Simpson & Vail

Good morning Steepster :)

My tea cupboard is a mess… I have too many little tins and this morning when I was rummaging around in there a few fell out on my foot. whoops! It actually seems a bit less cumbersome to keep them in the envelopes somehow, although the tea probably stays fresher in the tins.

I also broke my For Life teapot this week which is a major bummer… I’m forever breaking teaware! Might need to talk a walk down to Japantown this afternoon to buy a new one.

Anyway I thought I’d drink this for breakfast this morning. It isn’t anything too special, though adding sugar and soymilk seems to bring out more of the toffee notes. I doubt this will be a repurchase for me somehow.

Good morning Steepster
This is kind of a strange choice for breakfast but I chose it anyway because I’m not drinking a lot of teas in the afternoon these days due to concerns about caffeine.

However, my insomnia seems to be getting MUCH better. My arm is healing enough so that I’m not being woken up 5 times a night due to pain. I’ve slept pretty well in the last week, of course some of that is due to not having to be at my stressful job.

I still have too much of this tea left. I’ve discovered that the flavor is improved by adding sugar but I just don’t want it in my tea cabinet anymore. If I got rid of every tea I feel is mediocre I would purge 1/2 my collection in one day, lmao. As it is, I usually just get rid of the ones that are so horrible I would never drink them. Which makes me wonder, why do I keep buying teas I don’t like when there are so many I do like? I guess I always want to be trying new things but perhaps it’s better to stick to the tried and true….

Last night I was having a serious craving for sweets so it’s probably a good thing I don’t have any in the house! I’m not getting much exercise while I stay at home with my broken arm and I’m hoping not to gain any weight during this time.

So somehow this seems slightly decadent to me this morning. I brewed it in my stump teapot and am finding it fairly tasty. I am picking up toffee and marigolds although it is not a super strong flavor. I enjoyed this with a bit of stevia and soymilk. Getting a bit of burnt sugar in it somewhere. I’ll close my eyes and pretend I’m doing something really sinful – he he he. See previous notes if interested.

TGIF!
I couldn’t decide which tea to have this morning and ended up with this. I really like the black tea base S+V is using here but I don’t taste a lot of toffee flavor and I used a lot of leaf. hmmm. I think of toffee as a sweet, caramely flavor and this isn’t really it. However I do like this tea anyway, probably won’t be a repurchase though.

Tea of the morning here! I’m going to resist rating this for now because I woke up this morning with some bad allergies which seem to be affecting my sense of smell and taste. I’m noticing this is a smooth and mild black tea base. The toffee flavor seems light to me but does become more pronounced upon cooling.I’m drinking mine with a bit of soymilk and it’s good this way. Hopefully my sinuses recover soon so I can do a proper assesment.

2nd rooibos tea blend of the afternoon. I haven’t been drinking this much since the holidays. This is one tisane I actually prefer to underleaf a bit since I find the mint so overpowering. There isn’t even any actual peppermint here, just candy cane flavoring. I really like this with soymilk and today I tried it with a sprinkle of cinnamon and some cacao powder — nice. Maybe I’ll try making a hot chocolate with it soon.

Candy cane latte anyone? I really need to get that milk frother I’ve had my eye on…

I really like this blend a lot but less is definitely more – I added about half the amount of tea I normally would. Very strong mint flavor!

This was part of my latest order from S & V… I think this tea is YUMMY!

The green rooibos provides a nice base for this blend. It reminds me of the famous Candy Cane Lane by Celestial Seasonings but I like this blend better. In my opinion, it has the perfect amount of sweetness for a Candy Cane tea and is very minty. This is a knock your socks off kind of mint, not a wimpy mint. Sometimes stevia teas are so sweet that they are downright revolting but this is good. I used about 2 tsp. of tea for a 10 oz. mug but I might try cutting that in half… it’s pretty strong.

I got 4 oz. of this and I’m very glad. It will be a good blend for the holidays. I happen to like green rooibos but you don’t find a lot of blends made with it, S & V has a few and I’m drinking my way through them.

I thought I’d try cold brewing this one. I’ve had the tea for a few months and I don’t seem to be drinking it much because I’m not really crazy about it. The green tea is definitely nice coldbrewed and I was hoping that would bring out some more of the almond notes and even though it smells almondy, it tastes mostly like artificial flavoring and bitterness. I do like flavored teas but not when they taste like chemicals. I have this issue with several of David’s tea blends too.

