Izzy Send Message

You’d think I’d get bored of trying earl grey after earl grey, but they’re all surprisingly different in notable ways. This one is the darkest I’ve tried so far. The black tea base is stronger, heavier and richer than the usual Darjeeling or single Ceylon bases. It’s rich and filling with a good amount of bergamot – not too strong or bitter, but enough to live up to the black tea base.

You could substitute this one for your usual heavy breakfast tea. In fact, I might do just that!

I reviewed it without milk but I like it with milk too. https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/ahmad-tea-earl-grey-review/

Cold brewed a few teaspoons of this tea overnight. It smells nice but obviously artificially peachy. The flavour is quite nice too but it needs sweetening to taste really good. I didn’t sweeten this time to cut down a few calories. It’s astringent sencha with peach flavouring – not sweet, just peachy. Refreshing? Hell yeah.

Personal note:

It’s the hottest day of the year so far at 31c where I’m living. For me, that’s too hot. I can’t function well above 25c. Predicting this in advance, I had the good sense to make a pitcher of this tea the night before to cold brew in the fridge.

Of course, it all went wrong. I was drinking this outside in my smoothie cup because it has a built in straw and lid so the flies can’t get to it, when a cherry from the tree above me landed on my head. No joke. My head jarred forward in surprise and the hard plastic straw lodged itself in my gums. Blood went everywhere including down the straw into my tea. Now I’m sulking inside with a painful, bruised gum and only a small amount of blood-free tea left. I hope everyone else is having a better day!

Another tea from the subscription box (I finally got the blog review written up!) that is fast becoming my favourite. I love love love jasmine green tea, but jasmine white tea is even better. The jasmine smells very very fresh and the white tea adds a slightly nutty sweetness that goes with the jasmine even better than the usual slightly grassy green tea flavour.

The pearls are much smaller than I expected however. Once they unfurled I noticed the leaves were not in great shape. Some were quite badly damaged and others were yellow, black or brown in places at the edges, like the leaves should have been discarded rather than made into pearls.

It didn’t impact flavour as far as I can tell.

3 pearls, 80c water, 3 mins. I could have left it for longer.

Review of the full subscription package (including the teaware) – https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-white-tea/

The third tea from this company I’ve tried, I can’t say it’s better or worse than the others as they all taste pretty similar. This was the most pleasant, but also the most bland. The herbs and spices mixed together so well that it was impossible to really give any a name without looking at the label. There’s no dominant flavour to pull through, apart from a little anise-sweetness that I detected in the last few sips.

It does smell good though, it reminds me of samosas. The colour is beautiful thanks to the saffron too.

I’d recommend it if you asked me about trying it… but I definitely wouldn’t bring it up in conversation. It’s really not that good.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/ayurveda-pura-saffron-cardamom-delight-tea-review/

Second tea from the subscription box. It was great, but not as nice as the Silver Needle. I’ve discovered I don’t really like orchids, which is a problem for this tea.

It has a nice stone fruit flavour, maybe peach or apricot. It’s sweet but not as refreshing as I’d hoped. Strong orchid aroma and slightly nutty with a hint of wet oak.

I had a horrific migraine after drinking this tea. I can’t rule out this tea as a trigger, so I’ll sip the next cup tentatively!

The first tea in my teapro subscription box. Yep, I’ve decided to do a tea subscription to see what it’s like. When it comes to “real” tea with beautiful complex flavours and many many steeps revealing new layers… I’m kind of lacking in knowledge. I read the awesome detailed reviews here on Steepster (particularly those from Derk and eastkyteaguy) and I feel inspired to kick the supermarket/grocery store tea habit and explore more. But I’m on a budget and I need a little help with detecting flavours sometimes.

So, this “exploring tea” subscription seemed perfect. A chance to get the basics down at least. With a fairly empty cupboard (apart from the box of tea bags) it’s not like I’m going to run out of space.

Anyway, the actual tea. It’s excellent although I don’t have anything to compare it to at this point. The buds are so fluffy! They smell pretty good too, very fresh and fragrant.

