Tea Desire

I didn’t look this one up on Steepster before I brewed it, and it was quite a shock when it smelled of pu’erh once steeped.

Well, well. I was a little wary, but I let it cool as I wrote out more cue cards for conservation. I finally braved taking a sip, and it’s not so scary. The scent is far more pu’erh-y than the taste. The taste has a nice chocolate profile with the unmistakable, but not overwhelming pu’erh base.

Thanks for the surprise VariaTEA!

Less distinctly caramel tasting than I remember but still a delicious blend, with a nice earthy and bold pu’erh! I love the body here, and the dense quality of the caramel. Drool worthy!

Well, I did it! This is the last tasting note that I had to write in order to catch up before I head to Las Vegas tomorrow! So, I’m going into my vacation with a completely clean tasting note queue! So anyway, this tea…

I realized this week that it had been a REALLY long time since I last had this tea; and it used to be one of my all time favourites so that seemed like a really big shame. I fixed that the same day though; brewed a nice big mug of it with just a touch of creamer. It was so rich; really bold earth notes and a creamy, silky and dark tasting touch of caramel. Like drinking the tea version of dulce de leche.

Why did I let so much time pass inbetween cups of this!?

Midday cuppa from yesterday, with a spot of milk.

Very rich, comforting caramel and earthy notes with a thick, velvety mouthfeel. All of this was pretty normal for this tea; and what I was craving/expecting when I picked it out in the first place. The element that was a little more different/out of the ordinary was the roasty top notes! I’m not entirely sure where they came from, but that sort of soft roast/char was really interesting alongside the rest of the profile!

Song Pairing: https://youtu.be/Ecx66NV93RA

I think the overall smooth, rich velvet sweetness of the tea works perfectly with the tone of his voice…

Stocked up on more of this in my recent Tea Desire order! It’s been absolute ages since I last had this one since I had such a low stock of it – I felt guilty using it, so I hoarded it. Now I’ve got plenty though, so bring on the Caramel Pu!

My first time dipping into this new reserve actually wasn’t for a mug of it though – I decided this would be the perfect tea to infuse into a brown sugar syrups to drizzle over a sliced up Red Delicious apple! I mean caramel and apples – that’s a no brainer! I made it the same way I do any of my brown sugar syrups (ask if you want more details; happy to share ’em!), but with a slightly heaping tablespoon of this tea mixed in. The sauce was obviously very sweet, it definitely had that brown sugar flavour but you could taste the caramel as a distinct and separate sort of sweetness in combination with the molasses-y brown sugar. Basically, the exact same caramel notes you get when you steep up the tea.

Plus the pu’erh base obviously has a distinct flavour so of course that was infused into the syrup/sauce as well. Very rich, indulgent and sweetly earthy, with cocoa/dark chocolate notes too. It just all came together to pull off this very rich, luxurious caramel syrup that really tasted quite nice with the bright, sweetness of the apple.

Yummy tea infused snacks for the win!

This is a queued tasting note.

Made this one for the commute to work as an iced latte; I have a gut feeling it might be my last iced latte for the bus ride in to work for a while as we’ve definitely hit that part in the year where early morning are definitely sweater weather – so I’ll probably be making mostly hot tea for work now just to stay warm.

This was super yummy though! I made it with coconut milk, so I got to experience all the rich, gooey caramel notes with a coconut undertone that really complimented the flavour and added more character and depth to the drink. Plus, the earthy, creamy pu’erh? Mmm – divine! And the perfect dessert tea to make sure I was starting the day off with something yummy.

So, I risked revisiting this tea today as a cold brew. I say “risked” because the last time I cold brewed this tea it wasn’t a pleasant experience; but I cut the infusion time dramatically which I think probably helped a lot. I really wanted something dark, sweet, and indulgent to kind of capture the “piles and piles of candy” side of Halloween…

And you know what? This cold brew definitely redeemed the last one! Not only did it deliver on the dark, deep, and rich earthy flavour but the caramel was also really strong and sweet. It almost had a Dulce de Leche flavour to it, actually! I don’t think I could have asked for a better cold brewed incarnation of this blend.

Perfect for a Halloween evening!

So far the only tea I’ve had today; but a damn delicious one! It’s gooey caramel first and foremost, but with a full bodied earthy Pu’erh finish that incorporates notes of loam, leather, and bittersweet chocolate! Every time I brew this one up, it’s always a treat.

