RiverTea

I stole a sample of this out of Cavocorax’s tin because it smelled so good and it is good but a little on the sweet side. I am picking up on carrot mostly which is alright because I like carrots but I certainly would have never guessed this was a lime tea. Thank you Cavo!!

I wish I cold brewed this. It is not bad hot but I can see this really shining cold. Right now, there is elements of cream and a flavor relatively close to strawberry, complete with a touch of berry tartness to keep this from being cloying. It is not my favourite herbal I have ever tried but it is pleasant and unique enough that I would keep it around for something different every now and then. Thank you Sil for the sample :)

This. I like it. Another.

Thank you Sil for sharing this cup of liquid banana bread. Delicious! I really need to get on that RiverTea order.

Sipdown!

It was time to let this one go – I sent some out in a swap, then used the remainder for a pot last night. It smelled lovely, and I still enjoyed this tea even though I didn’t add any sugar.

However, I really have to let RiverTea go in my heart. I have 3 more blends left to finish.

Backlog from last night.

I was reaaaaally craving chocolate or caramel last night, but the convenience store was again closed, so I decided to have this instead.

I liked it, but I think I’ve reached the point where I need to stop hoarding this tea and drink up what I have remaining. It’s really cakelike and tasty, but the artificial flavours felt stronger or more noticeable last night. If that’s something I’m becoming more sensitive to, I need to finish the stash off now.

it’s teas like this one that really hammer home how sad it is that RiverTea is closed. When I run out of this and a few of my other RT faves – Crazy Mint, Ocean Breeze, Golden Yunnan – I don’t know what I’ll do.

I wonder if I should break this out and serve to to the extended family when they drop by for Chrismas dinner. It’s certainly seasonal and festive enough!

Man, I totally haven’t been on here for a while. In fact, I haven’t been drinking tea that much last week, and I have a bit of a backlog.

I can’t remember everything I drank last week, but I do remember having this on the morning of my birthday on Friday (Holy crap, I’m 30!). I did what I’ve wanted to do for a while with this tea, in fact:

I mixed it half-and-half with RiverTea’s Sweet Meringue. Black chocolate chai tea with rooibos vanilla-flavoured meringue tea – what on earth was there not to like?

As it turns out, mixing those two teas together isn’t an awful idea, but it didn’t result in the fireworks of deliciousness that I expected. I could taste a little chocolate and a little vanilla, but that was about it. I might try it again, but I’m happy to leave these two separate.

BTW, I’m cross-posting this.

Backlog from yesterday:

Oh yeah. This is the stuff. I will totally restock this when I break my tea hiatus in September. It helps that I have a coupon code.

The first time I steeped this, there was a whole star anise seed in the leaf, and I think there were also a few chocolate chunks. This time I tried to get as much plain leaf as I could to see what difference it made, and I think it tasted BETTER than before.

I just love the spice blend in this. It’s sweet, eggy, vanilla-y, and it genuinely does smell like a warm cake fresh from the oven. You don’t even need sweetener, that’s how good this is.

EDIT: Bumped the rating up a bit. The more I think about it, the more this is definitely a winner according to my rubric.

I’m not as over the moon about this as some people are, but it does smell and taste really nice. What really gets me about this tea is how is smells so much like real cake – there’s a vanilla-y, eggy, bready sort of undertone to this that I really like. Also, the spoonful of leaf I used contained a whole, unbroken star anise. Impressive!

However, the aftertaste on this is quite sour. I can’t tell if that’s because of the chocolate or because I added a half spoonful of agave nectar to the brewed tea. But the smell and the taste are very close to the dry leaf, which I appreciate.

I have a few chocolate chais in my collection, but I think this may be a contender for restocking once I go through them all. Also, this is yet another tea I should try steeping directly in almond milk.

Sipdown!

I finished this off last night after coming home from watching Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior in the theatre. The theatre near us is doing this “digital film festival” thing and bringing a bunch of old classics to the screen. So yesterday my hubby and I watched both The Road Warrior and Ghostbusters in the theatre. In a few hours we’ll be watching Labyrinth, so I can bask in the wonder of David Bowie’s Magic Pants Dance.

