Local Coffee and Tea

Overboard TTB #7

A decent English breakfast but nothing that really stood out… I’m a fan of really malty English breakfast and this just wasn’t quite malty enough for me.

I’m not quite sure where the mischief came in on this one! It was quite bland, with only a hint of fruity flavor. It was also surprisingly astringent for a white tea. Overall, I wasn’t a fan.

I haven’t had any of this for a while. I reviewed it last summer and gave in an 80. Now it seems very medicinal. I think it might have gone ‘bad’. I had to toss it out as I know it’s not really going to hit the spot anymore. Bummer!

Lately I’ve been drinking chocolate mates but i decided to branch out a little this morning. This is a nice refreshing sweet orange, almost more like a blood orange. There is a bit of a licorice flavor in there but sort of way in the back. It has that bit of woodsy flavor often found in the mates. I’m enjoying it and will have to see if it turns into one of my staples to keep on hand.

It does have a nice crispy after-taste or orange and a bit of licorice lingers on. :)

It’s an unseasonably cold day in mid September, the football game is on, the husband is watching and I’m reading a good book.

The tea is such a lovely smoky and bacon scent dry. The flavor and aroma follow through with their promise of something special. I am new to Lapsang Souchong so I can’t compare this to others of the same name. I can just tell you that this is so delightful and relaxing. Very evocative of campfires, fall leaves and bacon ( Bacon?). I have the feeling that this wouldn’t be nearly as good at some other times of the year but for the here and now, it’s perfect. It says it can be resteeped 2-3 times. Oh, what a nice thing to keep drinking all afternoon!

Adding more to my note about 4 hours later:

After drinking several cups of this tea I swear I could still taste and smell this tea even when I was out walking. It is so relaxing!

I have never had a Lapsang Souchong before so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I thought… a little smokiness from the tasting notes. Well, I got smokiness to swoon over. It is really lovely! Really brings back sweet memories of campfires with friends and family. What an aroma! I almost didn’t want to drink it, just breath it in. I added a just a bit of stevia and it became a smooth, lovely cup for sitting and reading the paper. (What’s a paper? Remember newspapers?) The smokiness is very enjoyable, in a relaxing way. It’s not a tea to bounce you out of bed in the morning. It’s more of a calm afternoon tea break. This is one I would not want everyday, but I can picture enjoying it many times in the future. This re-steeped twice with good results. :)

I’m on vacation in Florida and checking out all the tea shops nearby. I’ve bought about 20 teas this week. It’ll take some time to do tasting notes on all of them but gosh. I guess I just have to force myself to drink lots of new teas!

What a beautiful day it has been! I am relaxing on my deck overlooking the pond, watching the herons and egrets gobbling up fish, the frogs hopping and the song birds sing. I’m having a lovely tumbler of iced CreativiTea. Lovely mix of flavors. Nice and relaxing on a summer evening! Yummy!

I went to the lovely Selby Gardens in Sarasota Fl. They have an adorable tea shop where we spent way too much money. The tea wasn’t too expensive, it was just so good that we kept buying. So many interesting teas! I love traveling and getting to try new tea shops! The owners were VERY nice. When I mentioned Steepster and talked a little bit knowledgeably (Yeah right, me knowledgeable? Ha!) about tea they gave me a choice of any of their more expensive teas, $10./2 oz. for free. (Totally unexpected!) I think when I mentioned bringing my Breville TeaMaker with me on vacation, they could tell that I am pretty serious about my teas.

One of the teas we drank was CreativiTea. Very lovely scent! So nice a fruity. Smells like a summer day in the garden. Very refreshing. Nice lemongrass, orange peel and rose bud aroma and taste. It’s mostly a fruity taste rather than a particular fruit, but it isn’t just the same old fruity tisane. Very fresh flavors.

We have already decided to go to the Farmer’s Market tomorrow morning where they will also be selling their teas. We have to have mooooore !

sigh Apparently i didn’t add this one to my cupboard, though i swear i did. So um yay sipdown..but this does nothing for my cupboard count. So Terri, if i haven’t missed anything else in my cupboard i’m at 271…except tomorrow i’ll be adding 15? teas to my cupboard sigh so you might as well consider me as being at 285ish lol I really should do a swap to help get some of the larger quantities of tea that i have out of my cupboard BUT that also means a bunch of samples will come in…which is both good and bad and good and bad lol

oh first world problems, how i hate you haha

This tea has a nasty gross smell that i cannot handle. But i managed a couple sips of the tea and i actually love it a lot. But i can’t get past the smell of the oiliness of the tea. I figured out, by reading the comments that it’s likely something to do with the coconut because it smelled familiar, even though i don’t like it.

I might try cold brewing a little of it just to see if that produces a brew that i can tolerate the smell on haha. Oh well, still nice to have tried this :) thanks terri!

From the HHTTB

This is a fruity blend, with a coconut taste that is a little oily for me.

Woah. I thought I logged this waaayyy back when TeaEqualsBliss sent it to me. I enjoyed this while I had it but now it’s gone D: Lovely juicy cherry flavor mixed with rose. I think both of these flavors compliment the woodsy rooibos very, very well.

Guava and pomegranite? Count me in!
This was another vacation tea (it’s possible I have a problem). After spending some considerable time trying to figure out which bag of tea to take home from Local Coffee and Tea, I picked this one because it sounded more exotic than what I’ve found in Chicago. I love guava and pomegranite so I thought it would be perfect. I was slightly sad that I couldn’t smell it (duh, I could have just opened the bag) but I figured I’d take a chance.

