52teas

A HUGE thank you to Kristin for sending this to me! I’d avoided 52teas and other limited edition type teas because of their limited editioness. I’ve finally come around and am willing to enjoy teas while they last. :)

Oh. My. Lordy. I open the packet and it’s like Maraschinopalooza. I become worried. I smell hints of upside-downness, but to me it’s all about the cherry.

I was surprised that the instructions were to get the water to boiling. I’ve only ever done around 180 for other honeybushes. But I think, “what they hey” and go for it boiling. I’ll definitely try some at a lesser temp out of curiosity and make a note of what the differences are.

Oh yes. Me likey. The first few sips were “this is sort of like a pineapple/cherry chapstick.” But honeybush is like that for me: it always is reminiscent of the old school flavored chapsticks of my youth. However, that sensation faded. This is probably more like my imaginary Pineapple Upside-Down Cake would taste like (it’s been years and years since I’ve had the real thing). I kept drinking and drinking and drinking and now my first cup is gone! Must make more. I did start to get the Pez-like quality that Kristin mentioned, but I drank it all before it cooled too much, and for me Pez is a good thing :)

This is so intense that I won’t be able to do it every day, but if I want something bakey-sweet after dinner then this’ll fit the bill perfectly. TG

I’ve been cold brewing this in the fridge all day as part of the Decupboarding Day, and I’ve just now tried it for the first time. I don’t think I’ve done that with this tea before, I’m fairly new in general at this cold brewing business.

My mind? It is blown!

Steepsterites! Wow! Why did I never try this before?

Okay so it’s not a sample. It’s not even a decupboarding.

But it’s summerly and awesome and fruity fruity fruity with fruit on. And I haven’t had any of it in absolutely ages. Abandoned and forgotten, it has been kicking around at the bottom of the sample basket, but I dug it out today because I wanted something fruity and summerly.

I think I’ve got enough leaf left for one more round and then it’s over. In spite of having forgotten it for such a long time, I have really enjoyed this one.

Two out of three parts of my recent Amazon-avaganza loot arrived today and I’ve had watermelon for lunch. Lots of it, and nothing else. It’s just that sort of day. :)

The recent new fruity things from 52teas reminded me that I still actually have this one. A whole half pouch! So I decided to make me a cup while taking care of some correspondance (Ow! Crampy cramp is cramping crampily! I am way too used to typing!).

I didn’t drink it. I NOMMED it.

The funny thing is that I really especially like that note of coconut right there on the swallow and finish. I don’t usually appreciate coconut in tea at all, but I think that’s because there is such a thing as too much coconut. It’s very toned down here to a secondary flavour, and that works much better for me.

52teas order arrived today. Well, it arrived thursday, actually, but I couldn’t pick it up until today because the post office is closed when I come home from work.

I’ve been looking forward to this order. Having this tropical blend again. I’ve said it many times before, but it was a total ambush. I just thought I’d give it a go because I was ordering a few other fruity blends at the time, and it turned out that of that order this one was actually my favourite. I definitely think this is my very favourite 52teas blend.

And now I have it again! I will savour this pouch. Or maybe just yum it all up in a couple of weeks. :)

And now while in preparations to have this one, the TeaSpring order arrives! With Tan Yang Te Ji in it! ARGH! Tea angst! What to have first???

I’m sticking to this one first though, mostly because I’ve already got half a post ready for it. (Yes, I do this. I start writing the post before I make the tea. That way I can concentrate about the tea while drinking it instead of writing all this boring intro stuff.)

Yummmm fruit in my mouth! The coconut is really standing out today and with the other fruits underneath. You take one little sip and the flavour expaaaaaaaaaaaaands.

Explosion? Oh yes. ♥

Tan Yang Te Ji will have to wait a little while longer. Now that I’ve actually made the cup, that’s not quite as difficult anymore. Because this is awesomely awesome, and I’m shifting the rating up a good bit more, based on the way I hugged the pouch (yes really) when I unpacked it.

This + fruit flavoured foam candy = epic win of fruity nomness.

(even if said foam candy has accidentally been squashed during transport home into one enormous foam candy cake… that’s just not okay)

I can’t believe this is nearly gone. I can’t get over how much I like this. I was expecting to like it, but I didn’t think I’d like it this much.

I’m surprised at how much I’m liking this. I bought it thinking it mught be nice but I wasn’t expecting this level of niceness. My history with tropical flavours in tea is a bit shaky. But this stuff is disappearing at an alarming rate. It’s not too sweet and it’s not too artificial, it’s just right.

