SerendipiTea

Sipdown! I oversteeped this last cup of the tea so I didn’t notice any vanilla this time. Also, it’s like, years later. It was a reasonable cup of genmaicha though.

The last time I tried this genmaicha (which was a part of my awesome swap package from Missy & Dylan a while back), I couldn’t taste much, so couldn’t really review it. This time, however…. WOW! This is one delicious genmaicha! I both smell and taste almost a vanilla-y flavour, which could potentially be from cross-contamination, but fits in beautifully with the toasty rice and slightly astringent/seaweedy green tea. Reminds me of a more toasty version of 52teas’ Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha. I am really really enjoying this! The one downside is that I think I brewed this a touch too strong, but it’s only a touch – it just brings out a bit of astringency from the green tea that I’d rather tuck back in behind the toasty rice.

Thanks SO MUCH for this sample! If Frank doesn’t bring back enough Marshmallow Treat for me to be satisfied, I’ll look into picking some up this up and… adding marshmallows to flavour it myself?!

ETA: Second cup (2:30/82C) doesn’t have the vanilla overtones, and is pretty much your basic light genmaicha. Decent and drinkable, but nothing special.

Mmmmm, roasty toasty goodness.

Unfortunately I just contaminated my tastebuds quite severely by having some teriyaki sauce (aka lime/soy sauce/ginger/copious garlic), so a review at this time would be entirely unfair. I also think I should directly compare the three genmaichas I have in my cupboard. So I’ll do that next time!

Thanks for the sample of this one, Missy & Dylan!

Oh man…this tea…steeped in vodka (grey goose)…added to cran/raspberry juice with some gingerale is mighty tastea! I am going to miss this when i run out of my vodka infused tea…or is that tea infused vodka. Either way the blueberry-ness of this tea makes for a delicious blueberry cocktail!

Totally just had a hot brew of this tonight to finish it off! Operation sipdown! GO GO GO! I’m going to miss this one as it’s one of my fav blueberry teas so far. We’ll see if i manage to find another that compares before i get around to placing an order with this company haha

Sooooo grey goose vodka + this tea = blueberry vodka! Perfect when mixed with other such delicious juices like cranberry! Raspberry! sprite! you get the picture… I made a batch of this and man is it delicious! YAY for holiday blue drinks :)

mmm tasty tasty blueberry! I really like the zip and zing of this blueberry tea. I think what appeals to me the most of this is that it’s sweet blueberry but there also a bit of sour.

Totally did this as a cold brew and with a bit of sweetener this is like YO WOMAN! I AM BLUUUUUEBERRRRRY! Drink me! Yeah. Exactly like that. And so I did. And it was a glorious thing that tea and I together in blissful cold deliciousness.

Mmmm this is a great tea. I’m really happy to have received it in the Amoda tea box. I love the blueberry flavouring and the tea base. Oh happy days!

Mmmm still digging the blueberry taste of this tea. I think it might be my favourite blueberry tea that I’ve tried so far.

Another tea from my Amoda October box!

I quite enjoy the blueberry flavour in this tea. Theres a nice balance between the base and the blueberries. Also, the blueberries don’t have an artificial taste to them. It’s a bit like blueberry jam filled pastry or something along those lines. I think this was a great choice by Amoda.

I’ve been looking for a citrusy herb tea that did not contain hibiscus or rose hips — not easy. I first tried this iced in a NYC cafe, and iced is its best incarnation. It’s minty and the tartness is not too sour or fruity. The citrus is more lime than lemon, and more zest than juice. It makes the perfect unsweetened, uncaffeinated iced tea, but it’s also my go-to herbal when I’m feeling a cold coming on. I know this isn’t the lime-blossom tisane that Proust’s aunt used to give him, but it tastes exactly as I imagined that tea to have tasted.

SerendipiTea’s Rose Alongi is a blend of organic Chinese green tea and rose petals. The tea leaves on their own smell grassy. After it’s brewed, the tea smells like fresh roses with a definite (and pleasant) undercurrent of green tea.

This is a smooth and slightly sweet tea. It’s light-bodied and leaves a wonderful lingering clean/fresh taste. I think it makes a great afternoon tea to share with a loved one!

This tea has became one of my favorites and I drink a few of cups of it each week (usually paired with dark chocolate!).