Anyway I hope I will finish this off someday but that might be a challenge when I have so many better green teas in my stash and it looks like I have about 2 oz. of it. Le sigh. At least I know that I prefer this one hot.

Steepster is acting weird today, I just added a bunch of new teas but I can’t find them when I do a search on them. I tried re-adding this one and it said it was already in the database. Hopefully the problems sort themselves out.

Anyway this is a standard Chinese green tea that smells kind of almondy and contains slivered almonds in the bag. I was hoping for something a bit more marzipan-y after tasting it, so I decided to add a pinch of stevia. That did help make it more dessert-like. The almond flavor seems natural and not overwhelming. It’s a nice every day afternoon tea, I think. Not too bad with almond milk, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. ;-)

Tea #17 from Another Traveling Tea Box

While I enjoyed this, I thought it was a bit off the mark. It’s missing a few ingredients that I think are important in a carrot cake. I expected the cinnamon to play a stronger roll, but I was hardly able to taste it. The papaya gave it a tropical flavor that was just out of place.

Thanks Kittena for sending some of this my way :)

Wow I could smell this steeping from the next room. And it smelled amazing!

The apple is subtle, but there, and it’s just so cake-y tasting. This is a great dessert tea. Hmm I may have to contemplate an S&V order.

Also, it gets even better as it cools. I am thrilled I got to taste this one. Delicious!

Thank you for this one, Nicole! Simpson & Vail have some mighty delightful black teas, but this one isn’t so mighty delightful. It’s good, but not great. The leaves here look like a dark oolong. I think those are my least favorite teas and a green oolong might have been better with a mango flavor anyway. But this particular oolong melds with the mango flavor and isn’t charcoal-like at all. The mango flavor seems to be one of those mystery fruit flavors that can sometimes be confused for peach or something else (I think I’ve had this flavor in others teas before and it may have been supposedly peach flavored.) Not bad! But I think I’ll go check out the Simpson & Vail website….

I remember I sampled this tea from a teabox before…and I thought it was chocolate. But THIS time, it’s much fresher and I can certainly appreciate it more. Why not have a holiday tea in July? I remembered it’s half the year gone while sitting with Dad in his speech therapy waiting room and they’re playing a Hallmark Christmas movie. Oh boy, toooo fun. Anyway, this blend is lovely. Even though there is rooibos among the black tea, the black tea gets pretty deep and dark, just the way I like it. I couldn’t really tell there was rooibos here at all (AND it didn’t break through my infuser to invade my mug.) The flavor is sweet vanilla and just the perfect balance of peppermint, so as not to overshadow the vanilla. Bonus points for these gorgeous tiny flowers (quite different from Steepster’s photo of the tea and I’m glad for the change.) I’m happy I was able to revisit this one. Raising the rating from a 78.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug// 14 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 minute steep

Another teaboxB blend! thanks everyone! And another chocolate mint blend I’m sure to love. And I do! The mint and chocolate share equal stage time. The black tea base is nice, as all of the Simpson & Vail teas I’ve tried are. There is rooibos in this blend I was worried about (though I once said I wish there were MORE rooibos/black tea blends) but the rooibos doesn’t seem to be noticeable. My favorite part of this blend is the tiniest little flowers that I haven’t seen in any tea before!

I’m just reading the description right now and it seems like there is vanilla and not chocolate. However did I taste chocolate?!?!

I used more leaf than I normal would (2 tsp for 8 oz), as S&V teas sometimes seem to come out watery to me. And then I got worried, because the liquor seemed to go auburn almost immediately and only get darker from there. I still stuck it out for three minutes, though.

What I got came out smelling cinnamony with hints of cocoa and bread (and definitely tea).

Flavor wise it tastes like a cinnamon black with hints of unsweetened cocoa in the back. The extra leaf definitely gave it a stronger flavor with a kind of thick mouthfeel, it, however, also made a really astringent cup. I feel like I need a glass of milk to add moisture back to my tongue. The flavors here are also kind of muddled and I don’t get any sort of baked goods taste or anything that even makes me think brownies.

