sTEAp Shoppe

i tried this one this morning as well but i remember nothing about it besides the fact that i drank it, there was nothing wrong with it and it was gone early in the morning. that leads me to believe that this might be a decent one from steap shoppe. lol i’ll try and write a better note the next time i have this.

sipdown! (200) yay for being back down to 200! i’m trying to finish up a few more teas that i want to send off to my tea sister this weekend so there will likely be a few more of these here and there :) I still can’t figure out this tea…it tastes like cinnamon swirl but then it tastes like something completely different. I don’t dislike this one..but i’m not sure where it fits…

another steap shoppe tea that reminds me of the others, but this one doesn’t see too bad. I need to have this again though as work interrupted me. When there’s 1.9 billion dollars at stake…you tend to ignore the tea lol

oh well…tomorrow is another day!!!!!!

Sipdown! Still feeling like a lot of the steap shoppes blends taste the same. This one still has that vaguely familiar taste that reminds me of the cinnamon swirl bread minus the cinnamon. An enjoyable cup, but I’d rather be drinking the cinnamon swirl bread.

this is a new blend coming out from janet that she included as a surprise sample in my order for some of the trouble i encountered with her website. I have to say sometimes that i like having issues with my orders if only to really see how stores deal with problems. Janet has some excellent customer service in case you were wondering :)

I’m beginning to notice a trend with a lot of Janet’s black blends in that they all taste vaguely familiar. In this case, i’m getting memories of the steapshoppe’s cinnamon swirl bread but without the cinnamon part. :) not that it’s a bad thing but so far i’m finding i can live with msotly just her cinnamon swirl bread in my cupboard and maybe one of the chocolate teas. I’ve got plenty more to try though and i’m looking forward to it!

Sipdown! Must admit, this really wasn’t too bad today. Actually tasted kind of like white chocolate. I do have a strange soft spot for these blends, since they definitely were unique. I’d maybe get a few again sometime in the future, just to try. The rest of my samples from Steap are in my mug-sipdown pile, though.

Uh…. so I brewed up both this and sTEAp Shoppe’s Chocolate Orange tea…. and… I can’t tell them apart. I mean, they taste a bit different, but I can’t tell which one is which, which is kind of bad, given that one is supposed to be orange-flavoured.

Anyhow, both taste alright, and have a bit of a white chocolate/creamy flavour to them, but I’ll definitely have to give both a second go to figure out which I’m even reviewing!

ETA: Uh… so the second infusion smelled a lot like dry cat food… and kind of tasted like it too… so I gagged on it and threw it out :( I forgot that I remember having that same impression of the dry leaves/brewing leaves for the first infusion as well. Thankfully the first infusion was drinkable, but #2 was not.

Ahh, yeah, this one is the weird one, not Milk Chocolate. Interesting concept, but the result has a flavour bordering on “going bad”, and I’m not sure why. I’ll finish it up, but glad this is a sipdown!

Weird… apparently my last experience with this one was rather odd, involving a mixup with the White Chocolate Tea, and an association with spiced cat food. Anyhow! This time it was better, although I greatly prefer Butiki’s Two Friends for the chocolate/orange combo. I could taste citrus (not specifically orange), and some chocolate, but was also getting some cinnamon notes, which I didn’t particularly want. I guess I want my chocolate orange teas to be like Terry’s chocolate oranges. Two flavours. Either way, it was still drinkable, but I must mention that in addition to the overleafing (1 rounded tbsp), I ran out of hot water when pouring this since it was the third tea, and so it infused into maybe 8 oz. So that’s about double my normal ratio, and the flavour still wasn’t overly strong, so I think these teas are a bit on the weak side (age could be a factor here, but the bags are and have been well-sealed the whole time I’ve had them). Overall, a decent cup, but not remarkable.

Drank this, but confused it with sTEAp Shoppe’s White Chocolate Tea. Clearly there are similarities… This also means that I couldn’t pick up any citrus :( There’s definitely creaminess though, so this one will get another shot sometime in the future!

ETA: Second infusion of this one also smelled like dry cat food, and induced gagging and cup-dumping. As with White Chocolate, I did remember this aroma from when I was brewing it as well. I will add, though, that in this case, it was spiced cat food. But once I’d made the association, it was just downhill from there. Hopefully the second attempt is better.

Sipdown! 851. Thanks to Cavocorax for letting me nab a sample of her pouch while it was still sitting around with Sil :D

Hmm. Something about this tea seems kind of familiar, and I’m sad to say that it’s not in a good way. I’m starting to think that me and sTEAp Shoppe’s teas don’t agree… or perhaps, something about their chocolate flavouring/cocoa nibs. It’s not bad, or undrinkable, or anything of the sort, but there’s something that I’m not completely enjoying.

Anyhow, my first impression of this was that it’s creamy and a bit chocolatey. I’m blanking on more details right now though, so will have to go have a bit more and update later.

1.5 tablespoons for 375 ml

Thanks to Sil for sharing with me!

I really like this one and Lance likes it too, Just now as I was going to post about it and I read the posts before I realize that this one DOES in fact taste kinda like the “sunrise sensation” from steapshoppe which IS itself kinda similar to the cinnamon swirl bread, this one is kinda of minus the cinnamon compared to those two but I still think Janet’s teas are quite nice, I really like her tea spices they are awesome!
anyways Lance fave is the sunrise sensation and he really liked this one too :)

This tea is wonderful. Cinnamon + sweet + pu-erh – who could not love this hearty tea? Real cinnamon flavor – not artificial at all. A great introductory tea for anyone new to Pu-erhs.

