Adagio Custom Blends, Cara McGee

This is definitely my favorite of the bunch. It is like a big cup of pumpkin pie and it is delicious! Warm and comforting and oh-so-tasty. Thank you so much for sharing, Roswell Strange. I would certainly consider getting this one again to experiment with or simply to enjoy another hot cup. 170.

I’m sorry Roswell Strange but this tea was lost on me. I made the mistake of drinking this while focusing on school applications and I honestly don’t remember this at all. I believe it was sweet but with heavy chai spices but I am not certain at all. What I do know is it wasn’t something I enjoyed to recall, let alone want to own in any quantity. Still, I am grateful for the share :)

The pu’erh in this one scared me so with that in mind and given the flavors, I decided to have it over milk. That may or may not have been a bad choice because the milk is giving this a thickness that is leaving me very confused. At first, I was really put off because the drink that hit my tongue was so thick that it seemed like I was drinking pudding except slightly mushroomy pudding because that is what I was anticipating from the pu’erh. However, I think I might have been so put off because I was expecting to be put off because as I continue to drink, I am getting the flavor of gingerbread more and more. Still that hint of the base lingers and that is enough to make me not want this again. I am grateful to my tea twin, Roswell Strange, for the share though as it is always fun to try new things. 166.

Sipdown! …989… (That’s tonight’s final count. Yikes.) Thanks to Sil for a surprise sample of this and some other Adagio fandom blends!

I wasn’t sure what was in this, but it looked like there was some green… so I brewed it accordingly, not wanting to risk it. I still haven’t checked to see if I was correct, but it’s pretty tasty, so at least I didn’t mess it up! To me, this is a smooth, sweet blend – there are raisiny tones coming out post-sip, and there’s something creamy in here – perhaps vanilla? I’m not identifying much else, but I am enjoying this cup of creamy raisiny goodness… while playing Doctor Who Legacy on my phone. Heh.

The most prominent flavor notes are sweet potato and mate and it is making for a weird blend. I am not getting much of the chocolate or vanilla which is disappointing. However, the sweet potato provides a nice fall-time element to the cup. It is an alright tea but I find myself craving Lupicia’s Sweet Potato tea instead for that particular flavor. Anyways, thank you Roswell Strange for sharing. It’s a nice cup and I would drink it again if I came across it but this isn’t something I would seek out. 172.

It is just barely past midnight here but it feels like 2am to me. A couple of hours ago I actually dozed off while sitting upright with my laptop on my lap, my television on, and my bedroom light shining bright above me. It wasn’t until my laptop started sliding that I woke with a start and realized what had happened. I guess its just one of those days so I will try to get this tasting note out before I actually pass out for the night.

I made this in my carry mug, just because, and so luckily, despite being made hours ago, it is still hot (well warm since it was brewed in 175F water for 2 minutes) Yay for thermoses!

First thing I noticed was this tea has a strong apricot smell. That’s certainly a good thing. As for taste, I didn’t expect much but this is really flavorful. Wow. The first sip was vegetal but in the best way possible – creamy yet fresh and verging on corn/hay/wheat territory. That doesn’t sound quite so appetizing but it works. As I continue to sip however, the apricot takes over while blending perfectly with the vegetal base. At the end of each sip, I notice the roastiness of the hojicha which is just enough to keep things interesting while not taking over the blend. All of this is woven together beautifully by a rich vanilla sweetness. Honestly, I had no interest in this blend apart from its namesake but now I could see myself actually wanting more of this in the future. Thank you Roswell Strange for forcing me to try this by sending me a sample because this isn’t one I would have picked up on my own. 173.

In other news, the carry mug tipped over and some of the tea spilled out onto my leg. Given the tingling sensation I now feel, I can confirm that the Davids Carry Mug is indeed successful at keeping tea hot. Anyways, good night steepster! To bed with me…

The vanilla is much stronger here than I expected. I was worried it would be a strong chai taste but mostly it is like a spiced vanilla tea. It is actually quite nice so thank you Roswell Strange for sending some my way. 169.

Sipdown! And thanks to Terri HarpLady for a sample of this tea, way long ago! Of course, my boyfriend and I burned through most of the episodes featuring River, so I ended up drinking it while watching Heroes. Ah well. Anyways, it was an intriguing blend. The brewed aroma was strongly earl grey/bergamot, but the flavour was more nuanced – I could taste the lemon (it reminded me of DavidsTea’s Earl of Lemon), and the rooibos (also, it gave me a scratchy throat), but didn’t notice the coconut. Perhaps it added a bit of creaminess, but not much else. I’m sure this would have been a bit tastier had I drank it sooner, but it was still a good cup (and I have a re-steep coming up later tonight, I think). Probably not a tea I would care to have again though, mostly because I didn’t care for the inclusion of rooibos here, and I’m not the hugest fan of earl greys (unless there’s loads of creaminess, which there wasn’t quite here).

