Cornelia Bean

Evening pot of tea!

One of the things I found really cool about Cornelia Bean when I went to the store was the diversity of their Pu’erh selection. A lot of local tea stores or tea/coffee joint stores tend to have VERY limited Pu’erh options: a generic shou, maybe a sheng, and possibly like a dessert pu’erh? You know, chocolate or toffee? Cornelia Bean had some really unique options though, which I definitely took advantage of – grabbing three of the several flavoured pu’erh options they carried.

Dry, this one smells strongly of black licorice/anise. Obviously that’s to be expected with a name like “Anise Pu’erh”, so if you’re smelling this one and expecting that not to be the case then that’s kind of nuts? If you do like anise/licorice, though, then this is right up your alley! So potent and aromatic. Just rich, indulgent and so intense.

Steeped, it’s a lot less monotone in flavour than the dry aroma would have you believe. I mean, it’s clearly a really strong black licorice/anise flavour but it’s not the only thing coming through. There’s also a mix of fairly strong earthy and woody notes, which give this a bit of an unrefined/natural sort of quality that I’m digging quite a bit. Other things going on in this are some cinnamon undertones, and a bit of an almost salty finish? The saltyness of the pu’erh combined with the black licorice notes REALLY makes me think of Salmiak, ie. Finnish Salted Liquorice.

It’s very smooth overall; and makes for a sweet and relaxing evening pot of tea that works as a dessert flavour, albeit not your typical one. I’m a fan!

Sipdown (842)!

Unfortunately not a great sipdown. The initial flavour was baked apple and cocoa powder, but the first was just so drying (and this is a fruit based herbal, it shouldn’t be drying at all) and chemical tasting; like plastic!? All in all this has been an increasingly less joyful tea to drink as I’ve explored it, so it sucks to say this but I really feel like I can’t finish this off and leave the rating intact at a “90”…

So, dropping it down and moving on from this blend!

From earlier in the month… Why do I have this rated so high!?

I know I’ve liked it in the past, but my last few cups have been SO apple heavy and sweet without nearly enough chocolate or marshmallow to truly warrant the name “S’mores” that I just feel like I have to lower my rating, even if those apple dominant cups do sometimes taste really good.

The dry aroma of this tea smelled really good this morning when I was trying to choose which teas I wanted to bring to work with me and that’s why I selected it – but I’m really now that the reason I was into the smell was because it smelled sweet and I was mostly just craving sugar…

When I steeped up the tea I had the exact same issue that I’ve had nearly every time I’ve made this tea – there’s simply too much apple in the blend! Today, that seemed to really bother me more than other days: I wanted creamy marshmallow/chocolate deliciousness and not sweet apple.

This was a really late night tea; I don’t remember much about it other than I was craving something sweet so I measured out extra marshmallow pieces into the dry leaf. It was creamy, with apple undertones but largely I just recall this having a vaguely ‘hot cocoa’ sort of quality to it that I found cozy and comforting.

Kind of like hot apple juice, but with a crispness to the finish and undertones of chocolate. Where are the marshmallows though!? I know that there were at least four in the leaf that I used for this cup, but I really don’t taste any creamy or toasty qualities that I’d expect from a S’mores tea…

Left the teabag in this while I was drinking this; didn’t ruin the cup but did make for a lot more apple notes in the infusion – kind of buried the chocolate a little bit. The result was an infusion that tasted more like apple slices dipped in marshmallow fluff rather than S’mores. Still delicious though.

Drank this one yesterday on shift;

It was a really busy day though, so I wasn’t able to stop this one from steeping until over an hour after I’d started steeping it. As you can likely imagine, that didn’t make for the best cup of tea. It was a pretty bad, lukewarm temperature and the flavour was very weighted towards the apple in the blend. In fact, it mostly tasted just like hot, thin/bland apple juice with some cocoa undertones. Very weird, kind of unpleasant.