Here’s my beef with non-black teas: I like flavor. White and green teas always smell heavenly and strong but they always seem to disappoint when it comes to taste because the smell just doesn’t seem to translate. This tea is nice, but I wanted something that had some more flavor to it. Yes, I realize that this makes me a tea pedestrian, but I don’t care, it’s my tea and I’ll flavor if I want to.

Nice tea, but too subtle for my tastes so this will end up sitting in my cabinet much longer than it would have it if were a black tea.

I thought I would go out of my comfort zone of unflavored tea and get this. The dry tea smells pretty decadent! But the actual brew is just bad. It is so chemical to me; it actually tastes like someone dumped a little fingernail polish remover in my tea or something. Just a little. It even smells that way, brewed.

The best use for this tea is potpourri. It smells wonderful dry.

Don’t let this turn you off of this company, though. I’ve tried a few of their teas iced and they were delicious!

Wait a sec. I just brewed another cup of tea to get that taste out of my mouth and now I’m sure it’s the water. Someone else filled my Zojirushi and didn’t use spring water!!! BAD. I will try this tea again when I have better water.

Additional notes: Muahahaha. I decided to take another try with this one after taking most of the hibiscus out of the blend before steeping while it was in my infuser! Most of the tangy tartness is gone… there is just a bit which MUCH better. But it turns out, sadly there weren’t really any flavors the hibiscus was actually hiding! The flavor now is mostly sweet from the pineapple, apple and coconut, but there isn’t much flavor here. I can’t taste much coconut.. I can only smell it. I KNOW there are some amazing herbals that don’t need to rely on hibiscus.. so this one is disappointing. Alright, next time I have to take the hibiscus out AND steep it for much less time.. this steep was around ten minutes.

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending this one in our trade! I’m slowly leaving tasting notes for all the different teas I have right now… I feel like I’ll never get caught up since there are always more tea samples coming my way. Good problems!

That picture for this tea is GORGEOUS. Wow, I love how that picture was done. Anyway, the hibiscus in this one ruined the tea for me, as usual. I think hibiscus really loves to steal the spotlight, so you can’t even notice the other flavors. As I was steeping, I stole a sip that was nice and sweet and less hibiscus. But then I kind of forgot about it and oversteeped and it was so tart! I couldn’t find the apple or coconut, but I know the pineapple added a sweetness to tame the hibiscus. The steep color was a rosey pink. This one could have been worse, I guess. I like the idea of the blend, I just wish hibiscus wasn’t in herbal teas as much. I’d prefer less flavors (like if the apple, pineapple and coconut were less flavorful together) rather than have hibiscus overpower everything else. The next time I try this one, I will be sure not to oversteep!

I love this rooibos. Lovely berry flavors and woodsy notes.

Thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for sending me a very generous sample of this a while ago. Still a delicious rooibos in my book with the sweet berry flavor.

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss!! This is a delicious rooibos :) It’s sweet and mellow. You can definitely taste the current along with hints of the rooibos. The flavors work really well together. Thanks again TeaEqualsBliss!

Thanks for this one TeaEqualsBliss! I like this one. One of my other favorites is Zhena’s Lavender Rooibos, so this one compares. The lavender in the Zhena’s is a lot stronger to me, but this one has other flavors that make it great. I don’t think any of the flavors stand out so any of the others disappear. They seem equally balanced to support each other – the lavender, the rose petals, and the fruits… even the rooibos. This is a delicious blend!

Another from my swap with TeaEqualsBliss! In the bag this smells JUST like Tropicalia and I’m kind of obsessed with that tea so it was a good starting point. Seriously, why don’t I own any Tropicalia yet?! I always just get it iced in the store. Well, I guess this will do for now!

Many of the notes say that this is a tart blend, so I cold brewed it. Actually I would have done that anyway, but I’ve found that it really cuts down on the tartness from hibiscus even in long steeps (and this one was in the fridge for 13 hours). It’s a gorgeous red color when finished, and the tropical smell is a bit diminished. It doesn’t taste as boldly pina colada-y as Tropicalia, but the coconut and pineapple are still prominent. They’re tempered a bit by the hibiscus and rosehips but it’s still a great iced tea! I actually don’t mind hibiscus when it’s not overwhelming the other flavors, and I do think it works well here and keeps it from being too sweet.

The first time I tried this (several years ago) I did not care for it at all. It has taken me some time and several tastings to finally come around to this tisane, and now I actually quite enjoy it. It has a flavor that is very much like a creamsicle, but, the first time I tried it, I think all I could taste was that woody flavor and funky saccharine-y aftertaste from the rooibos … with very little orange or creamy yogurt flavor to speak of. Maybe I got a bad batch that first time around? I don’t know.

But now, I am really liking what I’m tasting. Maybe it just needed to grow on me. Whatever … I didn’t like this then, but I like it now. And since I didn’t have tasting notes of it back then, I think I will just rate it according to what I am tasting now.

One of my favorites! It’s light and fragrant, but it is unlike other teas that I have tasted.

This is a perfect blend of white tea and light fruit flavor. I am not a fan of teas with overwhelming floral or fruit notes, but this tea is blended to perfection. I personally enjoy it best chilled, but it is also great hot.