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Yes, I think this tea is best with cream or milk. Today, I added a bit of evaporated milk to it. Good. I’d like to try it as a latte one day, but for me, any dairy is a bit of a thrill.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, people! It is also St. Gertrude’s Day, as in St. Gertrude patron saint of cats. So Happy St.Gertrude’s Day to you too!

One of my very favourite honeybush blends from Anne at 52Teas. Most remarkable here is that the cream, as in dairy, element comes through as well as the chocolate and the strawberry. A masterpiece.

There’s already an entry of this tea under Tealyra’s old name, Tealux, but I bought it from Tealyra, so I am going with that designation.

The leaf appears to be Taiwanese Tieguanyin treated with milk and possibly sweetener and mixed with coconut flakes. The smell out of the bag is soapy, so I have my doubts.

Nonetheless, after the rinse, the coconut comes through and so does the gentle milkiness. Each subsequent steep becomes more floral, moving towards vegetal.

I would prefer a thicker milk thing going on here.

It’s ok. Perhaps it would be better fresher. But it is certainly satisfying the craving after all this talk of mixing milk oolong with genmaicha. Perhaps that is the next step for me.

oh, and I went through about five steeps with this. All but the first one, ie. the rinse, were pretty good.

That said, I need to get busy with this one just in case that soapiness is the harbinger of bad coconut news.

I still have some evaporated milk left, so I thought it’d be lovely to have a black tea with berry overlay with it this morning.

Now, I suspect I must have at least fifteen or so black base berry teas. At least.

After a fair bit of digging, this is the only one I could find. That would be the choice then.

It was ok. I liked the evaporated milk addition, but the flavour of both the strawberry and the black base could’ve been more intense. Age aside, I don’t recall it ever being better. Still, craving was satisfied.

This is not the best strawberry black tea out there, but it was fine. Just fine.

I posted the other day about this addiction that I developed for Hong-Kong style milk tea at Crimson Teas in town.

Since I cracked open a tin of evaporated milk yesterday when I made the turmeric golden milk tea, I thought that I’d play around with HK style milk tea with the rest of it.

This packet of leaf is past its prime. First, age, but more importantly because the pouch unhinged at the bottom early on—-pretty but useless pouches—and the leaf has been exposed to air for, well, probably since I purchased it.

Regardless, I thought there might be potential here. Vanilla black leaf. Vanilla bean honey. You get me?

Now, milk tea is strong, that is to say, intensely brewed, almost to the point of mistake. So I heaped up almost 2 teaspoons of leaf and let it steep for ooooh maybe 4 minutes, which for me it long.

After I made the milk tea with a huge glug of evaporated milk and at least a teaspoon and a half of vanilla infused honey, I googled the recipe for milk tea. Ayup, that’s how I roll—enthusiasm and action first, research later.

It turns out that HK style milk tea is made with English Breakfast, strongly steeped, and then all the other things.

My experiment, however, is still darn good though. Though, true enough, the base could be a bit friskier.

Also, these neighbours of mine—-whereever I go, there they are, yakking all at once, kids, adults, making noise. I move to another room and there they are again. Ugh!

Well, I take curcumin supplements regularly for their anti-inflammatory effect, but an unopened pouch of this blend has been hanging out in my stash waiting for the moment I need to haul out the big guns.

That moment has arrived. I am sick with a cold or the flu or whatever this is. It’s been several days now and I feel like hell.

This is a straight herb and spice powder. I made it up with boiling water, evaporated milk, and a dab of vanilla honey. And wow. Exactly what I needed. Beautiful medley of turmeric, fennel, anise, ginger, and cinnamon and they all seem to be coming through strongly. My throat is being soothed and I predict this will be having an effect on all the things.

Ayup, just what I needed.

Another really lovely cup with equal balance of peach and thyme. And again I am shocked that the flavours are coming through despite this full-blown cold or flu.

This is the end of this baggie, sadly, so I am calling it a sip down, but I suspect that there’s another wee bit of this in another squirrelled away pouch from Sil.

Thank you, Sil! Really enjoying this one, especially today.

And it’s a sip down!

Sipdown 74
(14 of 2019)