not a bad pu’erh.

I can smell this tea even through its package. Opening the package, the smell of toffee wafts to my nose, plus notes of pu’erh a bit of…mint? How odd…mint… According to the English Tea Store, the pu’erh is accompanied by butterscotch pieces and almond. Putting aside the difference between butterscotch and toffee, I rinse the leaves, then begin my first steep. While waiting, I think how fitting it would be, if I was writing this review with Montblanc Toffee Brown ink.

I think that the slight mint aroma came from the pu’erh mixed with the almond, as it is still present in the wet leaves, yet carries more earthy tones. But how does it taste? “Like dessert in a cup.” One can still taste the pu’erh, right down the middle of this tea, but the edges are more than heavily laced with a sugary-but-not-overly-sweet combination of toffee- and caramel-like flavors. From a traditional Chinese sense, I would not expect that pu’erh would ever be mixed with any sort of sweet, but the English Tea Store has found a good combination in the mixing of pu’erh with butterscotch and almond.

The flavors of this blend are smooth, and the pu’erh is bold enough to stand out among the sweet tones. I recommend steeping this tea longer than you might a normal pu’erh for the sake of fully drawing out the notes of toffee and earthy pu’erh tastes. I was able to resteep it several times in my gaiwan.

I can smell the chocolate but can’t really taste it. There is a slight creaminess in the middle of the sip so maybe that is where it pops in to say HELLO. The spices are nicely done…not too overpowering but still present and accounted for. The more I sip on this the more I like it.

Annnnnnnd…moving along…from that horrid last tea experience…

This smells like black tea with specs of holiday spices in potpourri format.

The taste on the tongue is quite nice. It’s mostly even-steven spices with a bit of citrus. Sort of like “Tang” – remember “tang” the juice drink?

It’s pretty good hot but I think this could be good cold, too.

It seems I am out of chai for the most part – I might have one or two handy – but even those are low. I’m not going to keep this one from the TT but I just wanted to sample it – before passing one.

As you can tell I am in SUPER SIP Mode today! Right now…I think I could probably run a marathon. And I haven’t even started in with the Matcha-Marathon, yet.

As for this Vanilla Chai…it’s alright. The chai flavors are not over the top nor is the vanilla. It’s a weaker flavor all around but still pleasing.

The aftertaste is a little more roasted than the rest of the cuppa but still a nice effort.

Thank you Momo for this one from your amazing tea sale! I have a feeling this is the same blend as Culinary’s Black forest. They both have white chocolate chips with cherry and this certainly tastes like the same black base. (I remember because it isn’t too bad!) The only thing is.. I’m not sure if I could spot the huge cherry pieces here that are in the Culinary. I think this blend could have been a lot worse.. it’s a nice cherry flavor and not fakey. But why oh why the WHITE chocolate chips? I’ll give this blend the same rating as the Culinary’s.

Time for something fruity. I know there are some horror film fans here so hopefully someone will know what I’m talking about…but tutti fruity is always going to be called tutti f***ing fruity thanks to The Devils Rejects. I was sat here thinking ‘hmm…what should I drink’ and then bam I saw it in my fruit drawer and said ‘I will drink some tutti f***ing fruity*. I can’t help it. It’s all I can think about. Damn you Rob Zombie!

Well this blend has mostly small/average sized ingredients and has a sweet and very herbal scent. Not quite tutti f***ing fruity but more curranty and dark.

Once steeped this tea is deep red in colour with a thick, tart hibiscus aroma. Not quite the tutti f***ing fruity I was expecting…

Flavour is hibiscus heavy and I can’t detect any fruit at all. It’s just a sweet, tart, floral, herby, hibiscus tea. I can maybe taste currants amongst the hibiscus but that’s it.

The positive side is that as far as hibiscus goes this is not undrinkable, just very disappointing. :(

I’m surprised that there’s no ratings on this/more reviews to it. Well let me change that. Lol.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew I wanted tea of some sort. So I grabbed this out of the bin on a whim. It’s not a bad tea, but unfortunately not quite what I was in the mood for, so I probly wasn’t concentrating as much on it as I should have been.

