SerendipiTea

I seem to gravitate toward this one during these mid-spring evenings. One foot in the deep warm just leaving the winter rooibos and one foot in the refreshing and light minty springtime. So nice after dinner – digestive and delicious.

My husband and I ate these huge breakfast sandwiches out at a restaurant this morning. I didn’t feel so hot afterwards (and I have an iron stomach) but he felt full on awful. He has finally emerged from the sickbed! I thought this would be a good one to serve – I find both mint and rooibos stomach settling and good for digestion. It is really hitting the spot – for both of us!

Simple and delicious tisane. Who would think that rooibos and mint would go together so spectacularly!? A little honey makes it even better :)

I think I can now add mint to the list of things that I thought I didn’t like, but actually really quite like!! I thoroughly enjoyed this tea! It’s so simple, but so good. It’s an ideal after dinner tea taken with some honey – sweet and refreshing.

My husband was REALLY crazy for this tea and begged me to order some!

Thank you so much Doulton for this sample! You’ve created quite a hit in our household!

And honestly – a tea company that names one of their teas after one of my favorite directors?! :) :) :)

I am increasingly fond of this chai. There’s something remarkably uncommon about the smoke-laced depths of it. It still reminds me of re-enactment villages and antique shops, and the stony fire pits of the Anasazi…or maybe venerable old houses made of good, creaking wood, with big flagstone fireplaces.

Something about it smells almost undeniably feminine to me, too. I cannot for the life of me tell you what the reason for that might be; the tea doesn’t smell floral or sweet or fruity, but somewhere in the back of my mind, it sets off little bells of familiarity strong enough to warrant the thought.

It’s not the chai I reach for every day, but a definite ‘reorder me’ tea even so.

Last night:

TV: " Legs spread same width as the shoulders, body tight, then hit the ball like you’re defeating the enemy. Here the pinky finger is the key. Then you just hit hit hit kaking-bingo!"

Me: -.o

TV: “What are you talking about?”

“He who conquers the left side conquers the world chief. Setting the parameters … that’s really the hard part.”

Me: …zzzzz…

Vespa on the TV: SCREEEEEEEEECH

Me: O.O OH GOD WHAT

Bad times. Baaaad times. Mastering my sleep schedule has always been difficult. With the con today, waking up too early would not have been good, so falling asleep early was not an option. Cue this chai.

I’m not sure why, but the dry blend smells, to me, like an antique store…or reminds me, maybe, of some of the re-enactment houses and locations in Colonial Williamsburg, which I adored visiting every summer as a kid when we would drive up the eastern seaboard. I can’t tell you what it is in the blend that triggers these memories…only that something assuredly does. It may be the very subtle, lingering scent of something smokey in the tea…in fact, I’m certain that’s part of it.

It tastes, after being prepared like a chai, almost exactly like it smells, only with more depth than it’s willing to give your nose. The smokey quality is really appealing to me. It’s very subtle, but very definitely there. You take a sip and you don’t have to look for it, but neither does it overpower a fairly well-balanced, internally-warming blend of the usual chai spices. I have trouble finding the vanilla in here, though.

Prepared 1c. water, some sugar brought to boil, tea added, simmered 3-4 minutes, 1c. 2% added, allowed to get foamy, removed from heat and let sit for a while. Strained/poured/sipped in front of the tv.

Nothing amazing happens here, everything is ordinary. A huge factory that can be seen from our town, the Medical Mechanica plant. All the adults got excited when it came here, like it was really a big thing. The white steam that billows out every day at the same time, it looked to me like smoke that signified some kind of omen. Smoke that spreads out and covers everything.

Ahhhh.

I’ll just go ahead and admit something right now…I’m not really well-educated about uncaffeinated teas. Part of that is that I tend to just drink white tea late at night, and part of that is that…well, I like caffeine…and the few rooibos blends I’ve tried have made me think, and I am not even joking, of bile. Why is that? Ugh. I have a serious aversion to all things even remotely related to nausea, so…the search for the perfect rooibos blend continues.

This was one of several rare attempts to find something uncaffeinated to drink, and one of the only successful ones to date. It’s really rather good. Mint tea on its own is something I always want to prepare Moroccan-style, boiled in a pot along with a hefty dose of sugar for that almost-carmelized sweetness. Clearly, that is a bad plan late at night. This helps me to get past that impulse by adding some depth and dimension to the mint in the form of some seriously comforting spices. They’re subtle, though…much more subtle than you would find in, say, a chai, and that works well.