I strongly urge you to try this one out because mine is disappearing at an alarming rate!

It was bad enough letting Doulton’s teas sit there and wait for me to regain full control of the keyboard again. But then the order from 52teas arrived today, and things only got more difficult. And then I opened one, just to smell it, and one thing led to another and so on… ahem.

So I’m giving it a go and as you can see I’m trying really hard to be patient here and type sloooowly and properly.

The reason I’m starting with this one is very simpkly that it was the one that I ripped the top off to smell. It had a stronger aroma than I had expected. I thought something sweetly fruity like fresh fruit. What it actually was was more like dried fruit, a bit soapy. Of course. It’s dried fruit in it. Not sure how this always manages to surprise me but it’s the same every single time.

After brewing the soapy note goes away. The primary notes in the aroma here are pure fruit, especially passion fruit, weirdly, and coconut with a bit if banana in the background. The passion fruit is odd because it not apparently supposed to be tjehre. It’s just reminding me so strongly of the passion fruit black I used to have from Adagio. I’m not picking up any pine apple and I don’t know what papaya smells like.

Tastewise there’s a lot of coconut overall in the flavour, but right there on the front we have pineapple loud and clear. Here we definitely have the fruity sweet that I was searching for in the aroma of the dry leaves, and lots of it. The beautiful thing about it is that the white tea itself is coming through quite well also. It’s a tea, not a sort of hot cordial. As it cools a bit, the banana is coming out more strongly too.

I bought this because of the success the bkack currant bai mu dan was for me and I wanted to continue explorijng the fruitier choices. This is definitely a winner for me, and if you liked the black currant bai mu dan, I suggest you give this one a go too. I think it would work quite nicely as a dessert with all the fruityness.

And yes, it would seem that I am actually capable of typing withiout all those typos. But it also took som,e 25 minutes to write this. sigh stupid finger!

This is SUCH a good idea for a tea blend that I think it needs to be redone. Because my bag is essentially just a plain rooibos tea. Even looking in the bag all I see is plain rooibos. When I sniff it I don’t really get anything but rooibos. And when I brew it there’s nothing else there. I LIKE plain rooibos, but as I’m fond of saying- I can buy it plain when that’s what I want. Totally bummed out that I didn’t get a peanut buttery taste out of this.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on Steepster, but I have been here wondering about. Most teas I’ve been drinking have just been my normal everyday Greens and Blacks, nothing special or worth writing about.

But today, I am drinking the Coconut Cream Pie tea sent to me by Ricky (thanks again.) Drinking this tea is odd for me considering I don’t really enjoy Coconut, but why not try it, right? The aroma does not have a strong Coconut smell to it and the taste is very light to me as well. The Coconut is easy to deal with if your not into that taste, and I just realized what I don’t enjoy about Coconut was the pulp and with this tea containing no pulp (not that you actually drink) makes this great! If your debating whether or not you’ll like this because of the Coconut…just try it! It’s quite tasty.

Minty? Got it. Dry lime? Hiding, but I think it’s there. Champagne? I’m a teetotaler so I’ll just have to take 52teas’ word for that one. Thinking this would be really nice chilled, if not iced. Thanks, Lori, for this one—-hoping this cup will chase the cobwebs out of my head; half of a 1500-word article to write this afternoon.

This is a pretty weird one- sniffing the dry tea in packet I’d have not known how to identify it if it weren’t for the label. I admired the pineapple pieces in the mix, although I’m not sure why- I hate pineapple, supposedly. When I brewed this, my first impression was that it reminded me of the raisin toast 52teas blend, which isn’t a bad thing. The cherry tones in this just really resembled the raisins in the other. The second brew definitely had a bit of a kind of pineapplely fruitiness to it, unless it was just wishful thinking on my part. I do like this tea, but I’d never on my own identify what it was supposed to be. I wish the cherry came out more.

I adore rooibos and adore gingerbread. So this blend kinda lept out at me, despite it being so humid in Houston right now that I feel like I’m in a sauna every time I step outside- I keep sticking to things. This one doesn’t taste like ginger tea- which is what every other gingerbread blend I’ve ever tried ends up as. It really does taste like gingerBREAD. However, it’s fairly subtle without any sweetener or cream, albeit tasty, and it had actual chunks of gingersnap in it. I definitely wouldn’t compare this one to a chai, which is what I’d been expecting, and I don’t taste the rooibos particularly strongly either. I think I like it, but I’ll definitely be updating my evaluation as I go through the bag. Not sure the gingersnap pieces actually contribute any flavor when left to dissolve with the tea leaves, but they were a nice visual touch.

