Tea Desire

Cold Brewed in a few shots worth of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum.

This was ages ago; and I actually got the suggestion to brew this specific one with the rum from the Steepster Chat group. Strained it smelled not so bad; definitely spicey and Chai (lots of clove in the smell) with some way deep down fruitiness to it. Not sure if I can say specifically Apricot with any sort of confidence.

However, it tasted terrible. Like some sort of antiseptic or disinfectant. The first tiny sip I kinda choked on, and then I had Tre (my roommate) try a sip after saying I was “such a baby”. He immediately ran to the sink to spit it out. I did, however, finish it off eventually! I pounded it back and then immediately pounded back a mug of milk as chase. And then I of course rubbed it in his face.

But yeah; sorry beloved Steepsterites – this was a miserable miss that I wont be repeating.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I got hiccups immediately after finishing this one too…

Made in my timolino to sip on throughout the day. Overall, this timolino worth turned out surprisingly weak in flavour – which is not something I ever thought I’d say about this blend. Despite being watery, it was still ok though.

A fairly solid fruity chai.

This is what I started yesterday morning with before heading to my interview. It was mostly cinnamon/cloves and sweet apricot – so basically, really tasty like usual.

I made this for work because I was craving Chai, but it was stupidly and uncharacteristically busy at work today so not only did I not have time to use the internet at work but I didn’t even have time to drink either of my work teas. I think a big part of that was because head office shat on me, and sent me 50 boxes of stock – which took my ENTIRE five hour shift to put away and enter into the computer inventory.

So, I’m drinking my two work teas at home now. Despite being in a timolino all day and not being opened once until my arriving home, this has pretty significantly cooled down. It’s still delicious like usual though. Very prominent cinnamon, clove, and apricot notes today. Can’t taste the ginger at all – which is a plus. I really want to try Rivertea’s version of this, for comparison.

Typically good cup (well, timolino in this case) of this tea. For the timolino I used something like 2 tsp. steeped for about two, maybe closer to three, minutes. This is the second tea I’ve had today with peppercorns in it – and they definitely suit this one better.

I get lots of the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and peppercorn like usual. As someone who does not love ginger, I’m happy it’s primarily lost under all the other spices. Also, the fennel is especially standing out today, and I’m not ashamed to say I picked some of the fennel out of the leaf after it was done steeping and ate it straight. Man, I forgot how much I liked straight fennel (kind of makes me want to try David’s Bollywood Chai just so I can pick out the candied fennel in it).

Apricot is still pretty strong even though I’m not sure if I got a lot of it into the dry leaf (maybe one or two average size chunks). I always get something “ketchup” like with this tea, in the best way, but still can’t figure out what it is!

Glad to end my day with a nice chai like this one.

Resteeped.

Right now, this is perfectly complementing the spicy beef Hamburger Helper I’m eating. The spices go together, but the apricot is something sweet and much more contrasting in flavour. I think the contrasting flavours in the tea alone are such a huge part of why I love this chai.

This second steep has really brought out the taste of cloves.

Dry leaf stills smells delicious, and still SO much like the sweet and sour sauce from the vegetarian meatballs we made in class (see my previous note on this tea for a better description). Mmm, sweet apricot jelly and a tangy sort of ketchup smell. Dang it’s really making me want actual food.

The smell of this one steeping is extra smokey today with strong contributing notes of apricot, cinnamon, cloves, and ketchup. I swear, I’m the only person who has review this tea to taste ketchup notes in it. I think it’s a huge part of why I love this so much, though.

1 heaping tsp. steeped for about 2 1/2 min. – the liquor is a cloudy orange colour. The taste is a balance of sweet, tangy, and spicy like always. I think I taste the ginger more than usual, and I’m wishing the the apricot and ketchup notes tasted closer to how strong they smell. Still, this is the perfect tea the help ward of hunger, at the moment.

Out of the four teas I bought from Tea Desire, this is the one I was most interested in! It’s a flavoured green tea AND a Chai, both of which are tea types that are very hit or miss for me. However,smelling the dry leaf has me really excited to try it.

It’s hard because I have no idea how to explain how it smells, and yet I know EXACTLY what it smells like. In my senior year of high school in commercial cooking class we vegetarian “Sweet and Sour Meatballs”. The meatballs themselves were made with crushed nuts, yogurt, cottage cheese, and different sorts of shredded cheese. What the dry leaf really reminds me of is the “sauce” that the meatballs were cooked in. Sadly, I don’t remember all of the ingredients that went into the sauce, but the ones I do remember are ketchup and apricot jam (both in quite generous amounts), and then I know there was some sort of spice added to the sauce as well. The dry leaf smells exactly like this! And, that sauce was really weird – but SO good.

Following Tea Desire’s steeping instructions I’m steeping a generous teaspoon of this for about two and a half minutes. Honestly, I have no idea what to expect – but if this tea tastes anything close to how it smells I’m sure I’ll like it.

