sTEAp Shoppe

kimquat is awesome for sending me a serving of this. I loves it and I haven’t had a chance to buy any yet! It is a perfect fall tea :)

I will be drinking cups of it all day while I work!

Last of my sample of this tea I got in a swap. Man I could NOT get steepster to work earlier on my work computer since the updates were made. Anyways, this tea was enjoyable as always. Might buy some eventually :)

Thanks to Tealizzy for sending me a sample of this! Everyone’s tasting notes on it have made me DROOL! Anyway, I’m amazed at how natural and BREADY this tea is! It really does taste like cinnamon bread but without that artificial taste some flavored teas get. I can see why everyone raves about it. OK, I gotta go steep it again right now… :D

Awe…I feel a bit bad that this is the first tasting note on this one. Especially because i don’t like it. This is another sneak taste from Cavocorax

The blend starts out lovely, but then quickly turns to a whole lot of too much clove. If the clove isn’t in the sip then there’s an abundance of hibiscus/sour taste. I think that this tea has potential if the hibiscus were cut back and the clove taste was WAAAAAAY less. I know i tried to get a teaspoon of tea that had a little of everything but this is just too much clove and hibiscus.

Every now and then, there was the promise of a wonderful taste of a well blended black tea but then one of those two flavours would ruin it. Ah well! Another tea off the list of all the teas to try :)

So i’m not sure if i’ll get to a sipdown today but i figure the next two tasting notes ought to count as sipdowns because they aren’t being added to my cupboard lol. This is another that Cavocorax let me steal a bit of before sending it off to her.
So this smells delicious…chocolatey and malty? Not sure what the undertone smell is but it’s very familiar. Sipping it, it’s a taste i’ve had before but just can’t place. I’m not sure if it’s “milkshake” that i’m tasting but the entire cup is a familiar cup or something. I just wish i could place the taste. It’s pretty much driving me crazy right now. I may have to order a bit more of this another time just to drink it until i figure out what the taste is. Overall though? this is a pretty decent chocolatey, creamy tea. Thanks Cavo! :)

So i have a confession, which isn’t that big of a deal, but i hate white chocolate. it’s like chocolate, only without the “good” stuff. Cavocorax was awesome enough to let me steal a cup of this tea from our order with Janet at the steap shoppe (big shout out to janet for her amazing customer service by the way!).

The dry blend smells delicious. It’s chocolate and yet not quite the chocolate smell that i associate with white chocolate. There’s an undertone of vanilla in the smell as well. There is rose hip in here, but there is nothing floral about this blend.

The liquid form of this tea could be called white chocolate, but i’m not sure if i’ve ever had white chocolate that tastes like this :) My other half says that this does taste like white chocolate, at the end of the sip. I’m getting more of a vanilla chocolate taste, but it’s still pretty good and the tea base is nice. I think this could be one of those teas i enjoy from time to time while not a regular member of my official lineup lol
thanks again cavo for letting me sneak some of this before i send it to you! (also yay for not having to add it to my cupboard)

I have been making a lot of tea lattes lately and thought this one might hold up well being in a latte form. I was correct! It is absolutely delicious. I used unsweetened almond milk and a touch of sweetener and it is perfect. I only have a small amount left, so I need to make it last. This is still one of my favorite pu’erh blends. :-)

Now THIS is a cinnamon tea that is not too overpowering! I’ve had a stressful day and needed something comforting. I have my go-to teas, but have been wanting to try this one for a while now. I added a touch of cream and sweetener to this one to give it more of a dessert feel. It is not too earthy, spicy, or sweet. It really does remind me of fresh toasted cinnamon bread! Now that I am feeling a bit more relaxed, I am able to settle down with my text books and complete my assignments.

Due to the demands of the semester, I have been drinking more coffee these days. After an interesting day, I felt like I needed tea to end the night. I still have many teas to get through in my cupboard, but I remembered I still had this sample hanging around. The smell is wonderful with hints of chocolate and smoke. I acutually over-steeped this tea by accident, but it had no effect on the flavor.

This tea reminds me of bonfires in autumn with s’mores! Given the fact that I do not eat flour and sugar, this was wonderful. I might wait to make my next cup when the temperatures drop, as this would be the ideal time to drink this marvelous tea. I am going to purchase a full amount when I need more! :-)

Thank you yet again TastyBrew!

