Top 10 Favorite Teas from 52Teas?

Here’s the ones that I’ve liked, but my tastes changed from what I liked before (which was having SWEET all the time) to wanting more contrast and bolder flavors:

Lemon Ginger Cookie Oolong – I would have bought more pouches of this if it hadn’t run out.

Lemon Meringue Chai – actually did buy the reblend

French Toast – my daughter goes crazy over this, and I have to ration it for her. She adds extra cinnamon to it.

Spicier Chai

Caramel Vanilla Chai

Stone Fruit White Tea

Peach Cardamom

I used to like the honeybush base because the sweeter teas were on that base, and now I stay away from it. It just tastes like wood to me. It’s funny how tastes change.

There have been so many good ones. I’ll throw out a bunch that I’ve loved and would gladly buy reblends of :)

Cashew Turtle – this was so chocolaty and caramely to me
Blueberry Cream Cheese Danish – The best blueberry tea ever
Coconut Cheesecake Honeybush – loved this when it first came out
Lemon Lime Cheesecake Honeybush
Maple Cheesecake Oolong – really awesome maple tea
Coconut Banana Cream Pie Hojicha – this was so good with foamed soy on top
Lemon Lime Meringue kukicha
Graveyard Mist
Lime Jello Salad
Lemon Ginger Cookie Oolong
Banana Cheesecake Genmaicha

Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha
Strawberry Zabaglione
Blueberry Cream Cheese Danish
Pancake Breakfast
Gooey Butter Cake
Graveyard Mist
Banana Pudding
Sun and Cloud Mist

Marshmallow treat Genmaicha / or anything with marshmallow
Cinnamon roll
Pancake breakfast
Graveyard mist
Something with banana flavor :)

Hi Everyone -

THANK YOU for your responses! I really appreciate it. I’m going to be spending some time determining the most popular, and I’ll work on adding it to the Kickstarter campaign.

I’ll get back to you with the final list and also some explanations as to why I made the decisions I did with it once I finish with the responses.

Well, I’m surprised that it didn’t take me longer than it did!

I’ve narrowed it down to five teas that I’m going to reblend for the “take over”. Please keep in mind that this is not the only five that I’ll ever reblend, as I mentioned in my other thread, I plan on implementing “Retro Monday” which will be on the fifth Monday (one month per quarter will have five Mondays instead of four, that is the day I call Fifth Monday) and this is a time when you’ll get to vote on one reblend that will be brought back for that Retro Monday as the release for that week.

In addition: I will consider all reblend requests! If I get a lot of requests for one particular flavor, I’ll set up a pre-sale for it and after a full pound has been pre-sold, I’ll reblend it.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the list of the five teas that will be part of the Kickstarter campaign:

Graveyard Mist
Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha
Pancake Breakfast
Maple TieGuanYin
Coconut Cheesecake Honeybush

There was an overwhelming response to Graveyard Mist. It was kind of neck and neck with Pancake Breakfast versus French Toast – I don’t want to blend both of them for this campaign because they are very similar, so I went with Pancake Breakfast because it won by the narrowest of margins.

As for the Coconut Cheesecake Honeybush, several different Honeybush blends were mentioned and they were all tied. I ultimately went with the Coconut Cheesecake because this is my daughter’s favorite tea of all from 52Teas so I figured if she was voting, that’s the tea she’d use, and since she’s the one who is going to be heading up this thing (I’m just the mad scientist behind the scenes) I figured I’d make the boss happy.

Yeah … kissing up to the boss.

Anyway, a couple of other explanations:

I immediately eliminated the Pu-erh requests. Why? I’m not a huge fan of pu-erh, and I’ve never made any big secret of that. Before I make a pu-erh blend (or reblend) and I’m not saying I won’t ever do that, but before I do, I want to test out a few pu-erh bases so that I’m happy with the base before I’m creating flavors. I don’t feel like I’m going to have adequate time to do that before I need to get these reblends into production. I’m sorry to those of you that this decision disappoints, but keep in mind that I will, at some point, take the time to evaluate a few different pu-erh bases and find one that I’m happy with (or maybe two that I’m happy with, a Shou and a Sheng) but I do need more time than will be allowed with this project at this time.

