T2

Tastes like popcorn, that’s for sure! I don’t notice any caramel though. And the taste of the tea comes through too. I don’t see myself buying it, but I enjoyed the sample from Cameron B. I’ve had a different caramel corn tea that I prefer, but I don’t remember where it’s from…

Sipdown! I finished up the last of this by cold brewing in lemonade. It’s almost time to say goodbye to summer, after all. I have a feeling that anything cold brewed in lemonade is going to taste good, and this is no exception. The blueberry comes out really well, as does the dragonfruit (more so than when brewed hot). The cranberry is more muted, which is fine with me as I’m not a huge fan anyway. The goji berry? MIA, but again, I don’t mind.

The sweetness of the lemonade complements the fruit really nicely. I mean, of course it does. You can’t go wrong with this.

334/365

I’ve been interested in this one for a while, but I’ve only just now got around to trying it. It’s a blend of cranberry, blueberry, dragonfruit and goji berries – and I think it’s everything I hoped Twinkle Berry would be, but wasn’t.

It brews up very pale – just about peach in shade terms – but I’m glad there’s no hibi here. T2 seem to be good for not relying on hibi too heavily when it comes to their fruit blends, which is one of the things I appreciate most about them. It’s certainly not their packaging I love! Whoever came up with that needs to be court-martialed. I digress.

This one’s nicely fruity, despite it’s pale and innocuous appearance. The blueberry really shines, followed by the cranberry (which is just a little bit tart.) You have to look harder for the dragonfruit, and the goji berries are very subtle, but I’m okay with that. There’s blueberry, after all!

I found this one nicely juicy and refreshing. Today’s cup was prepared hot, but I’m wiling to bet it would also work really well cold – largely due to the lack of hibi. This one’s a winner with me!

Sidebar – Yes, I have a tea (& coffee) cupboard, which has overflowing embarrassingly to boxes in my spare room! That is because the other trait I inherited from said grandmother is buying “stuff” for a rainy day, especially when there is an offer going. These two qualities mean that I am a pack-rat of the highest order, something that my beloved hubby has endured without complaint (or rather, only the occasional comment) since we met…
But I digress – so I have a moral imperative to wade through any tea, only disposing of it if has become completely undrinkable. So here I am, trying out the teas from my lovely presentation tin (T2 Sixteen Classics – sadly, discontinued) & while some teas have weathered the distance, others have become tainted by the other flavours, or lost their potency. I suspect this has suffered a bit of both.
I’m also a bit wary of Earl Grey after a fanatic flatmate tainted everything in our cupboard with the smell of her Earl Grey stash! And that included the food. I spent months eating bergamot scented EVERYTHING. Blech!
Much time has passed, & because I am getting back into tea again & Earl Grey is rightly a classic, I decided to get reaqcuainted…
First off – that hit of bergamot aroma was missing when I opened the tin. Not a good sign…
I brewed for 2 mins & the tea started looking suspiciously dark so I added my obligatory dash of milk (I really struggle with drinking tea black) & cautiously took my first sip.
Hmmm – a faint bergamot scent, along with a pretty robust but uninspiring black tea taste.
If it was new I would have given it no more than 50/100, but I have given it the benefit of the doubt and upped it by 20.
Sigh. This means I’ll have to obtain another sampler in order to give it a fair go…

Trick or Treat! Another T2 sampler down. This one is mostly chunks of nougat mixed with sweet apple, which I fixed up as a strong warm cuppa before bed. I have a bad migraine tonight and just finished an overly herbal cup of headache tea, and need a sweeter chaser.

The brewed tea smells quite sweet, like vanilla and honey. The flavor isn’t as strong as I was expecting, though. My sampler said to use 450ml of water for the packet (and I’ve learned from experience that T2’s instructions are rubbish), so I only used 350ml of water for the whole packet. It still tastes a little weak to me. I get the notes of the sweet apple base, but it feels too much like sugary water to me, like I just added a bit of honey or vanilla agave to a very weak apple tea.

Very underwhelming overall.

It is so sickly sweet it is like a mouthful of stevia. I drank this because it came in my T2 herbals sampler, but never again. I like licorice flavour, but in tea it just becomes a hindrance. Too metallic, too medicinal, and too sweet.

The taste is definitely banana. It was pleasant up until the last little bit, which was bitter. If I were to pick a banana tea to drink, I’d likely pick one with a green base instead. Definitely fun though.

