SerendipiTea

Not sure I’m going to get this one again. It’s strange. I do taste creamy chocolate. The oolong is sweet and at the same time mineral. The complete opposite of the other oolong we tried today. The dong ding reminded me of cleaning vegetables for dinner or opening the steamer while I’m cooking them maybe. This one reminds me of hot rocks around a camp fire. If I could lick sugar and chocolate off of rocks around a camp fire, I’m sure that’s is what this tea would taste like. I’m getting a coppery after taste. An interesting tea but not my cup.

Hrmm. This is my first real big disappointment from SerendipiTea.

The smell of this tea is FANTASTIC. Brewed, it has a very sweet dark chocolate taste. It a really hope-lifting chocolate taste, a very truly pleasant smell.

But the flavor doesn’t seem to hold up. There is a little bit of the chocolate taste, but the flavor of the oolong combined with the rooibos produces this really weird sour flavor that is… well… not good. It’s almost like a chocolate tea that was combined with a really cheap fake lemonade.

As much as I may hype of SerendipiTea… I would stay away from this one. I’ll finish this cup… but I’m not thinking that we’re going to finish the rest of this sample.

Sipdown! 808. Thanks to the now-disappeared Missy & Dylan for this one. I haven’t had a coconut black in a while, and the aroma from the cup was intoxicating…. And mmmm, the flavour is delicious too. It tastes like chocolate coconut even though the description makes no mention of chocolate…

Another mad grab from this morning. Not too bad of a choice; a reasonably tasty coconut black. It’s a tad soapy-ish, but I really think that coconut going off turns into a soapy flavour; luckily it’s not too bothersome here.

Anyways, tasty enough for me to drink down! Out of 5 mugs this morning, I still have 4 on the go, although at least one is nearly empty. Mmmm, tea. Hopefully I can try some sample sizes of things tonight, and perhaps get in a sipdown or two…

Made a thermos of this to take with me yesterday, so I’d have something caffeinated to drink between church/the Thanksgiving meal. Unfortunately, I think there’s something about coconutty blacks that doesn’t sit well for me in the morning. Kind of like a cup of milk, which also doesn’t sit well first thing in the morning. So while the tea tasted alright, I’m left with a desire to not drink it again in the remotely near future (kind of like 52teas’ Coconut Cream Pie). How annoying!

Thank you Missy and Dylan for this surprise sample! Right up my alley!

Dry and steeped, this smells overwhelmingly like coconut. A similar sort of aroma to that I got from both Golden Moon’s Coconut Pouchong, and Spice & Tea Exchange’s Coconut Oolong. Yum.

The taste is coconutty. And then more coconut. With a second helping of delicious, nutty coconut. The only thing I’m missing is a bit more of the black tea base, but as I’m being super cautious lately and not steeping blacks for longer than 3 minutes, perhaps that was my error. I’m not sure – I kept myself from reading everyone else’s tasting notes this time!

Anyhow, while this tea is coconutty, it unfortunately isn’t much else. I guess I’m not a person with simple tastes? (Haha.) I think I would prefer Coconut Cream Pie over this one if given the choice, but I imagine it would be fabulous to blend with for that strong coconut flavour!

(Is it wrong to wonder what Verdant Tea’s Laoshan Black might taste like with this sort of coconut flavour?!)

Anyways, thanks for the sample guys! Definitely loving the coconut :D

ETA: Second infusion was intensely and wonderfully coconutty too!! Awesome.

We tried this tea last night. We normally have a pot of some thing caffeinated right after dinner. We move on to tisanes after that so I can sleep. It doesn’t seem to bother Dylan much, but I haven’t been sleeping well for a while. I thought it might just be the caffeine but so far I’m still not sleeping well.

