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Oh, yum. This is a lovely jasmine green tea – smooth, silky and fragrant. Not a hint of bitterness from the green tea base, and none of the soapy aftertaste I got from the last jasmine pearls I tried. And I love tea that comes in pearls! These didn’t all fully unfurl in the first infusion, so I’ll definitely be resteeping.

Switching to tisanes so I’ll sleep well tonight.
This one has a definite peach flavour, though I wonder if I would have been able to identify it if I hadn’t known what I was trying to taste. :) I found the hibiscus pretty strong in this cup – not enough to make it unpleasant but definitely tart. Not recommended for people who hate hibiscus! The ginger and peppercorns give it a fairly subtle warming character. It’s nice, I like it. I’m definitely finding it relaxing, or maybe I’m just tired. :)
I did notice that since I was only making one cup, and the dried fruits/blossoms/etc are pretty chunky, it would be pretty easy to get, say, an extra hibiscus blossom or two. I wonder if it’s a bit hard to get the right ratio of ingredients this way. I might try it in a teapot next time.

I was stuck up north for 2.5 extra days because the planes couldn’t fly due to weather (fog, then freezing rain I think?). Anyway. I’m home now, and apparently all of my Black Friday / Cyber Monday purchases finally arrived last week so now I have All The Tea. I chose this one as my first to try, and I’ll probably do a proper tasting note later, right now I just want to say that this is soothing and delicious and just what I needed. :) Cheers, everyone.

Oh man, this is so good. I mean, it’s not quite as ridiculously decadent as Golden Orchid (same tea, but with vanilla beans added!), but I can see myself just wanting to drink this every day. Damn it. Just as I am vowing to myself to stick to Canadian companies (why did I have to develop a tea obsession just as the Canadian dollar tanked?? the exchange rate is killing me here) with reasonable shipping costs (y’all have already heard my rant about shipping), I discover that I might not be able to live without this tea. Hrmph. Luckily I can’t even stay mad about it, because I have this warm cup of chocolatey yumminess to soothe me. :)

My Whispering Pines order came in! YAAAAAY. :)
This is the first one I tried, because it sounded so good and smelled SO amazing. Oh man, it tastes amazing too. Chocolatey, creamy, malty deliciousness in a cup. YUM.

Ok, I tried it again. This time I put 1 cup of water on the stove to heat up while I measured the 6g of tea (and picked out all the orange candies, and ate them for their sins). The water was boiling by the time I finished with that, so I dumped in the tea, put a lid on, turned the heat down, and let it simmer for 5min. I tasted the tea at this point at it was terrible. Like, horribly bitter. I was thinking that this was never going to work, but I went ahead and added 1 cup of milk, 2 tsp of sugar, and then stirred constantly over high heat until it started to simmer again. Then strained into a mug.

So it’s actually pretty good. I don’t think it’s much different from the version that involved simmering everything in milk + water. This is good news, because I’m pretty bad with anything that involves heating milk on the stove – too many past experiences with burning the milk or having everything bubble up and overflow, lol. This way seems easier. Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the idea of a tea that requires sugar and milk to make it worth drinking. Having said that, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble finishing up the rest of the bag. :)

I tried this before, just brewed western-style, and it was ok but not great. So this time I decided to do it the David’s Tea recommended way: simmered on the stove. 1 cup each of milk and water, 6g (two generous teaspoons) of tea, 2 tsp of brown sugar (I used organic sucanat because… it was there). Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer. I ended up simmering for about 7min before taking it off the heat and straining into a mug.

Okay. This is pretty damn delicious. It really does smell like pumpkin pie, and with the creaminess of the milk and sweetness of sugar, the taste matches the aroma much better. I’m still getting a very faint plasticky aftertaste on some sips, which I suspect is from those cute little pumpkin candies. I’ll be pulling those out before brewing this again. How creepy is it that several of them were still intact (soggy, but intact) after 7min of simmering? Just, no. Anyway, my issues with the decorative candies aside, this was yummy. :)

My first roasted oolong! This is so cool. So it has a roasty flavour in the bag, and the leaves are all compressed into these deceptively small little nuggets (honestly, one of my favourite things about oolongs is watching the leaves expaaaand). :) As it’s steeping, the roasty scent gets much stronger, but there’s also something sweet there. Like some sort of pastry with toasted coconut on it? The liquor is gorgeous and dark, reddish I think (it’s not a white mug, so, colours are deceptive). The flavour is complex but mellow, slightly sweet and very toasty. I like this.

Edited to add: I think I resteeped this about 5 times? Impressive.

This is a decent jasmine tea for the price (I paid about $10 CAD for the 100g tin on well.ca). The green tea base is mild, and balances well with the jasmine flavour. I’m getting a bit of a soapy aftertaste occasionally, which I’m not thrilled with, but overall it’s totally drinkable.