Tealicious Tea Company

I’m almost out of this! I have three, maybe four teaspoons left. I should get more next time I’m over there, stuff’s delicious. I think I’ll add it back to my shopping list right now. 1001 Nights too, because last I checked I think I’m starting to run low on it too.

Plus, I want to try Tealicious’ Cream Earl Grey. …And vanilla. And blueberry. I wouldn’t mind finding a vanilla black staple. The ones I’ve tried so far tend to fall flat. I love my bold vanilla flavours. Same with blueberries.

This tea is a bit mouth-drying today, but still lovely. Sipping it before I go to campus and dive into my statistics work. Maybe I’ll stop off at Tealicious on my way back? If I don’t stay too late. Or maybe just on Friday.

Sipping this as a morning tea today. The black base makes it a good morning choice, and the maple (especially in the morning!) is always welcome. Who needs pancakes and syrup when you’ve got this? Mm.

This is to help me concentrate on typing out my geomorphology glacier limits and area averages report.

I made this again, and divided some to try it with milk (I didn’t want to add milk to ALL of it because I’m not really in the mood for milk in my tea [I hardly am {see: never, sans chai}]). You can still smell the maple, that’s a good sign… And the maple taste is actually a bit more evident. The milk mellowed the tea but not the maple. This’ good. It’s still not strong, but it’s slightly more evident in the aftertaste.

I actually made it with a cooler temperature and longer steeping time today, just to see if I could get any stronger of a taste. There’s a moderate difference (not dramatic, but not weak at least).

Maybe I’ll try sugar. But I’m enjoying my tea as it is right now, so perhaps another time.

I’m going to start out by saying that the smell of the dry tealeaves is strong. And it is NOT the artificial maple smell so many Canadians are used to in buying their fake Doesn’t Actually Contain Any Maple syrup (because as well all know, the ones that ACTUALLY contain maple are USELESSLY expensive and usually reserved for the tourists, while packaged in nice maple leaf-shaped bottles; they’re also a fraction of a size of the two-litre “Pancake Syrup” you can usually buy [which, at least, doesn’t even TRY to claim that it contains any maple]).

This is MAPLE. MAPLEMAPLEMAPLE. I passed it around for smells and got some “woah strong”s (although most were a good “woah strong”, because it is delicious, delicious maple). I realize I’m not really sure if I can smell the actual tea used, but there is a ‘down to earth’ness to the smell which I think may be the tea smell mixing in perfectly with the maple smell.

I walked over to grab my steeped tea and didn’t even need to lean down to smell it—sniffed the wet tea leaves, and the smell was good and strong. The tea itself—mmmm. This tea, I predict, would make a very good breakfast tea. Especially for people who need to cut some sugar and starch out of their diet and need to stay away from pancakes and maple syrup.

I’m really hoping the taste is as evident and wonderful as it smells. The taste usually has to be pretty strong for me to really like it, and most flavoured teas I end up drinking, the taste is too weak for my personal preference. Pleasepleaseplease…

Just tasting the tea. Astringent, a tad bitter even though I only steeped for five minutes. There’s a maple aftertaste. I’m thinking I should have steeped this at a slightly lower temperature (that can be could for flavoured blacks, I’ve been told).

I let it cool a bit, and that definitely made a difference. The maple lingers all through the taste, and I would like to commend the very nice base black tea, because it is quite nice (and the bitter has faded mostly with the heat). I think next time, a lower temperature for a slightly weaker tea taste to see if I can taste the maple more.

The maple that I CAN taste is delicious. Yum. Noting, though, that this tea is not sweet. It’s just maple, not any sort of maple sweetness. Although now that I think about it, I bet the maple taste may come out more with sugar. Maybe even milk (the black tea used seems like it should be able to stand up to both). But I didn’t add any myself. Maybe next time.

Finishing up the last of my sample. I still maintain that it tastes rather… gingeraleish. Plus, it went right through my infuser. Again. The Libre is simply no match for it. I’m makin’ a mess everywhere aaaah.

I feel bad that this one just isn’t too good, because it makes Tealicious look bad, since only two other teas from her have been reviewed on this site (both by me, hahah) and so although I really liked those ones, the ratio of tea I liked to tea I didn’t like is quite small. This will have to be rectified by buying more Tealicious tea.

In the tea’s defence, the sample did come from the big, huge tea tin, that has probably been opened quite a few times (Air! Light! Moisture!). So the tightly sealed, packaged-to-buy ginger tea could taste FABULOUS for all I know. And I will maintain that until proven otherwise.

I stored this in the little kitty tin I bought from Tealicious (I broke down and bought a few of the tiny tea tins for travel-tea purposes), and now that it’s empty, I’m to bring it home, descent it, and fill it with another tea to drink on the go. But what, I wonder… Hmm… Maple?

On a different note, I seriously oversteeped this (eight minutes, near ten? I’m not sure), but it didn’t get bitter at all.

Today was a good day. I got tea, I got dice (you can never have enough dice; these ones are blue flecked with gold!), and I got comics. No, I didn’t just get comics either, I completed a comic series I have had, incomplete, for many years. Hurrah (just Deadpool The Circle Chase, nothing exciting or expensive)!

