The Tea Spot

Not a fan TTB. Was this once called Coconut Milky Oolong?
Sitting here sipping different teas while my daughter is taking a nap. This one sounded good. It smells kinda funky when wet. And the water color is kinda cloudy which I thought was weird. This is quite a unique tea. You start off with a kinda meh flavor then you get coconut and lastly the silkyness of the oolong. The milk oolong flavor is so subtle in this one. I wish it was a little more pronounced.

I saved the best for last. This was fantastic!! I have never tasted a sweeter Nilgiri. The leaves when steeped became a slight purple. The flavor was of soft smoke and cherry. This had an undertone of oak wood. This went down smooth and creamy. I actually gave this a “wow” when sipping. I really really liked this!

I love this tea! It has a great chocolate smell and taste to me. Always have my black teas with a dash of soy creamer (going to try almond creamer soon), and it makes this tea even more scrumptious. Have already re-bought but forgot to save my tin! Aggh.

Two heaping teaspoons per 16oz Contigo travel tumbler.

Backlogging—This has a really strong cherry smell as dry leaf, but the taste isn’t overpowering. A bit sweet, not as chocolatey as the other chocolate flavored blacks so I didn’t re-buy, but was pleasant. Not out of the question for a future reorder.

It tastes like an orange julius if you squint a little and think about it really hard. For me the taste was woody rooibos with a creamsicle aftertaste. Not my favorite.

’Here’s Hoping’ teabox Round #4 – Tea #1

Another fun teabox round to start! I love those orange vanilla swirl type ice cream flavors, and this seemed like it might be like that. Maybe without so much hibiscus! The hibiscus took over a little giving it too much tartness, but there were also hints of orange. It was begging to be sweetened so I added some rock sugar. Without so much hibiscus it would have been better… It also might be better with a honeybush base.

Another one I snagged from a teabox a WHILLLE ago. I guess this is a raw pu-erh tuocha that should be jasmine? I didn’t see, smell or taste any jasmine. But since I usually expect a somewhat bitter raw pu-erh experience whenever I drink raw pu-erh, this one was surprisingly unoffending, if unoffending means there was hardly any flavor at all. The cup was a bright orange both steeps, so it was certainly steeping.. it’s just such a plain flavor. Disappointing but at least it isn’t bitter! The Jasmine petals tea I had from Tea Spot a while ago certainly had jasmine flavors.
Steep #1 // 20 minutes after boiling // 1-2 min steep
Steep #2 // 20 min a.b. // 3 min

Added 1t sugar. It doesn’t screen chocolate or cherry to me, but it had a very pleasant liquor-ish flavor.

Added 1t of sugar. The rose notes seem to over power a lot of the citrus notes, but it’s pretty good. Not necessarily what I’m looking for in a tea, mostly because I don’t care for rose flavor.

Backlog:

This past year, I tried a lot of different “Pumpkin Spice” chai teas … and I think of all that I tried, this one was my favorite. This one was really OUTSTANDING among the many pumpkin-y chai teas. In fact, as I proclaim in my full-length review of this tea: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/12/25/pumpkin-spice-chai-from-the-tea-spot/ it’s the best pumpkin chai tea I’ve ever had.

The pumpkin is prominent in both the aroma and the flavor. It really smells and tastes like pumpkin. Like real pumpkin. It tastes like someone scooped out the filling of a pumpkin pie, liquefied it and poured it into a cup of Assam tea and added some spices. It tastes very true to the squash.

The spices are flavorful and strong without becoming overly spicy. Sure, I love a bold, spicy chai but when there’s another flavor involved – in this case, obviously, pumpkin – you don’t want the spices so powerful that they overthrow the pumpkin flavor. The Tea Spot has achieved the perfect balance between spice and pumpkin-y flavor, and neither of these elements overpowers the Assam tea base which is rich and malty.

A really delightful pumpkin chai!

Backlog:

The Tea Spot has the right idea! Chocolate in a breakfast blend. Yeah. That’s the way a breakfast blend should be! And it’s been my experience that The Tea Spot understands my chocolate philosophy: more chocolate = better.

The black tea adds a note of malt and caramel undertones to the blend. The pu-erh adds a rich, earthy taste without tasting too much like earth. This isn’t harsh or bitter. It’s smooth and really pleasant. And the chocolate … well, it adds chocolate to the blend.

Here’s the full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/11/29/bolder-breakfast-blend-from-the-tea-spot/

Thank you for the sale, Momo! The leaves here look like Laoshan black (with some additional gold in color) which explains the ‘chocolate’ in the name, but then there is a very sweet scent of chocolate, so it seems they also add some chocolate flavoring. That is evident in the unfortunate gasoline type flavor of the chocolate… I’ve experienced this before in a couple other chocolate flavored teas. I’m sure the black tea might have been fine on it’s own. It’s a nice tea, so I can kind of ignore the gasoline flavor. I just don’t know how much of the chocolate is the flavoring and how much is the tea itself.
Steep #1 // 4 min after boiling // 3 min steep
Steep #2 // 4 min after boiling // 6 min

I’ve been enjoying cold brewing recently and anything that’s designed to make a more efficient cold brewing experience appeals to me, so I picked this up along with a Steep & Go. They recommend a10-15 minute steeping time at minimum, with 6 hours being the maximum; I ended up drinking this after about an hour.

This herbal blend definitely succeeds in providing ample flavor through cold brewing. The Tea Spot seems to be marketing in part to people who are looking to tea as an easy and potentially healthy water inhancer, and this is definitely a winner in that category. If you’re willing to wait, you get a way more flavorful result than any of those iced tea powder packets and flavor drops, plus it has a natural sweetness instead of using sweeteners.

Flavor-wise, I would call this an even split between the hibiscus and the licorice, with no peppermint at all. The hibiscus provides the sweetness and is also quite tart, while the licorice provides a bitter edge. I tend to dislike licorice, so I’m glad I only picked up a single packet of this to try, but for what it’s worth this is probably the best licorice tea I’ve ever had. I think it’s a good one, just not the best choice for me.

By the way, the Steep & Go itself is awesome.

Oops, I accidentally deleted my tasting note. Basically, I pulled this one from the T&C TTB before sending it off based purely on the fact that it had “breakfast” in the name. I didn’t realize until after taking a few sips and going onto Steepster that there was puerh in the blend. That would explain how it got so dark (it looked like coffee!) and why it was less malty than I expected it to be. I also found it sweeter than I expected, which seems to have been on purpose. It was a bit of a caramel taste to me rather than chocolate. And finally, I also feel like I tasted some kind of spice. That’s about as specific as I can get. I also spilled about half of my mug as I foolishly practiced doing headstands near the cup. A have a nice little tea stain on my carpet to remind me not to do that again. Oops!