5272 Tasting Notes
When I sent majority of this package off to Veronica, I decided to save a few tsps just to make sure my initial dislike was not just a fluke. So this afternoon I grabbed out my packet and brewed up a cup. This time around I get the faintest bit of what could be called cotton candy if I stretch my imagination and concentrate but realistically it is just a sweet black tea and not much else. I am glad it went to a home where it has been given far more love than I ever could. As for the last tsp, I am opening up the swap to Roswell Strange (yet again as I may have added stuff last night at 3 am when I couldn’t sleep :O) so that she can give it a try.
Preparation
Sipdown!! (214)
Thank you Cavocorax for the sample of this tea. I really expected to love it but I think I am searching too hard for liquid nutella as opposed to just letting this be its own entity. This is definitely a chocolate tea and I can detect hints of hazelnut but it simply falls short of my expectations and for that reason alone I won’t miss this now that its gone. However, I am definitely grateful to have tried it so once again thank you Cavo!
Also, I added a splash of milk just to see what that did and weirdly it really bumped up the hazelnut flavor. Alas, there still isn’t the nutella balance I am so desperately seeking. The issue I have with this tea really is all on me and not a reflection of the tea. It was doomed from the start :(
Preparation
I love Florence. Somehow it makes me sad that you don’t love it too.
If you are seeking “liquid nutella”, have you thought about Herbal Infusions tea blending kits. Just a thought, but one of the flavor vials is chocolate hazelnut. Maybe that would allow you to control how much goes in so you could find the perfect balance you are looking for.
http://herbalinfusions.ca/products/tea-blending-kits
Oh no Dex. I don’t want to make you sad. If it helps at all, there are other Harney blends I really enjoy like SoHo, Boston Blend, and Vanilla Comoro. Also I was looking at the blending kits but I think I will hold off on ordering until I get my tea stash sort of under control.
“I think I will hold off on ordering until I get my tea stash sort of under control.” – LOL I think that pretty much sums up my situation too. I like Soho and Boston too, but Florance is special for me. Hope you eventually find your special one. :))
I have got to try this! I’ll add it to my wishlist at Harney & Sons…
TASTING NOTE 450!
Usually I write tasting notes and only after the fact realize I hit a milestone number so last night I saw I had written 449 tasting notes and decided I would celebrate 450 with a special tasty cup.
I was initially hoarding this but then I was able to pick up more when HI reblended it so I am breaking it out to have a delicious treat! I think that was definitely the right choice because this is hitting the spot for sure. Even though it was the end of my first bag and the leaves were a little broken, I still get the awesome marshmallow earl grey flavor that is so amazing. If they actually made marshmallows that had this taste to them, I would be in serious danger of losing my weight loss progress because I would be eating them until I fell into a sugar coma. And then I would dream about them.
Anyways, this is certainly the perfect cup to celebrate my many tasting notes on steepster. I am so glad to have found this community and am honored to be apart of it. It is amazing how generous and kind you all are and you have improved my tea drinking experience immensely! Cheers to great tea and great friends :)
Preparation
Cheers!!
Woohoo! Congrats!
Yay!!
Congrats!
Challenge accepted! I want to try making earl grey marshmallows now!
Haha Dustin. I do not want to know if you are successful. Mostly because if you are, that would be bad news for my weight loss. I wish you all the best in your attempt though :)
You say that as if I were willing to share! ;)
As I searched my stash for the teas in a swap I stumbled across this. You sent me an INSANE amount, MissB! Because I have SOO much, I decided to make myself a cup to decrease the amount. Honestly, after the crazy overkill that was Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake Honeybush this nice and simple cup is really pleasant. I am enjoying sipping away at it as I prep some cold brews for tomorrow. I am making my first SBT (although tbh I thought you got two teabags per package so I was a little disappointed to just find one but nothing I can’t get over)! Hopefully it is tasty! Anyways, thank you MissB!!
Preparation
You’re very welcome! I had so much of this… it was just meh for me as well. Finally someone took away the 4 or so ounces I had left from a pound of it that I was sent through a RedditGift tea/coffee thang.
Oh dear. That is far too much of a tea that is simply just okay. I am glad you were able to send it out.
Now that my taste is back, I am going tea crazy and making 3 cups at once. After opening this to add some to a swap, I decided to give it a taste myself. I had high expectations of this one because I love Frank’s Strawberry Pie Honeybush and Cinnamon Roll Honeybush but for me personally, this does not measure up. Maybe there is too much going on because I am getting a strange taste and cannot really detect any of the individual elements. To be fair, that may be due to personal error because I overestimated how much water I would have in the kettle and this overleafed this cup. I shall hold off on numbers until I brew this properly but I have a feeling this will be making its way into the swap box.
