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Simmered 9g of this in 3 cups water/1 cup vanilla oat milk on the stove and served it in a big pot this morning for myself and sister before we headed to breakfast and then she had to get back on the road. I think if I made this again, I’d use even more leaf, as even at 3 parts water/1 part milk the flavors were a bit more muted than I like in a chai.

There was a lot left over in the pot so I’ve had it chilling in the fridge all day now as an iced latte! It’s very sweet, with a more forward vanilla flavor (perhaps the fact I use vanilla oat milk enhanced the vanilla notes?) The rose is present but not overwhelming, at least when made as a latte. The spices aren’t very strong here either, the most prominent is cardamom (which I think pairs nicely with the rose flavor) with a more subtle hint of ginger.

I need to experiment with it a bit more (plain, varying amounts of milk) and see what that does to the flavor. This brew felt a little overwhelmed, but I think this could be amazing with some tweeks.

Sister was sent up for more work, and she got a cinnamon roll cheesecake slice for us to split, so I brewed this sampler I received from 52Teas at one point with an order to go with.

Tea has a strong cinnamon aroma, and I do think I am getting a little bit of a creme cheese aroma, albeit subtly. On the flavor, however, I’m only tasting honeybush and cinnamon; the cinnamon has a bit of a spice-bite to it, slightly peppery? Occassionally I get pepper notes in rooibos or honeybush, so that could be it, as well. Also some honey notes.

Wasn’t wild about this one, but enjoying it with company made it worthwhile.

Admittedly, I never made a single cup of tea with this… at least, not that I can recall. After I ran out of ginger from my long-ago co-op run in San Francisco, I needed something to make ginger rice for my abysmal tum-tum days, and this seemed the best option I had available at my local grocery. The rice has been good, but I have to use quite a few teabags to get a good flavor. Will happily replace with straight finely chopped herbal ginger if I get so lucky again. Until then, this cheap tea is getting the job done.

Made this up to drink while rewatching the 1991 Addams Family movie, which I don’t think I’ve seen since the 90s… it seemed appropriate. This was a free sampler I picked up at some point from DAVIDsTEA. It brews a pink color from the beetroot powder. It tastes like cinnamon-sugar roasted nuts (I’m particularly getting almond/cashew notes), and while mostly sweet, there is a slight tartness to the cup as well. A pleasant pot of tea while I’m snacking on popcorn and enjoying a nostalgic movie on a rainy autumn evening!

Finished the house cleaning and squeezed in a nap, and now I am very ready for some afternoon tea while I work on some of my manga scanlation projects! This was randomly selected off my list of 2017 purchases, which I’ve been putting extra emphasis on sipping down.

Brewed western, 195F water, 4g in a 500ml teapot — a lovely little Moriage redware Japanese pot (think “Japanese brown Betty”) that I was gifted from my recently passed grandmother’s estate! There were two of the little pots and they looked nearly identical, without the cups (I found some rice bowls that match that can serve as cups on Etsy, they get a bit hot to the touch but I’m not above using a napkin or tea towel while using them). I’ve put one set in storage and am using the other set for this brew today.

Has a rich, roasty, nutty flavor (roasted chestnut, walnut, others?). I’m also getting a baked bread taste with a hint of cinnamon and raisins. A bit of earthy woodiness, and maybe a subtle plum note that is more prevalent in the aftertaste. Deeply satisfying on an autumn afternoon as the temperatures begin to cool off.

Been cleaning house all evening after work to try to spare myself of it over the weekend (though I still have bit left to do in the morning). Very ready to wind down with some tea. This is another freebie sampler I had from DAVIDsTEA that I grabbed yesterday with the others (the backup if the coconut was foul), so into the teapot it goes! And since I’ve been multitasking getting another batch of iced tea made up, the teabag was just left in the pot steeping for an ample amount of time. Ah well, I like my herbals “bag left in” strong.

Has a strong Red Hots cinnamon candy aroma. And that’s pretty much what I’m getting from the flavor, too. I’m getting a bit of an apple sweetness left on my tongue in the aftertaste, and wish the two flavors were meshing more together during the sip, but it is very dominated by the artificial cinnamon flavor. The rooibos base itself is fairly non-descript for me here, again because the cinnamon is such a strong note. It’s fine, but Tea Chai Te has a rooibos version of their Market Spice tea which is that same sort of sweet cinnamon candy flavor profile, but I find theirs a bit more rounded/interesting. I think this one would interest me a bit more if the apple flavor were popping more and I was getting cinnamon apples rather than cinnamon candies, since I already have a cinnamon candies rooibos I quite enjoy.

A perfectly satisfying cup, and one I’m glad I got the chance to try, but ultimately a flavor I have in my collection already and like better from another tea.