This tea has a proud spot in my tea cupboard and it will soon be time for me to reorder.

Sad to say that everyone seems right so far. This is a very mild and muted tea. It’s a shame really, since I had high hopes for it.

Another sTEAp Shoppe sipdown. (152) I think I’m going to be placing an H&S order tomorrow as my coworker is hooked (she bought a timolino after seeing mine, and now she grabs some H&S tea from my cupboard every day – I’m thrilled!). So anyway, it’d be nice if I could get to 150 before I place the order. Also, I’d like to get down to 140 or 135 before it arrives! Bwa hahah.

So on to this tea. I feel bad for sTEAp Shoppe – maybe I shouldn’t have had the Cinnamon Swirl Bread tea first as that one is SO GOOD. And even though this apple pie is good, it’s just not AS GOOD as that one. It was warm and apply-cinnamony, but not something I’d need to resteep.

So the samples were cheap and I went nuts. I even grabbed this even though I wasn’t sure about the cloves. I got it because it seemed like a festive tea similiar to some of the Christmas blends I’ve had.

I’m not a fan. The cloves are too strong, and it’s too tart with the cranberry and hibiscus. Like Sil says, it’s on the verge of something good, so maybe it just needs to be tweaked a bit.

I’m dumping the rest passing the rest of this sample onto Ozli, with love. :P (152)

I tried this again, but steeped it for only 3 minutes. I still hate it. Now I know.

I don’t really feel fair rating this though when there’s not a lot of tasting notes on it. But… I guess people should be warned that it might not be for them.

This would be a sipdown, but it’s more likely a “toss it down the drain and pretend it never happened” tea. No sipping involved. (154)

So I’m working from home today, but I guess the emphasis is on working as I really haven’t had much tea today! I poured a cup of this from my timolino and wasn’t sure what it was.

My first thought was that it reminded me of BBQ sauce.

Now that I’ve shaken my head a bit, I can see that’s not the case, but there’s something odd about this blend that I can’t get my head around. It really reminds me of a dark twisty black tea that I’ve had – maybe Ceylon Spring, but oversteeped?

I can smell the chocolate in it though! And if I just relax and drink it, there is a bit of a chocolate taste to it. And honey. And malt. And the slightest bit of honey which is probably from the Yunnan. I don’t trust myself to rate this at the moment though. I"ll post this note and then sip on the rest of the cup, adding more as needed.

Next time I’ll try steeping it for half the time suggested. That might help, but with new teas I like to try their suggestions.

without intending to my eyes flashed to the vendor’s description as i hit the ‘tasting note’ button…. ‘it would be impossible not to love this tea.’ well then i am an impossible boy.

dry it swells like sweet pipe tobacco, not quite what i was expecting, but as long as it’s not too heavy on the smoke i’m game to try it. as it steeped the smell evolved: tobacco and vanilla. however, once i moved to sipping my adjectives and taste palate vocabulary devolved to just one word ‘NOPE!’.

i must seem exceptionally uncharitable creating an adjective out of such a word, but candor saves time and ‘nope’ is shorter than ‘absolutely not!’.

in order to steep the black tea the higher temperature burns the white. i tasted no cocoa nibs or vanilla, although i did spy little black specks. i taste no malt as was described. what i do get is an on again off again flash of sea weed with tobacco ash.

i understand wanting the best of both worlds from the black and white teas, but i think that when you’re looking at such different steeping temperatures that the calamity that befell my teacup was very predictable.

not sure i will finish this cup. i am certain i won’t finish this sample…. what i will do is go and gargle with sTEAp Shoppe’s cinnamon swirl bread because that one is outstandingly executed.

for the second time this week my score is coming in far lower than the steepsters above me and i do feel the need to reassure those that are reading: i do not have a cold, i do not smoke, i am not terribly picky about foods and i have a freakishly good olfactory sense (nose). i even followed the directions! (not the way i usually roll).

Thanks cavocorax… i didn’t like the tea, but i greatly appreciated the experience. AND if you are someone looking to try a tea that all but one raved about send me a note and we can swap!

SIPDOWN! and that ladies and gents, puts me at 200. Not that i’ll stay there for that long since i have birthday orders to come in july and there’s a mini package coming from nxtdoor that will likely be here tomorrow. So I need to keep on drinking! But now…now i just need to try and aim for drinking things that i have lots of, at least more than 2-3 cups of.

This tea? It’s not bad but it’s not great. It’s actually a little watered down for me more than anything, and i believe that i added a bit of extra leaf. There’s a nice smokey flavour to this, but i just want it to be a bit…“more”

sipdown! (202) where did 203 go you might ask? well that was one of the verdant reserve sample from points tea that i had with dinner. I don’t bother logging them because you can only redeem once (which makes me a sad panda) and because it varies depending on when you redeem them. I also have zero information on the tea besides the fact that it was “2006 wild picked stone-pressed yabao”

This tea? it’s ok. pretty much will be fine never drinking it again, though it wasn’t a “toss down the drain” tea of anything like that. I just prefer black and white from steap shoppe as there are other better chocolate teas out there that i love. :)

meh. I think i like the other chocolate teas from janet more than this one by a pretty big margin. it’s not a tea i’d toss down the drain, but if i never drank this one again i’d be ok with that. It’s just pretty meh..especially when compared to other chocolate teas i’ve had…hell even to janet’s other teas!