I 100% don’t blame the tea though – I still think if I’d drank this one when it was still fresh and hadn’t let it steep for such a long period of time it actually would have tasted delicious like it did last time. I only have myself, and the busy day to blame. Such is the reality of working retail in December, though.

Last cup of the day!

So, unlike DT’s S’mores tea that they launched this year – this one is a herbal tea and the marshmallows in it are GIANT! I mean, totally NOT full sized marshmallows but the ones in DT’s blend look like a joke next to these guys. Plus, because marshmallows are so light there’s a ton of them in 50g. Technically speaking that means that this tisane probably isn’t actually vegetarian friendly. I’ve been a pretty damn strict vegetarian for around thirteen years now, but admittedly marshmallows are the only thing that I don’t withhold from my diet. I mean, I don’t go out of my way to eat them but they aren’t a deal breaker for me personally.

Steeped up this smells pretty heavenly; it’s mostly a mix of milk chocolate and apple aromas but there’s a marshmallow creaminess to it too! Very sweet overall, but with a softness. I imagine this will be a comforting/relaxing flavour. It’s weird ‘cause to me personally there’s definitely a summer/autumn association that comes along with S’mores ’cause of camping but yet the flavour profile works so well year round/as a wintery thing.

First few sips now and… Ahhh!

I was right; this is a really relaxing/comforting blend! It’s got three main flavours; two of which are ones you’d generally heavily associate with S’mores and that’s the marshmallow and chocolate. The last one is apple; but it’s just as much of a buttery apple as it is a sweet and very lightly tart one. It’s a touch weird, but not unwelcome. I don’t get the graham cracker, which is the other flavour note I would say is pretty linked with S’mores and without it being part of the profile this is almost more of a mashmallow topped hot chocolate kind of taste. I say almost, because it’s just a bit too much marshmallow to really drive home that hot cocoa association. So, I guess it sort of falls in this weird purgatory between the two associations?

I mean overall, this is damn smooth though and not overly sweet or lacking in flavour. I’m greatly enjoying it both as a dessert tea sort of profile and as a calming/relaxing night time option. It’s a very, very solid cup!

Song Pairing: https://youtu.be/z7SUrvYzjGU

#VacationTea

So, I’m not the only one on our trip who bought tea. Much to my surprise, my Dad actually ended up grabbing some tea at two of the locations we stopped at. In Fargo, at Steep Me A Cup Of Tea, he grabbed three different herbal wellness blends and from Cornelia Bean he grabbed this one – a simple dark chocolate black tea that he thought might be really nice for the evenings since he’s been cutting out A LOT of sugar from his diet – and I mean a lot. He’s limiting himself to no more than 20g of sugar a day, and zero breads. No real reason for it; he just doesn’t want to consume it anymore.

We’re back in Winnipeg right now for the evening – we leave for home tomorrow morning. He decided he wanted to try his new tea tonight though, so I made cups for him, myself, and our two hosts. My Step Mom decided to pass; she wanted coffee instead. Which is fine. I think Dad may have actually preferred that; more tea left for him when we get back home, right?

Personally I didn’t think there was anything special about this one. I mean don’t get me wrong; it was good! Very rich, full bodied taste and it produced a very smooth cup with a clean profile/finish. In particular, I really like that it achieved such a pronounced chocolate flavour without relying at all on chocolate chips. I HATE chocolate chips in tea; they just ruin the mouthfeel completely because when they melt down they make everything so oily/scummy and they often taste very artificial. This has none of that; which is good.

I’ve just had so many simple chocolate teas now at this point that I’m just not easily impressed and to me at least I think this is just like so many of them. It’s definitely going to serve the purpose Dad wants it for though. So, I’m glad he found something here in Winnipeg to bring home with him that he’ll enjoy.

Cold Brew Sipdown (1413)!

I’m finishing this one off currently and I’m enjoying it a lot. I’ve always found the name of it so weird compared to the flavour – spirulina is so vegetal/oceanic in taste but this blend is sweet and pleasantly spiced. It’s always been like drinking a liquid apple pie – that syrupy sweet baked apple filling and a slight tart edge with warming cinnamon notes. That exactly how this tastes, though leaning more tartly apple, and it’s very nice.