It’s a pretty relaxing cup when you have a headache, and I’m a fan. For what it is, I’m not sure there’s any way they could improve on it, so the question of rating becomes difficult…it should probably be higher. I just can’t bring myself to get that worked up about a tisane, though.

My first MILK OOLONG.

Dun dun dun!

Actually, more of a wheeeee!

I am so super-caffeinated right now. Seriously. BWAHAAAA.

Anyway, I bought this at the Coffee & Tea Festival (for those that didn’t read, I did a huge write-up of the funness: http://steepster.com/teaplz/posts/29743 and yay!) from SerendipiTea on a bit discount. They were so nice at the booth! I didn’t taste this one there, but I couldn’t resist a milk oolong for $9 (special price for the festival) that wasn’t artificially flavored.

Anyway, the leaves are very pretty, green nubby things. Very rolled oolong. The smell coming off of the leaves isn’t very special. A bit green/floral maybe? But nothing super-interesting.

Anyway, the packaging didn’t have any steeping parameters, so I went by what other people have done on other milk oolongs on Steepster. I only did 1 tsp of this in 8 oz. I’ll have to try SerendipiTea’s recommendation on their website when I can… I’ve got 4 oz. of this, so there’s plenty to play around with!

Anyway, the infusion steeps up to a beautiful creamy yellow color that makes me want to eat it all up. And the smell. Homygawd can we talk about the aroma here for a second. Deliciously buttery and creamy and floral and wonderful. Seriously heavenly.

The taste… mmmmm. So light, but packed full of flavor! It’s mostly a floral flavor, very soft but assertive and inviting. Sort of light a tight hug. And then there’s this wonderful milky/creamy note that lingers on the tongue for a bit, enveloped in the floralness. It’s really smooth and nice and mmmmm. It’s definitely more floral than I thought it would be, but not in a rose-like way. More of in a general pollen-y way.

It tastes like spring in a cup, which is awesome, because I’m just about ready to see it coming. I’m sick of this snow.

My mom did not get this tea. She said it smelled like cabbage. WAT. And she said it tasted gross. Whatever, Mom. You are wrong about this.

Anyway, I’m off to make a second steep!

Annnnd the Second Steep (4:00, 190 degrees) was pretty much a success! It was definitely not as wonderful as the first cup, but…

Can I pause for a second to talk about how absolutely gorgeous the leaves are when unfurled? Beautiful. They’re some of the broadest leaves I’ve seen in any tea. SerendipiTea, I love your quality. I love that you’re local. You are awesome.

The color was a bit darker than before, with some rogue sediment on the bottom. At peak, the taste here was kind of “hai, I don’t want to be made into tea anymore.” Once it cooled down a bit, the tea got into more of a happy groove. The milkiness is still there, but it’s a bit subdued. The floral tastes are still very much in the forefront of the flavor. It still tastes pretty damn awesome, and the cup is as fragrant as the first.

YUM! Maybe I’ll do a third steep, we shall see…

First thought when drinking this, Horseradish and Chinese Mustard. Odd taste, cant say I favor it, but it was something that was oddly pleasing, something different then that dirty water they call coffee. Will have to try again sometime.

Auggy sent me this one, and I’m still on the fence about it.

This is the second Darjeeling I’ve ever tried (after Golden Moon’s Darjeeling), so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I do know it usually comes tagged with words like “muscatel” and “the champagne of teas.”

Anyway, this looks like a slightly higher-quality black, leaf-wise. Pretty and twisty, and dry it smells like grape juice! Okay, maybe not so potent in a Welsh’s way, but there’s similar smells going on. I steeped this one up, and from the wet leaves I could immediately smell an almost sour-wine smell. Very grape-like, mixed with bake-y undertones. I’m serious. And the infusion, surprisingly just had hints of nutty-cocoa-black smells. I could smell a little bit of sweetness coming off the vapors that would give me a nice facial if I just sat there and waited, but I’m eager to try it.

This is where things get confusing. At first, this tea tastes like sour, unripe grapes! Seriously. Like something bad happened at the vineyard and they gave me wine with grapes that just weren’t quite there yet. There are kind of wine-y, fruity notes, but they’re really getting drowned out by the sour grapes of WRATH.

