Dryad Tea

Smelling it actually reminds me more of rose, pretty perfumey, which is not my favorite. Though to be honest I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered an elderberry on its own, so perhaps it’s just how elderberry smells. The taste reminds me a bit of cranberries, slightly tart and a little bit sour. Tea flavor is pretty mellow, and the whole thing is pretty woodsy. Overall I’m enjoying it, but I don’t think it would be an everyday tea for me.

Supposedly this is an Earl Grey, and though I can see hints of that, I wouldn’t have said it was unless I’d seen the packaging. It’s very mellow with a slightly sweet smell (the mallow flowers possibly), though the taste is mostly black tea and a hint of jasmine and other florals for me. I don’t really taste the apple, though I could smell them in the loose tea before I brewed it. It’s not immediately jumping out as a favorite, but I could see it being a tea I come back to. We’ll see if it grows on me as I finish off the sampler.

As it says, it’s very light for a black tea. Can taste the earl grey notes, not as much of the jasmine. Would be a pretty good everyday tea, I think. I like earl greys, but I find (at least the way I drink them) they end up so strong and intense that I only really like having them on occasion. Might get myself more of this one to put at work. I’ll see how I feel after finishing the sample, though.

As a side note I realized recently the mugs I have are actually 15oz mugs, so I guess I have not actually been using 8oz when I make tea, heh.

Roses. So much roses. I don’t really like the smell of rose much, so I wasn’t really sure how much I would like this one. Turned out it wasn’t too bad, at least, once I started drinking it and doing other things I didn’t find myself hating it, and I did drink the whole pot. But I don’t think I’ll be purchasing this again once I finish the sampler.

Supposedly there were other flavors blended, but while it did seem to mute the rose to a tolerable level for me, I wasn’t able to pick out anything distinct. But I’m definitely biased on this one.

Had this sitting around for a while and finally made a cup the other night just because it was the first one I pulled out that said caffeine free— I really liked it, though! Fruity, tasted like berries and slightly tart. Warm and pleasant for sitting about chatting with my friend as I was doing that night. I was worried I might have fallen in love with a limited edition, but it looks like it’s available from Dryad, so I will probably pick up a full package.

Especially as I apparently did not close the sample packet well and picked it up wrong and ended up losing half of it to my counter today.

I didn’t actually realize I hadn’t tried this one before, since I’d grabbed it randomly. I thought it was one I had had previously. So I’ll have to do another tasting to see what other flavors I notice since I wasn’t paying full attention. But it was notable enough that I remembered liking it quite a bit, so there is that.

Not sure this is actually available from their website anymore, I think I picked it up from a sampler set at a booth at a con and it might have been one of the limited time only blends.

Normally I’m not a big fan of rose, and I smell the rose a lot, but it works with the rest. The oolong gives it a slightly earthy flavor, though I’m not tasting much of the nut oils.

Spicy smell, but taste mostly the tart-sour raspberry. Not bad, but not my favorite.

ETA: Halfway through the cup I started noticing more of the hibiscus, which gave it a bit more nuance. A bit perfumey, but pleasant. Still don’t find it as ‘spicy’ as it’s described, though, it’s mostly a sweeter tea with a faintly spicy smell. Unless it grows on me tremendously after having the rest of the sampler, I am probably not going to buy this tea again.

Kind of forgot how much cinnamon this had. Not unpleasant, but somewhat surprising since I hadn’t had it in a while. I made a full pot when I had it, too, and the second cup was really sweet, like as if I’d put sweetener in, which I hadn’t. I don’t recall that happening when I brewed a single cup in a teabag before, so I’m wondering if the stronger/lengthier steeping at the bottom of the teapot had something to do with it. Strengthening the sweetness of mint perhaps.

Light blend, perfect for evening since it is caffeine-free. The cinnamon is strong but not overwhelming and blends nicely with the other flavors, making it a good autumn tea, too. Smells warm and inviting.

From the reddit traveling tea box!

Phew, I was out all yesterday with 2 food festivals – Watermelon Festival and the 626 Night Market. The former being a complete bust and a crappy festival. So this morning I’m dying for tea. I just had pu’er yesterday to keep me going.

This black from Dryad tea is interesting – I can taste plum and elderberry – which have a bit of tart to it. In the background is the black tea base, herbally notes and some light spices. Definitely an unique tea and would be best iced, but the tart and spice isn’t winning me over.

Another from the reddit traveling tea box.

Finally, a Dryad Tea! I’ve been wanting to try their teas for awhile, but I have so much tea I don’t purchase from new sellers all that much.

This tea is yummy – a soft black tea, lots of sweet lemon notes with a bit of strawberry flavor. Very smooth and kind of creamy. Wish I made this iced!

Thank you Melissa for sending me this as a sample in my recent Hapa-tite! Tea Swap.

This fruity jasmine green tea is quite smooth and fruity. I love when fruit teas actually have a taste to match up to their aroma. The sip opens up with fruitiness and finishes with a slight grass and astringency from the green tea.

Nice to drink, but not sure if it’s special enough to become a regular part of my rotation.

I had this iced yesterday and I think it probably needs sweetener to really bring out its flavors. I couldn’t taste strawberry, maybe just a little lemon, but mostly it was flowery. It seemed a bit too harsh so I think I’ll steep it less time too.

sipdown~~~

Tried the rest of the sample iced. Definitely not as good as it was hot, which I find weird because it says in the description it is good iced. The cinnamon becomes way more obvious, but it also tastes a lot more like it’s just flavored with hibiscus instead of fruit. Definitely not getting black currant, peach, or apricot. Just hibiscus and cinnamon.

