Tea Desire

This is bag #2 that I’ve ordered of this specific tea from Tea Desire, so I must love it. :)

This cup is very different than my last however. Less “full”, it’s a bit thin to be frank. I still like it, although there’s also less earthiness to it than before. A bit tart, which is odd. It’s almost tasting like a black as opposed to a pu-erh? Weird. Much better with sweetener. Wonder what I did differently, or if it’s a re-blend.

Dry, this smells very much like a chocolate truffle, and I inhaled for a few minutes as soon as I opened the bag. Steeped, the smell is similar if more faint, and you can definitely tell this is a pu-erh.

Drinking it is interesting. There’s a thickness to it that was the first thing I ‘tasted’, if that makes any sense. Heavier than buttery or creamy, more like, well, a truffle oddly enough. The chocolate does come through in the sip, although it’s further along, and it lingers interestingly along with the pu-erh. Some Truvia amped up the chocolate flavoring to a more candy chocolate -like flavor.

It’s nice. I’ll have to drink more to really determine if it’s something I’ll reorder or not. Right now, it’s enjoyable and… hard to categorize.

Oh yea, and I’m really enjoying Tea Desire, I just wish they offered more details as to how much to steep their teas. This is the second time I had to wing it, and really, I have zero idea if I got it right.

Is this a sipdown? Hm. Got a sample size of this, and forced it on my friend last night who loves Earl Grey, and who told me earlier last week he had enough tea to last him a few months – because I gave him a small pouch of DAVID’s Tea. Seriously? Sigh.

Anyway, it’s out of my cupboard now, even though I’m a bit sad I tasted zero of it.

Let me just put it out there that I hate the name of this tea. Why is it Slim and Slender? Makes zero sense.

Anyway…

Drank a cup this morning and another right now. Tastes like an unusual chai; lots of licorice in here, some cardamom, and a few flavors I’m struggling to identify. Has the mate really pepped me up? Maybe. Little more than say a black tea though, which surprised me a bit. Normally mate makes me crazy focused and a touch fidgety. Oh, wait, maybe I am fidgety today.

I like this, and I’ll have zero issue sipping it down, however I doubt I’ll buy it again. It’s just okay.

Also, how am I supposed to steep this? Zero instructions anywhere, so I guessed.

Sipdown (179)!

Yes! Finally finished this one off! And about time too, it was one of the oldest teas in my cupboard…

I really enjoyed this one when I first got it, but excessive consumption of it and the fact my leaf had aged/gone pretty stale made these last cold brews far less enjoyable. This one had some strawberry notes in it that were nice, but it was pretty dull too. So I’m pretty happy to have finished it.

Maybe in the summer I’ll look for another bamboo tea alternative because I do enjoy bamboo based blends – but I’ve had enough of this one to make do for a LONG time.

This is a queued tasting note.

Cold brewed this one; mostly strawberry but managed to stay light, fresh and vegetal which was pretty nice. This is definitely less flavourful than it used to be though; I need to start thinking of more creative ways to use up the rest of the leaf because I’m getting pretty bored of this one, as well…

Decreased my rating a little, as well.

This is a queued tasting note.

Like VariaTEA, my tin of this is pretty aged. Though not nearly as old as hers, I think? Still the age shows badly, and like her I’ve also steeped most of the fruit chunks. So, this is pretty well just bamboo tea which I now have to sip through and finish off…

In other news, I hit 300 followers here on Steepster which is kinda cool.

EDIT: Just for my own records, this was a cold brew.

I hope everyone had a good Easter!

I spent most of the day drinking a random assortment of teas, but this one I slipped in as a cold brew just to enjoy a solid favourite that also happens to be a lighter, fruitier tea that seems worthy of drinking on Easter/in early spring. The flavour was a little lighter than I’d have liked, but the fresh vegetal bamboo note was pleasant.

I’m sure I’ll write about Easter shenanigans with my family at some point, but right now I’m gonna focus on the brief time I spent with both roommates Monday evening after I got home from a day with the family. They’d spent all week fighting about Shauna moving out and her cat Vinnie and the tickets she got on his car so I really wanted to do something to bring everyone together a little. Neither of them got to spend the holiday with family, so what I ended up doing was putting together a giant Easter egg hunt for them both.