But then something magical happens and it’s like someone dumped out my cup when I wasn’t looking and replaced it with a completely different tea. When the tea cooled to a proper level, it even smelled different. The typical black-tea-smell had given way to a grape-y fruitiness (I guess this is where I can use big words like muscatel), and there was a nice, sweet smell emanating from the cup.

And now the taste has radically changed as well, just from the cup cooling down! It’s not sour at all anymore, but rather, sweet. There’s just a hint of grape-sweetness, and the black flavors have become more balanced, so I’m getting some smokiness, nuttiness, and light cocoa tones. There’s still a slight touch of tartness at the end of each sip, but now it’s very pleasant. Even the astringency levels seem to have gone down.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! It’s like my star tea got swapped in for a much hotter, cuter stunt double that should really be in the limelight.

I’m going to do a second steep the next time I make this, because I already tossed the leaves, but it’s definitely worth waiting for this to cool down to drink it. Really bizarre.

First Yerba Mate Ive had so not sure what to say about it, I will say this, it is definetly a different taste, close to a Black Tea but somewhere more near an Earl Grey, or so I would think, with my little experience with it. The Local Tea House, Manzanita News and Espresso has quite the variety of bagged and loose leaf teas, so I will have to try some of each. Overall I liked the Yerba Mate, didnt know what to expect though, so I will write a better review later.

I’ve had three cups of Buccaneer and think that it is mis-named. Maybe it should be called “Shepherd” or “Vicar” or “Constable”. It’s not a tea for dashing pirates or for Edith Wharton-style young ladies who are intent on conquering European high-society. It’s a good tea for a crepuscular read of Barbara Pym. It’s a great tea to share with an early evening visit with your neighborhood curate. You will taste its tones of vanilla and coconut and they will be kind and gentle, unassuming and a bit timid—but they are indeed there.

I may not be entirely fair: I’ve observed that I am not good at doing “subtle” when it comes to teas. I want mad concoctions that rage in my mouth! Buccaneer is a mild and very servicable tea. You can steep it for a while and it won’t taste bitter at all. It’s a tea for kind, gentle, wise people and not for pirates and debutantes. It is a perfect tea as is and milk and sugar will not hurt it, nor will they be necessary.

SerendipiTea has great looking packaging and speedy delivery service and I’m looking forward to trying more of their teas.

I love this tea! The mint and spearmint are highlighted flavors, thus making Holiday Cheer not yet another clove/cinnamon clone. There is, of course, clove, cardamon, ginger, and orange which are artfully blended with the two mints to create a beautiful rhapsody of spicy, minty, good cheer.

This particular tea feels as if one is standing next to an old-fashioned orange pierced with cloves upon which candy canes are pendant. The taste and aroma are warmly enveloping and not at all intrusive. If you like mint blends, you will love this.

I highly recommend SerendipiTea for speedy delivery, an artistic and pleasing web page, and superior mixes.

I seriously love the fact that Auggy sent me this tea. Seriously. LOVE.

I’m busy reading and writing and doing all sorts of work, and this tea was the perfect thing to cozy up with while I’m keeping myself busy. It’s fragrant and delicious and calming. The vanilla works perfectly with the unique flavor of the Vietnamese black, and the two produce a remarkable pairing. I love the subtlety of this, the rich cocoa and the smooth vanilla. And the color is so gorgeous too. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. It tastes so natural and organic and just… LOVELY.

How awesome flavored tea can be when it’s done right! And when it’s done wrong, it’s close to one of the most disgusting things to drink ever.

Back to my work now, but I’m really happy that I was just able to luxuriate with a cup of this. If I was a cat, I’d be purring with content right now.

Mmmmm.

This is another tea that Auggy sent me in a nice batch of samples, and it’s so super-yummy that I can’t stop sipping it as we speak. It’ll probably take me forever to write up this log as a result.

This tea is pure black, little scraps of tea, with some vanilla mixed in. The tea itself, when dry, smells deliciously of cocoa and vanilla. And when I say cocoa, I mean dark chocolate, unadulterated by milk. Pure, raw chocolate. The vanilla has that wonderful natural smell that I crave! The last vanilla tea I had was a bagged abomination – Bigelow’s French Vanilla, which tastes as fake as it horrifically smelled. So I was a bit apprehensive as I steeped this one. But I trusted Auggy’s judgment to lead me in the right direction.

This tea smells delicious in the cup. It’s a rich red hue, with a lovely vanilla scent that invites you to just stick you face into the cup and breathe. AHHHH. Smooth and rich vanilla.