As usual, I wasn’t all that excited to drink this. I steeped it 1 minute, 350 mL hot water. It was quite vegetal, but had a lightly toasted flavour with fruity notes typical of my favourite green tea Long Jing. It also was quite nutty, which I loved. Unlike Long Jing, it had no sweetness and had bitter tendencies. I really hate bitterness in tea. I resteeped it twice more in cold water and that was a bit less bitter, however I’m not going to drink this again. I don’t have the taste for sencha.

Trick or Treat! This was my work thermos tea today, and after a refill on my lunch break, I have another T2 sampler down!

The base tea tasted very much like a Chinese black to me, having a somewhat slightly spicy and smoky taste, so I really enjoyed this! It was very smooth and lacked astringency. The flavoring also wasn’t too overpowering as they tend to be in dessert blends; there was a soft, burnt sugar flavor, with hints of caramel and nuts, and they just sort of added a gentle sweetness that played into the base nicely rather than steamrolling right over it. As the fall weather is starting to really set in (it’s expected to freeze tonight!), this mix of smokey black and burnt sugar syrup flavors really did it for me this morning!

Home – 10:00 PM

OOF.

This is a big ol’ pot of hibiscus. It’s sour enough to make my face pucker a little bit.

There is spice – clove and cinnamon. Maybe a touch of apple.

But mostly, it’s hibiscus.

Nope, nope, nope!

326/365

This one smells absolutely delicious, both dry and once brewed! Unfortunately (and like many teas of this ilk) it doesn’t quite carry over into the flavour. In terms of taste, this one’s pretty hibi-heavy, although it doesn’t look to be when you’re just looking at the dry leaf. There are lots of apple and freeze-dried strawberry pieces, but I suppose as an ingredient hibi is always going to trump those. I can taste strawberry, but it’s really too tart/sour to really live up to its name – especially when brewed hot. There’s not much in the way of creaminess, except perhaps right at the end of the sip. You have to concentrate, though! I’m wondering whether a cold brew would suit this one better, but in general I don’t feel fruit blends are really T2’s strength. Their black blends, on the other hand…

This one’s okay, but I don’t love it.

This isn’t the best chamomile I’ve had, but it isn’t outstanding either. Some hot hay and lemon notes, a bit fruity. The other reviewers are correct in saying this pastes a lot like pollen. Luckily, it does not have the vegetal qualities of fresh chamomile.

I mostly get mint, lemongrass, and medicinal herbs from this. I wish it had steeped stronger because my first cup had an unfortunate accident before I could drink it. Resteeping the leaves a second time has yielded something faintly greenish but not the deep hazel colour that the first cup had. Some vegetal spinach flavour (nettle leaf), citrusy lemon grass, sweet spearmint, but no floral rose or savoury fennel.

So this was my pot of tea to accompany my dark chocolate covered digestive biscuits, because I wanted to feel properly British while watching the Doctor Who Season 11 Premiere with my friend today! Another T2 sampler down, and I’m getting pretty close to having cleared out most of the English/Irish Breakfast samplers in my stash, too.

This one is only a blend of Ceylons, so even among English Breakfasts, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite (I prefer the ones that add a little Yunnan or Keemun), but still better that ones I’ve tried that were extremely Assam-heavy. The leaf was CTC so I steeped it briskly since I personally don’t prefer my blacks too biting, and it turned out quite nice; it was quite malty with a rich baked bread flavor, and actually had a lot of sweet molasses mid-sip, that led to a sharper, slightly woody flavor toward the finish. The astringency following the sip was quite mild and it made for a nice late afternoon pot, especially paired with the sweet dark chocolate biscuits.

That was a most enjoyable Doctor Who premiere. Full of tea and biscuits and got to geek out with my mate… life is good.

Trick or Treat! While most people would be upset to find licorice in their Halloween basket, I was not that child… I’m one of the few people in the world that actually likes black licorice and black licorice-flavored things. Though I have my reservations that this tea is going to have much of a licorice taste (it lacks anise), or even much of that sticky-sweetness provided by licorice root… the dry leaf smelled very heavily of fennel, which I greatly enjoy, but tastes more like a veggie soup with some licorice notes to me. But I woke up with my throat feeling really scratchy/swollen, so I’d rather get on that now before it gets worse, and licorice root is my favorite balm for that problem. Then I saw this remaining sampler from the ol’ T2 stash, and it has such a catchy name, too! There really does need to be a candy called that. Like little frog legs made out of licorice. Ah yeah.