I thought mint and rooibos wouldn’t be bad together. I like both a lot. I don’t think I’d stock this one up though. It may be that different steeping parameters will change that. I think it’s just a combination that doesn’t appeal to me. The rooibos is strong in this one. I think it powers out the mint a bit. It feels like the flavors are almost clashing in my mouth. The epic struggle in good vs bad is played out by this titanic battle of rooibos and peppermint…… Just kidding. It doesn’t feel like they are fitting together. Like two people who never learned to play nice with others being locked into a broken elevator. I think the rooibos may just be a bit too woodsy for the peppermint this time. I’ll try some shorter steeps to lessen the rooibos.

Score! This is the rooibos chai I’ve been looking for. It has the perfect blend of spices. It’s especially awesome that the rooibos doesn’t fade away with all these spices. Clove and cinnamon are the most dominant flavors. Rooibos makes an appearance now with ginger as a partner. Last but not least, is pepper. A wonderful tea I’ll need to keep in the cupboard.

I’ve got big droopy puppy eyes as I’m writing this review, so I’m going to whine about being tired and writing a short review A SECOND TIME.

I really do love this tea, it’s probably my favorite kangaroo blend. Missy prefers 52teas Melange Rooibos, due to the lacking of ginger. I, however, happen to enjoy ginger.

It’s just spicy, and warm, and tasty, and gosh darn flavorful. Serendipitea really does kangaroo well in a lot of blends.

It’s late, and I’m slowly turning into a pumpkin, so I’m going to give this a much quicker and less detailed review than it truly deserves. I’d backlog it in the morning… but… no. That probably wouldn’t do a lot of justice for any kind of masala beverage anyway, let alone a kangaroo.

The most noticeable flavor at first is the clove. While the clove does definitely take the center stage, it isn’t an overwhelming level of clove, present, but not domineering. The cardamom comes next, with a hint of ginger and pepper at the end, rounding off into the natural woodsy-ness of the kangaroo base. The clove flavor lingers quite a bit, and really blends in nicely with that lingering bush flavor that always seems to stick in my throat with a kangaroo blend.

This blend claims to have cinnamon in it… but I seem to be losing it in the clove somewhere. Or, I may have waited too long, as this is quite cool by now.

Overall, a very strong kangaroo chai, and we’ll be keeping this one around. I would want more cinnamon, but that is always, ALWAYS the case. Missy has threatened to sweeten any tea I drink with Hot Tamales before.

This was the free sample I received with my gigantic box of samples from SerendipiTea.

Normally, a peach tea wouldn’t be something that would pique my interest. But, SerendipiTea is always very good with their flavors and blends, so this is definitely worth a shot.

Steeped, this tea smells exactly like those little peach ring candies. The ones you could buy as a kid in the big giant bulk bins in the supermarket. Or at the Sweet Factory (not sure if those still exist or not… haven’t seen one in a LONG time!).

The taste is good, the peach comes across as flavorful but not overpowering, and there’s still plenty of room for the very smooth black tea base to come through. There doesn’t seem to be any astringency to speak of… which just adds to the remarkable smoothness of this tea. If I were to offer dating advice, I would offer this tea (guaranteed to make all pick up lines come across 200% more smoothly).

It should be noted that I’m thinking about buying more of this tea. Not that my silly self doesn’t buy enough tea… just that this tea is good enough to make me change my thought on whether I should keep a peach tea around. This is quite good.

Yay more than halfway through trying all the samples we just ordered.

This is a pretty good tea, but I’m not a huge fan of peach. The peach seems a bit sweet or maybe candied. It might just be that it contrasts against the tea base a bit. The base reminds me of the nonsuch estate tea we have. It’s very mellow and smooth. The kind of tea you would drink with a sour tummy on a bad day. A very gentle companion to soothe away the worries. So that’s it sweet peach and mellow tea.

I’m trying to get through our serendipitea samples. Soon we will know our favorites there. I’ve already found two keepers.

One of my favorite flavors is mint, so a black tea and mint is always easy to drink. This tea is medium bodied with a hint of malt, a smooth partner for the mint. It’s a bit more aggressive in seeking attention than, say nonsuch estate. The mint is sweet and refreshing. Not quite a clear winner. I think our Moroccan mint is mintier.

