52teas

A bit of a backlog: I finished off the last of my stash of this one this morning. Since I had an early morning appointment, I didn’t have time for breakfast, so I wanted something that could be like my tea and breakfast all in one tea cup. :)

I will miss this tea. I say that about a lot of teas lately as I have been focusing on emptying my stash to make room for new teas. But it’s true. I really have enjoyed it. That being said, since I do have more teas on their way over the next couple of weeks, I can’t spend too much time or effort mourning the absence of these others… I’ve been hoarding too long! What matters is not that I do not have these teas any longer, but that I enjoyed them while I did have them. And this one I did enjoy!

I started my day with this tea – and I only have enough for one more pot of it! It is one that will definitely be missed, I loved the buttery flavor of this tea, as well as how the other flavors came together… sweet cinnamon (not spicy), slightly toasty black tea, raisin, and butter, I can taste them all. YUM!

But, I suppose all good things must come to an end (something I am learning this week as I watched the final episodes of both Lost and 24 – two of my favorite shows) :(

I haven’t had this tea in a while so I thought I’d have some for breakfast this morning. I really enjoy this tea and I also wanted to find out how my taste buds were doing. I figured with some of the more delicate flavors in this tea – I might be able to see if my taste buds were getting somewhere back to normal (what is normal?) so that I might be able to start trying some of the newer teas that I’ve recently received.

Unfortunately, my taste buds are not completely in check, but, they’re getting there. The smoky quality of the tea stands out in the first couple of sips, but it is not too smoky. I can taste the smooth buttery characteristic as well, and that makes me smile, as it is one of the aspects of this tea that I have always found so delightfully unusual. The raisin is quite delicate, as is the cinnamon. However, I do note a sweet cinnamon note in the finish that sort of rests upon the palate.

So, my palate isn’t quite up to par just yet, but it’s MUCH better than it was say two weeks ago. I won’t rate this tea numerically just yet, perhaps with the next cup (which, by the looks of it, just may be my last cup of this outstanding tea!)

In my experience, flavoured greens tend to use a heavy dose of flavouring to hide the fact you are drinking a green tea, making for a rather pointless cup. In this blend the elderberries are more complimentary, letting the sencha base skip along beside it hand in hand.
I can definitely see how fantastic this would be iced, but I think I will save that for a day that doesn’t require one to be wrapped head-to-toe in wool…

It’s horribly hot in our office (happens every Fall – old building with inflexible heating schedule! Once they turn on the heat, that’s it despite the fact that we always have warm days in October and November!). I pulled out one of my summer favorites to help cope!

Love that olde fashioned lemon verbena :) and bit of spice. The tea base is nice and medium bodied to let the additions shine. I put a half teaspoon of rock sugar in it to round out the flavors, and it’s delicious and refreshing. I don’t like this hot weather, but I do like this little impromptu visit from one of my summer tea friends!

I drastically oversteeped this because I was attempting to courteously answer a very rude email from a student (!!! ever notice the ruder the person, the more in the wrong they usually are? but I digress!) but I am pleased to note that while the tea is stronger than usual, it’s still absolutely delicious…and this is with nary an addition! I love the lemon verbena. Give me a strange old fashioned floral and/or herbaceous tea blend, and I’m all over it :)

It is so dreadfully humid in our area today! When I was on the train, all I could think about (as my glasses were fogging up from the change in temperature) was coming in, and having some of this tea.

The lemony flavors blended in are so refreshing, especially my beloved lemon verbena! I am sipping my second steep right now, and it couldn’t be more perfect. A great help in waking up (had a little too much Pouilly-Fuissé for my birthday last night!) and feeling some relief from this humidity!