I also immediately eliminated any chocolate requests. WHAT? Has she lost her mind? The chocoholic eliminated chocolate requests?!?!?

Yeah. Here’s why: Chocolate teas are something that are very, very important to me and are the reason that I got into the blending business ten years ago. I wanted to create a great chocolate tea and I succeeded in that back then. Now, after years as a tea reviewer, I have learned even more about what makes a chocolate tea great and I’m going back to the drawing board.

So, before I start working on chocolate reblends (and I will!) I want to create my chocolate bland. Or recreate it. Or upgrade it. Make it the best it can be. Then I will start considering chocolate reblends.

Again, I’m sorry to any of you that are disappointed with this decision, but I promise you that my chocolate blend will make up for it. At least, I think it will.

I hope that you are happy with this list of teas that I’ve announced for the reblends!

Also: regarding the Sun Cloud Mist – this one got a lot of votes too, but I already had 2 green teas in the list and I wanted to have at least one black tea, at least one “other tea” (the Oolong in this case) and at least one caffeine free tea in the five. So, I limited it to two green tea choices and the Marshmallow Treat won out over Sun Cloud Mist by a narrow margin.

Again, I’d be very happy to consider Sun Cloud Mist for a future reblend or a Retro Monday or maybe both!

AH! I didn’t originally see that you wanted replies within a couple days…

According to my huge list of tea ratings, these are my FAVORITE 52teas (all upper 90s in the ratings):

Coconut Banana Cream Pie Hojicha
Earl Grey Cheesecake (original was great, reblend had no flavor)
Cantaloupe Watermelon (mainly for the cantaloupe!)
Banana Pudding (either the black or the genmaicha)
Blueberry Cream Cheese Danish (thought the black tea for the older blend was perfect for this blend)
Lemon meringue chai
Peach Blackberry Crumble
Date Nut Muffin
Pancake Breakfast
Ginger Pumpkin Cheesecake Honeybush
Rumchata Genmaicha
Bananas Foster
Almond Happiness

As for reblends I’d like to see, there are probably so many great blends I wasn’t able to try (if it helps, my list says I’ve tried around 95 blends), but I’d love to revisit (since some of the above blends are still being hoarded in my cupboard!):
Coconut Banana Cream Pie Hojicha
Peach Blackberry Crumble
Almond Happiness
Raspberry Cream Cheese Danish honeybush
Custard Filled Maple Longjohns (though what I tried didn’t taste like much – love the idea though)
Frankenberry
Fruit hoops
Black & Blue
Hot banana bread
PBJ
Stone Fruit White
Rocky Road
Vanilla Mint Mate
Maple Cheesecake
Trail Mix
Dreamsicle pu-erh

(and I really hope the banana blends stay just as delicious! I’d love to see any fig, dates, plum blends. I also wish that the blends used Cacao shells instead of cocoa nibs.)

I really hope Frank keeps the archive of 52Teas blends on his site – it’s nice to revisit!

I haven’t tried enough to name ten, but I would love to see
- Graveyard Mist
- Tiramisu Oolong

I also had fairly strong feelings for Frankenberry and Strawberry Zabaglione Chun Mee from the Christmas box, but wasn’t sure about the bases paired with the flavours. (I would have loved to try Frankenberry with a milk oolong).

A few teas I’ve always wanted to try have been mentioned above, so I’ll be excited to see if any of them makes a return.

I’ve made no secret of how I feel about 52teas, both the teas and Frank. But I really do have to say that after reading these threads and seeing your willingness to talk to customers and get their opinions, I’m very eager to try some of your reblends. You have a real commitment to finding the best suppliers and not releasing anything you’re not 100% happy with and that’s really exciting to me. I cannot wait to see what you do with the company to make it your own.

As for me, I’m alway in the mood for interesting genmaicha and flavored oolongs, so your reblend list looks awesome!