Phew, what a night! I make my breakfast smoothies the night prior and store them in the fridge, and tonight while doing so the plastic of my blender caraffe cracked and red strawberry smoothie guts splattered all over my kitchen, looking very Halloween-horror-scene-appropriate. I, however, wasn’t quite so amused. Not only did I have to clean my kitchen, but I had to get dressed again, go back out after I’d settled in for the night, and buy a new blender stat to have my fruity matcha goodness in the morning. I am in the middle of an 11,000 book re-labeling project at work, and that was the last thing I needed to come home to!

So, no more drama for the night. Need relaxing tea! Had a few DAVIDsTEA caffeine-free samplers lying around — this one had coconut, so I immediately ripped it open and checked it to see if it was still steepable or would be trashed. Nibbled a slice of coconut. Tasted okay. Didn’t smell foul. Okay, will go with this one. Too tired to heat milk, so it’s just a plain ol’ hot cuppa.

The aroma smells very pleasant… definitely not that “instant badness” coconut smell I got from that Mighty Leaf Coconut Assam freebie teabag not long ago, but rich, sweet coconut, and lots of warming spices… cinnamon, cardamom, perhaps a hint of ginger and pepper peeking through on the nose as well? The flavor is very nice… The coconut adds a bit of sweetness to the spices, which just feel so warm and comforting tonight, and while the last rooibos I had from DAVIDsTEA (Pumpkin Cheesecake) tasted very medicinal/woody to me, this one does not; it’s very smooth and I’m getting more of a nutty/honeyed flavor from the base.

This is the sort of cuppa that helps make up for a shit night. Warm, comforting, relaxing.

I love pop/soda/cola-flavored teas, and not long ago finished off a bag of Gourmet Root Beer that was fantastic. I actually had the coveted rare large 50g bag of this tea, still unopened, from 2017, and as I’m trying to finish off all teas in my collection from that year, it got moved over to become my next focus tea for cold/iced brew.

I tend to prefer black teas brewed warm and then iced, so that is how I prepared this batch — I steeped 7g of tea in 2 cups 205F water for three minutes, strained, and then added an additional 2 cups cold water (and two teaspoons liquid sugar to help add to the pop factor) to the mason jar, let it cool on the counter for about 15 minutes, then put it in the fridge to chill overnight.

Mmm! While I don’t think I like this one quite as much as the Gourmet Root Beer, this is still a very solid pop-flavored tea. I’m getting a typical cola flavor (I think adding the bit of sweetener may have helped bring that to the forefront), followed by candied ginger and lime zest. I’m not able to make out notes from the base as distinctly with this one as I could with the root beer tea, either, but it is very smooth and refreshing! I’m definitely going to enjoy going through my bag.

Oof, this matcha has an overwhelmingly strong biting, artificial strawberry flavor to it. It may be a pretty pink color, but it has zero matcha/green tea flavor, and the berry flavor just feels like a punch in the face. I just got through a bag of Lupicia’s Matcha Au Lait Strawberry, which still had a nice, vegetal matcha flavor but a sweet “candy strawberry marshmallow” sort of flavor to it, and compared to that, this is just not really doing it for me. Even used in a berry smoothie, that artificial strawberry flavor overpowers everything — even the flavor of actual strawberries! (How???) If I use a very small amount of powder and use coconut milk for my latte it is slightly better, as the flavor of the coconut milk helps temper it a bit.

I really enjoyed T2’s Mint Chip matcha, but not a fan of this one. Hoping to get through my bag rather quickly…

I had tried cold brewing tea directly in milk once, and it ended very badly. Decided to give it another try using this tea. I used twice the amount of leaf that I would’ve used if I were brewing it with water, and left it steeping in the fridge in vanilla oat milk for at least 24 hours.

I feel the flavor still isn’t quite as strong as I’d prefer, but I am pleasantly surprised that I am getting a “biscuity” note from the tea. I really love McVities Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuits, and while it isn’t particularly as chocolately as I’d like, I am actually tasting something (perhaps caused from the spices?) that is reminding me of that graham-like biscuit cookie. The milk smells very chocolately, and perhaps if I was using plain oat milk (which I never buy, as I like the sweetness from the vanilla kind!) it would’ve “popped” a little more. It is delightfully creamy and certainly easy to drink, but I plan to use it to make a chocolate raspberry smoothie.

Made as a plain cuppa, I’m surprised to find the milk actually wasn’t changing the flavor much for me. I’m still only getting a very mellow impression of chocolate, but a strong graham/biscuity note. There is a subtle cocoa presence to the flavor, but I’m still surprised how much this does taste like the hard biscuit cookie under the chocolate frosting of my McVities digestive biscuits. It’s a very nice Biscuit/Digestive tea, I am just not getting the chocolate part of “Chocolate Digestives”… but I guess that could be my complaint for a lot of teas. Even with cocoa shells (which this tea does have) it seems that chocolate flavor hides from me a lot!