Tea Guys

SIPDOWN! 233! I had the last of this sample from shmiracles cold brewed to see how it fared and man it’s pretty darn delicious. Maybe it’s because we were out in the sun this afternoon but it’s tyeh perfect tea after spending the afternoon out. Sweet without sweetner and just a little tartness to eek through. Again. not so much with the kiwi but the strawberry taste is yummy!

thank you shmiracles for this one! I tried it hot brewed tonight before i’ll cold brew it just to see how it goes. This one has actual little freeze dried strawberries in it, which i think is what makes the blend so very truly strawberry. The down side? Not so much kiwi. There is a tangyness there that i interpret as the kiwi, but it’s not quiet kiwi. :) Still though, pleased with this one as the strawberry is very delicious. I’ll see how it fares as a cold brew to see if it will work as a summer brew :)

i decided to continue my chai journey! thanks to the yummy one i had earlier today.
but this was totally meh.

Bring It On Down To Veganville!

little balls of yarn!
http://instagram.com/p/W4rekMoc-w/
yummy yarn.

you guys are right! this is a very nice chocolate cup!
the slight touch of vanilla really rounds out the chocolate flavor. warm and nutty is a good and accurate description. and i’m glad i have more of this left so i can make it with a little milk and agave.

i keep drinking this one and i WANT to love it so much because it is the tea that was recommended to me and the reason i placed my Tea Guys order in the first place. and it has all these great elements that i should be enticed by. but for some reason it doesn’t excite me. OBVIOUSLY i need to drink it with milk and sugar next time, like a proper cake!

the first time i had this tea i was so surprised and delighted that it smelled so much like Apricot**, the baby in Strawberry Shortcake cartoons.
but i made some last night and then sipped it but didn’t drink most of it. so this morning i dumped it out and made a fresh mug before work, and even now i’m not jazzed or anything about drinking it. i guess i’m just not in the mood for this tea as much as i thought i was? (the weather is going to be 60 today! and it was a wacky blizzardy type weather just 4 days ago)

I KNOW i should have saved last night’s cup and iced it. i bet this is a great great summer iced tea!

it’s a bold happy apricot jam sort of scent and the black base mixes with it in a very friendly way.

**Apricot
Apricot is a little white-haired baby with an unusual vocabulary of oversized words. Apricot and her pet bunny Hopsalot lived in Big Apple City, down the hall from Lemon Meringue and T.N. Honey, and like them, she re-located to Strawberryland at the conclusion of Strawberry Shortcake’s visit.

i love when i open pandora and it just knows that i wanna hear The Smiths.
i love being able to walk to work and still be on time.
i love that it’s 50 degrees out and i have a midday errand to run.

Morrissey, i know you are a maybe-racist, but you are also endearingly nicknamed a “prophet for the fourth sex” and i think you would like this maple sugar tea. please have some with me. it’s dark and sweet and just a little bitter. and i’m pretty sure it’s vegan. (Bring It On Down To Veganville!)

it’s probably a little bitter cuz i over steeped it a tad. or over leafed it? it was one of those scenarios where you have just enough tea left for either 1 cup and a mini cup. or 2 weak cups, or 1 strong cup. like a scoop and a smidgen of leaf left. (probably should have saved it for a random blendo cup oh well)

Tea Guys teas are nothing like David’s Tea teas. the scent of the teas are often so strong it almost hurts, and the flavor is always very tea forward. here i smell the maple very strong, but mostly taste the strong black base first. this is a good thing! no fluff or mirrors or artificalness. just maple maple maple and tea tea tea.

now let’s dance.

What Difference Does It Make?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7MN5aJBQVs
All men have secrets and here is mine
So let it be known
For we have been through hell and high tide
I can surely rely on you …
And yet you start to recoil
Heavy words are so lightly thrown
But still I’d leap in front of a flying bullet for you

So, what difference does it make ?
So, what difference does it make ?
It makes none
But now you have gone
And you must be looking very old tonight

it smells great dry, but has a weird smell in the cup.
i keep drinking it but something is off…
i’ll brew another cup tomorrow ad make sure the strainer and everything is super clean before i do just in case.
weird start to my monday.

i think calling this ‘evening escape’ is strange as i would never really drink this type of tea in the evening. but maybe it’s like you can travel to an evening-time mood anytime of the day with this tea?
oh i see, you can end the day with a cozy sit by the fire. this is a fireside blanket in a cup.

it’s a lapsang blend. and i love lapsang blends. it has some little floral notes. it is a cheerier and lighter lapsang than we might be used to.

This is a rather long analytic post, skip down for the actual tea review. I’ve been a bit confused trying to identify this company as they seem to have some multiple personality issues, possibly due to private labeling?

This and the Coconut Truffle by Tea Guys (www.teaguys.com) was my very first foray into gourmet loose leaf teas after my first broad order from Twinings of 8 different varieties of bagged teas which I was very happy with.

I had been looking at all the major brands of loose leaf (before I found this wonderful community) and became somewhat perplexed with the pricing structure in moving from the 20 bags per box at $2.99 a box to the huge variation in pricing loose leaf. Understanding the yield per ounce vs bag was my next challenge.

