Starfevre select Send Message

This tasting note is written for the cups of tea that I drank last night and earlier this morning, from memory, so it won’t be as detailed as normal. Maybe next time.

I’ve been looking for the perfect apple black tea for a while now. I keep trying different ones and they keep coming up short. This tea comes closer than most, but still isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. I can taste the apple (and cranberry and hibiscus) in the blend, but it isn’t nearly as strong a flavour as I would like it to be. So overall, this could be better, although it’s nice enough as it is, I suppose.

Got this in a swap from lcg842 (this is my first try at bolding something, I hope it works!).

This is some serious fruit. I can taste the hibiscus and it’s pretty strong, but honestly the berries (and they merge into this one giant BERRY flavour rather than get tasted out individually for me here) are overpowering everything in this blend. It’s really sweet too. It’s a little much for a hot tea, I imagine it’s much better iced (and therefore watered down substantially).

So I drank this during a meeting at work so I’m going by memory on it rather than writing this during the drinking like I normally do. So here it goes.

This is a surprisingly good tea for me considering that individually I don’t like more than half of the ingredients. I’m not a big fan of chai, but it seems that this is a good entry into the chai branch of tea, I rarely come across a green chai and the toasted rice adds an interesting dimension to the flavour.

Unfortunately, I still don’t like it. I’m extremely sensitive to ginger and cinnamon so while this nominally tasted okay, I had a burning sensation in my mouth after every swallow that lingered unpleasantly. But I doubt that anyone else has this sensation so the steepster community as a whole will probably like this tea.

So I tried this mostly because I got it from my 52teas subscription and I believe that I should try everything once before I reject it out of hand, but white teas have never been my favourite thing, or even close to it. Imagine my surprise when I actually like this tea! The flavouring is subtle, fruity but not overwhelming and the white tea tastes like white tea but it doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi that I have never liked about it, somehow.

I think I steeped this correctly at 175 degrees for 2 minutes, but if anyone has suggestions on how to make this even better, please feel free to share, I haven’t steeped many white teas.

Well, honeybush isn’t my favourite thing, I’ve always thought it tasted sour to me, and even the strawberry flavouring couldn’t overcome that bias in this tea. I liked it a little bit, but not enough to ever drink it again.

And that is a good thing! Drinking this tea this morning has confirmed the theory I have had for a while that I have a minor allergic reaction to honeybush every time I drink it. Not bad, just nausea and a headache, but still more than I want from something I consume. This tea will be going onto the swap thread shortly.

Second try at posting this note. Steepster is having issues this afternoon. Thanks to Tea Sipper for sending this to me in trade. I’m highly enjoying it. The almond in it is coming along pretty strong to me and is leaving an absolutely lovely aftertaste for me to savour. It is pretty sweet too, above and beyond the sweetener I added to it. A touch of milk adds some creaminess that I think this tea needed and the whole thing is really nice. Good tea.

Well, I can’t say I’ve had much, if any at all, rhubarb in my life. My mother did not make this pie growing up and I’m not a pie maker myself. I can taste the strawberry in this and what I can only assume is the rhubarb as a weird undertaste to the strawberry. I can see how some people would really like this, but I just don’t. There is nothing wrong with this tea, I just don’t like it. I’ll try for strawberry again tomorrow with my Walter Bishop tea.

I’m going through my back stash of 52teas teas that I haven’t tried yet and this one came up this morning. It smells very dark chocolatey and very nutty although I’m hoping that it doesn’t have any actual almond oil in it because that is what has ruined the taste of all almond teas for me previously. I just can’t stand the taste of that, it tastes like alcohol to me and I hate that taste.

This has a strong flavour of dark chocolate and nutty almonds. I’m picking up a bit of coconut, but mostly in the aftertaste. It’s been a while since I had one, but if the balance of the chocolate and the coconut were a little more balanced, this would taste strikingly like an Almond Joy bar. Hmm, that makes me wonder if there’s any chance of getting a 3 Muskateers tea.

This is an interesting tea. When I breathe in the aroma, I get the distinct feeling of pepper in the back of my throat. The body of the tea is smooth with a strong fruitiness to it. No bitterness or astringency present.

Well worth getting up for, although I cut my treadmill workout in half this morning. Call it a win that I got up at all. 3:45am is too damn early.

I was out at a restaurant for dinner tonight and hot tea (or several other drinks) came with the meal and I didn’t want to pay extra for a drink and I didn’t particularly feel like just plain water so I ordered the hot tea. My choices were scant because I really should start keeping some bags of my own tea in my purse for these occasions but of the 3(!) choices (earl grey, generic green, chamomile) this was the obvious winner so in the cup it goes.

Steeped a decent flavour the first time. Not a great flavour, but a drinkable one. Second steep came out with barely flavoured tea water so this was a one hit wonder. But even the first steep was pretty light on the flavour scale and didn’t hold up well to the additives so I can’t say I’m surprised, I just didn’t want to bother the waiter for more tea when I’d already called him over half a dozen times for other things.

Conclusion: start bringing tea bags to restaurants. How many other steepsters do this already?