I can definitely smell the ginger in this, although it is a bit ‘dry’ I suppose (gingeraleish?). I had to be sure about the smell, so I got a hunk of real ginger out of my freezer (yes, I have a giant hunk of gingerroot in my freezer—it’s best not to ask) and grated some onto a spoon to get the smell going. My ginger smells a bit more ‘gingerbread ginger’ish.

I figure it might just be the smell of the black tea. Hmm. But there is ginger in it! You can SEE the hunks. They’re not huge, but there’s a lot of them.

You can smell the ginger in the tea… Not as strong, but that’s because there’s a good ‘tea’ smell in there too. Still slightly gingerale smelling (but I think what I mean by that is a sort of carbonated smell—I have no idea). The more you smell the more the ginger smell comes out. …Which is making me want to just sit here and sniff this all day. Mmm ginger. I can do that for a little while, because I’m letting it cool to a drinkable temperature first.

There is a bit of a bite, and then a black tea taste. I suppose I could have let it steep for six minutes instead of five. If you let it sit in your mouth for a moment you get a ginger taste, with a bit of sweetness. The more you sip it the more ginger you get. It’s not insanely strong, which I think makes it perfect for most people (but others—my dad included, love ginger so much they eat chunks of pickled ginger whole, with nothing else; they might want something a little stronger than this).

I’m glad it doesn’t taste gingeraleish. Hurray! I’m glad she gave me a sample of this, because I like it but I don’t love it, but I’m glad I got to try it (I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I wanted to try a ginger tea). Mmm, there’s actually a spicyness developing in the back of my throat now from drinking this. It’s a nice, subtle flavour that sort of develops as you drink it. Yup, I can definitely taste the ginger when I breath out now.

I’ve got a few teaspoons of this left, and I’m going to enjoy using them up another day. I think I’m going to attempt a second steep of the leaves right now though, to see if the ginger will be weaker or if it’ll get stronger.

I keep smelling the ginger I grated and wondering how easily I could add it to some black tea and make my own ginger tea. It’s certainly fresher, so it should make a strong cup. From what I know of spices, ginger starts to lose its strength pretty quickly (most spices do; dried spices are like tea—their greatest enemies are light, moisture and air, and most are only ACTUALLY good for about two months, and yet we store them in clear containers, and keep them from years on end, and still use them after that—go figure).

Second steep was for six minutes, fifteen seconds. The colour’s about the same as the first steep—maybe very slightly lighter. Hmm… Smells just as strong as before, although I think the ginger is (slightly?) clearer—not stronger, just clearer.

More of just a tea taste this time, but the ginger’s in my nose and on the tip of my tongue. Yup, the ginger’s still there. Mm.

Overall I like this tea, and the only ‘downside’ is that it’s got that dried ginger taste and smell (if you don’t know what I mean, if you have any dried ground ginger in your spice cabinet [I do!], go and smell it) instead of that ‘fresh’ ginger taste and smell. But that can’t really be helped because it contains dried ginger, obviously. Fresh ginger only stays fresh so long, and is moist. I think the only way you COULD get a ‘fresh’ ginger tea taste (other than loading the tea up with preservatives to keep it ‘fresh’, or artificial flavours to get the taste) would be if you just grated fresh ginger right into your tea leaves right before you steeped (which I have always thought about doing, hmm).

Of course I only vaguely know what I’m talking about when it comes to dried/fresh ginger. Just thoughts and opinions!

Mmm still very delicious and just green enough for me to stand—more in the scent and initial taste, but it quickly fades into an unbitter black, with a floral aftertaste of rose, and slight jasmine. It smells like a dessert tea, but it’s not. It’s not really that sweet. Just… nice. And smooth.

I wasn’t sure how to steep this. It’s my first green-black blend (and you can most certainly SMELL it—the green and the black tea, I mean). So I went 180 degrees, at around three (ish?) minutes, just to be safe. The colour came out quite light for a black tea (as expected, I guess).

Here goes! I was kind of nervous about this one. I’ve never purchased a tea I had ABSOLUTELY no idea about. But I am a risk taker! And where better to try a tea I’d been meaning to try, than with a company I had ALSO been meaning to try!

It tastes like black tea and green tea, but I can’t really taste any of the fruity spiceness that was also mixed in there. Although I can smell it in the dry leaves, wet leaves and (to a lesser extent) in the tea. Oh, wait—I can taste the jasmine, mildly I believe. It was a good idea that I tried jasmine green tea before hand, so I can actually pick that taste out. I would steep this for longer to see what I get, but the green is JUST strong enough for me.

I get a sweetness when I sip and then breathe out. No marshmallows, but it sort of REMINDS me of marshmallows. In a weird way. I’m sure it’s just my underdeveloped palette that’s keeping me from tasting things, but somehow… this is very nice. Maybe it’s the rose that I’m tasting a bit when I breathe out. That sweetness. Ah yes, it’s a bit stronger now. Definitely there. Mm, it’s quite nice. I’m starting to become rather fond of this tea. I think I’ll try a second steep and bring that to work with me.

I think I like this one! I’ll probably keep drinking it to see what I can get out of it. It smells so pleasant and sweet, and the taste is there, I’m just not the best person to give a very accurate description of it.