Steeping, the most prominent scents are cinnamon, cloves, and apricot. Maybe it’s because I’ve already made an association to those Vegetarian Sweet and Sour Meatballs, but I also smell a very sweet sort of tomato scent. The liquor actually reminds me of the colour of dried apricots or apricot jam.

First few sips… Mmmmm! It does taste more spicy than it smells, but in a good way. This is definitely a very sweet and spicy tea. Most prominently, I taste the cinnamon, pink pepper kernels, apricot, and cloves. I’m happy I’m not getting a distinct sense of ginger – it’s by far NOT one of my favourite flavours and I tend to avoid food and drink in general with prominent ginger flavour.

I love this tea, and I don’t have anything like it in the rest of my hoard so I feel like, once the 50g I have is gone, I can restock this pretty much guilt free! A success on the Chai and Green Tea front!

Urgh, my throat is suddenly killing me and I’m really wishing for something that’d go down smooth and gently. This is not it.

Part of my initiative to drink down teas that I don’t want to restock, I steeped a tsp. of this in my timolino (a little oversteeped, I was making Genmaicha too, and talking to Tre). Although it’s not helping my throat at all, it does taste a bit better than I remember it being. I’m ACTUALLY getting vanilla from this without having to add cream or sugar at all. Still, it’s good but not great and I have too many black teas.

Not changing my mind about restocking this.

Maybe when it’s done, I’ll chase it back with something minty.

Bit of a backlog from earlier this morning.

Woke up with a serious craving for this tea. Don’t really know why, since I wasn’t in love with this the first time I drank it. Maybe I just needed a stronger black tea with a little vanilla creaminess to it.

Steeped for around four minutes I think? First few sips, and sort of what I was craving? There’s the strong black tea base which is soothing right now, but there’s not really much creaminess to it. I think I actually noted that the first time I drank it, so what’s up tastebuds? I don’t really know what I was thinking exactly – I’m definitely craving something with a strong black tea base but MUCH more cream. I think I have to break my own rules and add milk and sugar to this.

Added about a tablespoon of milk and half a teaspoon of sugar. Still a very strong black tea flavour, but now the creaminess I wanted is there along with a more obvious vanilla.

I think I’m in a weird tea drinking mood today.

This is the first tea I’m trying out of the four I got from Tea Desire! Unlike the other teas I purchased, when I went to smell this one in store (they open the tins and then wave a fan over the leaf which blows the scent towards you) I was only able to smell the black tea base (since it’s described as an “East Frisian’s delight” the base is likely some sort of ratio of Assam and Ceylon) – none of the vanilla. Since only some of their teas have the ingredients listed I had to ask what was in this one. The sales lady told me that it’s black tea with vanilla bits and a natural vanilla flavouring. I was hesitant to purchase because I couldn’t smell any vanilla, but she promised I would taste it so I decided to give it a chance.

At home, I was able to smell the dry leaf much more closely, but I’m still only able to smell the black tea base – no vanilla. For my first cup I’m using 1 heaping tsp. for my mug and steeping it with boiling water for 4 minutes (the recommended time is 3-5 minutes so I just went right in the middle). Steeped, the liquor is a darker amber colour. It smells strongly of black tea, but again I don’t smell anything vanilla-esque.

First few sips and I’m hit with a very full bodied black tea. Black tea is definitely the dominant flavour here. A take a bigger sip (almost a gulp really) and let it sit in my mouth for a while. The longer it sits the more I’m, at this point surprisingly, tasting vanilla. After swallowing, the vanilla taste really hits me in the aftertaste. It’s a very creamy sort of vanilla, but it doesn’t taste artificial at all either. I understand where the “velvety” part of the name comes from.

The more I drink from my mug, the more I’m able to taste the vanilla without searching so hard for it. However, the black tea is also tasting fairly bitter as well. Once there’s only about half a mug left I add about 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar and a small splash of milk. This really tones down the bitter black tea, while still letting the taste of the black tea be present. It’s also really brought out the taste of the vanilla – which is another plus.

I do enjoy this cup, but I also dislike that I have to add both sugar and milk to enjoy it – I prefer a tea I can just drink straight. I don’t know if it’s something I’ll repurchase once it’s gone. Since it sort of needs the sugar, it’s also something that Tre can drink without me feeling like he’s wasting the leaves by adding a lot of sugar to the cup. I’m sure he’ll be excited for there to be another tea in the house that he can drink without my nagging him.

travelling tea box A!

Not a tea i would normally purchase for myself but i figured i should use the tea box as an opportunity to try and few “not normal” teas for me since that’s the whole fun of a travelling tea box! This is a pretty average tea for me. It’s nothing i need to keep in the cupboard, but i wouldn’t be opposed to drinking more of this. it’s not as light or refreshing as other greens i’ve had, but that’s maybe a bit of why i like it.

This tea smells like Christmas fruit cake (the good kind) full of cloves and other spices. The flavour of the chai spices is distinct but mild with cloves in the forefront along with a bite of black pepper and the heat of cinnamon and ginger. It’s a very ‘warm’ tea and perhaps it’s the memory of fruit cake, but it makes me think of winter and Christmas. I do wish that the apricot flavour was a bit stronger – as it is now it’s more of a sweet fruitiness in the background, though it works well with the spices.