It tastes best when prepared according to the package directions: warm up the teapot with hot (but not boiling) water and pour out, sprinkle bottom of pot with tea, pour in water, brew for 3 minutes, enjoy.

I finished my stash of this last night. This is a relaxing caffeine free tea. See previous notes.

I had this last night before bed. I am generally not a fan of rose teas but for some reason I really liked this one. It was a nice soothing cup after a stressful day. It is somewhat perfumy-y and if you do not like strong perfum-y smelling teas this would not be for you. I am just adding chamomile based teas to my stash and this is a nice option.

Thank you DHart1214 for this sample tea

I’m not a hibiscus hater like lots of people on Steepster, and find that it’s nice with fruit blends as long as the other ingredients have enough flavor on their own to keep from being overpowered.
Sort of like not putting mint with a softer vegital tasting tea because it would hide the flavor completely.

So I looked at the ingredients, apple, raspberry, rose hips, hibiscus, natural flavoring and a ‘Guatemalan black tea’ (really?), all organic, and thought that the balance should be tasty.

Yow! The tea brewed up like a Shu Puer on the 2nd steeping, almost black and thick! You could remove grease from a frying pan with the astringency.
Like any good culinary scientist (which I Ain’t),I put a little milk in the tea and watch an instant churning like DRANO as a whirl-wind of tea stirred itself and became a curdled cup of icky gunk!

I began again and tried a lighter steep and still there was a sour bad taste.
No apple, no black tea flavor to be found. Even sweetening could not make this a happy tea.

How can I find the good here. (That’s my job)

I’ve got it! It’s organic!

I have nothing new to add to this. I just wanted to say,

I aten’t ded!

This one came from Auggy and from the name alone I was sort of expecting some kind of breakfast blend-y, hearty and malty tasting blend of primarily Assam and/or Ceylon. That name just sounds like that sort of concoction. So imagine my face when I took the lid of the tin and smelled something that reminded me most of all of something like chocolate-covered macaroons! How can this be, Steepsterites? How can such a masculine sounding name hide such a frankly girly smelling tea? I wasn’t even expecting it to be anything but tea-flavoured, for Ceiling Cat’s sake!

I made Husband smell the leaf and I have to say he was sceptical, considering his reply well before stating that he would try anything once. (And every time he says that sort of thing there is the “within certain boundaries” add-on before I can really start making outrageously evil plans. Unfair!)

After brewing, it smelled very strongly of coconut. Sitting normally at the desk I could still clearly smell the cup, standing there beside me without even searching for it. There was something sort of cake-y in the aroma as well.

The taste was very sweetly coconut and very creamy too. I couldn’t really pick much of the base up and the chocolate-y note from the aroma of the dry leaf did not make a second appearance. I had rather hoped it would. This was really way too much coconut for me. It was a nice enough cup but the one cup was definitely enough for me. Husband didn’t care for it at all. No, this was not really something for us. I would much rather have had the blend that I thought it would be, and every time I see the little tin on the shelf now, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t contain what I might expect it to.

Oh look, a vanilla black! My obsession with vanilla these days is hardly a secret, is it? Actually, it’s one that has been going on for a fairly long time now. I can’t even remember what set it off. I suspect it was the awesome vanilla bean Nilgiri that Chi of Tea had and which was sold out when I had decided to buy a large quantity of it. (Does anybody know what’s going on with Chi of Tea these days? There has been radio silence on that front for a long time now.) Anyway, that particular vanilla black seems to have ruined me for all others, and now I can’t find the perfect one.

Auggy has sent me this candidate, and from the aroma of the leaves and the cup after brewing, it’s a serious contender. It’s a little bit coconut-y sweet, and it has that smell that feels tough and leathery. Like the skin of the pod itself rather than just the grains on the inside. The smell that reminds me of a certain sort of sweets that actually has nothing at all to do with vanilla as far as I know. In the cup, it smells all creamy too.

So the aroma is exactly what I’m looking for in the perfect vanilla black.

OMG HOW EXCITING!!! Could it really be the Perfect One?