I’m trying this again today and I’m trying really hard to have an open mind… and the imagination of a child. It’s not working. This tea isn’t doing it for me. I taste rooibos followed by a candy cherry aftertaste. Maybe, if I think about it hard enough, there is some cake flavor. Maybe. I am not getting any pineapple. I probably won’t be finishing this bag. Very disappointed in this one.

Update – and I am getting the Pez candy flavor as it cools.

Not sure what I think of this one yet so I am withholding my rating for now. I’m not tasting much pineapple in this cup. If my bag has large pineapple chunks like Erin’s, they are hiding. I did manage to get a small pineapple chunk in this cup. Definitely getting some cherry as an aftertaste. But this one might taste a bit like pez candy too (like Buttered Cinnamon Raisin Toast).

It seems I have been living in the engineering building. I really need to figure out a way to bring tea with me, cause I crave it so bad all day long!

I decided to brew some of this. I’ve always had a tough time steeping greens correctly since they’re not really that forgiving with water temperature and I have no way of regulating temperature.

The smell is very sweet, and the color is a pale yellow green. Hmm, I’m thinking I didn’t get all the flavor out of this cup. It tastes kind of watery, then again I did sort of make it in a rush since I wanted tea so bad! I definitely taste some melon flavor, and the green tea flavor is sort of there as well. I know it’s a sencha taste, but I always thought sencha was more bitter and stronger than what I’m tasting? I’m not a green tea expert though. The more I drink, the more flavor comes out, and I’m really liking it. It’s a pretty subtle tasting tea, at least this cup was, and I’m liking it. I think I’ll hold off on a rating for the next time I drink it.

ETA. Okay, after finishing my cup I really liked this tea a lot. It had some sweety flavor from the melon but at the same time I really did feel like I was drinking a salad from the cucumber and green tea flavors mixed. Very nice flavor and tea :)

I’m increasing my rating on this one because it really hit the spot today. Maybe I’ve finally gotten my steeping parameters right, but this just really tasted good today! It’s good hot out of the teapot, and in my opinion it only gets better as it starts to cool off. My favorite was when it was just barely lukewarm. I’ll be coming to this one more regularly now, that’s for sure.

I’m finally trying this iced, and I like it a lot! I’ve bumped up the rating tad. I wish I could taste more melon in this; the main flavor I’m getting is cucumber. It’s a very natural cucumber flavor though, and the hint of sweetness at the end is wonderful! I can’t tell if the sweetness is from the melon or from the sweetener I added, but whatever it is, it isn’t artificial. This is very very refreshing!

I bought this specifically for the purpose of having it iced (which Cofftea says is delicious) but I don’t have time to make this iced right now.

The dry leaf smelled like cucumbers and melons (imagine that!) and there were chunks of cucumbers mixed in. Once steeped, it smells more vegetal and the cucumber smell is more prominent than the melon.

This is pretty vegetal from the cucumber. It has the tiniest hint of sweetness from the melon, which is a very nice touch at the end. I can tell that this would taste delicious iced and sweetened. I think I made the water too hot (I really need to get a variable temperature kettle) so I’m not really getting the full oomph from this. However, even with having prepared it wrong, it still tastes good! That’s always a good sign! Next I’ll try this iced.

I’ve been meaning to try this one for a while. I love apples, so I’m always on the lookout for teas that actually taste like the real thing. I tossed in some sweetener to hopefully bring out the apple flavor a bit more.

I was impressed with the chunks of real apple in the pouch. I believe Frank when he says that there’s real honey in here, because the dry tea leaves were sticking to the dried apple chunks. Gooey chunks, yum!

Up front, I taste tart and bitter tea. The apple is in the aftertaste, sadly. I really don’t care for this. The rush of sour bitterness makes me want to gag. I hope I just prepared this wrong, because it sounded so perfect for me, although I followed the steeping directions properly. This cup is going down the drain before I lose my lunch.

Breville 1,000ml 170, 2 min
~4tsp, that’s the end of this :(
so delicious! (hot or iced), more cucumber when iced

militiajim made some iced, and i had a cup for breakfast, much more cucumber when iced
no idea how much, but it was brewing overnight in the fridge