I steeped 1 generous teaspoon for 3 minutes, managing to get 3 steeps out of it in total. The aroma is very fresh melon – but not quite ripe melon. It’s not sweet enough to be ripe but it’s very strong in aroma.

Flavour-wise, melon again. But it’s gentle and a little bit creamy. Slightly floral too – honeysuckle perhaps. In my last steep which lasted 9+ minutes, I had this hit of white chocolate. The description card that came with this tea (very helpful with determining flavours) has it down as “floral, melon, honey, cucumber” so I got 3 out of the 4.

I had the first cup at about 7pm and the last around 10pm. I slept very very well, this tea made me feel very peaceful.

I’m going to try the other 3 teas and then write up a combined blog review for the subscription box. In the meantime, I’m definitely looking out for more silver needle teas to try.

Not a good tea. 100% toilet cleaner. I’m very disappointed as I love their bottled iced lemon tea… even though it doesn’t really taste of tea I enjoy the sugary refreshing flavour. But nothing about these black lemon tea bags was pleasant.

The flavour is like they’ve taken a real lemon and stripped away the bitterness, sourness, tartness and natural sweetness, then added a dash of artificial sweetness. They’ve stripped away the character of the flavour. Now it’s just nasty.

Ah well. At least I can say I’ve tried it and reviewed it. https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/lipton-lemon-black-tea-review/

I thought this would be very nice – single origin Darjeeling with real bergamot oils, rather than bergamot flavourings. It was a bit bland though. Neither were strong enough for me to feel really satisfied with each sip.

The tea sachet was also very lacking. The wrapper states there’s 2g in there but I’m not sure. Should have weighed it before brewing but I forgot.

It was pleasant and if I had more of this tea (I don’t) I’d probably keep it and try it again. The quality of the tea, how it’s selected and picked, doesn’t really mean anything if the resulting cuppa doesn’t taste anything special. Flavour is the most important part and this tea was just average.

Reading my review so far that sounds pretty negative…. it’s just easy to pick out the bad things about this tea. There are certainly good things (I still recommend this tea especially if you enjoy Darjeeling) but they’re just average-good. Not shout-worthy good.

Full review nonsense: https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/pmd-planters-earl-grey-tea-review/

A nice tea, but it’s a bit too much for me. I can never finish a cup, or if I do, I get odd stomach feelings for the rest of the day. I do love the aroma though. Dry, it’s very minty with green tea and pomegranate notes. There’s also this lemonade and vodka aroma – I swear, I’m not imagining it. After some bad experiences, I rarely touch alcohol.

Flavour is just mint, really really strong mint. It doesn’t taste like peppermint to me, it’s more like spearmint with extra menthol added. Any pomegranate flavour is lost on me.

Personally, I don’t like it iced. The Superberry Samba is far better iced. Full tasting notes, method, pics etc.: https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/zest-tea-pomegranate-mojito-review/

This arrived as a sample in my order – it’s not something I would have ordered myself… but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I brewed it up Western style and managed to get 3 steeps out of it.

Steep 1, 3 mins 20 secs: slightly savoury/salty, wood, nuts, cream, malty and a naturally sweet aftertaste.
Steep 2, 6 mins: savoury but less salty, delicate notes, minerals, eucalyptus, camphor and steamed green veg.
Steep 3, 12 mins: subtle black tea, green veg and gentle honey sweetness.

Savoury tea is a new one for me, but it was still nice. It took me a long while before I could name the eucalyptus/camphor flavour. A good challenge for my tastebuds.

Still can’t make up my mind on what food I’d eat this tea with. Would more savoury food make it overwhelming? Would sweet food clash horribly? Unfortunately there’s no tea left to test out my theories. Undecided if I should buy some more of this… I’ll think about it.

In the meantime, here’s the longer review with more detail and a few pictures, in case anyone is interested :) https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/what-cha-yunnan-golden-tippy-black-tea-review/