Tea related birthday aside: my coworkers gave me a gift certificate to TBar!

http://steepster.com/places/1188-tbar-philadelphia-pennsylvania

Boy, is this a delightful summer tea! Even though I’m drinking it hot, and even though it has spice in it, it is so refreshing. It’s that magic lemon verbena!! ♥

Also, have I mentioned how much I love my FORLIFE cup recently!!?!?!? It is so much more convenient to use at work it’s not even funny. I love a convoluted tea ritual as much as the next person, but not at work. Now all I have to do is figure out which is the best travel mug for me, and I will be totally in the 21st century in my outward world doings. Home is totally another story ;)

I’m sitting here in Philadelphia enjoying a little bit of Florence, Italy. Two lovely, nostalgic, delicious steeps. I’m surprised more people don’t like this one! I am always the oddball :) I’m so glad this one is part of 52teas permanent collection because I’ve never tasted anything like it, and want to keep it in my cupboard continuously!

I feel like I am really starting to get in my groove as far as the teas I absolutely adore. I’ve done a lot of experimenting over the last 6 months, and have come to a few realizations:

-I love unadorned Chinese black teas!!!!!
-I continue to love Assam teas.
-I will always have a weakness for flavored teas with milk and sugar, but they are no longer my main focus. Give me a good Chinese tea that I can take plain, or a flavored tea that I can take without additions, such as this tea or Kusmi’s St. Petersburg, and I’m as happy as a clam!
-Earl Grey = ♥ Jasmine = ♥ Earl Grey, jasmine and rose together?? ♥ times 100!!!!!
-I love oolongs, both darker and greener!
-I have not fallen in love with green tea, no matter how I try. I adore the French greens that are flavored as a once in awhile afternoon treat, but if I never had another plain green tea I have to be honest – I really wouldn’t be all that put out!!! I will continue to try them hoping for some magic, but…
-I think 52teas Black Currant Bai Mu Dan is the only white tea I have flipped for.
-I am so surprised how much I am loving the herbals and the rooibos and honeybush tisanes. About 10 years ago I declared that if I couldn’t have a caffeine tea, I would not drink tea!!! My husband starting to not be able to sleep because of the teas this year (ah! Aging!) changed my mind real quick. I am delighted by so many of the flavors I’ve been experiencing. The key for me is NOT to compare them to TEAS and just think of them as their own flavored beverage things.

I was in the mood for “something different” this morning and chose this one. Taken with a half teaspoon of sugar. Really nice on a hot day. The spice is subtle, and the citrusy flavors, especially the lemon verbena, are really refreshing. It finally hit me why I like this so much – I just got a memory of when I was in Florence and went to the Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella.

http://www.italian.it/santamarianovella/smnuk.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/01/26/travel/shopper-s-world-florentine-potions-for-sale.html

There I bought the most amazing lemon verbena perfumes and soaps, made from centuries-old recipes and herbs gathered from the Tuscan countryside. The perfume is long gone, and the soaps were given out to friends as souvenirs, but I have loved lemon verbena from that day forward.

This tea has the most lemon verbena taste I have experienced yet!!!! It may have gotten its inspiration from a market in Seattle, but to me it will always evoke Florence and the olde recipies of Santa Maria Novella.

Taken with a pinch of sugar. Nothing like I thought it was going to be like – I was thinking a Constant Comment type tea. I really like it!!! I’m not tasting a lot of spice, or your typical citrus. I taste citrus fruit peel. Some lemongrass. It actually reminds me of a Kusmi-type tea – really nice black tea that tastes great without milk and has many different subtle, interesting, delightful flavors. Perfect on this rainy, cool morning.

Ok, it is official, I do not like Rooibos. Done. Moving on to something more worthy of my money and tastebuds:)

Sipdown no. 151 of the year 2014. This time I made it with plain Assam (LeafSpa Banaspaty Bliss) as the extra black tea rather than spicy chocolate to see what difference that might make.

It does tone down the spice to about an 11 from a 15 or so, but it’s still quite spicy and there’s a substantial afterburn. Certainly a bit more than I can handle on a regular basis, but every now and then something like this could definitely hit the spot.

I really do like chai, which may explain why I seem to have it coming out of my ears. I haven’t counted all my chais, but I have two other chocolate chais from 52teas and at least ten others (some chocolate, some not) that I can think of offhand, not counting samples. It’s likely that number is higher. Sipping down chais isn’t all that easy for me. It’s higher in calories (because milk) and more labor intensive than most other teas, so I can’t drink it as frequently as I’d like. So getting this sipdown in gives me a feeling of accomplishment!

