Tea Desire

Hey, would you look at that – I’m over 100 followers now!

Anyway, I’m totally indulging my love of flavoured blacks today! There are at least three more I’m hoping to get in by the end of the day, some new and some old. This is one of the ones I’ve tried before – but since I was in a chocolate mood I grabbed this one over some of my other chocolate/some other flavour like mint or fruit mixes.

Today I added milk after recalling a few reviews that said it was tasty that way. With the milk, this steeped up to be a very smooth chocolate tea today, akin to a semi watered down cup of hot chocolate. Even though I’m not explicitly tasting the dates in this cup, I’m sure they’re part of what’s adding to the cookie/fudge feeling I’m getting. I also taste a bit more vanilla than usual, perhaps the milk is bringing it out.

It’s a “lick up every last drop” kind of cup.

Tre caved and gave me a slice of pie! Yay! So, to go with my pie I made a black tea; black tea seems to go with most desserts, in my opinion anyway. I actually bought this one because of all the talk on Steepster about it; it seems like it made a rotation through several people’s cupboards and that got me curious. My favourite employee from Tea Desire also told me that she dislikes this one because she can only taste the dates in it – and that made me curious too because I hate oreos, but I like dates…

So, I’m drinking this with a pretty open mind seeing as I think it could go either way as a “love it” or “hate it” tea, and because I’ve heard a wide array of opinions on it.

Dry, this smells like creamy chocolate and black tea. Not awful or anything, but just a little bit average (in a good way, I guess). My preparation was 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf, 10 oz. boiling water, steeped for four minutes. The smell is creamy milk chocolate with a touch of sweet dates, like the kind used in pastries.

Taste wise, it’s actually a surprisingly good chocolate tea. The chocolate is light, smooth, and very creamy with nice vanilla notes. The dates are fairly present and contribute a nice fruity sweetness that keeps the tea from being too one dimensional. There’s a soft pastry or cake like quality to the tea too, which I think adds to the intended idea of an “Oreo Cookie”. The black base is light, but still present. The doesn’t taste really equal an Oreo cookie for me, but in my case I guess that’s a good thing! As it cooled down, it did taste a little watery so next time I make it I think I’ll use more leaf or a slightly longer steep time.

Ultimately; I think I’ll enjoy going through this one – but I’m unsure as of right now if I would repurchase it; it’s nice enough but not anything super unique, and since I have many other chocolate black teas I don’t think I would feel as if I was losing out by not having more of this around.

After meeting Kittenna at Tea Desire for a swap, I then rushed my ass off to get home (Day #5 of the Christmas exchange from Momo was waiting in the mailbox for me when I arrived at home) and change into something appropriate for my interview… Which happened to be at Tea Desire, the place I had just come from.

I think the interview went really well. The woman who interviewed me is someone who I already know fairly well and who I’ve had many good tea related (and a few unrelated) conversations with already. It was kind of interesting because, obviously, she knew I was super familiar with tea already and about Tea Desire’s blends in particular (I’m in there at least once a week to buy tea and sometimes two or three times just for tea to go). It was kind of funny because some of her interview questions she didn’t even have to ask because she already knew the answers. I think that’ll probably work in my favour.

Regardless, wish me good luck! She said that I’d likely hear back by Monday! How cool would it be if I got the job? :D

And… Of course right after my interview I had to buy tea. She knows me well enough, I think, to get I wasn’t “sucking up”. It’s literally just a compulsion I have every single time I walk into the store. So, I got 50g of Sweet Toffee Rooibos and this as a tea to go latte.

Taste wise, it was pretty decent. Just a touch bitter, but I’m 90% sure that’s because I left the tea bag in for a very long time. It was a very nice London Fog though, essentially. Definitely not something I’ll stock from them because I have better Earl Greys at home, but something nice to sip on while out doing errands and things like that!

Cold Brew Sipdown (182/184)!

In total, this sat in the fridge cold brewing for pretty much a full 24 hours. When I set it up, I actually thought I had much more of it, and I was expecting to still have a bunch left – but somewhat thankfully there wasn’t as much as I thought and I got to dump the last of it in the mason jar!

This is pretty good cold brewed; I think better than it is hot, anyway. Hot I get this really funky, ‘soapy’ after taste that competes so much with the orange and the cinnamon, and all the other fruits. As a cold brew, the main flavours of this are orange/banana as immediate flavours and this incredibly long, lingering cinnamon/clove aftertaste that’s just really lovely and adds a cool dynamic to to the fruitiness of it. And there’s absolutely no soap flavour.