I don’t know, but The Road Warrior really bummed me out last night. It was a fun movie, and it definitely had a spark of something interesting in it, an authenticity and uniqueness. But it also acted as a trigger for a source of anxiety I don’t talk about very much: climate change. Thinking about stories set in a post-scarcity world always freaks me out because I can’t help thinking we’re close to the cliff’s edge, about to catapult into such a world, and I think that if only I had turned my lights off more or used less plastic, we’d be a bit farther away from that cliff.

Anyways. What I mean is that I really wasn’t in the best frame of mind when finishing this tea off last night. Thinking about the fate of the world and the possibility of living in a scarred, ravaged landscape doesn’t really go well with herbal tea.

Backlog from last night:

I’m slowly reaching the end of this tea – I probably have 3 or 4 servings left. This is great for the evenings when you want something savoury rather than sweet.

However, the container is pretty bulky. I’ll be happy to regain the additional room when I’m done this.

Backlog from two nights ago.

I don’t drink this tea often, and when I do I underleaf it slightly, but the flavour is still quite strong. I’ll probably have this in my cupboard for a while. However, I will be rather sad when I run out, as it’s unique among my cupboard for having sage and rosemary in it. This is a nice savoury accompaniment in the evenings – good for having after a pasta dinner.

I wonder what other savoury teas like this are out there?

EDIT: Oooh, this is note #666!

Backlog from a few nights ago.

I’m really happy I have this blend because it’s caffeine-free and because I like having a savoury tea or two in my cupboard. Watched this after doing yoga on Friday night, and my stomach was not so happy. I hoped this would calm it down, but I don’t know if it did… Ah well. It was Friday. Today is Monday. Time passes.

Backlog from last night.

I had this right before I went to bed because my stomach felt a bit off, and I think this tea may have done the trick, although I didn’t finish the whole (huge) cup. Minty, herbal, savoury – my first thoughts about this tea still stand, though I do think it works better with a slightly shorter steep time to cut the cloying taste that peppermint gets when its been steeped for too long.

On a different note, the hubby and I watched “The Ladykillers” last night (the original with Alec Guinness, not the Coen Brothers remake) and it was good dark fun. Quite grim, but in a humorous way.

Final tea of the evening, and another first note for a new tea!

I got this from RiverTea because I thought it sounded very different (I don’t have many savoury teas), and because it sounds like it would be awesome to drink when you have a cold.

I was a bit wary of the peppermint being so high up in the ingredient list, though, as well as the long steep time. The canister says 8-10 minutes, and I let that go even longer than I should have, since I was on the computer.

Anyways.

When dry, the leaf smells overwhelmingly of mint, though you can see other green things mixed in and what looks maybe like little flower heads. When brewed, it smells very savoury. I can smell the mint, but the rosemary and sage really come to the fore. This is reflected in the taste, which is reminiscent of a kitchen spice cabinet! Sage, rosemary, mint… I bet you could make a nice broth and add this in as a bouquet garni.

What I’m surprised by is how well the peppermint takes this treatment. In my experience, if you steep peppermint for more than 1-2 minutes, it starts tasting really harsh and chemically. Here, it does have a bit of a metallic aftertaste, but it’s quite light, and that’s after brewing for more than 10 minutes. I bet this would be just perfect for cold winter nights.

Cold brewed this one for like 24 hours. That seems to work out for me because I very likely always end up underleafing. I cold brew in a 1L pitcher and if I used enough leaf to make it as flavourful as I wanted, I’d go through all my cold brew teas way too fast.
So I leave it in the fridge for a day or so.

This one… There’s something weird about this one. I did get a creamy sort of mango tea. But either the cinnamon, banana or chamomile is rubbing me the wrong way. I couldn’t put my finger on it when I was drinking it because I hadn’t read the description/ingredients yet.

I will try again later to see what exactly my issue is!

Backlog from Steepster’s Week of Server Doom.