The taste actually surprised me, because it’s deep and rich! I wasn’t expecting such a strong black flavor! At the forefront of the taste is definitely the rich taste of raw chocolate nubs. And then the vanilla hits, in a sweet, sweet wash of natural-tasting goodness. It’s gentle, but not cloying. It doesn’t talk down to you. Or try to sell you something you don’t want. It just invites you in for a stay, and wraps you in a hug.

I know I’m going to be staying up late, so caffeine is not an issue. However, on a normal day, this flavor would be perfect for night-time. My mom is really allergic to caffeine, but she can muster a sip or two of tea. She loved this one, and also wished that it was available decaf as well.

More yumminess from Auggy! She’s two for two! And this just shows me that yes, flavored tea can actually be really delicious and natural-tasting, instead of fake and disgusting.

All right, Steepsterites. I tried this at a shorter steep time and it was still noticeably bitter, though not nearly as much as before and a weird part of me [my elbow, maybe] didn’t mind it. Maybe I need to drop the temperature down a bit, or wash the leaves before I let it sit. I don’t know, but what I will tell you is that the second steep of this was absolutely phenomenal. Grape-y in a lovely, lovely way. I can’t get into it much more because I need to study for a test I’ve got tomorrow, which allows me to segue somewhat clumsily into the next paragraph.

I’ve been drinking a lot of tea lately, but I’ve got finals coming up, and that means that I don’t have time to log things like I’d like to. It also means that I’m going to have to go dark on Steepster for a week or two because I need to throw myself into school right now. SO, I will see you guys on the other side of the semester. I fully look forward to my activity feed being so blown that there’s no way I’ll be able to catch up. ENJOY YOUR TEA!

So…I am really very much at odds with this tea. Not knowing a ton about darjeelings, I’m not sure how this measures up in terms of what you typically get from them, but I think that I could really like it. Here’s what’s got me scratching my head.

Steep one was VERY bitter. I followed what they said on their website, which said five minutes in boiling water, so maybe toning one of those aspects down could get rid of it, but at the same time, the bitterness…I don’t know. It kind of began to remind me of wine at one point, and that was likely because I could really taste the grape.

It took me a while to get used to what “grape” can mean when I got older. As a younger me, I used to devour white and red grapes brought home from the grocery store. We used to freeze them during the summer and suck on them. I sometimes ate grape-flavored candy, or have a grape-flavored soda, or, though this was far from appealing – grape-flavored medicine.

Now, grape means much more to me than that one-dimensional [well, two-dimensional if you count red vs. white] grape taste I knew then. I’ve had dolma, though that technically involves leaves, and I’ve grown to love wine, so this tea fits in with my newly acquired idea of what grapes can taste like. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the flavor profile that dolma can take on.

What this REALLY makes me think of is this spray that I got from Caudalie. It reminds me of it a LOT. It’s in the taste, it’s in the smell. And I don’t mind it, but it could be a turn-off point for some people.
http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml;jsessionid=VBQGKJ50ET4RICV0KQNQIGQ?id=P6025&shouldPaginate=true&categoryId=4171 – the spray is awesome, just as an aside. Super refreshing. Makes me face all tingly.

The thing that I found very intriguing about this is that it sweetens a lot in the aftertaste. You drink it, and I discovered that letting it sit for a little bit allowed it to settle so the aftertaste would be stronger, and it’s kind of intense but afterwards? Complex, and dare I say delicious? I was really digging it. It reminded me a lot of wine at that point.

In the second steep, the bitterness was almost gone. I stopped there because I got distracted or…maybe it was time for dinner or something. I’m not sure. But I ended it with cup two. I’m definitely going to make some time for this over the weekend so I can play around with it any more.

I’m glad that I soldiered through the bitterness to discover how enjoyable it ended up being because otherwise I would have surely sent Auggy a ‘BLECH BLECH BLECH BLECH BLEEEEEEEEEECH’ email for sending it to me. It makes me think of warheads – you sit there and suffer through the bitter sour taste, but that makes the sweetness at the end just that much better.

Changing some things around could completely get rid of it, but…I don’t know. The more that I think about it the more I kinda like it.

The length of time between when I got this sample from Auggy and when I actually finished it [today] should be indicative of how spectacularly horrible I am about finishing my samples. It makes it harder to finish them when they’re good, because then I know I’ll need to go through the process of piecing together an order and I can’t really think of anything else from Serendipitea that I really want. Anyone have any suggestions to toss my way?