Reliving my awkward preteen crush on Steepster chat right now guys…

Morgan Kelly is perfection. Sexy, “bad boy” perfection. But revisiting this formarly forgotten about childhood crush today started with me trying to find Falcon Beach online to rewatch it (if anyone knows what I’m talking about; I love you – and if you can help me find someone to watch it online, I’ll love you even more). Then I wound up scouring youtube to find the hamburger commercial he was in. Success!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkx0cWr3GM&list=PLz-_KtzcbQuSWAs8Bb5pL3DcTeyKch5sB&index=13

Sexiest hamburger commercial, ever. The comments make me really sad though! Motherfuckin’ bamf Morgan Kelly is not a serial killer. What awful accusations! What you silly people on the internet call “creepy eyes” I call bedroom eyes.

Anyway; I’m currently trying to drink this one. I say ‘trying’ ‘cause it’s not really very good. I cold brewed it because I thought that it’d be rich and indulgent since this is one of, if not the best, caramel teas currently in my stash. Dessert teas usually do well cold brewed! I even added a tiny splash of milk after I’d strained it this morning, to make it silkier and creamier.

But instead, while this does have a rich caramel flavour and thick mouthfeel, something has gone terribly wrong with the Pu’Erh and it’s overwhelmingly strong with a very grimy, earthy flavour and – even worse, for the first time ever I’m tasting oily, slimy fish stink in the aftertaste. Barf. I wouldn’t serve this to anyone; even Tre (and I feed him some pretty gross stuff sometimes).

It’s now taken about two hours to finish half my 25 oz. mason jar and I can’t do it anymore. This is a bad tasting, failed experiment and now I know better: drink this one hot! The rest is getting dumped and I’m moving on to a better, tastier tea.

This was my To Go latte at Tea Desire on Tuesday. I was totally going to try something new, but then I saw this on the shelf, and after the Caramel Black that was to Tea of Day to sample I couldn’t get caramel out of my head and, well, the rest is obvious…

I had the same problem with this one as I did with my last latte from Tea Desire; it was very thin and watery, but this one was prepared by a different associate so I’m wondering if maybe Tea Desire has just switched up their latte formula? I really hope that’s not the case! This water/milk ratio just isn’t right…

Taste wise it was good though: the earthyness of the Pu’Erh was muted and just kind of subtly floated under the sweet, smooth caramel flavour. And the milk foam, of which there was lots, was the BOMB! It was super, super creamy/rich seductive caramel flavour. I could eat buckets of the light, fluffy stuff!

I have to say, I really really like starting my morning off with a hot mug of tea like i’ve been doing all week. I take my two usual “work teas” to work with me (hot timolino and a cold brew), but I’ve been steeping a third now which I drink while walking to work – keeps me warm. I used to steep my work tea in the morning, but wouldn’t drink it until break halfway through my shift.

This is what I chose for the first day of sales at Calendar Club: I figured it’d be stressful morning because there was still a lot to set up, and we had to test our debit/credit connection and get bank deposit keys, and lots of other stuff. So, really I just wanted something sweet and rich, and reliable.

This was all of the above. Luckily, it really wasn’t a stressful day though. Everything went as smoothly as it possibly could have. And how often does that happen? I think the answer is probably “not often”.

In my timolino for work, and just divine. Heavenly, even.

I want to go make Poptarts and tea (I blame you Marzipan!) though, so just copypasta-ing my tasting notes from earlier in the week. I don’t need to expand; I’ve raved about this one before.

- Rich earthy Pu’Erh base
- Gooey Caramel and Clay notes (but not gooey clay; what would that even taste like?)
- Very indulgent
- Honestly could have maybe benefited from some milk, though
- Back on the wishlist! I need MOAR.

In a timolino for milk, with a tiny splash of milk.

I just could NOT resist having this one, again, so soon after trying it. I think I’m really falling in love with this Pu’Erh (a phrase I thought I would never say). I feel highly compelled currently to go pick up a nice tin for it, and another 50g. I want this is substantial quantity…

But I should probably wait until I have it a few more times before I make my mind up on that. I don’t want to rashly by a new and exciting tea in a large amount; I’ve made that mistake before!

I get the impression this would resteep really well; I hardly ever resteep blends because I want to enjoy as many teas in a day as possible, but I’ll probably make a special effort to try and resteep this one.

Our lovely MissB talks so highly about this one that the last time I was in Tea Desire I took the plunge and bought 50g of this to take home. It wasn’t a hard sell; I trust her opinion a lot plus it has caramel in it and a lot of it, which is a favourite flavour of mine in general, and I got to smell it in store as well so it wasn’t like I was just blindly ordering from their site. It smelled awesome, by the way.