I wont get this again; because while it’s a neat cold brew it’s not overwhelmingly special either, and also because the fear of the lack of “soap” flavour being a fluke it holding me back a bit too. I think I may have sent this to a few other people, and based on this cup my recommendation to them is to try cold brewing the sample instead of having it hot.

Had this about a month ago and thought it tasted soapy, so I hadn’t touched it since but I was portioning some out for a couple people a few days ago (most of it for Robyn), and realized I should try it again so that’s what I did last night.

Actually, it’s not as bad as I remembered it being. In fact, it was mostly creamy orange and rooibos, with just a touch of cinnamon to create this kind if “warm” nighttime cup of comfort. I mean, it wasn’t exceptional but the last bit of it (yay for not having a ton left) might be drinkable enough for me to not have to send it all away…

Tre was being really mean about the fact I’m sick and have had nothing but tea and breakfast foods to eat all day. He stole all the pillows from the couch I’ve situated myself on and was being an ass and laughing at how it was really arduous for me to go and pick them from the ground. So – in the spirit of revenge I used the only weapon I had; spoilers about the new Sherlock episode.

While that was happening, this tea was steeping. 1 1/2 tsp. used for a 12 oz. stein. Tea Desire suggests 1 tsp. for 8 oz., so I just upped the leaf amount a little bit. Same proportions I’d use for Victoria Mint which is from Tea Desire, and which I happen to adore. I used boiling water and this steeped for five minutes – which is on the low end of their suggested steep time spectrum. The steeped colour is a rather nice orange.

The smell is more cinnamon than I thought it’d be – even though the packaging describes this as a cinnamon orange tea, that doesn’t come across abundantly in the dry smell. It’s also creamy orange and something else super familiar that I can’t put my finger on.

Taste wise, it’s a little bit weaker than I would have thought. Maybe I did under leaf it or perhaps I should have left it to steep longer. Initial taste is creamy orange in a slightly artificial way, and then a wave of cinnamon. Tickly cinnamon that does not totally mesh with the orange. Typically orange and cinnamon compliment each other; but here it feels like two competing flavours that are both kinda, well, ‘off’.

I also get the hint of something kinda soapy – similar to what I sometimes experience with DAVIDsTEA’s Blueberry Jam. I double checked both ingredients lists though, and neither tea share any listed ingredients. As far as the other listed ingredients in the tea go, I can vaguely taste the banana but that’s about it. Like I said though, this seems rather weak (especially for a Tea Desire blend). Not really “magical”.

Right now I feel like this is something I would not stock again and that will probably take a while to get through – that being said, I don’t find it terrible and I’m going to do some experimenting to see if I can make it more enjoyable. Perhaps more leaf (though it worries me that that could make the soapy taste more prominent) or a longer steep time (which presents the same fear)…

Sidenote: I just removed a whole bunch (ok, like… 5) of teas from my cupboard! I posted several in the Take It Away thread and got a quick response, so went and dug them out and because of the quick response was able to parcel everything up to get mailed off. I don’t know if I’ll have time to go to the post office tomorrow before I leave for vacation, but they’re all officially out of my cupboard which is good enough for me!

Japanese Cherry, Lime Gelato, Cherry Cola, S’mores – this is basically goodbye!

really exactly as the Tea Desire label suggests. Very light and soothing with just the right amount of toasty-ness. Very enjoyable any time of day.

thank you MissB for this!

dry this smells like xmas to me. oranges and fruit…. spices, (clove especially) and seasonal zippiness. has a lovely balanced smell. however, the balance and robustness goes away when the water is added!!!! it’s a misleading tea! no fair =0(

it’s not bad…. just not what the smell advertised. humph. i think it has unrealized aspirations….

i’m tired. it’s late. i should be sleeping….. i REALLY should be sleeping, instead i am going to enjoy one last moment for myself before the sun rises on another gong show tomorrow…..

i have no idea how this tea accomplishes oreo, but it does. i actually feel the need to confess that i have always been an oreo brat….. everyone knows the only reason the chocolate cookies are there is to hold the yummy icing in place.

i would unscrew the two cookies, scrape the icing off of each with my teeth, then chuck the cookies. you could argue that it was wasteful, but i would argue that in fact it was a reliable method of sustainable caloric intake =0) i could eat more icing while eating fewer cookies, see? perfect sense!

that said, i was always in trouble over it though….. well, mostly just when i stuck them back together and put them back in the bag. it’s kindof amazing i don’t have a back condition from the amount i got spanked as a kid, lol!!!

this tea is white icing all the way…. no chocolate cookie. but that’s okay because i’d have to pick out the chocolate bits and mail them back to MissB. hee hee hee…..