So being the Excel geek that I am, I started a spreadsheet plugging in the selling price at however many ounces then dividing down to get a per ounce price from them all and found the going rate to be around $3-$4 per ounce. Then reading around I gathered there are about 8-10 teaspoons per ounce (with usually 2-3 steepings per teaspoon).

Using this formula (9 teaspoons per ounce and 2 steeps per teaspoon)
I arrived at about $0.075 a cup for my Twinings bags of 20 at $2.99 a box.
For most of the other teas at $3/oz a cup worked out to $0.167

Which brings me (finally, sorry!) to The Tea Guys and their Tease brand which at $9.95 for a 6oz bag ($1.67/oz) works out to $0.093 per cup. So this is what prompted me to order my first loose leaf from them and I have been so happy with it!

THE TEA
The 6oz tea comes in an easy to open ziplock foil pouch for resealing and as soon as I opened it I was OVERWHELMED with the aroma. The fruitiness was stronger than a really strong potpourri and I was a little afraid it might be too much until I brewed my first 24oz pot. It was rich and aromatic with the peach being pretty strong but not nearly as overwhelming as the first whiff seemed. There is a spicy undertone from the ginger and the Darjeeling interweaves with the other flavors.

I love it with cream, sweetener, and a touch of honey. The only drawback is there is a lot of debris so use a fine mesh filter. I get a nearly as strong 2nd steeping in my 24oz pot from one heaping teaspoon.

Delicious very strong undertone of the rich cocoa with just a hint of the coconut. Definitely recommend having with cream (this tea prompted me to go out and get real cream – the one that says “whipping cream” on the carton). It’s a lovely dessert tea with a nice smooth black tea flavoring under it all. I didn’t realize it had honeybush in it till I went back to write this review and read it but in retrospect I think I could sense it smoothing everything out (I love honeybush).

Thanks for the sample My Friend Rashad! Apparently I am a big fan of nutty teas. This one is good times! Nice and nutty and creamy too and the green tea isn’t overly astringent. Perfect!

Thanks to Courtney (and Shmiracles!) for sharing this one! I am always looking for delicious rooibos blends to drink in the evening, and this sounded intriguing.

I always WANT to like carrot cake more than I do. This smelled almost exactly like carrot cake, so that was exciting. However, the medicinal rooibos flavor overpowers the carrot cake that I smell. I still enjoyed two steeps of this, though, so it’s definitely one of the better rooibos blends that I’ve tried.

Wow, this one smells good! My Mom and I were just talking about those little leaf-shaped maple sugar candies that you can get in Pennsylvania, and the smell of this tea reminds me exactly of those candies. The flavor is more like a warm, thick maple syrup rather than those little sugary sweet candies, though. It definitely tastes like real maple syrup – nothing artificial in this flavor. I wish I had made some tea to go with our french toast brunch this morning! Thanks Alphakitty!

-Dry blend has medium greenish-black tea leaves with pieces of flavoring, cocoa nibs and small red berries.
-Dry leaves smell like rich maple syrup candies. Tea liquor aroma is of chocolate and black tea.
-Tea liquor is a thick golden brown color with a small amount of oily sheen on top.
-Robust black tea flavor with a sweet and heavy maple syrup finish.
-Best with milk and sweetener.
-Very good tea. Rich and sweet flavor. Reminiscent of real maple syrup.

Grabbed a sample of this when I stocked up on Maple Sugar. I mean coconut and chocolate, how could I resist? The dry leaves smell so good, like chocolate cake soaked in coconut cream. I love to do cakes sans icing with coconut cream, you brush it onto the dry cake over and over until it’s just oozing with creamy coconut goodness. Mmm!

This is a very chocolatey tea! And not fake chocolate, but nice dark roasty cocoa notes. The coconut kind of plays second fiddle to the chocolate but it’s still there! This reminds me of a more dessert-y version of Yunnan’s Fable/Coconut Cacao (which I am 99% sure are the same teas). Very nice with a little cream and sugar!

Thanks Alphakitty! I was excited to try this tea becuase papaya and ginger sound amazing together. First taste this tea reminded me of bubblegum O.o I can catch the ginger and some fruity notes. I actually really like this tea :]

I’m so surprised this one wasn’t in the database! I skipped over it on my first order with Tea Guys, but had to snag at least a sample with my giant bag of Maple Sugar. Mm, Maple Sugar…

But I digress! Lime teas often don’t work for me, they taste a little artificial and odd. But this one is lovely! Bright, sweet and tart key lime with a hint of cream. Funnily enough, this tea has a different name on my sample—Key Lime Ceylon instead of Key Lime Pie—but I definitely think there’s some creamy aspect in here.

It’s really fantastic iced, I have a hard time with lime teas hot but I think this would even work that way with a little cream to make it even more pie-y. Thankfully their samples have 3-4 cups so I can play around with this a bit!

This was a lovely gift!

Beautiful smooth peachy taste. Couldn’t ask for better

Thank you Dhart 1214 for this Sample Tea!