I finally made it up tonight. I wasn’t sure if this was a Pu’Erh that really needed to be rinsed, so I did a quick 20 sec. rinse with warm water just in case. A five minute steep later, and I had my mug of this ready to go. It still smells incredible!

Man, this is a flat out tasty, tasty tea. It has the familiar caramel/toffee flavour I’ve experienced in other Tea Desire blends like Victoria Mint or Sweet Toffee but this is much earthier and almost “gritty” – but in a good way. It’s thick and creamy too, and very very rich.

I honestly think this is the first (but hopefully not the last) Pu’Erh I’ve tried that I’d want to keep restocked or in quantity; and hey, I have 50g of it now so that works out well! Looks like I’m going to need to clear out a spot in the tea closet for tins of Pu’Erh – at the moment such a section does not exist.

Thank you MissB for sending me this sample! And she left a little note on it as well! Her favourite white. Well it does smell lovely so I’m excited to end my night with this tea :)

Mmmm this smells so good! More sweet like caramel and toffee :) I can’t quite put my finger on the exact flavour though. It’s like toffee, but has the brightness of mint (like the feeling in the mouth, not the actual flavour of mint. Does that even make sense?). Bonny, I see why this is your favourite white! It’s so nice and smooth and bright. I’m reading other notes on this and there’s coconut!? Ahh this is a great tea, and I don’t really taste the coconut, which is great because coconut isn’t really my favoutite flavour. But dude. THIS TEA IS GOOD.
I’m getting different tastes than other people. I usually underleaf my teas. Like usually it’s 3g to 8oz, but I found for my tastes, that is a bit too much for me, so it’s 2g for 8oz and it works perfect for this tea! This ratio may be underleafing for others, but it’s the perfect amount for me :)

((shout out to Flo [aka awoogah on here] for finally making a steepster account because I’ve been telling her all these stories about steepster ahha))

This one was sent my way from Roswell Strange. I’m almost completely through her parcel! Yes!

The rooibos is a bit too much for me here, but I can get some orange flavour. I have a feeling the sandalwood exacerbates the rooibos.

Thanks for sharing Roswell Strange!

I needed something without caffeine to try and this seemed like a good idea. Still not quite tasting everything, but I could get the Orange (quite nice) and a hint of chocolate. I’m not sure if the chocolate wasn’t strong enough for me or it’s my taste still being off from the antibiotics. I’ll have to try this one again.

I’m such a sucker for banana chocolate. I have this thing where I despise fruit and chocolate together, with this one exception.

This is my morning cup with my breakfast of coconut pineapple loaf, plain yogurt with honey, and coconut water. I have a mango I should cut up, but perhaps that will be for lunch.

This tea is delightful. There are lots of floating bits, but it’s so tasty I don’t mind. The chocolate is apparent and the banana less so, but still there. I wouldn’t mind having a tin of this around for a herbal option. Though I think the closest Tea Desire is close to a 45 minute drive away. This city needs to grow up, not out.

Thanks Roswell Strange!

This tea is tasty. I’ve been lucking out with all these new teas I’ve been trying. This one is chocolate-y with a hint of vanilla and a nice black base. I wouldn’t say it’s anything special, but it is good.

It doesn’t really taste like an oreo, but I feel that could be a user error, since I don’t like adding milk to my teas.

Thanks Roswell Strange!

Sipdown (118)!

I’ve got a little bit of backlog to get through that’s built up over the last few days but thankfully not a lot, so since it’s my day off today and tomorrow in between catching up on TV I’m gonna aim to clear my queue.

This one I actually “stole” out of the 50g bag that I bought for VariaTEA a week or two ago; it’s a blend we had both enjoyed and last time I picked up 50g of it I split that between the two of us. Even though I liked it, when I ran out I decided I didn’t need to restock – presumably she has now run out or is low, and she does want to restock. For me, that meant I could take advantage of a more rare chance to nab a very small amount, since Tea Desire doesn’t do sample sizes or anything (the smallest size you can get is 50g).

I remembered this is really good cold brewed so that’s what I used the tbsp. I stole for – I can always order this hot from the store To Go but I can’t get a cold brew from them. And it was delightful like I had remembered; very sweet and indulgent and fun with very defined walnut notes complimented with sorta maple and chocolate flavours. Some kind of chocolate dipped nut dessert is what was brought to my mind. As for the sandalwood – a flavour I’m not a fan of – I didn’t notice it at all.

So, this was a fun “throwback”, if you will! And don’t worry VariaTEA – I’m compiling tea for you right now, and it’ll make its way to you shortly! :)

Sipdown (182/188)!

