Story of my Tea

Cold Brew Sipdown (516)!

Last tea from Story of My Tea to finish off; like the others this one basically come in a very large tea bag for you to make iced tea with, but I opted to just cold brew it largely out of laziness. This one was pleasant enough; I really, really enjoy blueberry black teas and in fact my most logged tea here on Steepster is a blueberry black tea so I’m always excited to try more variations while at the same time probably also very critical given how much I love them. Sort of a catch 22; I love them but I will tear them apart nearly every time I drink one…

I thought the blueberry flavour in this had a nice overall presence though; it wasn’t too light but it didn’t entirely overshadow the black tea base either which is definitely what I want out of a good blueberry black tea. Biggest complaint though is overall sweetness; it took me a while to place it but finally I landed on the fact that what the blueberry notes were reminding me of was blueberry syrup! Back when I was living in Saskatoon there was a little cafe at the end of my block – I only went a couple of times, but they made their own blueberry syrup and I think that’s what this is reminding me of. I mean, the syrup tasted good and this tastes good but the point is that it tastes sweetened and just a little unnatural and I was hoping for something would be sort of naturally sweet/mimic the taste of actual blueberries. So it is a touch disappointing.

But overall I liked it despite some small issues, and I think it was probably the best tea I had overall from Story Of My Tea as well. Don’t think I’d repurchase/order it though.

Cold Brew Sipdown (343)!

This is my second cold brew from Story of My Tea; the first one wasn’t a huge success for me but this one was significantly better.

It reminds me a lot of DT’s Mango Fruit Punch, but lighter on the mango. Of course, that does make a fair bit of sense because there’s quite a bit of ingredient overlap between the two blends. I’d say the bulk of this is very candied tasting pineapple notes and sweet tangerine. There’s nothing really acidic or tangy to it; it’s a very sweet brew with really sugary undertones to all the different tropical fruit notes. Not cloying though; just sweet. The tangerine is fairly distinctly tangerine but does venture a little into a bit of generic orange juice sort of territory.

So to sum up: very sweet candied fruit notes that are tropical overall and mainly a mix of pineapple, tangerine, and mango. Enjoyable, and refreshing!

Cold Brew Sipdown (341)!

So, Story of Me Tea recently had a thing where they’d send you three free cold brew/iced tea samples for just the cost of shipping – and after browsing the site I saw three teas that interested me enough to try it out.

What drew me to this one was that it’s essentially just a straight rhubarb flavoured tea. You really don’t see a lot of those, and I like rhubarb a lot so anything that leans really heavily into that flavour is something I can probably get on board with. When I cracked open the sealed packet I saw that the tea is premeasured out to be made into ice tea inside of a “teabag”, although the leaf itself is still whole loose leaf and not anything like dust/fannings. It smelled incredible too; a very, very bright and sweet jammy rhubarb taste.

Now that I’ve strained it and am sipping on it now, I’m enjoying overall for the most part. The top notes and body are very rhubarb heavy; it’s sweet and tart, and comes off like real, natural rhubarb fruit that’s almost been made into a sort of jam or preserve. There’s also a bit of butteryness and roasty notes from the oolong base. If I had been able to leave the flavour just at that, it would have been totally lovely and delicious. Unfortunately, that’s not where things ended though…

The finish of this one is so incredibly sharp and sour; it’s grassy in all the ways that a tea shouldn’t be grassy. Just harsh, and piercing and unpleasant and unfortunately very long lasting/lingering into the aftertaste. It completely ruined the lovely rhubarb flavour, and left me feeling almost nauseous with just how intense it was overall.

And now I don’t even have the rest of the pitcher to try and tinker with the find a way to make it work because I set the pitcher down on the kitchen island and one of our cats jumped up and knocked the whole thing over. I guess he wasn’t a fan of it either…

So, I’m finishing my glass of this one feeling like this started off with so much promise but ultimately feeling pretty let down by what I ended up getting. I’d probably try it again and just experiment with the brew time, but only if I didn’t have to pay to do so. Personally, with how awful that sour grassy flavour was I can’t see myself at all spending money to possibly just recreate the same thing.

What a shame.

First of all, I love this company’s packaging. It’s like you’re conversing with the tea given it greets you with a fun “HELLO!” And then that Hello is followed by the reveal of some pretty good tea. Honestly, I was shocked at how much mango flavor this actually had.

Check out the full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2017/10/04/green-tea-mango-from-story-of-my-tea/

Sipdown (303)

This is a pretty tasty tea. It tastes like 7D brand dried mangos when cold brewed and I love that. Yum!