One of my favorite teas is Buccaneer. This find is awesome, in that it feels like a lighter version of that. Think take out the coconut and Niligiri tea and add peppermint. Since it has no tea in it, I can drink it as late as I like!

The chocolate and vanilla meld together so nicely. I’m pretty sure there are yogurt bits in here too, making this tea creamy in texture and taste. The mint is very mild, only showing up very late in the sip. I’m totally keeping this one around.

I think we’ve found our mate chai! Yum yum yum.

You have your standard chai spice flavors here with cinnamon being the most prominent. Cardamom and clove follow directly after the cinnamon. The ginger is very mild in this one. Score! I do have to wonder how this would taste if it had roasted mate instead. That might just be the best.

I made this one up for watching Priest. Dylan hates the dialog in that movie. I agree it’s boring and not a bit creative. I don’t really demand a good dialog in my action movies. I need to see a good CGI team and good choreography. Priest has those two things so I’m happy. Good dialog belongs in drama and I tend to avoid that genre.

This is much like Buccaneer with out coconut. I think the black tea in Buccaneer adds some depth that the green tea in this misses. You won’t be able to miss the vanilla and chocolate notes. The yogurt bits seem to just make it very creamy. Woodsy rooibos ends the show, with the green tea getting lost some where in the mix. A good dessert tea if you are looking for some thing with less caffeine, but I really like the black tea version better.

I have bad dreams. I don’t go back to sleep those nights. Some nights are good. Those nights I dream other things. ( the hated dialog) :D

I’m bumping up the rating on this one a bit since it’s totally awesome iced. I liked it pretty well hot but iced it’s just wonderful. Creamy orange flavor meets a tangy fruit. I get a hint of the chocolate but mostly just creamy orange. Perfect for a hot day.

Another sample from SerendipiTea.

This is like orange creme sickle from market spice, except for the chocolate. Blood orange is apparently much more tart than regular orange flavoring. I really like contrast of the vanilla and chocolate against the blood orange.

You know, I was all relaxed and calm, enjoying a very mellow tea and just letting my week kind of melt away… and then I tried typing the name of this tea into the search bar. Xocolatl… no… xocalatl… no… xocatl… no… xocotlatl… no… XOCATLATL! I’m pretty sure I could have just rolled my face across the keyboard a few times and come closer. Ugh.

Anyway… so, we bought a huge list of samples from SerendipiTea, taking advantage of their $2.50 samples. Only, they seem to have sent us 1 oz samples. So it’s like we got a bunch of free tea that we weren’t expecting. Well, plus they sent us a package of a free tea that we weren’t expecting. So, double bonus. Overall, really pleased with this order… but it seems too good to be true, so I’m wondering if there’s some sort of mistake either with our order or their website.

So, there’s a lot going on with this tea. The aroma smells mostly of cinnamon and mint, and if there’s anything else hiding between those two, I don’t smell it. Overall quite pleasant.

Drinking this tea, I’m really reminded of the expression ‘Jack of all Trades, Master of None’. The flavors of this tea are all very, very subtle. A little cinnamon, ginger… start tasting the mint and the vanilla… and somewhere after the swallow you get a hint of chocolate, along with the lingering mint flavor and a teensy bit of the ‘woodsy’ kangaroo taste.

I don’t really taste the black tea in there at all. I might notice if it was gone, but I’m definitely not feeling like it’s there… if that makes any sense. But then, you could probably say that about any one particular flavor within this tea. The various flavors really blend together well, but they blend together in a very subtle, passive way, which Missy thinks may be because she only steeped it for 3 minutes. I just think there are so many flavors, that none of them can be strong. By your powers combined… Xocolat… xocalat.. xocl… nevermind.

Anyway, there’s some sort of weird disconnect between this tea, and the description of this tea on their website. It’s totally different, it’s like you’re talking about two different teas. The website mentions nothing about ginger, cinnamon or clove (but it is a chai, after all). And the bag doesn’t mention that there is kangaroo in it (which is so totally apparent).