I think it really cut down on a lot of the tension in the house, and they had a fun time and kind of got to do that childhood stuff they likely would have done with their families anyway. And honestly, the atmosphere of the house has been so much better since then so I think I did a good thing overall. Hooray for hiding chocolate in strange places!

This is a queued tasting note.

More dental work! This time a root canal and a filling; but both went incredibly smoothly, actually. No pain during OR after the dental work, and I didn’t have to take any time off to rest before drinking tea or eating real food. It’s amazing too ‘cause I was sure the tooth that was getting the root canal wasn’t causing pain at all but I guess the reality is just that I’d been living with it so long I was totally adjusted to it ’cause I can CERTAINLY feel the difference.

This tea was at one point a cupboard staple for me; if I’m being honest I probably wont restock it again once I run out because I’m growing a little tired of the flavour profile. It’s generally very consistent and while I appreciate that in a tea I’ve had this one a lot and it’s starting to feel boring. Light, refreshing and vegetal bamboo notes: a fresh red berry (strawberry/red currant) and lemony contrast. I’m sure I’ll go through this by the pitcher come summer but for now it was just something reliable for post-dental work haze.

This is a queued tasting note.

Hot, late night cup of tea to kind of relax me during a bit of insomnia. It didn’t actually do a whole lot to make me feel sleepy, but I really liked the rich strawberry, vanilla, and pineapple notes on top of the yummy bamboo base. This one is so consistently good!

Tea Soda!

Brewed this one up specifically with my brother in mind; he loves DT’s Bamboozled so much that I thought he might like this blend. Even though it’s not peachy there’s another more obvious connection between the two…

And, he did like it which is a success in itself – thought not as much as Bamboozled or Just Peachy (his reigning favourites). I’m liking it too; the bamboo is the most prominant flavour and tastes sweet, light, crisp, and a little vegetal. The strawberry notes follow shortly after and are delightfully sweet (like the light, sweet flavour of strawberries in strawberry shortcake) but quite fleeting. It also maybe tastes a touch lemony?

My day just took a turn for the better but also more confusing and equally stressful…

I just got a call from Value Village; they’ve offered me a F/T position starting at $11.75 an hour (which is definitely fair; minimum wage is $10.20 in SK) for an entry level position where I’d be working both as a cashier and within the donations center. My understanding is that being cross trained in both these departments is not a common occurrence and combined with the wage they’ve offered is their way of showing that they really want me there: if I were working in one department they wouldn’t be able to offer me fulltime which is something I had expressed I was looking for so they’ve merged the positions for me.

At the same time, I was also contacted by DAVIDsTEA today about doing a group interview for a seasonal position as a Tea Guide. Assuming that, following the interview, I’m offered a position the downside here is that despite DT obviously being the job I’m more passionate about, there’d be no guarantee I’d be offered a position after Christmas and I likely wouldn’t be making as much.

So; thinking forwards, I may very well have to make a decision between the two and while I know where my heart lies I don’t know if that’s necessarily the realistic choice. I almost feel like I have to accept the DT position if I’m offered it though – regardless of what’s more realistic. It applies directly to what I’m studying, so it’s worth the chance…

Had this one cold brewed, as I quite often do. Not much note worthy or out of the ordinary; primarily vanilla/strawberry taste in a way that I can only describe as “Froot Loops” which a very light, watery vegetal backdrop from the bamboo. It’s hard to describe the flavor of bamboo as anything other than bamboo, to be quite honest.

More than anything I just wanted to write about the fact that…

Tea Sommelier class resumed today!

Since I’ve now completed “Tea 101” I have seven other ‘classes’ to complete before I can take my Tea Sommelier certification; I know I discussed in prior tasting notes which I’d be taking next since I can now do those seven in any order – the plan was to take Tea 105 From Bush To Cup but not enough people registered for it so rather than lose a month of class I switched into another class – Tea 103 Sensory Development: Tea Science of Taste. The first online session for that class was today!