NOW sleeping is not optional.

Used my whole sample of this one from MissB tonight, since it was just over a teaspoon (more like a heaping teaspoon) and I was making a mug of this.

The dates are an unusual addition, and really, the dates are mostly what I taste in this tea. While I love dates, and this is a yummy date tea, it is not really terribly oreo, though I imagine the dates are there to enhance the chocolate cookie part of the tea. That’s my thinking anyway.

It’s a decent tea for how it tastes, rather than what it is supposed to taste like. I did have this with only sugar, and then I added milk, and I like it better with milk.

I probably would not buy this one on my own, but I do like it and am glad to have tried it.

This is yet another sample from the extremely generous MissB. And it is definitely an interesting cup. More than anything I am tasting the Pu’erh. It is earthy for sure but also there is a hint of dark chocolate that creeps in around mid-sip and lingers in the aftertaste. I am not sure why but I expected more of a milk chocolate flavor. Nonetheless, this does bring to mind chocolate truffles, just ones made with dark chocolate. Thank you MissB for this tasting experience.

MissB sent me a sample of this tea and as I sit waiting for the tea to cool, first thing I notice is that it actually does smell like an Oreo Cookie. Definitely a good start. Unfortunately, the taste is a bit watered down in comparison to the smell. There is a slight chocolate cookie taste but no oreo cream center, although I suppose that can be solved with some milk. A pleasant enough cup just not oreo cookie. Thank you MissB for sending me a sample to try!

Sipdown!! (158)

Thank you Roswell Strange for sending this my way but I finally got through the sample and I am glad to see it go. It smelled so delicious but each time ended up tasting like a generic grocery store tea. At least it was consistent!

Why do you insist on tasting like Tetley’s Orange Pekoe? When I read the name “Velvety Vanilla” and smell a delicious vanilla scent, I expect some vanilla in my cup. Instead I got generic Orange Pekoe tea. I have one cup of this left and I may just drink it down to get it out of my cupboard. Thank you Roswell Strange for sending me this sample – if nothing else, you helped me permanently cross this off my list :)

Well my taste buds must be off because I am trying this tea that Roswell Strange so generously shared and I am tasting Tetley’s Orange Pekoe tea. That can’t be right. It even smells like the Tetley tea to me. No vanilla in this cup anywhere. This is really quite strange. Oh well, perhaps I will have better luck in the future. Luckily I have at least one more cup in the sample to try and get this one right. Thank you Roswell Strange for sharing :)

Sipdown (104)!

You can tell I’m not in the mood to write anything out today since i’m just copy/pasting my jot notes…

- Very rosey/floral with a sharp, tart kiwi/hibiscus type flavour
- Just a little melony
- Pretty well fine with finishing this off; will likely revisit in the summer

I think I’m ready to be done with this tea. It’s good, but it’s not the right season anymore and I’ve gone through a lot of leaf now, and am just kind of… Over it? Maybe after I sip this down I’ll revisit it in the summer…

Anyway; my whole family made fun of me because the first thing I did Saturday after we had driven into town was dig the tea out of my backpack and set up a cold brew. But come on; like I wasn’t going to have a cold brew ready for me for Sunday morning and the drive back into the city. That’s not even an option.

Taste wise this was a little thin: I wasn’t usually my regular pitcher or my mason jar so I had to use a different measurement of leaf, and I got the measurement wrong. Consequently, mostly this tasted like rosey kiwi water. But not horrible over all.

After Cuppa’T shopping I was supposed to go to my Mom’s for an hour or so and exchange Christmas gifts and pick up the tea she bought for me from Disney – but when we got there she wasn’t home even though I’d told her when I was coming. We called her, and turns out she was at Costco and wouldn’t been home for hours! My Dad got all pissed off about it and said we couldn’t wait for her so we just left. I tried not to seem to bummed out, but I was bummed out…

Just upset with her for not planning better so she was home, and upset with my Dad for being impatient, and upset in general because I haven’t seen her in close to half a year. But anyway; that concludes the trip to Regina! That’s it; all my tasting notes from when I was down there.