I don’t know, it’s all very weird. My understanding is that SerendipiTea is a bit of a small shop though, so it might just be a matter of not keeping up with variations. I’d say it would be something to watch out for… but I like their teas too much to be that put off by it. If I didn’t already have a relationship with their tea though, I’d probably be pretty upset.

Am I objective enough to lower the rating for that… nope, not really. I’ll send them an email though :)

We got our samples from SerendipiTea today. Yay! I was surprised that the samples appeared to be bigger than what I expected. They also tossed in another sample I didn’t order. SerendipiTea also employs Santa’s reindeer to deliver tea. They were incredibly fast. I’m quite impressed with my experience.

So I put this on my shopping list a long time ago. I looked at the name while we were deciding what to get for samples this month, and though that this would be a spicy, chocolate chai. I was wrong! It happens once or twice a year. It’s a chocolate chai for sure, but no peppers. It’s still pretty good but I have other chai that are good as well. I think of it as a sweet, creamy chai really. Vanilla, mint, ginger, chocolate and yogurt all combine to make it sweet and creamy with out the addition of milk. The other chai spices seem to be a bit overwhelmed by the sweeter spices. Rooibos shows up, but the black tea is hiding.

It’s a dessert tea, but I think I like Buccaneer more.

had this cup with a vegan burrito at harrison street cafe.
pretty delicious! sweet and fruity and tart. a little too tart for me personally, but i also let it brew too long while i was eating. i bet the second brew of the bag would have been exactly right for my tastes. perfect summer tea. i will be drinking much more of it in the months to come i’m sure.
Meghann M below says that this tea “smells of tart citrus, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice” and she is exactly right.

Mmmm… Genmaicha.

Genmaicha will always hold a place in my heart. It more or less kicked off my journey into loose leaf tea. A box of Serendipitea’s Genmaicha was left in my cupboard from when a friend of mine had rented a room for a bit, and out of curiousity more than anything, our loose leaf tea journey was born.

For such a simple blend, it is truly an amazing flavor combination. The earthiness of the toasted rice, with that rich, roasted flavor that just fills up inside of you. Unlike any other tea I’ve ever drank, this tea makes me feel comforted and soothed. I think that’s part of the reason Missy chose to brew this genmaicha tonight… it was comfort tea, to wash away the horrible memories of the icewine.

The green tea in this particular blend is a little vegetal, probably more than I’d typically be okay with. But for some reason, it seems to fit in this tea. It probably has more to do with the ‘green’ coming in after the somewhat ‘brown’ taste of the rice, the green is more of a second string than a first seat. The toasty-ness is really the star of the flavor profile.

It also has a fairly charming color to it, as it develops into this translucent green that almost glows, like you’ve stumbled across the key to life… itself!

At some point in time I’d like to try someone else’s variant of genmaicha, but I really do enjoy Serendipitea’s. It doesn’t hurt that I can get it from Amazon for a ridiculously cheap amount, and it’s at my door in two days (Prime membership makes impulse buying far, far too easy). Though, we had just recently bought another 8 ounces before we had found the wonder that is Steepster, and the many other tea peddlers that are out there.

I can see why some people really don’t like rooibos. I think it’s an acquired taste. I used to drink “squaw” tea instead of koolaid as a kid. Now if I tried to offer that to people they’d probably kick me, but it is quite yummy to me.

This is one is pretty standard. It brews up really dark and strong in the rooibos fu. Woodsy earth and tobacco are what show up strongest. It ends with a sweet note like raisins. I think the sweet note pops more if I add a bit of sugar in the raw. I’ve tried it with creamer but it’s really smooth enough on it’s own. I’m going to lower the rating because there are too many flavored rooibos out there I would drink first.

I thoroughly enjoy this tea. I find it rich and inviting. The lovely, vanilla aroma is very relaxing. I pick up a bit of the chocolate but the vanilla is the dominant flavor. The tea shines through in the end. It has an interesting feel on my tongue, a smooth almost velvety texture. That seems silly because it’s just water flavored by the tea leaves. I think this one shall be a staple tea.