So far it’s definitely more science based which I get; it’s important to understand how taste works and to find some sort of ‘common shared ground’ for something that can be so subjective. This past week focused on mapping out the places on the tongue where we experience each taste: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Bitter and Umami. For whatever reason there’s been no mention of “Spicy” as a taste so far. We actually haven’t even had any tea tastings/cuppings yet for class and we don’t this week coming up either. Instead this week we taste tested salt, honey, coffee beans, lemons, and tomatoes.

Next week we’re doing tastings of water (distilled, spring and tap), olive oil, chocolate, and coffee beans (Brazilian, and a few others I don’t remember). The broke as fuck cashier part of me is kind worrying about the cost of buying three different kinds of olive oil I’ll probably never use again; I can’t even remember the last time I cooked with olive oil, and I know from my experience as a cashier that even buying the smallest bottles that’s not gonna be cheap. Picking up like four different chocolate bars? Simple. We even sell loose bulk coffee beans in all the kinds we need to test; realistically I can just buy a cup’s worth of each kind of bean and it wont add up to too much. The other thing I don’t really want to buy? Distilled water. At work we only sell it in 4L jugs. What the hell am I going to do with the other 3.9L after I drink my little sample amount!?

Cold Brew!

So glad I’ve got lots of this; now that it’s Spring I think I’m gonna be burning through it really quickly again; it’s fun, fruity, and light which just completely goes along with the weather. This brew in particular was really heavy handed with the ripe, sweet strawberry notes and softened a bit by some more mellow, silky vanilla.

So, since Brenna (my sister) is coming up for Easter I took advantage of the holiday to sort of go “All Out” and put together a GIANT Easter Basket filled with all sorts of tooth rotting treats and fun marine biology related ‘swag’ – marine biology is her latest ‘phase’/dream job. It’s amazing; she’s 10 currently and the only jobs she’s ever really wanted to do are super sciencey animal related things. A few years back the big one was being an entomologist (“Bug Scientist” – she had to dumb that one down for me). I don’t even know how she learns those names/terms: while my family has always encouraged these interests we’re not the ones prompting them or teaching her the ‘lingo’. She’s coming up with it on her own!

My siblings and I are so different though; in school I hardcore excelled at English and Arts classes and all things creative, empathetic, and emotion/passion based and, for the longest time, my ‘career path’ was going to be English/Arts teacher or journalist (neither of which happened). Now I’ve found tea…

My brother is very logical and mathematical and excels greatly at all things math and sciences like Physics that rely on formulas. These last few years of highschool he’s done very well with hands on stuff like electrical work or engineering – and right now he says he wants to be an environmental engineer.

And Brenna’s the best of both worlds; she has the sciencey stuff in the bag, but with the emotion driven and empathetic animal tie in – when she gets to highschool she’s gonna kick biology’s ass!

And that’s my random story/rant thing for the night, I guess. I’m just so proud of my siblings!

My sore teeth are back; have been for the last three or four days now. And, surprisingly, it’s on the same side and the same area as where the dentist fixed my cavities last time. It’s not constant, and I haven’t really broken down and really cried yet from the pain like last time – but it’s something I think I probably need to check out and get looking at again.

I’ve taken to chewing up like three or four advil at a time (yes, chewing) on the sore side and just letting my mouth go totally numb. I think I might be developing a resistance to whatever is in Tylenol or Advil, ’cause I can take like three or four at a time and it does nothing.

Anyway; this tea is sweet strawberry/currant Fruit Loops! And then, the bamboo brings that sugary fruit sweetness down a bit, and makes things more “gentle” and a bit vegetal. Best bamboo tea EVAH.

My tin is so empty, and I’m so sad. I don’t know when I’m gonna get to Tea Desire next, either – and I don’t want to run out of this one. Boooooo!

But yeah; fresh and really fruity with bursting strawberry and red currant notes accompanied by soft vanilla over a light vegetal bamboo base. I must have really been craving bamboo today (at least some part of me anyway) so I pulled out both of my bamboo teas to drink today…

PS. This one still reminds me of Fruit Loops. Every time…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVs9hOPMaE8

#ZachAttack #FruitLoopDingus #BigBrother&TeaThings

Made a large mug of this as a sole tea to sip on last night while watching the Double Eviction episode with Tre last night; it was a rollercoaster of an episode! My second favourite houseguest ended up going home. I hate double evictions…

This was delicious! As always, of course. It’s my sweet Fruit Loops tea with red currant and strawberry notes and loads of vanilla! Mmmm!