And we’re travelling back to Halloween, ‘cause that’s when I last wrote tasting notes! I ended up doing like “half” Halloween teas on Halloween, and then half caffeine free/lighter teas to counter balance. This is one of the caffeine free ones I picked!

I feel like maybe it can count as “Halloween” very, very loosely ‘cause it’s almost candy like in the sweet, fruity flavour (although there is a sharper sour/tartness at the front of the sip but that was even fairly toned down). Can we pretend that it was a cup of “Sour Patch Kids Tea”? Does that make it more themed to the holiday? That’s what I’m gonna tell myself. No talking me out of it!

But other than the more muted than usual beginning tartness, this had some very beautiful sweeter kiwi and melon notes, with a faint floral rose finish. It looked very pretty steeping too – there was a whole rosebud in the leaf, and the longer it steeped the more petals separated from the bud until it looked like I was steeping a handful of blush pink rose petals.

Get on that aesthetic.

Oh man, why do I have this rated so high? I mean, it’s really good – but it’s not that good. Gonna scale back my rating to a more appropriate number…

Anyway; I made this one hot to sip on as something vibrant and fun to end my day on, but because I know it can get really sour really quickly ’cause of some of the fruits in it I underleafed it to cut back on that. The result was a really tasty, vibrant fruity drink! It had a punchy quality to it, but a bit more tropical with some super fresh kiwi notes and some lighter melon notes supporting that in the undertone with this reaching rose flavour lightly spread out over the whole sip. Floral, but not overly. Sweet and playfully sour.

It was very Spring/Summer in vibe, and it’s getting to really be more Autumn in season so it felt a touch out of place, but it was good. This is still at its best iced, but when you make sure to dial back the leaf it can produce a nice hot cup as well.

Hey, would you look at that! It’s 2AM and I’m finally getting around to tasting notes for the teas I had today (technically yesterday, because it’s 2AM). That’s maybe a little sad…

I cold brewed this one, and really sadly the tin is now practically empty. There’s enough left for about one more cold brew and now I have to decide whether I want to restock this one, and I’m pretty sure I do but that means yet another shopping trip to yet another part of town, and I don’t feel like I want to do that…

Hooray crippling anti-socialness! But not really. I should go to Tea Desire; I want to restock this one and Sweet Toffee anyway, and tomorrow is payday so it’s probably the best day to do it; but damn I don’t feel up to the post office, grocery shopping, DAVIDsTEA, and Tea Desire especially because it means busing and the city recently changed all the bus routes and I haven’t learned them all yet! Wah wah wah.

Anyway, this cold brew was amazing! Vibrant, mouth watering and insanely juicy kiwi/melon/pear with just a little rose petal dusting to give it an added dimension. It’s a little sour, I’ve give it that – but the flavours are really dynamic and scream summer, and on the whole it’s sweet enough to counterbalance any sourness. More so it’s just like juice or Kool-Aid or something.

Yeah, I totally gotta get more of this. It’s just a question of when, really…

Backlog from yesterday!

This was a cold brew that I forgot was cold brewing so in total it sat for 20ish hours doing its thing. I poured it into a water bottle and enjoyed sipping on it during the day while I was out with Kristina. Very juicy and refreshing with a strong kiwi taste; a lot better cold brewed than hot too (hot it’s very sour).

This will be a summer staple!

Made this up when I first woke up, along with the first mug of Paris that I initially botched. So, this also got an ungodly steep time but I found I was ok with that because it’s an all fruit blend.

Also, I wasn’t making this to drink hot anyway. After my semi-failure at doing a tea slushie yesterday I decided that I’d try making some different kinds and this was the first that immediately came to mind as something I wanted to test out that way. And I have to say, I did a much better job at taking this out of the freezer before it became a giant, frozen ice cube.

This totally gives off a slushie sort of feeling! Yay for semi frozen tea!

I’ve had this a few ways now: cold brewed, hot, and now in slushie format. Quite honestly, it was best as a cold brew (much less sour) and worst as a hot tea (way too sour). As a slushie it’s just right in the middle. It’s like drinking a melon/kiwi slushie that was very fruity/flavourful and then you added in a pump or two of that ‘Shocker’ flavouring that just makes things sour. I like shushies with shocker in them (sometimes I get like 5 or 6 pumps of the stuff) so it works perfectly!