Today’s venture with this was a comedy of errors.

First, after I added milk to the mixture and set the timer, I walked out of the room and forgot to go back to check, resulting in a foaming, overboiled pot when I went back into the room.

Second, after straining the leaves into a measuring cup intending to pour from the cup into serving cups, I went to rinse the strainer and forgot that I hadn’t removed the measuring cup from the sink, resulting in the addition of approximately one ounce of cold water to the mix.

I suspect it would have been better minus these two mishaps. I used TeaG’s Chili-Chocolate Black Tea for the extra black tea. Maybe it was a bit too much, though. I think I’ll try the last bit with a non spicy black tea for laughs.

I gave some to the BF (who loves spicy stuff) with a warning. A minute ago I heard “Whooooaaaaaa, are you crazy!?!?” coming from downstairs. He walked up here and said, “That can hurt you.”

LOL.

The last time I had this, I liked it. But in the days after I had it I wondered whether I thought I liked it more than I actually did. It was so very different from most other things I’ve tried in tea land that when I stood back from the experience I wondered whether it was infatuation rather than true love.

Furthermore, it was abundantly clear from my last foray that I had overdone the amount of chai given the spiciness quotient of this tea. I like spicy, but as I said in a previous note, this isn’t just spicy. It is way way way way spicy. In retrospect, the degree of spiciness was probably more than I could reasonably stand on an ongoing basis. I liked the first experience but on second thought I had no real desire to repeat it.

This time around I’ve gotten closer to an optimum mix. In fact, this would probably serve if i can’t optimize it any further. Two cups of water, 2 tablespoons of sweetener, one tablespoon chai, three tablespoons Kusmi Chocolate (not the spicy, the regular). Boil until water mostly gone, then add two cups milk. Bring to boil, immediately turn off heat, let steep for 10 minutes or more. Strain and serve.

This is still at least one “way’s” worth of spicy, but it isn’t burning my mucous membranes and making my eyes water as I recall it doing last time. It’s really much more enjoyable to me this way. The chocolate in the Kusmi seems to enhance the chocolate in the chai, too. It smelled incredibly chocolatey while it was bubbling on the stove, and it’s a really delicious, creamy consistency with a lot more chocolate flavor than I recall it having last time. Which, seeing as that was what I found the major drawback of this tea at the time, is a particularly awesome discovery.

Excuse me, I must go now and enjoy my very chocolatey version of Mayan Chocolate Chai.

I’MMMMM OONNNNN FIIIIRRRRREEEE! But it hurts sooooo good! Lol.

First off, let me say that I made this on the stovetop using the same method I’ve been using for all chai lately, and whoa — this stuff is so spicy that the usual stovetop method most assuredly overdoes the amount of chai because of the strength of the cayenne. I’m thinking half what I put in would likely have done the job.

Second, let me say that though I obviously need to work on the ratios, I think the stovetop is definitely the way to go with this. I haven’t tried it otherwise, but I really don’t have any desire to because the chewiness of the milk makes it taste like hot cocoa duking it out with chai in my cup, with tabasco thrown in to complicate matters.

The fragrance of the mixture in the package seems deceptively mild, until after a little bit your eyes start watering. It smells like chocolate/ginger/pepper and quite nommy. It’s also quite pretty — there are huge sliced almonds in the mixture and tiny little red spheres of pepper.

After cooking, it smells like a very peppery, gingery chai. And wow, that’s exactly what it tastes like. Before this, the Rishi Masala chai was the spiciest chai I’d had, and this is much spicier than that. It’s very tasty, once you get over the shock of how spicy it is.

The only downside, really, is that in the end, the spice seems to win the fight with the chocolate. So while I can taste the chocolate around the edges, I wish I could taste it more front and center. Perhaps changing up how I prepare this will get me closer to a deeper chocolatey taste.