I steeped it up strong in my travel mug, and warm I can smell more of the peppermint in the blend, though I still am getting a strong fennel aroma. The flavor is… much sweeter than expected! The sip certainly opens with a strong fennel flavor, with just a subtle hint of mint, but the licorice root, despite not having much aroma, actually pulls forward and leaves a lot of sweetness lingering on the tongue. The fennel and menthol from the mint actually leaves a strong aftertaste too, and the compination of fennel, licorice root, and peppermint menthol is exactly what my strained throat was begging for this morning. I know this is a tea that most people would hate (the strong licorice root alone would probably make 90% of Steepsterites turn their nose up at it) but for me, it is tasty and certainly a better alternative to what I deem to be nasty-tasting throat losenges or cough syrups.

Work – 4:00 PM

There’s not really much to be said about this tea.

It’s an unremarkable Japanese green tea that tastes of grass and dried leaves with an unremarkable artificial strawberry candy-like flavoring.

Meh.

There are definitely better strawberry green teas.

Work – 2:00 PM

This is one of a couple of T2 teas that I actually purchased at a T2 store in Melbourne. We traveled to Australia last fall for a friend’s wedding. This particular friend is one whom my SO has known for about 15 years or so but had never met in person before. So it was an interesting experience!

I will say, I found Australia to be quite close to the United States in many ways. We had a great time – the wedding took place at a beautiful venue in the mountains and the weather was lovely. We also visited an animal sanctuary where we booked several close encounters with various wildlife. My favorites were the wombats – we were able to see them up close and play with them. The baby wombat reminded me so much of a puppy, she loved her belly rubbed and kept wanting to chew my shoes.

Anyway, getting off-topic! This is a rather strong spearmint tea that is somewhat reminiscent of spearmint gum. I happen to enjoy this quality in a tea, especially in the afternoon, but I realize it might be too strong for some people. The oolong doesn’t really contribute much in the way of flavor, but it does improve the body of the tea and give it the ubiquitous silky mouthfeel. It’s definitely a refreshing tea! I think I prefer the Spearmint Green or Algotea from Kusmi, as the gunpowder green tea in those gives an interesting smokiness. But I’ll certainly have no issue finishing this one.

P.S. – To anyone reading this, I have now entered all of my tea stash into my Steepster cupboard. Please feel free to snoop and send me a PM if you see anything you’d like to try, I’d love to swap samples with you!

Trick or Treat! The Wheel o’ Tea selected this one for my nightly herbal, so it seems even RNG seems in favor of me finishing off my T2 samplers. So it seems the dessert tea tonight is green rooibos flavored with vanilla. The last vanilla-flavored T2 tea I tried tasted like banana to me (the demon food, bleeeeeeeeeeh), specifically the banana flavoring of those nasty Circus Peanut candies. I can only hope the flavoring will actually taste like vanilla on this one, or at the least the base rooibos will salvage it otherwise… (One question though, why did they name this Red Green Vanilla if it is only green rooibos and doesn’t have red rooibos in the ingredients? That perplexes me…)

Thankfully, the flavor of this tea doesn’t taste of banana (phew). The aroma of the tea smells like sweet caramel, and that is what this tea tastes of to me, as well, though I do get some vanilla notes toward the finish. I don’t really get much of the green rooibos base, which is typically quite vegetal, as this is a very honey-sweet tea, a characteristic I usually taste in red rooibos or honeybush, though it does have a lighter and somewhat refreshing mouthfeel. I’m getting a slight sarsaparilla note in the aftertaste, which I noticed in another recent rooibos I sampled that also included green rooibos, so perhaps that is contributing to that flavor? It’s tasty, but other than being a bit lighter, the flavor doesn’t really provide anything I haven’t really tried before in rooibos, such as Metropolitan Tea Co.’s Creme au Caramel.

Work – 12:00 PM

My box says “T2 Holiday Breakfast”, but otherwise looks identical to the photo. Maybe it was a difference between the Australian and North American versions? shrugs

I used two bags for a 16 ounce pot (which is about 5g, if the net weight on the package is to be believed).

This tea is surprisingly light, with the base tea being almost nonexistent. It does taste rather cookie-ish, but the spice notes are light enough to make me think “snickerdoodle” rather than “gingerbread”. There is ginger, which is nicely warming, alongside sweet cinnamon. A light, lingering sweetness in the aftertaste also suggests licorice. There is nutmeg mentioned on the package, but I’m not sure I can detect any alongside these stronger spice flavors.

All in all, it’s not a bad tea. It is perhaps a bit too light, next time I may try steeping it a bit longer and/or using additional bags.