The first sip was definitely vanilla flavoured, and the vanilla tasted right too. It even tasted milky grey, which is a good sign. But then… that was it. The vanilla flavour is everything that I’m looking for, but the base is really where everything falls like a house of cards. There doesn’t really seem to be much body to it. I can barely taste that it’s a black tea, but I can’t say anything at all about it, because it’s only so faintly there under the vanilla, and the flavouring doesn’t even seem to be that overwhelmingly strong. I should really really like to find this flavouring on a slightly more forceful base. I don’t know which tea this one is made on, but it just doesn’t seem to be asserting itself.

The first time I had it was in the large pot that I share with Husband (I think. I must have forgotten to get his opinion), and then tried again in the medium sized pot for the same result. Yesterday I had it in the smallest pot and it was a little bit better, but not really enough to make that much of a difference.

Still, I’ll rate it pretty high, because the flavouring of it is spot on. It’s just not the perfect base.

Thank you Dhart1214 for this sample tea!

For some readers this will bring back memories, for some…‘Guys’ maybe not unless you were dragged along with mom and a sister as a kid or are a dad who enjoys these times with a daughter.

It’s ‘Back to school shopping time’ for 17 year old Megan!
And of course who do they call? GRANDMA! (I’m so proud!)

I am the Queen of shopping for the family. I know how to get the best deals. It’s a holiday weekend which means ‘sale’ so I went online and checked the store I wanted to go to and found 15% off on top of what’s on sale in the store. (50% becomes 65%, 70% becomes 85% and so on).

Off we went in my Grandma minivan to Macy’s.

My daughter Annalisa, Megan and I scooped up a huge pile of clothes from the sale racks, then grabbed the largest dressing room.

What happens when we women get together is always the same.

We started getting goofy and laughing.
Then I began laughing till I wheezed.
Then they laughed at me, and from that point on everything was funny.
Pretty soon Megan was laughing and calling ‘Grandma", while I was crying and wheezing, “Stop”, and my daughter couldn’t speak at all because she was on the floor doubled over giggling at both of us.

We exhausted ourselves with this nonsense.

We are a family of Laughing women!
In the car with the other two teenage girls it’s even worse.
At home and at Church…we can’t stop laughing and carrying on.

It’s wonderful!

I chose the Black-n-Blue tea for my nightcap because it just struck my fancy.
Most times I like blackberry tea because it reminds me of making jam and berry picking with my children when they were little.

After steeping the leaves in my Finum basket, I sweetened the tea and took a sip.
The tea tasted like a hot blackberry turnover.
There was a nice bakery flavor that I liked, with a jam quality that wasn’t too sweet like candy but was natural but not tart.
There was an aftertaste that reminded me of peach. It’s a full, round mouth-feel that gives the tea that crust buttery pastry flavor.

This was a good and tasty tea.
Perfect after laughs with the women who have my whole heart. These shopping trips are going to create some good memories don’t you think so too?!

A nice strong black. Smooth and rich. The vanilla is not overdone but lasts and lasts on your tongue. I have to thank Missy for another wonderful sample!! It’s good!

Side by Side Comparison with Once Upon A Tea by SerenipiTea – thank you to Missy and Dylan for both samples!
This tea is okay but the flavors are just not my favorite it seems a bit on the weak side. There was just something sort of MEH about it.

Cocoa Loco is sweeter and less spicy than Once Upon A Tea
Once Upon A Tea has more complexity and depth.
Both have a creaminess to them but I believe that Cocoa Loco wins on the creaminess factor.
I am not a huge fan of either really to be totally honest.
Where one wins the other skips out and vice versa. I think I will pour them into one big mug and see what happens :)

Side by Side Comparison with Once Upon A Tea by SerenipiTea – thank you to Missy and Dylan for both samples!
This tea is okay but the flavors are a bit on the weak side and the rooibos base is a little too prominent for me. It did get better as it cooled but there was just something sort of MEH about it.
Cocoa Loco is sweeter and less spicy than Once Upon A Tea
Once Upon A Tea has more complexity and depth.
Both have a creaminess to them but I believe that Cocoa Loco wins on the creaminess factor.
I am not a huge fan of either really to be totally honest.
Where one wins the other skips out and vice versa. I think I will pour them into one big mug and see what happens :)

Had some more of our fave ginger peach today thanks to Missy & Dylan!
You guys have impeccable taste, I must say.

Lightly sweetened – hit the spot! Was going to save some for iced tea but then… I drank the whole pot.