Last night I was getting ready to meet up with my daughter’s big van for the 50 mile trek to St. Luke in Erie for Vesper’s with Bishop Basil. (It’s the eve of the beginning of the New Year on the Orthodox liturgical calendar which is celebrated with the Vespers and a picnic today.)
It can be a long drive with lots of grandkids bumping along calling requests from the back of the van to the front (although last night there were only 2 toddlers, 2 little boys, 2 teenagers and 2 mom/grandma’s).
I planned well, brewing a double tall insulated mug of this Chocolate Delight Tea. It would be my grandmother medicinal that could calm my nerves come what may. I would be prepared to sit in my seat and sip away, off in my own tea world while havoc reigned behind me.
For five minutes or so I tried to have a civil conversation with my daughter about how little sleep she was getting with the 18 month waking up at 3am ready to play.
Soon, a little voice over my left ear kept saying
“Is it pretty my precious?”, and other creepy phrases like that.
“Oh, I remarked, The Hobbit?” Ah yes.
The rest of the journey was quiet on my part, with little voices over my left ear and a big mug of tea to sip.

The tea was…PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE!

I picked the right tea for the right occasion. (Pat on back)
There had been no fooling around when I brewed the tea.
I didn’t taste the hot tea when I ran out the door…but I had sweetened it, steeped it a little long and added cream.
I’m so glad that I added both because it was soooo goood!
The chocolate flavor wasn’t sour or fake tasting but rich and deep like a chocolate Sacher Torte.
The barley adds a warm fullness to the tea and the apples are something I usually don’t like, but here I think they add sweetness without being detected as apple flavor. The cocoa flakes and beans…no complaints! Ha! The more the merrier!
(I especially love the barley in the tea…such a good move!)

I couldn’t resist giving my daughter a sip (and I’m a germ-a-phobe…I don’t share cups!!!) and she said she would buy this tea too because of the barley with the chocolate!

Very nice.

I love grapefruit—pretty much any tea with grapefruit on the ingredients list is an instant buy. This is actually the reason I decided to order with Tea Guys, and for some reason I saved it for last. And of course cold brewed it because, well, I freaking love cold brews. Also, hot grapefruit doesn’t work for me. It needs to be icy cold always!

This is definitely very grapefruity! Tart and a bit bitter, but that’s the way grapefruit should be. It’s quite tasty, sweet and grassy from the green. It’s also quite floral as well, which is interesting. It’s more grapefruit rose than straight-up grapefruit and reminds me a lot of their Mango Rose. I think I still prefer Lupicia’s Grapefruit Green so far, but this one is pretty darn close!

Another gorgeous blend from Tea Guys, full of so many different pretty colors! This is also another one I only got a sample of, which of course I’m regretting already. I feel another order there coming on soon…

This tea is everything I wanted DT’s Strawberry Ginger to be. It’s light and sweet, with an almost honey-like taste from the white. The ginger is strong but not overpowering, giving the tea a bit of bite. It matches well with the tropical flavors from the papaya and pineapple, which keeps this from being a kind of generic pina colada-esque blend. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the addition of ginger makes this quite unique!

Eight ounces of boiling water; 1 1/2 teaspoons of tea; three minutes. I added about a teaspoon of black sage honey and a couple of tablespoons of whole milk.

This is tasty and light. Coconut Truffle is a nice afternoon tea. I love the fragrance of toasty coconut wafting in the air as the flavor crosses my taste buds! The chocolate beckons for some spice so next time I brew it, I will add some red pepper flakes.

This is such a gorgeous tea. The green and white leaves are full and fluffy, strewn with cornflower and marigold petals. The rosebuds are large and intact, and… yellow! Rose in tea is always pink/red (or at least the many rose blends I’ve tried), so I was surprised to see yellow ones here. It adds an extra pop of color to an already-colorful blend. I know the look of a tea doesn’t really affect the taste much, but starting out with something this pretty definitely sets the mood in a way.

When I had Lupicia’s Mango Oolong, it tasted very rose-y to me and I loved it. I think I like floral a lot more than most people, so of course I set out to find a mango rose tea. There are quite a few out there, but I don’t like placing orders for only one tea so I decided to wait around for the right blend. Thankfully Tea Guys had many kinds that seemed to call to me, so into the cart this went—and it showed up 3 days later, pretty fast shipping.

I cold brewed this since I love cold rose teas, and hot mango has never really worked for me. It doesn’t really smell like rose or mango either in leaf form or after a 12-hour steep, and the color is so pale, like dew on the ends of grass. But it definitely tastes rosy and fruity! The white/green blend is what I taste at the beginning of the sip, a little grassy and fruity. Not mango fruity, but that kind of generic soft fruit taste you get from some whites. Then the mango comes in, juicy but not that strong, followed by soft rose. It’s really quite floral, not exactly a surprise with so many rosebuds in there, but the rose is at the end and it doesn’t overpower the other flavors. The mango is subtler than I thought it would be, but I had the same feeling when I tried the 52teas Mango Ice Cream so maybe my mango-related tastebuds are off? It’s delicious, just not as boldly mango as I expected.