On another note, why do companies feel the need to leave one side of their packages clear? I mean I would think they know that light affects tea so why not make the package opague? Or are those little windows some special UV ray blocking plastic? If not, I feel like it is a pretty shitty plan although I suppose it helps the business because if the tea goes bad, you have to buy more.
Preparation
So before I sent this all off to Roswell Strange I decided to give it one more try. I was actually really surprised at how good it was this time. I remembered there being a strange, dusty quality to this blend last time I had it but this is like a completely different tea than what I remember. This smells of raspberry but the taste is predominantly chocolate. Really not bad at all. I might even keep some tea bags for myself because I would drink this again. Although I don’t think I would restock it or keep majority of the bags just because there are so many other cups I would reach for first.
Preparation
This is not really a tasting note because I opened this up, took one whiff, and realized this is American Tea Room’s version of Forever Nuts. Does anyone want this because I won’t be drinking it. At least it was a free sample that came with my order.
yeah that’s why i didn’t buy it. it’s not really brioche.
I was gonna buy it and then read the description and thought it sounded similar so I didn’t add it. ATR thought I should have it though and sent it as 1 of the 2 free samples. I opened it just to make sure and it even smells the same.
If you haven’t finished packaging the stuff for our swap, I wouldn’t mind trying it. If everything is already packaged, don’t worry about it – someone else can try it :)
Haha. If no one asked for it, it was going to you anyways. So it is all yours :)
I was gonna buy it and then read the description and thought it sounded similar so I didn’t add it. ATR thought I should have it though and sent it as 1 of the 2 free samples. I opened it just to make sure and it even smells the same.
Sipdown!! (218)
So I brewed this at the same time I brewed Sugar Plum Spice and the resteep of Marie-Antoinette. Then I got distracted by packing up teas for a swap so it cooled a bit. Now I am trying it as I eat my pizza (Jenny Craig, the one diet you can eat pizza and a cupcake every night and still lose 65 pounds!).
As an accompaniment to my dinner it is weird. On its own, this tea is tasty. The rooibos is more muted in this blend than in other Nina’s rooibos blends I have had and that is a good thing (not that their rooibos is bad – I am just not a huge fan of heavily rooibos tasting teas in general). That may be due to it being cooled though. Anyways, I mostly taste the vanilla but I can detect a hint of strawberry. I don’t notice the grapefruit other than the fact that this is a really well balanced cup and I think that might be due to the citrus of the grapefruit toning down the other flavors. All in all, pretty tasty.
Thank you Sophie and Laurent at Nina’s Paris for this sample! I appreciate your generosity and am really glad to have met such wonderful people :)
Preparation
Since I was opening the package to send some of this to Roswell Strange in a swap, I decided to brew myself a cup to try this one out. My thoughts? Well it definitely lives up to its name but in a very weird way. The start of the sip is all sugar and then you realize it is sugar plum. The end of the sip is all cinnamon. It almost seems like a different tea appeared in my cup part way through because there is a disconnect between the distinct flavors of the start and finish of the sip. At first, I didn’t like it but on subsequent sips I don’t mind it. Realistically though, I doubt I would reach for this all that often. And I definitely won’t drink all 20 bags but I might have a cup every now and then.
Maybe I should mention that I didn’t try this tea when it was very hot. It took me a while to package up the teas :)
Preparation
Sipdown!! (219)
This tea is a very nice cup. If I had to describe the taste in one word it would be “pretty” which sounds weird but it is fitting. The tea is delicate and smooth. It has just the right amount of sweetness from the apple but the flavor is enhanced by the rose petal. The flavors just marry so perfectly to make such a unique cup. This is what I imagine french teas to be – flavorful but in a subtle way. This will definitely be missed while its gone but I am sure I will be getting more of this in the not too distant future.
ETA: Resteeped, the flavors mellow. Not bad but since this is already a subtly flavored cup, I far preferred the first steep.
Oh Gosh, I get the feeling this swap is gonna be huge!
It fits in a bubble envelop still, I have not reached the point where I need to put it in a box. However, it is definitely the biggest swap yet. And I think recently I have had a tad bit of a panic over the surplus of teas I own so I am sending some of that your way :P
Your’s is in a bubble envelope right now too, but I think it’s the biggest bubble envelope I’ve sent (anyone) yet…
I am quite fearful of my cupboard exploding. I keep thinking about the packages on the way and between my few orders, this swap, and a package from MissB (who is ever so sneaky with adding tea), I worry what that number might be.
