sTEAp Shoppe

Dear Cavocorax,

I wanted to write and thank you so much for the cinnamon swirl tea you sent me!

I woke up this morning with (and I’ll be honest) a certain amount of dread in my heart. I knew that today I was going to be stuck dealing with provincial government red tape and that it would probably take hours. Before I even got started I put the kettle on. ‘cinnamon swirl’ I determined as soon I perused the tea stash you sent me. It was the sample I most coveted as we wrote back and forth determining what we would send to one another.

My electric kettle clicked off and I opened the little bag of cinnamon swirl. Long fibers all stuck together reminding me of the tasty goo on top of a cinnamon knot… a vague scent of cinnamon, but not the heavy smell I had been expecting. Well, if there’s anything I’ve learned on this journey it’s not to judge a tea before it’s steeped.

At this point I will confide in you something that I hope you find most complimentary: I followed your written instructions! You always hear about different personality types: A, B, etc. people have always told me that I’m an SC which stands for Serial Contrarian. It’s never my intention to be contrary, and so far as I know I’m not a jerk, I just tend to do things my own way! That said with such a precious sample, did I really want to waste it by serial contrarianing it away? (I just couldn’t risk it especially seeing as I have read frustrations about not tasting what was expected by other steepers). so, 1 tablespoon for 6 ounces of water for 1.5 minutes of steep time…. Really? I thought to myself. Because I am famous for my long deliberate steeps as well as getting distracted and inadvertently making them even longer. Oh well…… instruction following. Yup yup!

The water changed colour and became rust hued, the vapour billowing out of my cup took on a cinnamon slant. I smelled a bakery! Just a second, afk… must take another sip. I’m back. The most remarkable thing happened when I removed my tea ball: mass amounts of red poured out of it! it reminded me of the huge red algae blooms you see in the ocean from space. It just kept pouring out and filling my mug. Wow!

Now, I know the purists would frown, but I added my standard bit of cream and sugar, it is MY cup of tea after all and for reasons that are old and complicated to explain those add ins give me comfort. (and who doesn’t need a bit of extra comfort when dealing with the government all day???)

The verdict: I am drinking cinnamon swirl bread. Cavocorax your instructions were magic! As I near the bottom of my cup there is cinnamon piled there. No floral notes or undertones aside from the warm taste of cinnamon bread. Interesting though because the flavour is warm even as my tea is cooling. This is lovely. Thank you for such a tasty respite from phone calls… and the directions so that I achieved the desired result!

Sincerely,
JustJames

I decided to try this iced, although I’ve enough left to try it hot later on.

So far it tastes like bark – that special type of bark I associate with white teas, especially DT’s Cookie Dough. It’s a little creamy, and it’s a bit sweet, but I’m not really getting chocolate from it. I’ll try it hot before I rate it.

ETA: I drank the second half of my sample hot. (154) It is MUCH better this way. I still get that barky-white tea taste, but this reminds me much more of white chocolate. This is sweeter, and creamier and very good.

Now if only I were crazy about white chocolate! :P I just had to try it though. Just because.

sipdown on this one! I’m going to have to agree with tastybrew on this one. While it’s a nice enough tea and it DOES taste like apple pie…it’s just a little muted. The flavour doesn’t POP but it is true to it’s name. the rest of this is off to a couple pieces houses so YAY for that!

sipdown on this one as well since i’m sharing my small samples with my tea sister so that she gets to figure out if she wants more steap shoppe in her life outside of the cinnamon swirl bread. :) This is a great chai! It reminds me of a few of the adagio chai’s that terri shared with me but less “make sil sneeze.” What i do NOT get from this is chocolate. I nearly added some chocolate myself. I’m with bonnie on this is a great chai but there is a distinct lack of chocolate :( Which ironically is a bit funny since 90% of the other blends that i’ve tried from janet have all had an abundance of cocoa nibs in them :) Still though..not too shabby. deducted a few points for the lack of chocolateyness

Thank you, Shelley_Lorraine! This tea is the closest I’ve come to finding a chocolate tea that tastes like chocolatte. I was worried that this would have an artificial, bubble gum taste but it pleasantly natural. The tea not only tastes chocolately, but has a great roasty, black tea taste.