This tea gets dark and heavy really fast so you have to experiment with the amount you put in your cup until you find the right balance. It feels a bit heavier to other black Chinese teas and leans more towards the Indian teas for me. Great tea to start the morning with or whenever you need a stronger caffeine pick up.

Whoops, guess I haven’t made any notes for this one yet.

I picked this up when I hit up Tea Desire at Metrotown during their closing sale (I should check to see if they’re still open and pick up a few more teas before they’re gone for good—they’re an underdog in the Tea Community, but they’ve still got some nice stuff, if you know what to look for). I’ve had it a few times, and I quite like it. Not their usual green-black blends, but instead a green-white blend. It takes to the pineapple and strawberry well. Pineapple’s more visible in the hot variety, but today’s post is actually about icing it.

I bought some bottled sodas last week, and kept the bottles and caps to reuse for iced tea. I bottled this and a few others (I’ll get to those when I sip them), then refrigerated ’em and forgot about ’em for a few days.

Opened this one up, sniffed it—delicious strawberry pineapple scent. Sipped it—love it. I’m inexperienced when it comes to ratios for iced tea, but I think I did pretty well for my first try. I did two heaping teaspoons for the whole bottle (355mL); steeped in about 250mL (3 minutes), and then poured in with a bit of crushed ice (as much as I could get in there—narrow necked, unfortunately), then put the bottle in an ice bath.

Very refreshing. Getting the green tea mostly. Not much of the white, as to be expected. Strawberry’s stronger than the pineapple. Didn’t use any sugar, and I’m loving it without, but as a fruity green I think it’d do well with it.

I’m going to have to make more. Bring them with me when I go camping in a few weeks.

I didn’t actually write a note on this? Jeez, this is the last cup of it.

It lives up to the apple bit, at least. Juicy with a nice base of green and black. Never got much from the almond. Not particularly creamy. But a good apple tea.

I happened by this store in Metrotown and decided to pop in since I’m always on the hunt for new teas – specifically coconut teas. I saw this one, which evidently isn’t on their website.

The scent of pina colada type teas always intrigues me. I’m not a huge fan of actual pina coladas but pina colada flavoured things usually go over well. I found this to be quite similar to David’s Tropicalia. I’m thinking the Tropicalia is slightly more flavoured (but not necessarily in a good way) than this one, but I also haven’t had it for at least a year.

I’m happy I picked up 50g, I can’t wait to try this one chilled.

Ummm I tried this once, maybe twice, and was not impressed… so I sent it home with Mum this weekend – she loves green teas and this one will make her very-very happy.

Not much to say about this tea yet, I found it to be quite a mild green tea, with some faint grassy notes and a hint of sweetness as the tea cools off.

Another update from the library. My aunt sent up this tea and Tea Desire’s Earl Grey. The earl grey isn’t anything special—I didn’t expect it to be—but I’m pleasantly surprised by this lapsang. It’s nice—not fantastic, but it’s not sharp and burnt like Murchie’s. She also sent up a Britta water filter with the tea. I don’t think it helps the hard aspect of the water, but it removes the chlorine smell.

It’s difficult trying to keep my virtual cupboard in order. I’ve been keeping a paper log of teas that I’ve finished/gotten, so that I can update them the next time I get a chance to go the library and log onto Steepster. But work is fun. I need to take some pictures out in the field with my Libre.

Again, second steep is darker than the initial rinse steep. It’s definitely earthy; I’d say even muddy, but not dirt, rather soil. Is that an odd differentiation to make?

I somewhat forgot about the tea for quite a while, and the strong smell of the dry leaf’s faded quite a bit, as has the fishy aspect of the brewed tea itself, I think. At least I remember it all being a little different, but it’s been a while. I suppose it’s the tin I kept it in, and in most tea-storage practices this all would be a bad thing, but I think it really helped. I like it more than I remember liking it, although I never truly disliked it. At least if I take small to medium sized sips. I gulped some and it coats the mouth and throat most unpleasantly.

It’s recommended that you do the fifteen-second initialrinsingsteep. Which I did! However, I am still holding that initial steep. I figure, it’s there, I might as well try it. The tea leaves will still be in the infuser for the “Real Steep” when I get back.

The smell of the tea is… oriental. Which seems like a weird description, but really, I sniff it and it reminds me of Japanese foods. Sushi and whatnot. Ooh, pleasant. It’s also not as inky-coffee-black as people described. Just a good, dark tea colour.

First sip is fishy and earthy. Not… not in a bad way? Sort of coffeeish. Very earthy. It’s nit bitter, but is sort’ve charcoaly.

Second steep (20 seconds) managed, somehow, to be DARKER than the first. Smells the same though. Taste is similar, but a bit different—slightly more black tea-like, while still retaining the earthyness. Almost bitter, but somehow still smooth.