English Tea Store

Thank you Momo for this one from your amazing tea sale! I have a feeling this is the same blend as Culinary’s Black forest. They both have white chocolate chips with cherry and this certainly tastes like the same black base. (I remember because it isn’t too bad!) The only thing is.. I’m not sure if I could spot the huge cherry pieces here that are in the Culinary. I think this blend could have been a lot worse.. it’s a nice cherry flavor and not fakey. But why oh why the WHITE chocolate chips? I’ll give this blend the same rating as the Culinary’s.

Time for something fruity. I know there are some horror film fans here so hopefully someone will know what I’m talking about…but tutti fruity is always going to be called tutti f***ing fruity thanks to The Devils Rejects. I was sat here thinking ‘hmm…what should I drink’ and then bam I saw it in my fruit drawer and said ‘I will drink some tutti f***ing fruity*. I can’t help it. It’s all I can think about. Damn you Rob Zombie!

Well this blend has mostly small/average sized ingredients and has a sweet and very herbal scent. Not quite tutti f***ing fruity but more curranty and dark.

Once steeped this tea is deep red in colour with a thick, tart hibiscus aroma. Not quite the tutti f***ing fruity I was expecting…

Flavour is hibiscus heavy and I can’t detect any fruit at all. It’s just a sweet, tart, floral, herby, hibiscus tea. I can maybe taste currants amongst the hibiscus but that’s it.

The positive side is that as far as hibiscus goes this is not undrinkable, just very disappointing. :(

I’m surprised that there’s no ratings on this/more reviews to it. Well let me change that. Lol.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew I wanted tea of some sort. So I grabbed this out of the bin on a whim. It’s not a bad tea, but unfortunately not quite what I was in the mood for, so I probly wasn’t concentrating as much on it as I should have been.

It smells like a nice vanilla tea when it’s dry. I was surprised that the wet leaves had the same vanilla-y smell after they were brewed. Usually with black teas I find that they have a almost coffee-esque smell afterwards…Or maybe earthy is the word I’m looking for. Anyway, this one did have that smell which was nice.
Without any sort of sweetener, it has a nice mellow vanilla taste, though I found that adding sugar didn’t really change much. It seems like it would be a good tea to mix with other teas if you just wanted a touch of vanilla. Next time I might try it with some milk and see if that makes the vanilla come out more. Also, there’s really not that much astringency to me, which was nice since I’m finding more and more that I don’t care for the really astringent teas.
Not one I’d order myself, but then I’m fairly picky lately on what I’d reorder. I’ll definitely finish this one out instead of swapping it away though.

thanks so much again for the teas, Dinosara! This one is good. I’ve tried a few English Tea Store teas so far, and they have all been nice! The dry leaves sure don’t smell like chocolate though. And there are flower petals in it, which seems odd for a chocolate tea. Luckily, the tea actually has a smooth sweet chocolate taste on a nice black tea base. I think Harney’s Valentine’s blend has a slight edge over this one (that Dinosara also sent me a bit of!) but I really like this one. It’s like a milky bar of chocolate!

So these English Tea Store chai blends are not as strong as I hope they would be, but it is good anyway! I have been brewing it Western style, so maybe thats the problem. I will use the rest of my samples for the stove. This is a decent cuppa tea to accompany breakfast. The vanilla flavor is very light, but this blend is nice and creamy.

I wanted a hot chocolate flavor, so I went into my sample basket and reached for this one. This was a tea in the Tea Box Pass! Delicious! I couldn’t taste the chocolate as much and the spices were a little muted. But I could detect the chai flavors.

Seems like I got this FOREVER ago from Rachel Sincere! Thanks very much!

This is a nice, bold Yunnan black with lots of black peppercorn flavor, and a bit of yam and sugarcane. The leaves are sort of medium sized for a Yunnan black, and mostly chocolate brown/black in color with some golden buds mixed in.

I’ve been blending it with Fengqing dian hong, which is milder and yamier, and it makes a for a nice balance of flavor.

Brewing this in my new(ish) yixing, and I’ve had to use about double the amount of tea that I normally would. So far its still sucking up a LOT of the flavor, more than my other two did. The side effect of using so much tea is a major caffeine high, which, admittedly is pretty nice when studying for exams :)

1 tablespoon for 375 ml

Maple syrup or marshmallow-like sweetness. Lavender is stronger than the bergamot but I enjoy the balance of the two. No excessive astringency.

Thanks to Sil for sharing with me!