I brewed this one up at the same time that I brewed Jumpy Monkey so that I would have a back up if I didn’t like one. I often do then when trying new teas. I put this one in the larger cup because I predicted that I would like it more, but I actually liked the jumpy monkey more. This isn’t bad, its just so-so. The chocolate tastes a bit off. I’m not sure I can really describe the rest of it. There is a sort of smokiness about it, nothing too offensive though. And it’s just ever so slightly tart. I am happy to finish my cup, but regretting just a little that I chose the bigger one for this tea. Oh well. :)

Sipdown! I recieved this one in a swap and I can’t remember who sent it to me…. But THANK you! It’s absolutely delicious! It’s not your normal green tea and mint. It has a lovely liquorice and mint flavor. The green tea is a bit overpowered but in this blend it’s ok. It works. It’s very uplifting. I really enjoyed this :]

Ah boo, what a let down. I saw all the ingredients in this one and thought “gee, this will be a good strong cup!” And with a name like ‘sunrise sensation’, it had better be.

I used 3.4g in a 14oz mug and steeped for 2 min (recommended time was 1min30sec). Its a coppery puddle of cinnamon flavored water with a tiny squeeze from an orange. It’s not icky or anything, but way to weak for my standards.

Thanks anyway TastyBrew!

I do have some left for another cup. When I’m feeling up to it I will try brewing stronger and longer to see if it makes a difference. However, if I really need to use so much leaf, it probably won’t be cost effective in the long run.

one more thing to note, my tea thermometer said that the water reached 200F today. Either it’s broken or the elevation around here is fickle (quite possible, really).

thanks to TastyBrewwww for the moar teaaaa!
(this is tea tasted number 297. i’m keeping track cuz for the 300th tea i’m opening Laoshan Black and trying it for the first time.)(and it looks like that will be tomorrow morning!)
i’m afraid all this tasting is turning me into a tea snob. like in the bad way. it’s that i catch myself having some weird expectations of what i think a tea should taste like by the scent or ingredients, and then when it doesn’t match my presupposed expectations i get overly judgmental. this is not the tea drinker i want to be!!
naw no
i wanna be open to each sip. and judge it in the moment. and see what i can discern and what speaks to me (i have scarred sinuses and a poor sense of smell but i want to do my very best.)
so when i first tasted this i was all ‘meh’. but why? i really had no reason.
it’s a nice tea. i guess i should just put things in the buy or not buy categories? pass/fail?
this tea is gentle. and pretty tasty. slightly vanilla. but i wouldn’t buy more. just cuz there are other vanilla teas i’ve like more. oh that perpetual vanilla hunt.

OH CRAP. NOW i know what it’s like to have too many teas to try!
swaps from TastyBrew, Shadowfall, Dinosara, Shelley_Lorraine have done me in.
with whatshesaid, Sil, Scheherazade, and CHAroma swaps still to come!
what have i done!?!?! hahahaha
it’s craziness. it’s chaos. teasanity! and VERY FUN!
but - i NEED a SYSTEM. i feel like i should apologize to Scheherazade and CHAroma for being such a disorganized swap partner this time around. i’ve lost complete track of what teas i have and what teas i am craving and what tea is still en route or in process.
i’m really new to the swapping and i kinda dove in headfirst with a flourish. as i usually do with everything.
i’m not a half measure type of person.
How do you guys do it?!
How do you make sure you don’t get swaps of things you already have?
Or have already tasted?
and how the hell do you decide from a mountain of tea what to drink next?!?!? haha
these are the funnest problems to have.

yesterday as i had a mountain of little tea swap samples spread out in front of me in the kitchen my boyfriend was like, “do you have a whole world of online friends that i don’t even know about?”, like it had just occurred to him that the tea comes from people (giving and thoughtful and passionate people), and i was like “duh ya”.

this tea. it’s nice. i like it. but it’s not super exciting.
i followed the steeping directions pretty closely. it is vanilla but not really enough. and the tea base isn’t thrilling either. it’s a middle tea. but this is the 296th unique tea i’ve tasted! all thanks to swapping. and this one specifically thanks to TastyBrew.

Thank you TastyBrew! After much deliberation, I decided to try this one first from the samples that you sent to me.

This is a very rare sort of tea that actually tastes better than it smells. It smells like caramel-apple-cardboard-style. I was prepared to be disappointed.