I love spicy stuff, though the older I get the less I can tolerate comfortably. Though I could easily have had this every day twenty years ago, now it’s likely to be the sort of thing I’ll have to pay for later ;-) so I’ll have to factor that in to when and how I partake of this.

But whoa, what fun!

A week or two ago as I was sorting through my stash I found a tiny bit of this tea stashed away from where I would normally sort through… and I don’t know if I was saving or hoarding this for some reason, I really don’t remember, but, oh well, it’s a chance for me to revisit this tea which I really LOVED back when it was released. I am hoping that the flavors did not fade too much over time, it was stored rather well, so here’s hoping!

It is still really flavorful. Maybe not quite as strong as it once was, but I can still taste the creamy, vanilla-y, nutty flavor of the classic ice cream flavor, as well as the black tea. A nice way to start my day.

Waking up with a cup of this yummy tea today.

It is so good. Smooth – but brisk enough to wake me up.

I may just have to buy more of this to try it iced (as Frank suggests) – but it is so good as a hot tea. This tea disappears from my cup so fast!

I am up way too early for a Saturday. My youngest daughter had a friend spend the night and they’re up, so… guess what? I’m up too.

The one redeeming element in me being up so early is that I can start drinking tea. And I’m starting my day with some Butter Pecan!

I tried it today as a latte, thinking that this might bring out some of the creamier qualities. After having tried it as a latte, I think it’s better without the milk. It’s still good with it, but, better without. The milk mutes some of the strong nutty flavors that I found so enchanting.

But, as I say, it’s still good. Very creamy. Delicious. Definitely one of 52Teas best, in my opinion.

Yay! I got my order today!

YUMMMMMMMM! Nutty, smooth, buttery, creamy – DELICIOUS! I like this one A LOT. I am almost (almost) liking it as much as the chocolate banana.

Come to think of it, Frank… bananas would be very good in this blend too. As would a little (little = a lot in LiberTEAS language) chocolate. :)

Yum! This morning, I decided I wanted some apple pie! I went a little overboard on the latte part – I don’t think I used too much milk, so maybe I warmed it up a bit too much because, it got FROTHY… fast!

Despite my misadventures with the frothed milk, this is one yummy cup of tea. Here is a link to my review of it on TRB:

http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=11307

I think I like it best with the latte (just don’t overdo it like I did!) because it really brings out the sweet cinnamon notes.

Edited to add: For the second infusion, my milk frothed perfectly (I did have the first batch just a little too hot, I suppose!) and as is true with most teas, the second infusion is much tastier than the first. Loving it!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Some of you may recall the fantasticawesome Tan Yang Te Ji from TeaSpring which has sadly gone out of their selection. I have never got over the sorrow of not being able to get more of it again ever. They have a fancier leaf grade, but I will NEVER be desperate enough to pay over $17 for 50g. Ever. So that was out of reach. I put it on my shopping list because a girl can dream, but I was never going to buy it.

With the power of Google Fu, I have discovered, I think, another place (http://www.teainchina.biz) where I can get it! At under $8 per 50g. And, it seems very reasonable shipping to Denmark. AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING!

Watch me place an order of at least 200g when I come home from my holiday in August.

Therefore, celebration tea is called for. My eye fell on this lovely berry-flavoured green, which, less fortunately, must now be decupboarded.

Very fresh and berry-y today, with a more heavy buttery base underneath, which comes out on the swallow. That’s how I like it best.

I like that the berries are there and I don’t have to search for them, but they’re not in-your-face either. They’re even present in the aftertaste, which is rather awesome, I think.

The base green is a wee bit heavy on the butter-y-ness in the aftertaste, but it’s got a really nice freshness just at first, so everything is balanced out.

All in all, a suitable celebration tea.

(Oh, and also, allow me to brag. I’m about 1.5kg smaller than I was 10 days ago. Another reason for celebration.)

Summerly, summerly, summerly… Hmmmm….

I lifted the Big Box O’ Samples from Nothing But Tea, and look what I found underneath! I’d forgotten I had this one.

Smooth and butter-y and with yummy berries in it. This is definitely a good choice for summerly.