I don’t think I’d get this one again though. It was great hot, it disappointed iced.

I had this last night, I see now it mentions iced tea in the description, but it was really good hot.

I thought it’d be like the other one that was fruity with a bit of spice but it was a lot different. This one is a bit more like tropical fruits rather than citrus, and the cinnamon wasn’t really noticeable.

I’m going to save the rest of my little sample for iced tea when it’s not FREEZING.

tl;dr I need a little rant, scroll down for tea.

Did not have a good day, I thought it was going to go so well because I got through 4 traffic lights that usually require me to sit at least 10 minutes total. I brought the wrong textbook to study on the train (though that I think turned out ok), and some guy decided to grab me by the elbow downtown and mock me when I yelled at him not to touch me.

I’m actually getting really tired of it because I am harassed almost weekly now, if not more sometimes. I skip class a lot because I don’t want to deal with it. I’ve had a guy start hitting on me just because I sat down next to him on the train when I had no other options. I’ve had two guys touch me despite the fact I am ignoring them saying excuse me. I have heard comments that don’t need to be said about my butt. Only once has a cop been close by for me to do anything. I’m about to carry pepper spray and use it.

I’m just tired of being violated. That’s how it feels to have someone mock you for getting upset they just touched you without it being okay. And he mocked me because apparently he’s free to do what he wants and there is just SO much wrong with that kind of mentality. And there’s so much wrong with that area of Atlanta. They just allow these guys who clearly have nothing else to do loiter around and stuff like this shines a bad light on the city. You know, I rolled my eyes at first when this whole bad ass mall cop thing came out on reddit which spread to the local news, because I knew that wasn’t Atlanta, but with that, a WAFFLE HOUSE charging 20% more for security at night, and all the crap I deal with, Atlanta deserves the rep. Instead of focusing on actual problems, it’s all this stuff with a new billion dollar stadium for a football team, despite the fact there’s a perfectly good stadium already there.

So after my test I just came home and eat whatever I wanted and watch a movie and drink tea. Though, this is from last night but I noticed the dashboard wasn’t working.

here starts an actual tasting note

This was way better than I expected it to be. I thought it would end up being too spiced, but it was very light. None of the spices really stood out, as I was expecting it to be really peppery from all the peppercorns.

The elderberry was really good. I had just had that Wonderberry Truffle oolong from Teavana earlier which is strongly elderberry, and this tea just blew that one out of the water. Mostly because I could also taste the base tea still.

This is the first of my Dryad samples where I feel like I need to get a full ounce of it. I think it would make a good iced tea too, almost like a spiced berry-based punch.

It kind of reminded me of Glitter and Gold if it was a little toned down in spice, and with berry instead of citrus.

I gave Sebastian broccoli for the first time and he’s turned into a birdie vacuum. He was even eating past midnight last night. So funny.

I was thinking I should have a rose tea today and was going to have one later without realizing this one is most definitely rose! Raspberry, rose, clove, apparently. Not getting clove, but there’s definitely a unique sweetness to the rose that comes from the raspberry.

This is really well done, it’s only the second time I’ve had a rose tea because I was apprehensive of them, but I’d put this one tops now. It’s sweet and not soapy at all.

I have to say I was not looking forward to this when I saw almond extract as an ingredient, but I figured it couldn’t be that strong of a player in the tea.

It’s not.

Something about this just tastes off to me. The raspberry smells and tastes odd, it actually almost smells like a savory soup at times, it’s not chocolatey at all, and it tastes like pepper.

Going to try again with this at some point but I’m put off by it right now :(

I’ll update this when Dryad’s shop is back up from vacation mode.

I totally did not realize the owner of the shop is part of this band called Pandora Celtica and that some of the teas in the Dryad Tea shop are based on their music. How cool! Admittedly I probably should have caught that from the shop banner but you know what, all the teas had my attention.

This one is okay, I don’t taste much apple. It tastes more like a sweet mint tea rather than apple mint with a hint of floral notes.

I think I may like it better iced, so I will save the rest of my sample for that purpose.

A friend of mine pointed out Dryad Tea to me on Etsy a couple of weeks ago, and since they also participate in this Out of the Box Sampler program, I saw that they would be doing some Black Friday deals. So I ordered about 9 samples of the teas for $10, and am finally getting around to trying them. There are two different levels of teas with different price points, so six regular samples is $6 and six from the fancier collection is $7. And then they also have three samples you can pick. So I did 3 regular and 6 Pandora Celtica.

Each sample is supposed to make 3 cups, but I’m using my Perfect Tea Mug and didn’t even use half the bag so yay for awesome, large sizes!

I just got back from eating pho and drinking half an avocado shake. An avocado shake is as amazing as it sounds. Hooooly cow. I had to put the rest in the freezer and now I need green tea. Jasmine and lychee sound very good right about now.

I steeped it for 2 minutes, since that tends to be my preferred time for flavored greens, and it does not disappoint.

It’s very floral, but the lychee adds a nice floral/berry twist to the typical flavor of jasmine. It’s not blowing me away, but the flavor is excellent. The jasmine almost makes the lychee taste juicy in the tea itself.

This was kind of a well I don’t know what else to get but it sounds interesting choice. So I can’t wait to try the ones I really, really wanted!

Also I let it cool off completely and that makes it a lot more tolerable when you’ve had enough jasmine. It seems to mostly be lychee tasting at this point.

Spicy, fruity, and the lovely earthy tone of rooibos makes for a satisfying evening tea.

I’ve never enjoyed black tea before this! It’s wonderfully light and fruity. I still prefer green, but I’d never turn down a cup of Spring Court!