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Sipdown, and I’m only just now finally getting the steeping parameters perfect. Boiling water, overleaf, long steep (7+ minutes). The result is a rich and roasty dark chocolate flavor. I never did get much creaminess from this but I like dark chocolate so I didn’t really miss it either.
I haven’t been on Steepster much in the past week, but I hope our California Steepsterites are safe!

Day 9 of DIY mostly Adagio advent. The coconut flavor in this is fine – not too oily, decently creamy – but the base tea is extremely meh. It just has this coarse edge to it that doesn’t complement the flavoring and makes it impossible for me to enjoy the cup. I tried adding honey in an effort to soften the edge, but it didn’t help at all.

Busy day so just marking a sipdown of this blend from the 2023 advent calendar, for the sipdown challenge prompt. Note to future self – add this to my sipdown tracker!

I’ve been curious about The Qi for a while! Their whole flower teas looked very pretty, and I like that they use ethical sourcing practices. I just hadn’t gotten around to ordering – between the cost, not being sure about whether I’d like the taste, and not being a huge fan of all the health claims, it wasn’t top of my to-buy list. But I was thrilled when Nazanin sent me a few!
One of the hesitations I had was whether this tea would be more style than substance. It’s just so social-media-ready, and that sometimes translates to mediocre flavor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this has both style and substance. The packaging is gorgeous. The dried whole flower is gorgeous. It unfurls gorgeously as it steeps. And the flavor is lightly sweet and floral rose. It holds up well to resteeps and doesn’t seem to overbrew, or at least it didn’t overbrew for me this time. I spent all night drinking it, just topping up the water. Honestly, I can now see why this costs this much. It’s probably the best rose herbal I’ve ever had. This one is a sipdown.

Day 12 of the 52teas advent calendar. I made this as an oat milk latte because the word “chai” always makes me think I should add oat milk. The spice balance here reminds me a lot of the gingerbread blend, in a favorable way. The cinnamon, clove, and pepper are clear but not overpowering. Not sure I’m getting “chestnut” per se, but there’s a nice creaminess that goes deeper than the oat milk. Another one that’s risky because of my stomach but I’d recommend for flavor.

Overall, this continues to be an excellent advent. There were some returning favorites (banana eggnog oolong! candy cane marshmallow treat genmaicha!) as well as some new and new-to-me blends that I found quite enjoyable. The gingerbread green and raspberry lemon linzer black were particular highlights there. The quantity of tea is just right – enough to play around with but not so much that it ends up sitting around forever. This calendar has quickly become a constant in my advent lineup; I expect that will continue to be the case.

Last blend in the Plum Deluxe caffeine-free Hanukkah sampler! This smells so good while it’s steeping. The white chocolate, peppermint, and coconut scent just wafts at you alluringly. Those same notes translate into the flavor, too. With a splash of oat milk, it’s a perfect wintry dessert tea. Theme-wise, this is probably more of a Christmas or generic winter blend than a specifically Hanukkah blend, but it’s so tasty that I’m willing to forgive it. In general, I feel like this year’s Hanukkah sampler didn’t have any holiday-specific flavors/themes that I picked up on. But most of the blends were tasty, the price point is very reasonable ($12 for 16 packets, each with enough leaf to make 2 regular or 1 large mug), it’s packaged nicely, and I can see that they’re working to make this offering better every year. All of those things keep me coming back to this sampler, and I expect that I’ll be getting it again next year.

Naturally, I had to include this in my Hanukkah tea lineup. Funnily enough, even though this is more intensely sweet than the DT latke blend, I like this better. I think because it’s trying to match a purely sweet flavor profile, I’m not having that feeling of wanting it to be something else (in the case of the latke blend, more savory). The DT Hanukkah gift set should just be a bundle of these two blends instead of a random assortment of teabags with a worse cost-to-tea ratio than the advent calendars. But I digress!
I like this one hot and unadulterated. The notes of jam, powdered sugar, and seemingly specifically fried pastry are just spot on.

Don’t even ask me how old this tea is. About a decade or so? I can’t believe I still have any left. Even more wild is that it’s still pretty tasty! I’m trying to finish it off this year to avoid pushing my luck too much. Probably my favorite thing about it is the ability to tune the sweet/savory balance and get very different flavor profiles. This blend was such a work of art – in a magical universe where Stacy came back to do some limited reblends, I’d vote for this one for sure.

Happy New Year, steepers! Obviously I’ve been drinking this latke tea during Hanukkah. It still reads as apple-cinnamon pancake to me. I find it too sweet and not savory enough to read as potato per se. But it’s tasty for a sweet pancake tea, I appreciate that it even exists, and I respect the effort.

Boo, it’s already the 7th night of Hanukkah! At least I’ve been having fun with it – lots of latkes and sufganiyot, candle lighting, cute socks, my epic holiday playlist on repeat, family time, crafting, and presents. I just finished applying gloss to a Hanukkah repaint of a vintage Polly Pocket McDonald’s toy, so fingers crossed that works out well! This is the second to last tea in the Plum Deluxe caffeine-free Hanukkah sampler. Good news: it’s not hurting my stomach. Alas, it’s still an Earl Grey, which means lots of bergamot. It’s fine for an EG, but there’s too much bergamot for my tastes. I do like the creamy note from the vanilla and the base tea is nice enough. Hard to get past the bergamot of it all though.