It smells like a nice vanilla tea when it’s dry. I was surprised that the wet leaves had the same vanilla-y smell after they were brewed. Usually with black teas I find that they have a almost coffee-esque smell afterwards…Or maybe earthy is the word I’m looking for. Anyway, this one did have that smell which was nice.
Without any sort of sweetener, it has a nice mellow vanilla taste, though I found that adding sugar didn’t really change much. It seems like it would be a good tea to mix with other teas if you just wanted a touch of vanilla. Next time I might try it with some milk and see if that makes the vanilla come out more. Also, there’s really not that much astringency to me, which was nice since I’m finding more and more that I don’t care for the really astringent teas.
Not one I’d order myself, but then I’m fairly picky lately on what I’d reorder. I’ll definitely finish this one out instead of swapping it away though.

thanks so much again for the teas, Dinosara! This one is good. I’ve tried a few English Tea Store teas so far, and they have all been nice! The dry leaves sure don’t smell like chocolate though. And there are flower petals in it, which seems odd for a chocolate tea. Luckily, the tea actually has a smooth sweet chocolate taste on a nice black tea base. I think Harney’s Valentine’s blend has a slight edge over this one (that Dinosara also sent me a bit of!) but I really like this one. It’s like a milky bar of chocolate!

So these English Tea Store chai blends are not as strong as I hope they would be, but it is good anyway! I have been brewing it Western style, so maybe thats the problem. I will use the rest of my samples for the stove. This is a decent cuppa tea to accompany breakfast. The vanilla flavor is very light, but this blend is nice and creamy.

I wanted a hot chocolate flavor, so I went into my sample basket and reached for this one. This was a tea in the Tea Box Pass! Delicious! I couldn’t taste the chocolate as much and the spices were a little muted. But I could detect the chai flavors.

Seems like I got this FOREVER ago from Rachel Sincere! Thanks very much!

This is a nice, bold Yunnan black with lots of black peppercorn flavor, and a bit of yam and sugarcane. The leaves are sort of medium sized for a Yunnan black, and mostly chocolate brown/black in color with some golden buds mixed in.

I’ve been blending it with Fengqing dian hong, which is milder and yamier, and it makes a for a nice balance of flavor.

Brewing this in my new(ish) yixing, and I’ve had to use about double the amount of tea that I normally would. So far its still sucking up a LOT of the flavor, more than my other two did. The side effect of using so much tea is a major caffeine high, which, admittedly is pretty nice when studying for exams :)

1 tablespoon for 375 ml

Maple syrup or marshmallow-like sweetness. Lavender is stronger than the bergamot but I enjoy the balance of the two. No excessive astringency.

Thanks to Sil for sharing with me!

This is a medium-strength Lovers Leap Ceylon and it’s pretty satisfying! There is a bit of “crustiness” and it works really well in this cuppa! Delightful!

I guess I inadvertently grabbed a few blends that tend towards astringency tonight, this being another of them. Well, good to know it’s not just my tea-making skills! Haha. Anyhow, this was tasty tonight, though a bit astringent. I do seem to like lavender in blends now, as long as it’s in the background and not the central flavour. Just a bit of this left, now.

Got more of this from Sil, and threw it into a travel mug for the evening (a baby dedication!) Not my favourite, but the floral/lavender on a soft black base worked just fine for me tonight. In moderation, I actually don’t mind lavender so much, it seems, and in this blend (possibly due to age/storage-related loss of flavour), the lavender is not overpowering at all. Yum. Bumping the rating up.

Given the description of this tea, I’m honestly surprised that I thought it wasn’t too bad. Lavender? Jasmine? Earl grey? Sounds like something perhaps Dinosara or Alphakitty would love, but not me! However, this blend was actually quite well-done, and the floralness was tamed to a level that I actually didn’t mind. The flavours I was picking up from the black tea blend were also quite pleasant. The biggest problem with this tea was that it was astringent after my 2.5 minute infusion. I didn’t grab any to give it another shot, but if I could tame the astringency, I could perhaps enjoy drinking this straight. I imagine, however, that it would be best (and quite tasty!) with milk and sugar.

Thanks for letting me sample this one, Sil!