It’s quite tasty, but doesn’t taste like a caramel apple to me. It does taste sweet, and it tastes like assam, but I’m not exactly picking up individual flavors beyond that. I much prefer underachieving dessert flavor than over anyway. This makes for a good biscuit-dunking tea. I have teas that I drink alone and teas that I reserve for my most favorite Biscoff biscuits.

This is definitely a tea that I’d like to have around, but I don’t know yet if it will become a regular.

UPDATE 5/25/2013: I found another tea that better fills my niche for this one (Macaron -Mariage Freres) as it smells and tastes good and I like the apple flavor of the new one better.

the mystery swap tea box i got from TastyBrew came with a note. it said the box contained “teas i don’t love as well as some of my favorites”. so The Game Is Afoot!!

actually, i realized that i have already cheated cuz i’m a big peek-er. and i looked up tastybrew’s opinion already. haha oh wellz

fact is, i love lapsang blends.
i really do. cuz lapsang seems like a tea that wouldn’t be blended with anything well and it’s always a surprise.
i also read a lot of sherlock fan-fic. and last night i stayed up till 4am in the morning getting half way through a really long story. and lapsang is always sherlock.
but i digress.

the vanilla and coco nibs are mild, but i can get a hint of the vanilla. i would have never thought of a vanilla added to lapsang but i now realize it’s OBVIOUSLY a great idea and i will hope to find a really good one someday.
i do think this tea itself is pretty mild. and i brewed it according to instructions. but next time i will probably try brewing it longer. (that is, when i brew my last cup. cuz i already drank 3 cups of this hah)

I bought a lot of sample sized teas from sTEAp Shoppe, but have finally gotten around to trying some of them! This particular tea is good. There is a smokey dimension to it, though it is overall light in flavor. The chocolate stands out, but given the name, I was really hoping for a stronger tea. Maybe I need to increase the amount of tea for the steep? I’ll try it again to see if it helps. If I can find the right tea/water ratio, I might buy the full size!

I was wicked excited to try this one, and it was ok, but I got this sticky aftertaste that I just didn’t love. I’m sure it’s just sugar from the caramel but it felt artificial and left the taste in my mouth for a while. However, in terms of the flavors being accurate, they definitely are. The apple was a classic granny smith apple taste, which personally is my favorite kind of apple to dip in caramel.

It does kind of feel like I’m at the country fair, which I appreciate, and I can definitely imagine enjoying this more in the fall. OOOH or as a latte in the fall!! Awesome. doing it.

Ok I am going to need a larger amount of this ASAP. I got 3 tsp in a swap with TastyBrew who has the cutest little bags for swapping. I don’t remember smelling the dry leaves because I was too excited to taste it. So once brewed, this smells precisely like a freshly baked slice of cinnamon raisin bread with buttered spread on it.

Every Christmas, my uncle/Godfather hands out these loaves of bread to the people closest to him, it’s the thing we anticipate most about the holiday in my family. It’s a huge loaf of cinnamon swirl bread with the thickest, fullest swirls of cinnamon you can imagine. It makes the greatest tea accompaniment and the BEST french toast. We call it “Joe Bread” because my uncle’s name is Joe. This tea could not smell more spot on like Joe bread.

I think I will not only need a large amount of this for myself, but special bags for every member of my family as well. The flavory is sweet, doughy, rich, and smooth. Such a treat!

SIPDOWN! After waking up the sick, snoring man and feeding him, I figured it was time to get back to a few more teas before i reached my limit for today…i’m starting to feel a bit sloshy but i think the food will help me too haha. All in all, not sad to see this go but i enjoyed it while i had it. whee!

I forgot that i took this one out and about with me today. Only today, I added a bit of yunnan gold to this while it was brewing to see if that would add a bit of depth to it without losing the sweet apple goodness that i like about this one. It worked, though sometimes i would prefer the sweet unmodified version of this. I actually think it might be interesting to brew this with maybe tiger assam and see what happens :)

go go apple theme for today! Knocking the rating down a little on this one because it feels like a really sweet herbal to me. I often forget that this has actual tea in it. Still a relatively decent enough cup of tea..but more so if you pretend it doesn’t have a black base…which i can’t taste at all. :)

backlog from yesterday as i came home with a splitting headache and went to bed early. I have enjoyed one from steap shoppe, though i’m not convinced yet that it’s a reorder. i do like the appley goodness of it though, so it’s a nice fall tea :)

mmmm i like this one from time to time. it’s caramel and appley goodness.

what do you call an alligator in a vest?

an Investigator! bwahahahaha