**Yours(?) Oh gosh, I’ve been out of school too long – I can’t remember my grammar anymore… I’m trying to do some sipdowns today: I’d rather not get over 200.
haha I am very conflicted over what I should drink. I don’t know if I should be diving into my samples box, drinking teas from swaps, going for sipdowns, or drinking older teas (not that any of them are THAT old since I only got into teas in August but still). I keep leaning towards sipdowns just because I keep trying to control my stash haha.
Right now I’ve got samples that are close to sipdown size, some of my oldest teas (mostly DAVIDsTEA blends), and the 2 Butiki teas from my BF order I’ve yet to try out of my closet – and I’m kind of rotating between those things. I was hoping I could make Orange Matcha a sipdown today, but I still have a little left. I was tempted to add it to your package, but I’ve already sealed the bubble envelope up since the little strip was coming off :(
haha I decided to recycle an envelop I got in an old swap (mostly because I didn’t have one large enough at home and it is always so frustrating to have to package everything up at the post office. People look at you funny when you have a giant pile of teas :P. Anyways, in order to seal it up, I used a whole bunch of duct tape and then I keep reopening it and resealing it with another strip of tape to ensure it stays closed when it travels. So I will apologize in advance for the surplus of tape. However, speaking from experience, it is actually quite easy to peel away and open when you want to.
I have a small(ish) stack or regular envelopes and then a second of various sized bubble envelopes so I can package everything here at home instead of doing the awkward at the post office thing. The one I used for this swap was the biggest size I had.
Alternate! 1 sipdown, 1 older tea, 1 tea you like. :) Keeping everything in rotation is a good idea. I’m focusing on samples right now though because stuff keeps falling out of the box onto the floor.
hahaha mine is quickly getting to be that full too. Although my bag of swaps is also exploding. I guess just reaching for whatever appeals to me at the time is a good way to go about it.
All my tins or bags of tea which are large enough to stand upright are kept in our living closet sorted by tea types (grouped, basically) with the exception of the 20 or so teas I have in the kitchen on rotation. I then have a drawer with is filled with samples I immediately or quickly want to get to. All Matcha is kept in the freezer. Everything else (samples, small bags of tea, etc.) are kept in huge ziploc bags labelled by tea type (Black, White, Herbal, etc.). I then have a spreadsheet on my laptop which organizes things by company and then, within company, tea type. Next to that information is something like: “Tin”, “No Tin”, “Sample”. If it’s in a tin, I know it’s in the closet, same with “No Tin”. If it says sample, I know the look for it in the immediate sample drawer or one of the labelled tea type bags. With this system, I’ve never ‘lost’ a tea :)
Oh, and all my Tea Bags are kept in a special chest from my Grandmother (it has about 10 perfectly tea bag shaped compartments) in the kitchen…
haha Roswell Strange, you are so organized. I have all my teas on the floor surrounding my staircase. Some are in a large box which is my sample box, some are in a bag which is the swap box, ones from swaps are kept in the original package they came in and all those packages are sitting in a huge teavana back on top of my tins of teavana teas. There are some teas stored in tins on my kitchen counter (those are mine and my roommates favourites). I also have a spreadsheet where the teas are sorted by company and highlighted in different colors based on type. Also I list where (who) each tea comes from, who I sent the teas to, and if I would buy the tea again. On that spread sheet, I also include tasting notes so I can quickly see why I would/would not restock them. Also, last night I made a separate list of all my caffeine free teas so I can quickly decide what I want to have in the evenings/at night.
Yeah, the tea types in my spreadsheet are done by colour too (I use DAVIDsTEA colour system because all my tins are DAVIDsTEA tins that match tea based on the colour). I also have a system in the spreadsheet to know whether I’d restock: N/A (Haven’t tried yet), No Restock, Restock, and Unsure. I should mark who teas came from in swaps, but I don’t. Usually I can remember…
How much to do you guys charge for setting up and data entering onto one of those fancy spread sheets?
Dex, I would happily make a spreadsheet for you. Granted I can’t fill in the origins of your teas or tasting notes or stuff like that but I can use your cupboard as a guide and organize them by company and color code by type :)
I was just about to offer to do the same thing! Honestly, it doesn’t take long to do so I wouldn’t at all mind helping :)
LOL Thanks guys, really I was kidding. I would never be disciplined enough to keep it updated. I was just in awe that both of you actually keep that kind of data.
My mom used to be a bookkeeper and so I kinda grew up with spreadsheets. I think it is more habit than anything :P
Similarly, my Mom was a secretary for years before she quit to return to school and get her Masters so as soon as I started having to use Microsoft Word or Excel for school she taught me how to do everything properly according to MLA Style Guides and things like that – though tea is the first time I’ve ever used a spreadsheet practically outside of school :P
I work accounting, I look at spread sheets all day. I can appreciate how awesome it would be to keep my tea organized, but it would end up being too much like work. Respect you guys for keeping yours up to date.