Thank you TastyBrew! Mmmmm this is a pretty good fall tea. Vanilla with a hint of spice.

Finishing off the rest of this sample! Mmm this one will be missed. It’s smooth and I feel like this cup is a bit more creamy than the last. The spice isn’t in your face but kind of lingers in back of the vanilla.

Thanks TastyBrew! Boy this was a wonderful surprise. The flavors mingle and are surprisingly light. The vanilla is a nice and smooth and the cardamom gives it a little bit of a nice spice. Nothing overpowering. I really like this one.

Sipdown!

Sil was nice enough to send me a little bit of this! And I could tell by looking at it that it was a Yunnan tea! I get points for that!

As expected, this is a nice light tea, with bright honeyed notes. I can’t really tell the difference between this and other Yunnan’s though. I guess I need to work on that!

So I’m home nursing a bum ankle today, so it’s a tea-splurging day. And this was the first I grabbed out of the pile I set aside.
Got this one recently and I loved the smell of it. Also the ingredients sounded interesting, though I wasn’t sure what half of them should taste like. Lol.
I get cinnamon right off the bat just from smelling it, but not much else. I definitely get the cinnamon in tasting it, maybe hints of something else, but unfortunately the cinnamon is pretty much all I’m tasting from this. I have enough for a cup, possibly two cups, left, so I might try either a longer steep time or more leaf to see what sort of result I get.
I’m glad I tried it, but if all I get is cinnamon next time I make this, this definitely won’t be going in the reorder pile. As it stands now, I probly wouldn’t reorder it at this time.

Edit – Made a second steep (3 min, same temp) of this just ‘cause I figured it wouldn’t hurt. The cinnamon definitely backs off, but lingers around. It’s gotten a bit sour/tart now, maybe from the berries coming through? I added a bit of sugar to tame that and it’s alright. Nothing spectacular or impressive and likely I won’t finish this cup. /shrug/

Sipdown! overall a pretty meh cup of tea but i couldn’t bring myself to not drink it. Not a re-order for me as Janet has better blends that i like way more!

pretty sure that this tea falls into the no thanks category. I think it might actually be the espresso in it that is doing me in. While i like coffee and espresso, it turns this tea into more of a coffee type blend that it does a dark chocolate. It’s not a terrible tea but it’s not somethings that wows me at all. Also, something in the aroma of this one is turning me off a little. might have to toss my unopened sample into the swap box! Hopefully someone else will love it more than me :)

sipdown! another one for the road haha figure i’ll let terri try a bunch of steap shoppe through me since i have lots of teas! getting excited to be making room for the travelling tea box too! and birthday orders! yay!

this one i’m still not sure about. It’s a decent enough tea but it doesn’t live up to it’s name imo. it’s more of a chocolate tea…with the occasional hint of orange. for that reason, i’m dropping the rating a bit since it doesn’t live up to it’s name, more than because i don’t like it.

Figured that i might as well try this one tonight since prior to this i had the orange tea from della terra.

So initial sips of this one, i felt like i was drinking an orange version of cinnamon swirl bread. There was that bready taste and cinnamon in with the orange. As it cooled though, the tea became much more orangey and even the chocolate came out to make an appearance. overall, not a bad tea but nothing to re-order when it’s gone…especially since there’s my favourite “two friends” from butiki!

Sil ‘s sample sipdown! I am not really counting my sipdowns but I’m trying to go through all these baggies that are taking over my kitchen! The goal is to finish off all baggies by July and just have properly stored teas — in their original packaging, be it tins or otherwise — of my shelf. All these bags in bowls are starting to get to me a little bit.

