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Another tasty sample from Kittenna! Thanks!

I definitely oversteeped this one so I will try it at work tomorrow before judging it. I wanted to do 3 min but got distracted and it was definitely more than 5 minutes…. It was a cinnamon tea with a hint of chocolate. And it was not very full bodied at all, pretty weak aside from the cinnamon.

I am reserving my rating until after my second try, but so far I’m disappointed because it doesn’t taste nearly as delicious as it smells.

Stay tuned!

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, hold on a second here.

Did they liquefy some cookies and make a tea blend out of it or what?! Why is this so good??

Thanks so much Kittenna for this sample…. Pretty sure it might be the best cookie/baked goods tea I’ve ever tried. I will probably have to buy some soon.

I made it to bring along in my Contigo travel mug for a 2.5 hour car ride, and those mugs keep the liquid ridiculously hot for a silly amount of time so I was patiently waiting to not melt the inside of my mouth…. I was so pleased when I could finally take a sip! It’s really good. I am impressed.

Curses. It’s both exciting and disappointing to find an awesome tea to add to your wish list :)
Especially not knowing the shipping cost situation for that company. But I will look into it soon enough! Now I’m pumped to try my other S&V samples from Kittenna. You guys might be creating a monster over here……

ETA Hey! 100 Tasting notes! :)

Kittenna sent me a sample of this, much appreciated!!

I made some tonight after work and I thought it was pretty good. I’m not quite getting creme brûlée out of it but to me the flavours mesh together to make a totally inoffensive caramel tea.

Not my holy grail caramel tea or anything, it’s not SUPER flavourful, but I’m not getting the cardboard taste others have mentioned and it’s not the burnt type of caramel (despite being creme brûlée flavoured), so all in all I’d call this a perfectly ok cuppa!

Made this Friday night, another sample from one of the cutest tea companies out there, Bluebird Tea Co. Thanks guys!

I love the smell of lavender. I probably have an 85 yr old lady living inside me telling me to buy everything lavender scented. Hand cream, lip balm, perfume…last summer I planted my very first garden which included two lavender plants. Exciting, but I still haven’t figured out what to do with them, haha. This year I might try them in my dehydrator and play around.

Anyway, I love earl grey teas, and given my obsession with lavender I thought it was worth a try.
You know how some things smell better than they taste? Lavender smells like heaven but not surprisingly I’m pretty sure it kind of tastes like a plant, haha. I didn’t like it enough to have two steeps, but I am glad I tried it. I had it at night so maybe it helped to relax me. Who knows.

Received this with some other samples from Bluebird Tea Co. First can we please discuss their adorable presentation and packaging??? Their tea photos with the little ‘cut here’ graphic, the samples came in these little glassine type packets SEWN closed with baby blue thread, their website and graphics and logo and everything is just so freakin cute. Goes with the name. I notice stuff like that. And love it. So good job guys!!! I always appreciate an artistic/creative display.

The only thing I couldn’t find were steeping instructions?? Perhaps those could be added to the teas on Steepster also.

Now for the tea, I was interested in this one based on the description, sounded different.
Hmmm. This was different! I did two steeps, first time around was boiling water for 2-3 minutes. I’m at work, no timer so I wasn’t too picky since it is black tea.

The tea was very roasty. I did not get any banana taste though, possibly a very mild hint which served to soften the tea a bit. There was nothing fake about it which was nice. I imagine if the tea was more banana-y it would also taste more fake. I bet it’s hard to achieve that balance when making a tea.

I was thinking this would make a nice breakfast tea because there was a satisfying coffee feel to it. I think teas that taste like coffee are gross (ever use water from a Keurig machine to make a cup of tea?? Ew. Don’t.), but this was more the feeling of satisfaction you get from a good cup of coffee duplicated in tea form. Serious coffee fans know what I mean, there’s just something substantial about it. I drank it black but milk would probably have been nice.

It was relatively dark yet mild, and subtly sweet on its own. Probably thanks to the banana.

So that being said, steep two (5 min or so) had not much flavour, zero banana, just kind of like a black tea. I didn’t finish it because I decided to make something more satisfying instead, that’s how I roll.

Based on steep 1 I will rate the tea pretty well, points off for no substantial banananess, but the lack of fakeness was appreciated. Happy to try my other samples soon!

Thank you for the sample, Bluebird Tea Co!

Decent, maybe a bit too fruity in a slightly artificial way… Not bad, just not for me I guess.
Kind of tastes like strawberry candy, I don’t want that in my tea!!