Yummy! I think this would be an amazing treat in the summer time.

Backlog?

I made a timolino of this early this afternoon to take with to my Aunt Nancy’s for Christmas dinner (hoping it wasn’t rude to bring a thermos of my own tea). I wanted to continue the pear teas so this one was next up!

I’m so glad I wasn’t feeling sick today, because my Aunt is an amazing home cook and I didn’t want to not be able to eat anything especially after she’d thought of inviting me over for Christmas so I wasn’t alone, even though we’re not too close. Turns out I did end up passing on a lot of the main meal. She’d forgotten I’m strictly vegetarian and made turkey…

But not to worry! She also made a totally vegetarian meat loaf dish, so I could have that! Except, the main ingredient in it was mushrooms and I have a severe mushroom allergy. The evening kind of went off and on like that: we’d be having a great time and then something would ruin it.

She invited me over for Christmas, but then the meal was something I couldn’t have. But not to worry, she’d made a delicious dessert and plate of home baking to take home with me! She went on for a solid HOUR gossiping about my mom’s failed relationships (and having no sensitivity) and my other Aunt’s, but then she Skyped them and I got to talk (sorta) face to face with everyone whom I haven’t seen in months! She wanted to play Jenga some other games, but then she kept this up for hours and I couldn’t leave. See, I don’t drive so my Uncle had picked me up to bring me over, and was also my way home: but you can’t just walk out when your host who is having so much fun adding things on to the evening is the one bringing you home…

And then, finally the evening culminated with hers wanting to watch The Devil Wears Prada, which kept me there several more hours. It’s a really good movie, though & everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves throughout it which I was surprised about because my Aunt and Uncle are decidedly and painfully homophobic and there’s an assumedly gay character in the movie. That’s a bit of an uncomfortable area for me to be stuck in, given that I’m not straight. I thought things were going well, but as soon as the movie was over they just went on and on about the “faggot” character, and I just had to silently sit through it.

It’s mostly a generational thing, I feel. But anyway it all worked out I guess with (mostly) no harm, no foul. They did keep me there so long I didn’t have time for my last pear tea of the day, so I’m a bit disappointed about that. I’m home now though, and can finally sleep and I still appreciate the effort to make a nice home cooked meal for me, and the games, and the fact they’d thought enough of me to have me over so I didn’t have a lonely Christmas. Family can be stressful sometimes, though. I hope everyone else here on Steepster (really, just everyone in general) had a lovely Christmas and no dreadful family situations to contend with.

EDIT: OH! The tea!

This was the first time I’ve ever had this blend hot (normally it’s a cold brew, for me) so I figured it’d be quite different. And I was correct in my thinking. For preparation I used 2 tsp. of leaf steeped in my 12 oz. timolino with boiling water for eight minutes. There were two whole rosebuds in the leaf I used, and the steeped colour was a pale pink.

Taste wise, it had very tart and kind of sour notes initially. There was a strong presence of kiwi and what felt like sour watermelon candy in the initial bit of the sip, and then that kind of mellowed out to a sweet and juicy pear/kiwi tastes with floral rose notes for depth. It was good, but a little “high strung” in the initial sip for my liking. Glad I tried it hot though, because now I know that the best way for me to enjoy this one is cold brewed like I’ve been doing: it’s got a whole different taste profile that way.

Poured the rest of what was cold brewed into my water bottle this morning and took it with me to work. It was just over a cups worth. Definitely couldn’t let Tre get the rest of this delicious tea while I was out at work.

It’s not as cold as it was last night, likely because it’s been sitting next to my till all day – so as I’m drinking it right now it’s more room temperature. This afternoon, I’m picking up more of the rose in the blend – and the watermelon is coming off like those sweet five cent watermelon candies. Yummy!

Also, I’m starting to do my prep. for closing tonight and part of that is updating the daily promo shelf. Each day there’s a “theme” and things featured on that shelf relating to the theme are slightly discounted. Well, tomorrow’s theme is “Wine Calendars”. What the hell do I do for wine calendars!? We don’t even sell any wine calenders… The closest would be Pepsi or Coke calendars – and that’s just because they’re beverages.

Seriously, who comes up with these promo ideas!?