So I just got up from a fifteen hour sleep. Sometimes I think I have a small “sleep problem” because I don’t think normal people are supposed to sleep that long. But then, I realized the bigger problem is the tea problem because I woke up looked at the clock and immediately thought “Fuck, that means I’ve missed out on a few hours worth of tea drinking!”.

Anyway, this is backlog from yesterday. I cold brewed it as per VariaTEA’s idea and that was enough to finish it off. I’m very happy to report to you VariaTEA that the cold brew for this? Phenomenal. In fact I was especially worried because I had forgotten it was cold brewing so this cold brewed in the fridge for about 28 hours. Yeesh!

But no, this was the most intense and flavourful maple walnut flavour with just a touch of chocolate! It was as rich as I can possibly imagine it could have been, and it was insanely thirst quenching too. It really almost makes me want to go buy 50g more just for cold brewing; and maybe I will someday but I definitely wont be right now because I also got VariaTEA’s package for me today which pushed my cupboard up by 22 more blends! Yikes!

They all look awesome though, and I’ve worked a few into the rotation for today. I’m sheepishly admitting too that while I love you essentially sent me the Adagio Firefly sampler I haven’t actually watched Firefly, so I feel guilty considering drinking the teas when I have no point of reference for how they match the characters…

EDIT: Oh, I bumped the rating on this up because of how awesome the cold brew version is.

This one has been moved down to the amassing collection of tins and bags of tea to sipdown too; I like it, but once I’m out I probably wont need to have it around again. At least, not for a while. Besides, it’s so easily available!

Anyway, it was my breakfast tea a few days ago and it was splendid! There were strong, non-competing notes of maple, walnut, and fudgey chocolate set alongside the black base and the faintest presence of sandalwood which I don’t think did much to add or detract. The was even a really light, “drying” feeling on the tongue in the aftertaste that I associate with eating a lot of nuts.

Mmm!

Recently, I bought 50g of this which I’m splitting 50/50 with VariaTEA – I hadn’t tried it before, but she said I’d like it so I took the plunge since it was pretty affordable, and I’m not going to be stuck with a ton if I don’t.

At Tea Desire, in store, when you smell the teas they use this elaborate fan set up to waft the smell towards you (instead of smelling directly like you can at a DAVIDsTEA) – because of this, the scents usually aren’t so strong – so when I get an overwhelming smell of one of the teas, that’s typically a good indicator for me. This was one of those blends that just smelled intensely good; pure walnuts! And you’d hope so, right? The dry leaf is LITTERED with giant, whole walnut halves.

Now that it’s steeped up; it smells really nice – definitely walnut, maybe kind of “maple” like, and with aspects of something chocolatey. Even though none of those things are inherently related to it, I’m kind of reminded of Christmas. Hmmm…

Now that I’m drinking it; it is really good! VariaTEA knows my tastes so well; this really does perfectly capture the flavour of walnuts. Though is there really no chocolate in this? It’s not in the ingredients list, but man is it in the flavour. How peculiar. It almost reminds me of Tea Desire’s Oreo Cookie – but I think this is better. Also, echoing my ingredient confusion; there’s apple in this!? Totally doesn’t come through in the taste. Oh well; the walnut shines marvelously, and that’s really all that matters, right?

This is much better than the Walnut Orange I have from Tea Desire (which is what I was hoping); that blends captures the flavour of Walnut brilliantly too, but the orange completely and utterly detracts from it.

And now, I think I’m going to have a Vince Vaughn “Mini Marathon” and watch The Internship and Delivery Man – I’ve been dying to see them both for ages now.

This was the “Tea of the Day” at Tea Desire today, and I just had to try a sample of it because I don’t think I’ve ever had another Yellow Tea before.

It was pretty good; though it’s hard to get a definitive feel for it based on the little shot glass sized amount they pour out. Mostly, I think I tasted the cranberry and the orange/mango – not a lot of pomegranate. I’m finding that’s a flavour I’m usually really unimpressed with when it comes to tea.

I don’t know – maybe I’d consider getting some? Or at least, a “To Go” cup of it to get more of a taste? Though I don’t plan on going to the store for a while now that I’ve picked up tin refills for my favourites, two new blends (one of which I’m splitting 50/50 with VariaTEA) and VariaTea’s Buddha Bamboo.

Also, I was wearing my Dollarama smock because I was headed in to work after buying everything (and stopping at the bank to get my rent money), and the cashier charged me the mall discount price. She must have just assumed I was working at the Dollarama in that mall. Score!

I saved a few bucks in total :)