Glad I just ordered this as part of the Custom Sampler Pack from DTT (don’t even get me started on how awesome it is that that exists!!! <3 Della Terra)

Eta lowering the rating a bit because… Well just because.

Hiii.

Ordered the Della Terra custom sampler pack and this one made the cut. What a great way to try tea! I wish more companies offered this. It is greatly appreciated.

I am always looking for an awesome caramel tea. I tried Kusmi’s and found it not quite caramelly enough, though as my tastes develop it is definitely growing on me. I tried Davidstea’s rooibos Creme Caramel (I think that’s the name, I’m too lazy to verify), which I found distracting because of the extreme rooibos taste, and their Salted Caramel which had too strong of a burnt taste for me, and I have the Green Caramel from the Persimmon Tree Tea Company (very tasty considering you might question the green tea aspect!), and i had a sample of Nina’s Paris Je T’aime, which I did enjoy and was similar to this one, but slightly preferred. Those are all the predominantly caramel teas I’ve tried so far.

Here’s the thing. I have a sweet tooth the size of the moon. I also really like butter. My friend makes this homemade caramel sauce/spread every Christmas and I get a jar, and it’s made from brown sugar, Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk, and butter. It is so delicious. It’s just creamy and sweet. There’s no burnt taste to it. I know it’s asking an awful lot but I just want a tea that tastes the same.

I get that there’s nothing natural about caramel tea anyway, but for me, the single most important aspect missing from all these teas is the buttery creaminess. Perhaps that would serve to tone down the slightly burnt taste some of them have. Even creme brûlée is only burned on the top, you guys!

Back to this tea, it’s not as burnt toffee tasting as Salted Caramel, but it’s also not creamy enough to warrant having that word in its name.

I’m a huge pig and I just want tea that tastes like butter and sugar and milk. Creamy and sweet, no burnt taste.

Was this good? Yeah! Reminded me of the Nina’s Paris one.

It’s just that my search must go on. I wonder if there’s such a thing as a buttery caramel oolong or pouchong tea? That would be creamy from the get go because of the base….. Anyone??

Thank you Josie Jade for another awesome sample!!

I made this one at work this morning, got distracted while it was steeping and had a very strong cuppa 10 minutes later, haha.

I ended up adding milk to tone it down a bit, which was fine because I’d been thinking I felt like having a plain black tea with milk!

I have enough left to make another cup properly later, as it was I liked that the black base wasn’t weak, (i know, nothing is weak after steeping for 10 min!!) but I could still taste the blueberries. This time around I didn’t get any maple but I suspect that was more due to my screwup than the actual tea :)

I used boiling water as I had no directions but figured that would work for black.

Looking forward to round 2! Withholding my rating for now.

See my review of Mandarin Silk to read my little Persimmon Tree Tea Company story.

This was one of three teas I recently ordered from this company, I was not disappointed!

I had this after eating a chocolate and I still was able to notice the refreshing sweetness, AND taste the green tea in the most pleasant of ways!

I drank some while working on Season 4 of Doctor Who, I don’t have much left. I don’t know when the doctor switch up happens but I’m already sad about losing #10.

Tangent!

I’m pleased with this tea, I got the smallest tin but could see me reordering for sure. It’s fun to figure out what your staple teas should be by trying lots of new ones. :)

Brewed at 175 degrees for about 2 ish minutes.

I assume this is now called Mandarin Creme as the ingredients are the same.

Except my tin states “pouchong”, and both descriptions under the two names of this tea say it’s oolong. I don’t know what pouchong is but rest assured I’m going to google it once I’m done this review!

Soooo my Persimmon Tree order arrived today. I had posted a comment on their Facebook wall complaining (politely of course) that their crappy shipping options for Canada meant that for 1 oz of tea (added to my cart to determine shipping fees) it would be $28 at the CHEAPEST to ship to me.

Anyway they responded immediately, apologized, gave me a free shipping code and added a new shipping option for $15 to Canada which is totally reasonable as their teas come in tins!

Yay! So I ordered three teas and a sample of a fourth. I had to share the story because good customer service should not go unacknowledged. And I am pleased to report that the teas I ordered are awesome! Thank you, Persimmon!

This was so good. It’s creamy and flavorful yet light, and the tea base is also noticeable, delicate and delicious! I ordered the smallest tin of this and am thinking perhaps I should have got the larger size! Soooo good. It’s flavoured but not overwhelmingly so, and there’s no unnatural taste whatsoever. That is all. Yum.

180 degrees for 2-3 min, as I wasn’t sure what pouchong was, haha.