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I am starting to have better luck brewing this tea but it is difficult to get it right. A big thank you goes out to Jaime for suggesting a lower temperature.

After rinsing the leaves (which I don’t know was good enough), I smelled the tea. Right away, I was put off by how dusty it smelled. I’m not sure if I didn’t rinse the leaves enough though so I can’t argue about the dust too much. Then, drinking it I was pleasantly surprised. It’s very light in color and taste, but still the dust was starting to irritate my nose. So I wasn’t able to pick out the different flavors of the tea. :(

On the second brew I let it sit slightly too long and I ruined it. I’m not used to teas that are this fickle. When I say I let it sit too long, I mean an extra 30 seconds. If you see this tea darken all of a sudden, it is completely ruined. Unless you like dusty, bitter, watered down Timmy’s coffee.

I still have 5 or so of these left so, I’ll use the remaining ones to figure out how to make a good cup of tea. I’m going to try and rinse the leaves a bit better next time and watch my tea timer very carefully.

This is a nice cranberry cider drink. Which is not something I usually look for, but I have cider sometimes during the winter season. So it is a welcome addition to my tea cupboard.

The cranberry is not overwhelming, just a nice sweet and tartness to the cider. The spices make this a lot less boring than it could have been. Overall I like it, but it doesn’t really impress me a whole lot because I am not a big fan of cider anyways.

Recently I was making some pulled pork in my crockpot (just a pork pot roast, onions, chilli sauce, etc). Since pork goes well with fruity things I brewed a cup of Forever Nuts and dumped it in my mixing bowl along with other seasonings. Then poured everything over the roast and let it sit in there for about 10 hours.

I’m really glad that the finished product was not too sweet. The Forever Nuts is pretty noticeable while you’re eating, but it’s kind of a different flavor because its been mixed with a bunch of other ingredients.

The recipe is pretty average, but if you want it just send me a private message.

At David’s Tea I was looking for some plain black tea and this caught my eye. I usually keep 1 of each “type” in stock at my house. The canister in the store had just enough for a few more scoops of Black Needles before it ran out. So I guess this is popular at my location.

Anyways, onto drinking this stuff. I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly this goes down. It tastes like a nice, strong flavored black tea. What more could I expect? The fact that it has the strong flavor and it goes down really smooth, is a nice feature.

If I don’t feel like trying out new black teas I will probably just buy more of this.

I tried “rinsing” the pu-erh twice with boiling water. Then steeping it for a short time and drinking it. Not exactly David’s way but something I picked up from a tea book. (Hey I am a pu-erh noob, cut me some slack! hahaha)

It tastes better, but I am still not crazy about it. Its flowery and earthy. Like you wandered into a garden the morning after it had just rained.
On the 2nd steep (counting real steeping, not including the two I chucked out), it was especially mouth-watering. Unfortunately there is this funky aftertaste present with each sip.
If this is from the chrysanthemum flower, then I am beginning to think I don’t really care for that type of flower. If it is the pu-erh, well then I really ought to find some good pu-erh one of these days because I am tired of being so disappointed.

I didn’t expect this tea to taste so “heavy.” The chocolate really weighs it down. I can best describe this as being a comfort drink, and not something meant to refresh you.

Snacking on some blueberries made this taste a lot better. If you’re serving this drink to others, supplying some sweet fruit would be a welcome addition.

Not sure if I am going to drink a lot of this during December. I’m around so much sweets and junk food as it is. Also, I am not a big fan of chocolate so I didn’t enjoy this as much as others might. For me, this is a special occasion tea. Tasty, but not something I can drink more than once a week.

I smelled this tea in the store, and was blown away by the strange scents.

Tasting notes: it’s incredibly creamy and has an unusual flavor layered on top of the usual oolong. My husband and I really like this oolong, so it might soon become one of our favorites.
This is definitely worth trying once, because it is such a unique tea. It smells really good before and after brewing.

I’d still be able to have a cup of this. However one of my cats (I don’t know which, and they won’t admit to it), RIPPED the bag apart. I guess they really liked that tea too.

I said to my husband “my cats ripped apart my sweet dreams!”

Tried some of this iced tonight. It’s still pretty good but I prefer it hot.

This smells like a mild apple cider. It tastes of apple, spices, and a hint of almond.
I think it tastes a lot better than an average spiced cider, and it has a lovely deep pink color when you brew it.
It’s very light, and has a warmth to it that is enjoyable during the colder seasons.

Personally, I enjoy having this all the time. Because it is so sweet and not full of caffeine.