Sipdown (115)!

Well, this is the last of the Hobbit sampler and I’m sad to say I didn’t really find a single blend that I’d want to buy more of. Oh well; I still have all the tins though and they truly are beautiful.

For some weird reason, I had less of this one than all the others so while I was able to do one cold brew, one hot cup, and then one “other” for each of the blends this one i could only do a cold brew and, instead of a hot cup, a latte. It wasn’t really as bad latte per say, but it didn’t stand out either. Hot, thick creamy milk and maybe the tiniest extra touch of ginger or vanilla.

Wont go down in history as one to remember.

The last Hobbit Tea to try cold brewed!

I’m remembering when I was at Robyn’s place and we watched both the Hobbit movies and her roommates severely judged me when I found sick, on his last limb, dying Kili to be the sexiest thing ever. Hot damn; take me now Kili, if you have the strength to do so. I mean, even though you’re looking fine you’re not really looking so fine, you know?

But anyway; that’s definitely not really super relevant to the tea so…

WHY IS THIS SO GINGER HEAVY? It makes me really, really sad because the ginger was basically all I could taste overtop a mediocre black base with maybe a tiny faint presence of vanilla. I mean, actually it was ok but definitely not anything more than that. And I am fearful of the hot cup. I don’t see the hot cup being any kind of improvement on this one.

So basically, nope.

I recommended Kili, but not Kili inspired tea.

Sipdown (99)!

Double digits! Holy fucking shit. I don’t even know when the last time that happened was. Like, a yearish ago? Damn.

Anyway; to finish this one up I added some milk and brewed it in a timolino for work. I didn’t add the milk because I thought it was bring out any of the flavours especially, but the last time I had this I thought it was rather bland and muddled so the goal with the milk was just to sort of add any sort of flavour.

And it was ok; mostly I just tasted the milk and the black base and I was alright with that because that was drinkable and not bad tasting – on a few sips I somewhat got some cinnamon but otherwise nothing remarkable or notable. I’m definitely fine with being out of this one now.

WAY less clove-y than the cold brew which is major disappointing. And really that’s the flavour that mattered the most, to me anyway. The rest was muddled and hard to discern.

Cold Brew!

Even though this is definitely a Chai, I was excited when I opened up the tin because there are lots and lots of visible cloves in the dry leaf. I love cloves! And thankfully, the taste was also very clove heavy. Enough to mask any other unwanted spice flavour! It was also kinda neat experiencing cloves cold – I typically only have them in hot tea. Holla!

I also got a bit of fruity sweetness – the apple I suppose. I’m interested to see how this fares hot. Not a half bad blend.

Also; Steepster chat has entered a very dark place friends. I pulled up the page for 52Tea’s Dreamscile Pu’Erh to do a comparison and that opened a scary can of worms since everyone was reminded of The Hot Pocket Vine.

This has now led into a probably really bad direction and Starfevre is now attempting to find internet content to traumatize me. So far I’ve explored “Goatse” (meh) – but that has led to me typing out the phrase “Obama is gazing into the butthole”. That’s something I can honestly say I never expected to say ever.

So, umm, caution? Steepster chat may be going to a very dark place tonight.

I promise to make my next note for this one more normal.

Sipdown (113)!

Made in my timolino yesterday to sipdown because it’s a Pumpkin Tea now instead of Sweet Potato, and with Halloween fast approaching I liked the idea of a “themed” tea flavour wise, but not so far as the namesake goes. I didn’t drink it until about 10 hours after making it though (WELL into my work shift) because after my dental work my mouth was SUPER frozen for HOURS. And then, I was in a fair bit of pain when it finally “thawed” as my mouth “adjusted”.

You all know that feeling when you almost have to “relearn” to chew because of fillings that feel like they’re not totally right…

Work was crazy too; we SMASHED the records for both total netsales in a day AND total number of customers. Customer count was 1126 (previous record was about 900) and the netsales were just over $9000 – previous record for that was $8000. And trust me, you could FEEL the difference in how busy it was. We never stopped moving (and I never stopped drooling, it felt like) and a lot of stuff didn’t get done or was done sloppy. For just two people working in the evening (me and one other girl) we were terribly overwhelmed.

Tea wise – softer, less distinct cinnamon/pumpkin spice flavour with muted vanilla and a faint “bread” taste to it. Good, drinkable but not exciting and not worth seeking out any time soon. But a fun blend regardless!

Made this one as an Eggnog Latte!

And drank it all in one day. I don’t have any shame about that though. Eggnog is good, and it felt right at the time. So hush.