On the last cup of this, I was stuck with that conundrum so many of us often find ourselves in – I didn’t have enough to make two cups, but I had too much for one. Either I could use some of my smaller mugs and spread it out or dump it all in, shorten the steep time, and hope for the best.

I opted for the latter, since I was feeling impatient. The tea was going to be accompanying me through a programming assignment and I needed a quantity that could last me for a while.

The decision made for the best 3 cups of Colonille I got out of the sample, hands down.

I wish I’d paid closer attention to the actual quantity when I dumped it in there, but I’d say it was maybe…1.75 tsp-ish? I set the timer for 2:30, but got distracted and pulled it out a bit late.

No astringency, to the relief of my palate, just smooth, smooth, smooth, warm, vanilla goodness, darkened by whisps of cacao and blanketing my tongue. This tea doesn’t hammer you with sweetness [though I imagine that it would hold up to additives well – I think that Auggy can confirm validity on that estimation] but the flavor profile evokes it quite nicely, if that makes sense. What you’re left with is a lovely, comforting, rather mature cup of flavor.

This isn’t a refreshing tea for me, it’s a calming tea, and I find it best prepared as the dusk approaches and things are beginning to wind down. Three cups in, the flavor did not diminish much, which might have been due to the large amount of leaf I used, and I would have kept going if I didn’t feel the need to switch to something lower in caffeine. [Though, I suppose most of the damage had already been done by that point, caffeine-wise.] With this last experience, I’m going to have to give it a ratings bump. And start thinking seriously about putting an order together.

I needed a break from brain work earlier today, so I decided to make some tea and beat up some people on Fat Princess. I got some chai cooking on the stove and brewed a cup of Colonille, sent to me by Auggy, to tide me over while I was waiting. And beating.

It could just be that I was distracted because I was too busy burninating on little cartoon people, but I couldn’t taste the chocolate that this is supposed to have in it. What I did taste was the vanilla. I’m going to have to try this alongside the Rooibos Bourbon Vanilla Carolyn traded me, because although one is rooibos and one is black, they remind me very much of one another.

What I can say about this is that it’s warm, inviting, and for me is equivalent to a tea hug. It’s something I want to revisit when I’ve got some place comfortable to sit with a blanket and a book. And maybe a fire. And maybe replace the book with a PS3 controller. And maybe whilst sitting there I’m destroying some cartoon lives on Fat Princess.

I’M SORRY! I’ve got asploding on the brain.

Seriously, though, going to need to drink this again when I can give it the attention it deserves. What I got out of it, though, I enjoyed.

Rooibos+vanilla+bits of chocolate=one great tea. A mug of this makes a great dessert, or pair it with some some cookies for an extra special treat. I like to add a little milk, but this tea has a creamy taste all on its own. You can really taste the vanilla and cocoa, but they don’t overwhelm the flavor of the rooibos.

Ceylon just is not a favorite. This isn’t as good quality-wise as some that I’ve had but it’s okay. I probably like it more than the nicer one I had before since that one tasted of raspberries and I don’t like raspberries. This one is just kind of a general, not overly exciting Ceylon.

This one is a bit dry, but very tasty in my opinion. You can taste the natural sweetness in the steam rising up from the cup. The color is deep golden…very pretty. It smells faintly of green tea but tastes nothing of it. I’m digging the slightly nutty flavor. I could drink this one all the time. I bet it would be tasty iced too. Yea Darjeeling!

I’m glad Auggy sent me a full sample tin!

Holy monkeys. My first sip and the fruit just smacks me upside the head. Which is really mean first thing in the morning, especially when I’m in such a not-happy mood. I think if I were in a better mood, I might have enjoyed the overpowering fruit aspect of this (though maybe not), but as it is, I just wanted to dig through the liquid to find actual tea. I think there was some tea taste at the end but it could just be the result of my taste buds being beaten into submission.

I wasn’t sure what fruits exactly were included while I was drinking it and if pushed to guess, would have gone with peach (which is in it). Which is so incredibly NOT what I think of when I see a name like Lili’uokalani. Peach is not a tropic fruit.

The only flavored tea from SerendipiTea that has disappointing.

Steeped for about 3 min. Very nice coconut and vanilla flavors. Didn’t really taste a chocolate flavor, but very yummy.