I keep forgetting this is a pu’erh because I like it and I really don’t dig pu’erh yet. It’s like I have a short term memory problem. Every so often I think “wait, this is a pu’erh?”, and then I remember, only to have to go through it again the following week as I drink it.

This gets too cinnamon heavy as it cools, almost loses the bread part so maybe you should try to drink it faster, don’t take it in the bathtub with you like I did, and then leave it sitting there in the corner all neglected.

Not as good as the first time because a) I accidentally let it cool and b) it lost the surprise/novelty element.

You know those “How’d they do that?” shows? I would like to see one on THIS tea. How someone can put cinnamon and completely kill a tea (for me, anyway) and someone else — say, sTEAp Shoppe — can do amazing things with cinammon, like this here tea.

Now this is what I would call delicately spiced. There’s cinnamon in here, duh!, but it doesn’t bludgeon the rest of the stuff to the point that you just feel you’re sucking on a cinnamon stick. I’m interested in also knowing how they get the bread taste. In wine, you know they use yeast, for example in Chardonnay. I doubt they use yeast in tea so … how?

In any event, delicious tea. I was worried maybe cinnamon in tea is not for me. Clearly this proves it wrong. As for the tasting note, you don’t need one from me. Just remember your last Cinnabon. That’s what your tea will taste like.
The End.

PS. Thank you to the amazing Sil for sharing this. Awesome choice.

Sipdown! I might actually have a few less teas in my cupboard than i thought since i did a quick glance at some of the samples that i apparently didn’t take out of my cupboard yet though they’re gone. That makes me happy since i might very well be able to get to 235 this weekend, which even when i get my teas from my friend this weekend, will still leave me with enough time to get to 200 before the end of june…i think. I haven’t yet run out of smaller sizes so i think it’s manageable haha.

This tea is one that i shared with cavo and the last bit i have i’ve set aside for Terri. I suppose it’s cheating a little but i can do what i want! haha This is a very mild tea. It’s a very smooth – i like my teas a little bolder but this is a nice every day sort of tea, more of an afternoon tea than a morning one.

I pulled this out because OMGSrsly and Heather Martin wanted to try it and I figured I’d better have more before I sent half of it on. :P

It’s really pu-erhish today. There’s no hiding that. But it’s also warm and cinnamony and heavy in my stomach. I might not even need a real cinnamon bun with this around. I probably wouldn’t say no if you offered one though.

Sil made this sound so good that I bought 2 oz of it. That’s sorta how I roll with Steepster.

I’m happy I picked this up though. It almost has this thick bready texture to it, as if each sip was heavy in my throat and filled me up. It’s sweet, and cinnamony and I can practically taste warm icing. And… the best part is that this is only the first steep! The instructions were VERY clear that I should resteep this 5 times. Can’t wait to see what magic that does to it.

Lost this note. :(

In summary, chocolate orange as a white tea is unique as the others I’ve had are black. This is subtle and creamy, and it smells like chocolate orange. It tastes of cream and orange though, instead of chocolate. Very nice!

Thanks for the easy sipdown, Sil!

i don’t know if my batch is different from everyone’s but i don’t like this. not even kinda. It’s not undrinkable but it don’t get much orange or cinnamon, and certainly not cake. Sending the last little bit of this to terri to see if she fares better with it.

ick. do not like. This is certainly got that bitter orange taste going on…with some spices. I wouldn’t call this cake though, nor would i call this delicious. I wonder if janet has changed her recipe around or i just managed to get more spice than tea in this cup. I’ve got more left in this sample so i’ll be trying it again but so far, colour me unimpressed.

Thanks TastyBrew!!! Ooh my goodness. Today has been a long day. But on the upside I got 2 free scones the size of my face. I ate one and thought this tea would go well with it. The aroma of this tea is so rich. Like melted milk chocolate. The flavor is rich and chocolatey. There is a hint of maple flavor. This is a wonderful chocolate tea :) I need mooorreeeeeee!