I’m actually running relatively low on this one, so restocking is probably a thing that will be happening very shortly. I think I may need to stock up on Caramel Pu’Erh too so at least I wont be restocking just one thing.

It looks like VariaTEA also decided to have this today; though mine was cold brewed (I think fifteen hours?) and then brought to work.

I normally really love this one and can find no faults with it, and I thought that was the way this brew was going, until I reached the last sixth of the thermos and then, for some reason unbeknownst to me, this went from light, refreshing “Fruit Loops” to this really weird/funky medical strawberry/red currant flavour – almost like the total clusterfuck of a mess that DT’s Currant Affair was. Umm, what? Hell no!

I’m thinking it was just from sitting all day though, because this was mostly really enjoyable and that list little bit was left alone for well over five hours during my shift today…

Until it happens again, I’m calling this a fluke!

I actually made this earlier in the day when I was talking to VariaTEA about Fruit Loops tea/David’s Bamboozled. I made a cup and then stuck it into the freezer to enjoy later as an tea slushie. I think it was Sil whom I got that idea from…

Anyway, lets just say I forgot it was in there until I went into the freezer to grab some FroYo. At first I thought it had frozen solid, but after poking it a whole lot with a spoon I cracked the thick, top layer of ice open only to realize a thick layer had frozen solid all around the edge of the cup but the inside was still liquid – albeit very, very fucking cold liquid.

Not really so much of a success as my first tea slushie because I sorta just made a crappy Popsicle, sans the stick, but it was cold and refreshing anyway. Now that I’ve drank all the liquid, I just have a thick “Buddha Bamboo” flavoured shell of ice in the cup which I’m waiting for to melt…

EDIT: I pulled out a few more I thought would be interesting to try as slush. I’ll experiment with a couple tomorrow…

Made in my timolino this morning and sipped on all day long. I didn’t realize how much I missed this one until making it today and falling in love all over again. It’s like drinking a mug of hot fruit loops, which I realise maybe doesn’t sound appetizing but it actually is really, really good.

This was the second tea that I brought with for work. Last time I had it was cold brewed, and I really thoroughly enjoyed it that way (one of the best tisanes I’ve ever had as a cold brew). The only other time I’ve had it hot was in store, so I wanted to see if I could recreate the delicious fruit loop sort of taste that made me fall in love with this blend in the first place.

So for preparation, I used about a tablespoon steeped in my timolino (boiling water) for 10 minutes. At the same time, I was making Cherry Cola & Cake from Della Terra and the two smells were not meshing well, so I was getting a poor idea of how this tea would taste. I’m drinking it now though, and it’s delicious!

It tastes exactly like that first yummy cup I tried in store, and I’m so happy about that. I love when it’s so easy to recreate the flavour of something you’ve had made for you in store because not every location steeps their blends as per the recommendations they use on their packaging. The more I drink this, the more I love it: it’s super refreshing and I’m getting to be able to identify the individual fruits in the blend that come together to make this wonderful Fruit Loops taste: Strawberry, Pineapple, and sweet Red Currants (Tea Desire does currant blends so well).

Also, I’ve been brainstorming for what tea to pick for the 12 Days of Christmas swap here on Steepster – and I think I have ideas for each day except Six Geese-a-laying and Seven Swans-a-swimming. I’ve also been skimming the internet for “home remedies” for sore gums (stupid cut) and one thing I keep seeing it to hold a teabag straight to the sore area (green tea is the suggested tea) – so I’m thinking maybe I’ve finally found a use for all the awful, nasty Lipton green tea bags I have lying around. When I get home I’ll have to test that out!

I recently bought 50g of this because I had it hot in store and it was AMAZING. Since buying it, this is the first time I’ve had it – and to prepare this I cold steeped about 3 tbsp. of it in a pitcher of water.

This cold steeped in my fridge for somewhere around 12 hours, I think? I strained the leaf out of it early this morning before work, but waited until now to pour myself a glass of it. I usually try to do 10-12 hour cold steeps when I’m steeping a full pitcher. I got some of the giant flowers into the dry leaf and some of the huge candied strawberry chunks too (Tea Desire sure does love blends with big chunks of stuff in them). I don’t think there were many of the red currants, though.