I won’t review until I try a couple different brewing parameters, but this one didn’t do much for me.

East Frisianites would make great members of Steepster if this article is to be believed
http://germanfood.about.com/od/drinks/tp/German-Tea.htm

as the average consumption of tea per year is 5.51b per person.

This tea was quite satisfying today. It had a nice body and an interesting variety of flavours and an interesting softness to it even without the recommended cream.

The dry leaf is quite pretty with a nice blend of bop scattered with golden buds. After 2.5 minutes, It brewed up to a deep copper colour that deepened to rosewood with a full cup that smelled of fruit, biscuit, malt and cocoa.

Flavour wise, My initial impressions of this tea were a smooth, floral, hay, combined with white chocolate notes melding into malt and biscuit,
with top note of fruit. I could see how a rich cream could go nice with this. I would love to try it with an unsweetened double cream (one of my favourite foods I had in Ireland), the floral chocolate notes would meld perfectly with it. The initial note is light and soft, and the tea finishes with deeper rich notes of fruit and malt. There is a hint of spice and chocolate in the aftertaste with
just enough astringency for it to taste refreshing. quite nice!.

I tried a second steep with the recommended sugar and this really brought out the berry notes of the Ceylon in the blend followed by floral notes.

This is a really nice everyday tea that I quite enjoyed. Thanks to the generosity of Nicole I have several more cups to look forward to!

Another tea from Nicole, yay! Thanks Nicole!

I love doing things a little differently in the name of tradition, so of course I prepared this as directed, 200F for nearly 5 minutes, rock sugar at the bottom of the cup, cream lowered in at the end without stirring. I’ve had Upton’s East Frisian but not Harney and Sons’, and it’s been quite a while since the Upton so I can’t say which I like better really but I’m inclined to say this one just because for today it’s quite pleasant. The brewing smell is malty and comforting, and it does remind me of how much I love “Western” traditional blends, you know, meant to be taken with milk and sugar, with lots of classic brisk black tea taste. They’ve been lost in the shuffle lately with my exposure to lots of Chinese and Taiwanese stuff, but this is a good reminder not to forget about them too long as it’s really up my alley, for the nostalgia as well as enduring personal preferences.

SIPDOWN! I forgot i had to add in 2 butiki teas to my cupboard so there really is no likely way i’ll hit 200 teas this weekend – a more reasonable goal is probably 210, so i’ll aim for that. I didn’t brew this traditional style – i wanted to see if this would hold up to my usual brewing and it did! Thank you nicole for sending this my way. I’ll like pick up more of this at some point from either S&V or H&S. It’s a pretty decent addition to my cupboard for those days when i don’t want an overly bold tea or a malty one. I’m interested in trying it “traditional” style as well some day.

I had a great time reviewing this sample, and it is one of the best Earl Grey creams I’ve come across during this project. The cream is the most prominent note in its flavor, but it still manages not to drown the traditional Earl Grey flavor profile like so many others do.

It’s blend is very smooth and avoids nearly any of the usual dry mouth sensation that seems to go hand-in-hand with Earl Grey. Overall this was a very enjoyable tea, and I look forward to sharing the rest of the sample at work!

You can read my full review here:
http://wordsabouttea.blogspot.com/2013/08/creamy-earl-grey-by-simpson-vail.html

Since I had the ATR Brioche tea this morning I thought I’d try this one to see if it tasted similar because of the almonds. They look a lot alike, the S&V has more almond slivers though. The Almond Sugar Cookie is a nice tea, the almond taste is good but if I need to pick one almond tea I would take the Brioche because it seemed sweeter and I liked the cinnamon. The tea base was stronger and slightly more astringent in the Almond Sugar Cookie.

Forgot to add that I got this from swapping with moraiwe :) Many Thanks!

This was such a good smelling tea. I used a lot of leaf but it still came out a bit watery to me. I could taste the cinnamon and chocolate though. I like it but wished it were thicker/malty and stronger tasting to enjoy it more. Thanks to moraiwe for the swap.

I’ve never ordered this one myself, but jessiwrites sends me some occasionally. I don’t think I love it enough to order it myself, but yet I thoroughly enjoy it the rare times I do drink it. It really does embody a strawberry cupcake with a nice black base.