This is a medium-strength Lovers Leap Ceylon and it’s pretty satisfying! There is a bit of “crustiness” and it works really well in this cuppa! Delightful!

I guess I inadvertently grabbed a few blends that tend towards astringency tonight, this being another of them. Well, good to know it’s not just my tea-making skills! Haha. Anyhow, this was tasty tonight, though a bit astringent. I do seem to like lavender in blends now, as long as it’s in the background and not the central flavour. Just a bit of this left, now.

Got more of this from Sil, and threw it into a travel mug for the evening (a baby dedication!) Not my favourite, but the floral/lavender on a soft black base worked just fine for me tonight. In moderation, I actually don’t mind lavender so much, it seems, and in this blend (possibly due to age/storage-related loss of flavour), the lavender is not overpowering at all. Yum. Bumping the rating up.

Given the description of this tea, I’m honestly surprised that I thought it wasn’t too bad. Lavender? Jasmine? Earl grey? Sounds like something perhaps Dinosara or Alphakitty would love, but not me! However, this blend was actually quite well-done, and the floralness was tamed to a level that I actually didn’t mind. The flavours I was picking up from the black tea blend were also quite pleasant. The biggest problem with this tea was that it was astringent after my 2.5 minute infusion. I didn’t grab any to give it another shot, but if I could tame the astringency, I could perhaps enjoy drinking this straight. I imagine, however, that it would be best (and quite tasty!) with milk and sugar.

Thanks for letting me sample this one, Sil!

Mmmm! I can’t believe the monks were allowed to drink this, it’s sinfully delicious!

It’s a bit creamy from the vanilla, and definitely fruity, I really like it!

Though I have to google “grenadine” because surely this wasn’t made with that syrup that they used to put in my Shirley Temples when I was 8. No way were the monks allowed to drink that stuff.

This is something I will have to buy! All you who hate monks blend, feel free to send it my way! :)

Happy Saturday to me! Thank you Sil, for another winner!

(about 95 degrees for 3-4 min)

My morning cup. This is an ok Ceylon, but it was too light for my first cup of the day. This is more of an afternoon tea.

The tea has a very slight floral taste as well as a note of hay. It was a bit dry on the back of the throat. I was reminded of late summer when everything has been baked by the sun for weeks on end. Dry and crisp but also a little hazy around the edges.

This tea was from the teabox, and while I liked it it’s not a tea I see myself buying. It was nice to try though.

This smells delicious dry. Not really caramel though. The flavour is toffee like, without being overly sweet. Will have to try this as a cold brew.

Thanks to Lazey for this.

Sipdown!

This is going into my swap out box. I was fairly sure that i wouldn’t enjoy this as it’s both earl grey AND lavender but i’m open to trying new things :) It has a really nice start to the tea..but then the lavender comes out of nowhere and ruins it. I am REALLY not a fan of lavender.

However, if you are a fan of lavender or early grey…you might really enjoy this tea.

Tea?yay! First cup since Sunday and it’s soooooooo goooood!

mmm sipdown! I really like this one. May have to think about picking it up periodically when i want to change things up a little :)

Soooo close to a sipdown on this one, but not quite! inspired by the recent talk of black pearls and yunnans, i pulled this one out this morning to see if it was as delicious as i rememeber. Turns out i actually like this one a little better than i originally did, not that i ever thought it was bad. It’s got a smoothness to it that i really like, while maintaining that black malty delicious goodness. YAY!

mmm having a cup of this courtesy of my dear friend in Florida. I am enjoying this one quite a bit this morning. Hoping for a few sipdowns today but we’ll see how things go. May just dig into my reserve club teas today sicne i’m on my own to putter around the house :)

Sipdown! Trying this cold brewed today and letting the last remainder of this go to a better home. Mostly just want to let others try this as well in case they fall in love with it. I think i prefer this iced as the jasmine and lichee seem better balanced than when it was hot.

Another sample sent by my friend in florida. :) Love her to death for passing off a few teas to me, since most of them are not teas i would normally purchase for myself. This way i’m getting to step outside my comfort zone and try things that she enjoys.

I’ve enjoyed the one lychee tea that i’ve tried so i figured even with the jasmine this one had a decent chance of being something i’d enjoy at least a bit. I was right, though i could certainly do without the jasmine. I’ve got at least a few more cups of this left, so i’ll be trying this as a cold brew for sure. I want to see if that brings out more of the lichee or lets the jasmine take the dominant position.

As a hot brew, this is mostly lichee with a splash of jasmine that comes out more through each sip.