The liquor is a very near clear yellow. Seriously, it’s just the slightest touch yellow. For a second I didn’t think 12 hours had been long enough – because when I had it hot the liquor was a more more medium toned yellow. However, after trying a few sips just now it’s fairly flavourful and I think it did steep for a pretty good amount of time.

I actually am trying this cold brewed as per the recommendation of one of the Tea Desire sales ladies who said this is how she likes this blend best. As I’m sipping now, there’s a bit more of a vegetal taste to the drink that when I had it hot (from the bamboo, I’m thinking) and a more present floral note in the aftertaste. As odd as it sounds, it tastes kind of like how sunflowers smell. Yeah – that’s a weird description I know. The strawberry is really present, and the currant (something I think really sweetened my first cup) less so. Overall, I still very much like this as a cold brew: it’s still quite sweet and super refreshing. Like last time, I’m getting “Fruit Loops” – just a little less concentrated.

I need to try hot steeping it with my own tools to see if I can recreate the taste I drank when Tea Desire made it for me, but if that taste can be replicated consistently as a hot brew than it’s safe to say that I actually prefer this one better hot (but only because of the stronger taste of fruit loops). I wanted to try this carbonated, but I was expecting the taste to be a bit bolder, and now I’m thinking it wouldn’t be the best idea to do this one carbonated at this concentration level: I think the sweetness and fruit loopiness of it would get too watered down and wouldn’t be flavourful.

I still have lots of carbonated water left, so time to think about what else might be good carbonated…

Sometimes it saddens me that so few of Tea Desire’s blends are listed here on Steepster, and that I have to add them myself (like this blend) because they often have some REALLY good blends, and it’s a shame more people haven’t tried their tea.

I had this as a Tea To Go today, for work (I was really thirsty, and two thermoses of tea just didn’t seem like enough). Like usual, they asked if I wanted a favourite (I love being a regular) or if I wanted something new – and I decided to get something new. My stipulations were not a black blend (I’ve really not been impressed with the ones at Tea Desire, despite being impressed by most of their other teas), and not something spicy (since I had DAVIDsTEA’s Gingerbread to drink with me as well).

This is the one I was suggested, and after smelling it I decided to go with it. Usually, Shelby (one of the ladies who works there) is very good at recommending teas for me. All I was told, is that this was a herbal blend with lots of bamboo in it and red currants (they know I like currants, since I adore Champagne Cassis). I’ve never had a bamboo based tea, so along with the very appetizing and sweet smell that had me really interested.

Steeped, the liquor was a pale peachy yellow colour and the aroma was shockingly strong and a dead on ringer for the smell of Fruit Loops. Holy did it smell good. Very, VERY sweet and fruity: NOT the light, vegetal taste with subtle fruit notes I was expecting to get from a bamboo tea. But like I said, I’ve never had a bamboo tea before so I guess I was making assumptions on what it would taste like.

The taste was very much the same: pure Fruit Loops without the starchiness of the actual cereal. It was interesting only having a limited idea of the ingredients in the blend (I’ve since looked up what they were) – typically I research the hell out of a tea before I buy it. If I hadn’t been told there were red currants in the blend I can’t say for sure I would have guessed that. I might have guessed peach or a very sweet raspberry, but neither of those are in the ingredients either. I guess what I was tasting must have been strawberry, pineapple (odd I couldn’t identify pineapple – it’s a favourite flavour of mine), and the lemongrass primarily.

Damn. Curse Tea Desire for getting me interested in buying another tea!

Well, I guess this is a sipdown, because I dumped the rest on the floor. If this was a beloved tea, I may have swept it up and used it.. as gross as that sounds! This however? I’m good with it going to the compost bin.

All I’m getting out of this is licorice smoothness and a hint of something spicy. It’s okay, I like it, however it’s far from the loveliness I had when I first drank this. Reducing the rating and kinda glad now that it’s a sipdown.

Why did I rate this so highly before? It’s a strongly flavored anise/licorice chai, with little chocolate in it. I still quite enjoy it, however it’s no longer as spectacular as I thought it was. Reducing rating.