- Yeah; I bought eggnog…
- And drank it all in one day
- But I did do tea lattes! So that’s better…
- This was good; just the right balance of pumpkin spice and vanilla poked through
- Good seasonal hybrid of Autumn AND Christmas!
- MADE A DENTIST APPOINTMENT (At a new office; the old one wouldn’t get back to me)
- Have since gone to said appointment, and another since that first

ALSO! I just had my first non-neighbor trick or treaters! FUCK YEAH! The little kid, dressed as a freakin’ adorable pirate – OPENED THE DOOR and walked in. It was awkward and precious all at the same time.

Cold Brew!

This one was pretty popular on Steepster for a while back when it used the old formulation (with Sweet Potato instead of Pumpkin Spice). Or at least it feels that way to me; I remember seeing a lot of notes on this in very close proximity a while ago. I’d have loved to have tried the Sweet Potato pie version back when it was making rounds – still, this one smells really good dry. Better than I thought it would, so I was still pumped to get to try it how it is now.

It actually was surprisingly good! Maybe actually the best Hobbit tea so far? It was a little tough breaking things down individually but as a whole this gave off a very “Pumpkin Pie” sort of vibe, complete with the pie crust! I look forward to seeing how it turns out hot, but if all fails I can just finish it off cold brewed! Tis the season for Pumpkin Tea, right?

Relating to the character though; not sure how I feel about the flavour choices. I get why they were picked out, but I just feel like better choices maybe could have been made? I think this should maybe have been sweeter? I don’t know though. I’m no expert.

Sipdown (109)!

- I did it again where I wasn’t paying attention and I just drank this
- I don’t remember what the flavours were like!
- Vaguely remember chocolate/orange in the initial sip
- But feel like I might just be grasping at straws here and not accurately recollecting
- And now I’m out and sad… Ugh.
- At least it can’t be bad; I’d remember that.

Made in my timolino, but unfortunately this is just another example of why I shouldn’t always drink tea and multi-task (or rather attempt to multi-task) because at some point I got distracted and stopped paying attention to the taste of what I was drinking.

I just remember a generalized sort of impression of this being smooth and comforting. Like, that “homey” nesting sort of feeling when you curl up with a bundle of blankets? I’ll need to pay more attention to the sipdown.

I fooded too fast guys; my delivery order got here and I ate a whole pizza in under ten minutes. Now I feel queasy…

Watching The Voice with Tre and eating/drinking some yummy tea things; I’ve got a tiny list of back logged notes from throughout last week to get through, so why not try and pluck away at that while we watch? Yay productivity!

This was a cold brew, continuing with the idea of trying all the Hobbit teas cold brewed and hot at least once. I didn’t expect to like this one; even though there were good ingredients like sweet potato and chocolate there’s also too much spice and stuff but it was ok. Just ok, but ok is better than not ok. It was a little muddled; there were chocolate notes and nondescript Chai spice notes. Overall I mildly got the impression of gingerbread.

I hope it’ll be better hot; there was a lot of stuff in this that I felt I was missing out on that I was sorta looking forward to – Sweet Potato, and the mate. Hmmm…

A sample from Shmiracles! Thank you. :)

Sadly, I find the Adagio lapsang blends to be almost stomach-churningly like drinking soaked campfire ash. So, uh, not for me. It was pretty smooth, but the flavour just did not work at all.

Maybe if it was 1/16 lapsang and mostly the other blends I’d like it more, but as it stands I had to dump it. :( I hate doing that with tea.

I tried it with maple syrup and milk.

Sipdown (101)!

That moment when you’re lying in bed with all the lights off except for the glow of the computer screen and, out of the very corner of your eye, you see the movement of something on the edge of your bed. At first the realization is slow, but then it hits you all at fucking once. Spider.

I swear, I nearly shit myself. I don’t know if I’ve bolted so quickly anywhere in months but in two seconds flat I had moved from totally stretched out across the whole couch (my bed) to blanketless in the fetal position pressed into the far corner of the couch on the opposite side. I fucking hate spiders, and that this was like four inches from my face. Plus, it was HUGE. Like, the size of a Loonie or a Twoonie. I had to call Tre from his room and make him kill it for me because I was too paralyzed with fear to go anywhere except farther away. When he squished it; we could hear an audible “pop”. I may have cried a little. He may have cried a little.

And then I couldn’t sleep for a few hours, so I made a cup of the most calming/relaxing thing that came to mind – the last of this roasty toasty tea, with extra vanilla notes present in this last cup. I had the heebiejeebies for days afterwards. So much nope.

- I think this is far better hot than cold
- It was vegetal and roasty almost on a 50/50 level
- Vanilla was still present and it sweetened everything and added depth of flavour
- And unlike the CB I could taste juicy apricot! Lighter, but present.
- There was an almost indescribable elegantness to this
- Felt like an accurate representation of the character to a fairly good degree