I would 100% buy this again if I found myself back at Cornelia Bean.

Sipped on a mug of this Saturday morning while doing podcast outlines!

We now have five podcast episodes recorded (two of which are edited/finalized) as well as an intro episode and a trailer! We’re so excited that we’re SO CLOSE now to being ready to upload episodes – we just want to make sure we have a good stockpile so that if there are weeks we can’t record it wont mean nothing gets posted. I think one more day of recording and we’ll have enough to upload! Aaaaahhh!

Also – this tea was nice! I picked it because it’s a mate blend, and I wanted something to drink but also that would help me focus and I feel like I got that from the cup. The flavour is very apple cinnamon, but has a specific note to it that makes me think of pie. I think it’s the fact the apple tasted baked and borderline caramelized and mild/delicate cinnamon flavours I just subconciously associate with pastry…

I think I say the same thing every time, but…

Apple pie.

I recently reorganized my tea tin storage system, and when doing that I stumbled upon a whole bunch of teas I’d forgotten that I owned – this being one of them. I’m sipping on it now, although it’s cooled quite a bit, and it’s just delightful. Very cinnamon/apple with a sort of buttery “pie crust” element. Except very tangy, sharp and acidic apples…

Morning cuppa, with honey.

It’s not that this tea particularly needs the honey, but I actually woke up craving creamed honey so I probably would have added it to whatever tea I made first thing this morning regardless of what it was. It works well in this one though; the tea has a very ‘hot apple cider’ flavour – the kind we used to get around Thanksgiving when we had big family get together; someone, usually one of my aunts, would make a giant crock pot of it and it would sit in the kitchen all day with a ladle so that you could just ladle some into a cup when you wanted a refill. Usually it was just apple juice with apple slices in it and a bunch of cinnamon sticks…

So basically this was like a hot, sweet cider – perfect for the cold, wet weather we’re experiencing right now.

LIttle bit of a sourness, the same way that crab apples can be sour – but with a little less bite, and definitely softened by the fact there are other things like cinnamon and blackberry in this. You definitely get cinnamon notes; less so the blackberry, other than the general sweetness of having fruit in the blend. It’s also a little lemon-y.

I actually liked this cup a lot; sourness and all. Sometimes it reminds me of apple pie, and sometimes it doesn’t – this was a ’doesn’t’ time, but still a nice cup.

Hot, with a bit of vanilla agave.

Even straight up, this tea reminds me a lot of apple pie. Tart, crisp apple notes with underlying sweetness, and then a cinnamon note which seems to sort of replicate the taste of a cinnamon sugar dusted pie crust. It’s a flavour profile I really enjoy: that apple cinnamon combo, but just a bit more weighted towards the apple. The use of vanilla agave here just really pushed that apple pie imagery to the extreme though, and even added an ‘a la mode’ component. But, like, the tiniest little baby scoop of vanilla ice cream – a lot of the vanilla ended up just tying the cinnamon and pie crust imagery together.

Anyway; it was very nice! Smooth, rich, delightful – with just a bit of tart crispness.

Cold Brew!

I’m still disappointed that this one doesn’t brew up blue/green in colour – that’s arguably one of the coolest things about spirulina so it kind of sucks it doesn’t happen with this one. Oh well, it tastes pretty good and that’s the most important thing anyway. Even as a cold brew, it’s still very much an apple cinnamon/apple pie kind of flavour. Differences I’d say at that this is a little more tart apple/Granny Smith in flavour with a little bit of a stronger grassy undertone to the whole thing from the various herbal elements.

Still very enjoyable, though. Blue or not.

#VacationTea

So, we got to Winnipeg yesterday afternoon – and literally the first thing that we did was go shopping at Cornelia Bean! I’ve tried several teas from this store before, the majority of them passed along to me by Dexter. From what I can recall, most were in the range of average to very good so I was excited to actually get to check out the store in person.