Sipdown! I took the remainder of this leaf (probably at least 30g) and dumped it all into my iced tea pitcher to hot-steep and then top up with cold water. As it turns out, the tea was significantly overleafed, so the resulting tea, even with the extra cold water added, is pretty tart from the hibiscus and rosehip.

Ah well, I really just wanted to get it out of my cupboard. Summer’s winding down, so I’m trying to cold-steep a lot of easy sipdowns to get a sense of accomplishment.

Another first tasting note!

I coldbrewed this in my iced tea pitcher, but I left the leaf in for too long – over a day. This led to it tasting quite bitter. I’ve added some honey to the rest of the pitcher to see if it evens things out, but at this point, aside from the bitterness, it’s a pretty generic-tasting lemon/rosehip blend. Surprisingly, I’m not getting much mint, but I’m also not getting any licorice, which I’m grateful for.

OO First tasting note for this tea? Uhhhh…./slightly intimidated/ Oh well. /Plows on/

So another one from my RiverTea order while making dinner tonight. Probly be the last tea of the night judging by how late it’s already. x.x
Not bad. It’s got the slight bitey/assertiveness like the Assam I had earlier, but without the horrible bitterness. There’s a nice malt to this one too when you roll it about on your tongue. The astringency is middling/high-ish which is tolerable. There is a slight bit of bitter as it sits, or it could be the astringency as I drink it. I’m not exactly sure, but it’s not down my throat choking like it was with the Assam.
I’m not sure about sweet or nutty as in the company’s description, or at least I don’t get anything that I would describe as either of those.
I did add a smidge of Truvia and that seemed to tame any lingering bitterness that the tea might have.
Not bad. Not one I would reorder for myself. But not bad to try.
(1.5tsp)

sipdown on this one yesterday – finished it off cold brewed with a splash of lime juice and it was perfect :) I may think about restocking this one after i get through my lime gelato! woot woot! (thanks again dexter!) love lime drinks cold brewed in the summer, even if this one needs a bit more lime to really rock

cold brew of this one again tonight. Had a relaxing night…i’m not sure my body know what to do with itself when i’m not working 12+ hrs days. I made a commitment to myself this week to leave work by 5pm (which is still later/overtime for me when i get in at 7-7:30 but reasonable..) and to not get angry at things this week. Last week nearly killed me and i did not enjoy the person i was becoming on no sleep and too much work. So this week, i’m trying my best to stick to 8-9 hours days, i’m taking lunch, stepping away from my desk more than once and turning off work when i get home. If things fall on the floor, so be it. August and September and going to be bad enough so i need to take care of ME.

my other half has a rare weekend off next week as well, so we’re going to take the weekend to ourselves and not make plans with other ppl and just chill, and have some down time together. it’s going to be great!

oh and this tea? still enjoying it, still drinking it cold brew and um yeah..not lime-y enough but it’ll do!

Final Count: 130

no moar sipdowns! i had this one as a cold brew, ending my cupboard today at 139 (+4 on the way = 143) which means to meet ONE of my goals, i need 48 more sipdowns between now and the end of the month OR i have 12 more teas from January to get through, which is so not going to happen based on the quantity there haha i like playing drinking tea games with myself. I’ll see what i can do to get to the end of my goal, but unless work slows down a little, i’m not sure i see it happening. But i always try :)

this one is best cold brewed IMO. i don’t get the “carrot” flavour that VariaTEA did, but it’s almost not quite so close to being lime but not. :) it is great for hot summer days though, and that’s what WILL matter in august/september at this rate heh.

Final Count: 139

had this one again tonight and it was better than before. I think the trick with this one is not to cold brew it longer than a few hours. overnight seemed to eliminate some of the lim-yiness to this while tonight it’s more like the lime taste that i want it to be.

i am a fan of lime teas. I picked this one up hoping for a little competition with lime gelato from david’s or lime chiffon from della terra. Sadly, after cold brewing this for the day, it’s only a little limey and the bright pink brew is unsettling haha. It’s got a creamy ish sort of taste to it, and it’s not sour but it’s also pretty weak in the lime department. I’ll drink this and enjoy it, especially on hot summer days but this isn’t nearly as limey as it needs to be :)