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This is my tea of the week for February 13.

This is so good – and it’s almost gone! I do have a little more of this to measure out – which I should have finished by the end of the weekend – but what I do have left of this is not going to last long after that!

Right now, I’m enjoying this as a boba drink that I made. My youngest and I LOVE boba – so much so that I decided that I need to get the ingredients necessary to make boba at home because it was getting expensive to tend to our boba habit! So – this that I’m drinking right now is brown sugar boba, this tea (hot brewed & then chilled) plus a milk cap (also known as cheese foam – I don’t like that name so I call it a milk cap instead!) It is SO good. It is amazing. I love this. It tastes better than anything I’ve ever gotten from a boba shop! So very yummy!

Currently enjoying this tea – I wanted some caffeine (yes, it’s after midnight, but my sleep schedule is way off – in other words, I just woke up an hour ago) and this is the one I grabbed. I’m happy this is the tea that was on top of my stash because it has such a rewarding flavor. Pleasant notes of peppermint, chocolate & hints of vanilla with the rich black tea. A nice way to get my caffeine fix!

Currently sipping – & excited that I actually have a moment to sit down & write a tasting note! I’ve been pretty busy trying to get everything set up as an LLC. My darling daughter Amethyst finishes her college education in May & it was her wish to focus on her new career aspiration.

Anyway – there’s been a lot of paperwork to handle!

This is a blend I crafted for November 2022. I love the base of Fujian and Yunnan black teas – it’s rich & flavorful & plays well with the spices and the pumpkin notes. Really nice!

This is actually our 4th Tea of Christmas but I held off brewing this on that day & instead, saved the tea to cold brew.

This is FANTASTIC cold brewed. I enjoyed it served hot as well, but it’s a completely different tea when cold-brewed! It tastes like a pomegranate lemon-lime soda!

I don’t think Steepster likes me. It keeps acting up.

Anyway, this is the 7th Tea of Christmas and it is so YUMMY!

I was really happy with how well the reblend turned out – so beautifully blended. It tastes just like the name suggests, carrot cake pancakes – with a drizzle of maple syrup.

The 6th Tea of Christmas from our 12 Teas of Christmas Box. (We’re already half way through the countdown!)

The last few months, I have been on a bit of a maple craze (if that hasn’t been obvious with the teas that I’ve created thus far – with at least one more, maybe 2 to be announced) – plus the lindt lindor truffle that I included with the 12 Teas of Christmas as well as the subscription packages for November/December have been the limited edition maple truffle – suffice to say that I’ve been wanting everything maple over the last few months & I’m actually surprised that I didn’t make more maple-y teas. I’m not saying I didn’t want to make more – I just didn’t.

Anyway, this tea: I had originally planned to make the Maple Cheesecake Oolong tea but I didn’t have the right base available to me at the time of blending (the shipment was on back order) so I had to think quick & I decided that rather than making yet another maple cheesecake variation that I would make a different maple oolong altogether, so instead of going the cheesecake route, I added one of my favorite berries to work with: Blackberries.

I love how this one turned out. The blackberry notes are well pronounced, but not at the detriment of the maple. I like the way these two flavors work together. Usually, when I see a berry & maple combination, it’s blueberry & maple & to be honest, I had considered making this one a blueberry maple – but since I had just recently made a blueberry tea (BooBerry in October) – I went with blackberry. I’m not sorry because this is so good. It turned out better than I expected & I had high hopes.

This is our 5th Tea of Christmas! Every year for our holiday poll, quite a few banana teas are nominated and of those – several win enough votes to win their way into the box. However, I want to maintain a variety of tea flavors within the box (I probably could do a banana box with as many banana teas we have blended and how many of those have been requested as a reblend.) So I choose the one tea that received the most votes.

And that would be this tea.

I did tweak the recipe slightly this time around – and I added a teensy bit of Lapsang Souchong. I did this after the initial taste test and I realized that it kind of tasted a little “flat” – like it needed something. This may be because I’ve recently had some bananas foster (the dessert) and the deep caramelization that came from the flambe of the brown sugar was something that I wanted in this tea and I think that the addition of the Lapsang Souchong accomplished this.

It smells a lot smokier than it actually tastes – especially after some cool time – where the smoke melds together with the rum & caramel. I really like how these flavors fuse together in the sip so – as CrowKettle mentioned in her post – this tea definitely does benefit from some cool time.

The 3rd Tea of Christmas!

I realize I’m a little late to the party today – as on the east coast, it’s already time for the 4th Tea of Christmas – my last 24 hours have been a little weird & as a result, I haven’t had the time to sit back and enjoy a cuppa & write a post about it.

PS: I apologize if this ends up being a double post. Steepster was acting weird.

I am CRAZY for Earl Grey. I love bergamot. So, I’m often thinking of ways to bring a new Earl Grey blend to the 52Teas lineup & I’m always happy when the opportunity arrives to reblend one of my previous EG blends.

As I mentioned earlier in a comment on another post for this tea – my original blend had pastel blue & white snowflake sprinkles – while this blend has the rainbow sprinkles & a quick look into photo album tells me that I also did a version with green, red & white sprinkles for a previous holiday box. Ideally, I would have chosen either of those sprinkles for this blend, however, I had purchased these sprinkles a couple of months ago when I had planned on reblending it – however at the time of blending, my cold-pressed bergamot oil had not yet arrived and you can’t very well blend an EG tea without bergamot oil. So, I had to shelf that plan & since this blend did so well in the holiday poll, I decided to just reblend it for the 12 Teas of Christmas box – but I didn’t think it was necessary to buy a new batch of sprinkles since I seldom utilize sprinkles in my teas – but for a cupcake tea, I felt it necessary to add sprinkles. :)

So, that was probably more than you needed to know about why the rainbow sprinkles. Anyway, this tea: I love it. It’s Earl Grey, it’s vanilla, there’s a richness to it that is evocative of cake batter. YUMMY!

Our 2nd Tea of Christmas

I have been looking forward to this cup. This is the first tea that was complete & packaged up as I worked on the 12 Teas of Christmas box – so it was the first tea that I tested. So it’s been a while since I last tasted it! I really enjoyed it – but since I have been tasting a lot of teas over the last 3 months while working on the 12 Teas of Christmas as well as the regular monthly teas, I haven’t had a lot of time to just sit back and brew a cup of tea that wasn’t part of a taste test – you know? So it’s been nice to be able to sit back (at least for a couple of minutes) and enjoy the teas I made for this box.

I really enjoy the way the flavor of the cream cheese (vegan, of course!) plays with the smooth, nutty flavor of the chestnut. It’s a really pleasant cuppa!

The 1st Tea of Christmas!

A blend of black teas, raisins, oranges & my own special recipe of essence to create a taste that evokes thoughts of tea time with scones! I just brewed up a pot & my s/o informed me that it is in the top 5 of all time teas that he’s tried from me (and I’ve served him quite a few cups of tea since I started the 52Teas thing more than 7 years ago!)

It’s really tasty – and it’s lovely to revisit these teas. I think the 12 Teas of Christmas box is one of my favorite things about the holidays!

Have a great day!