I think, all in all, I ended up getting eight different teas that were actually Cornelia Bean ‘branded’ and then one of the Algonquin Tea Co. herbal blends they were carrying as part of a partnership. It was a really nice experience though! The atmosphere of the store is really nice and relaxing, and I feel like with the large table/desk in the center of the store that it’s the kind of place one could easily hunker down in for an afternoon to get some studying done in a quiet, peaceful environment with good lighting and accompanying tea! The best part, in my opinion, was just the conversation I had with the woman working at the desk who, though I’m not 100% sure, I believe was the owner. She was very sweet – and after my Dad very awkwardly/proudly boasted that I was a certified Sommelier we ended up having a really nice conversation about the TAC certification program – in particular the extent to which the program discusses tisanes/herbs in general. We also talked very briefly about the terroir similarities of Nepalese teas and Indian teas, such as Darjeeling – since the two countries share a border/are so close geographically. It was just a super positive experience in general!

As I was smelling away at the different teas, I stumbled upon this one. Though I’ve never had Spirulina tea, I’ve had several different things with Spirulina in them before and honestly I’ve always quite liked them. To be fair, I don’t know exactly what it takes like on its own though. I know a lot of people aren’t fans of the flavour though; I’ve just never experienced any unpleasantness myself. When I saw this one, I was intrigued by the smell though and I pondered aloud what it looked like visually when brewed because it DOES have that really distinct blue-green kind of hue.

The lady we were talking with (I really wish I had caught her name!) offered to make me a cup, and I happily took her up on the offer! I ended up trying it just as we were checking out, and I took like three sips and then apologized to her for having to make her do more work – ‘cause I 100% wanted to grab some of this to take home with me! It was actually so, so good! It’s hard to describe it; it tasted eerily familiar in flavour but also completely unique/different.

The descriptor I finally settled on, about halfway through finishing the cup, was “Apple Pie, but if you made it with crab apples”. It was sweet and tart, with warm cinnamon notes like what you’d get in baked apples/pie crust. It has more going for it other than that though – particularly a lemony quality alongside that sort of crab apple tartness. I wish I could isolate the taste of the spirulina – I just don’t think it’s gonna happen, though. I still think there’s another mystery flavour in here than contributed to the wonderful flavour – but without a complete ingredients list I can’t be sure.

Anyway, definitely not something I expected to pick up – but one I’m happy I got to try in the moment and decide on. It was good! Plus, it’s nice having another mate option!!!

Holidays TTB

There’s only enough left in here for one, maybe two cups. This is good though, it reminds me a little bit of England – there were a few days where I just hung out in my pjs before bed reading and drinking Lemon Ginger tea and this is extremely reminiscent.

This one of few green teas that I’ve actually enjoyed and the green tea base is prominent. I can’t taste any creamy notes, but the lemon/citrus flavor is not as distinct as I would have expected, so it very well could be that there is creamy notes but they are just cutting the initial sour lemon flavor.

GCTTB

Sipdown!

I had enough for about 2 cups of this so I coldbrewed it overnight. Bright pink liquor, peachy smell, but the flavour was very tart. There was also a weird undertone I couldn’t describe – I guess it was a result of sitting in the box for so long and absorbing other flavours.

Thanks so much to Inkling for sending me some of this! I couldn’t find brewing instructions online, so I went with the Steepster average of 180f for 3 minutes. This is surprisingly hefty for a white tea. I really quite like it. Very good toffee flavor, smooth and thick mouthfeel, nice savory-sweet aftertaste. This makes for a nice dessert tea. I got a good second steep at 180f for about 5 minutes (didn’t time it the second time).

Sipdown!

GCCTB4

This tea is not for me. The peach came across as too artificial tasting. I’m just really sensitive to artificial flavours so I think others who drink them might like this tea. It definitely was peachy.