Tearunners

Another sipdown! I’m doing fairly well with these, which is nice…but also makes me want more tea NAO! Still feels like this is YS’s laoshan black but maybe not.

Sipdown! Last of this over to VariaTEA to try. This one grew on me, even though overall my experience with tea runners is that they’re over priced. I expect a Canadian company to first of all offer CAD$ pricing and then secondly most of their teas are seriously marked up from what i am guessing are their suppliers (YS, Nepali tea etc…). I’d rather spend a little more on random teas from those company than pay for pretty re-packaged tea.

Need to try get through the last of my tea runners tea before the next month gets here. I’’ve had this one before but yesterday it seemed to work out much nicer. I think the lower temp and shorter steep time made it work out better. less of a bitter note.

Sipdown! the rest is over to VariaTEA whenever i get a chance to drop teas off/pick teas up. Given the lockdown it’ll be a while. On the plus side, i’m almost through my tea runners December box before the january box gets here, so i’m winning on that front. Historically subscriptions are a bad idea for me because they pile up lol

longer steep works better for this one. Still not my favourite, but at least there’s more flavour with a 4-5min steep

Not sure where tea runners sources their tea but this feels like it came from yunnan sourcing. I’m sure there are a multitude of suppliers they may be sourcing their tea from though, so maybe that’s not fair.

Gongfu Sipdown (1402)!

This gorgeous & tippy tea is robust and full bodied with bold and complex notes of bittersweet dark chocolate, burnt sugar, baked yams, smoke, and stewed red fruits – but it’s really the burnt sugar and cocoa notes that stay with you after the finish! Such an interesting balance of bitterness and sweetness made for a very enjoyable tea session this afternoon!!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CQCGi1gg9ir/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmPuKFmAVFA&ab_channel=RunForCoverRecords

Sipped over the afternoon – thanks VariaTEA for sharing!

The dry leaf of this tea smelled really heavily of raisins to me, but the steeped tea was more plum heavy with other stewed fruit/stonefruit notes as well. It was pretty full bodied and quite smooth/clean finishing on the palate. I got notes of honey and cocoa as well, but much less than the fruitier flavours coming through.

It’s not my favourite black that I’ve tried from Tea Runners so far, but I would say that it is above the average mark…

Grandpa Brew Sipdown (1153)!

Thank you VariaTEA for the share! I enjoyed this one a lot when I had it earlier in the week, but it wasn’t the type of mind blowing black tea that I think will stick in my memory among all the others I’ve tried and I don’t feel like I need more of it. I thought it had sturdy body to support a malty and almost powdery feeling cocoa note, with hints of fresh out of the oven brew and a little bit of redfruit undertone. Moderate astringency, which added character to the tea and kept the most sweet leaning notes from feeling flat. I think, brewed Western style, it might be a bit too mild and Gongfu I imagine it wouldn’t resteep well after a steep or two so this might have been the brewing sweet spot. At least, that’s my impression.

2021 sipdown no. 74

I had three steeps of this through the afternoon and early evening. I can’t get over how much it reminds me of Verdant’s Laoshan Black. It’s got a maltiness but also a lightness to it, and the third steep tasted nearly identical to the first.

1st steep 2 minutes
2nd steep 3 minutes
3rd steep 4 minutes

Thanks VariaTEA for sharing!

Another great sample from VariaTEA!

I am really enjoying this one! It’s a simple, straight black tea. This one does remind me of something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I’m really enjoying it as my evening tea. It’s a bit malty and I’m here for it!

Edit: I did a second steep of this for 30 seconds longer and it was just as delicious the second time around.

Sipped on this a few days ago and, aside from the unattractive green-ish blue liquor colour I actually enjoyed the mug quite a bit. It was soft and delicate with a white tea forward profile that tasted of honeysuckle, straw, and fresh linens. I didn’t get mango, but the dragon fruit was really nice. Pretty gentle and much more authentic tasting that I find a lot of dragon fruit blends typically are since it was more that watery pear-ish profile. Really refreshing in a calming, mild sort of way.

Steeped this one up Sunday morning and it ended up surprisingly being the gentle hug in a mug I needed to ease into the day. The white tea in this blend is fairly floral and soft, but even the very mild dragonfruit flavour has a floral undertone to it as well. I find a lot of dragonfruit teas have this almost fruit punch like sweet/syrupy taste to them, and there is a part of me that does like that – however authentic dragonfruit/pitaya is so light and truthfully pretty watery. This feels way, way more comparable to that realistic flavour and for that reason I’m really digging it!

(Could care less about the inclusion of butterfly pea flower, though)

Cold Brew!

I think I let this one steep a little too long because there was this murky muddled edge to the flavour that didn’t seem like it would have been so pronounced with a shorted steep time – but I don’t really time my cold brews and I instead lean heavily into that “it’s ready when it’s convenient for you” mindset since that usually works out for me.

This is definitely much more dragonfruit than it is mango – it actually didn’t taste like mango at all, to be honest. More that very light, watery, and refreshing pear-ish taste of dragonfruit – which does translate pretty well to a cold brew. I also really appreciate that it’s not sweet at all. Just mellow and thirst quenching.

Cold Brew!

Not the most intensely blue colour I’ve seen from a butterfly pea flower blend before but at least it is blue which does count for something. I fully expected this to be more mango than dragon fruit, because that’s such a hard flavour to nail, but it’s actually the other way around. Still a very light and refreshing flavour though and not really sweet/juicy. Sometimes dragon fruit blends feel like more of a “fruit punch” sort of concentrated dragon fruit and this is actually more of the mellow and somewhat watery crisp and pear-like dragon fruit flavour that real dragonfruit has. I could drink this like water; it’s the type of refreshing flavour that feels like it would never build up into too much or get too cloying and it feels light – not like something you’d get bogged down by after a glass or two. It also reminds me of something very familiar outside of dragonfruit but I can’t put my finger on it.

All that said, it’s not incredible and I don’t think it’s something I’ll gravitate towards often. It’s just both different and better than I expected, which is nice.

this is SUCH a boring tea. It’s not good…it’s not bad..it’s just boring, and flat.

I have more of this to try so I’ll rate it then but I don’t think I cared for this one. Not quite to the extreme of Roswell, but I don’t remember being impressed with it.