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Sipdown no. 3 of 2024 (no. 692 total).

I probably should have realized that this wouldn’t be my thing cold from the pastry notes, but alas, I didn’t focus on that when I dumped the last of this into the pitcher and brewed it.

It may also be partly because there wasn’t quite enough to put in the amount I usually put into a cold brew. It was a spoon or so short.

In any case, it’s not bad. It’s just not something I’d try again because of the aforesaid pastry note.

Sipdown no. 2 of 2024 (no. 691 total).

Drank the last of this as a cold brew. I forgot how nice of a cold brew pu erh can make. I might like cold pu erh better than hot, even.

I’ve said it before but I’m saying it again. I really wanted to be a pu erh fan. It seems like most hard core tea people are, and I wanted to be hard core. For me it’s OK, and more like a sometime thing, maybe. I wouldn’t turn it down if someone offered it to me but I’m honestly not sure I need to keep any on hand for myself.

It’s the earthiness. It’s too much for me. I don’t love earth, barnyard, marine etc. notes if they are dominant.

This one had a bit of gritty sediment at the bottom of the pitcher and getting some of that in the last sip was unexpected — I wondered if I’d chipped a tooth for a minute but it was only sand.

Sipdown no. 1 of 2024 (no. 690 total).

I mixed this with the last of the Mango Sorbet from Todd and Holland to make a cold brew because there wasn’t enough left to make a full pitcher by itself.

Great synergy, as it happened — the guava was enhanced by the small amount of mango into something quite full bodied and fruity.

Sipdown no. 31 of 2023 (no. 689 total).

I realized that I wrote a sipdown note about Peacherino thinking of this blend. While what I said in the Peacherino note was true, the Mango Sorbet blend was a sort of -issimo version of the Peacherino.

It was even less exciting as a cold brew when compared to the Harney Mango than Peacherino was when compared to the Harney Peach.

Now that it is getting colder here finally, I am going to have to start drinking things other than cold brew again.

Sipdown no. 30 of 2023 (no. 688 total).

This became my latest cold brew venture and I have to say, it wasn’t as successful a candidate for cold brew as the Harney fruit blends.

It was an intensity problem. This fruit blend wasn’t intense enough to support a cold version and it tasted a bit weak even though I used the same amount as I did with the Harney.

In looking back at my original note, it seems to have been more successful hot — though I did note that it was “mellower” than the Harney peach, which perhaps should have been a tip off.

Sipdown no. 29 of 2023 (no. 687 total). And I’m down to 13 pages of cupboard. Huzzah!

I needed a lower ranking cupboard occupant (which is relative since everything in my cupboard now is over 80, I think) to sip down as a cold brew. When I picked this, I didn’t realize how little of it was left. I really only had half as much as I needed to do a cold brew so I topped it off with Harney English Breakfast, which I thought might be interesting. It occurred to me afterwards that what I might end up with was something very weak and pear-like and something very weak and black tea like mixed together which might or might not have had working synergies.

Yeah, it didn’t really work. I’m writing this note to record that it is now gone, but it deserved a better send off.

Sipdown no. 28 of 2023 (no. 686 total).

Drank the rest of this as cold brew and find myself tempted to repeat my note on the Peach Fruit Tea. Instead of repeating it, I’ll link to that entry here. https://steepster.com/teas/harney-and-sons/9591-peach-fruit-tea#tasting-notes

Sipdown no. 27 of 2023 (no. 685 total).

Hard to believe this is one of the lowest rated items still in my cupboard until just now.

All of the Harney fruit blends shine as cold brews, perhaps even more in my opinion than when served hot. Because the base has a lot of hibiscus (which I am now a fan of after a fair amount of time shunning it), the fruit blends have a lot in common and the fruit that is the distinguishing feature is harder to identify, but once you realize that and focus in on the non-hibiscus backdrop, you can definitely get the peach. It’s not as strong as some others (mango for instance) but it’s there.

I could see maybe getting one of these gain. I’d probably do the strawberry kiwi or goji berry, but who knows, I might get a hankering for this one.

Sipdown no. 26 of 2023 (no. 684 total).

I’m going to miss this one. I see that when I wrote the original note on this I was skeptical about why I would have ordered it. Since then I’ve developed into a pretty big fan of ginger in tea.

This one has a lovely balance. The ginger isn’t too strong, and leaves a nice, fresh aftertaste. The floral notes are atmospheric rather than definable, but they don’t cloud (or crowd) the tea’s flavor.

Lovely even when old, and I might have to get more of this some day when my cupboard is cleared out.

Sipdown no. 25 of 2023 (no. 683 total).

I had a humongous bag of this and whenever I have a humongous bag of anything that is a sipdown candidate, it ends up getting mostly used for cold brew.

This was a nice cold brew. Close enough to the standard “tea” flavor you find in good restaurant iced teas to be reminiscent of that, but with other things going on. I didn’t get a lot of berry in the sipdown, probably because of the tea’s age, but I did get something that tasted rounder and deeper and even, I think, somehow greener than a standard.

I think it is the honey note that gives it that depth. It’s not citrus.