ThinkGeek

This is a fantastic tea, which I did not expect. I received it as a gift and I find myself reaching for it regularly. A nice strong Earl Grey and the orange notes are great. A reviewer identified the blend as Adagio Earl Grey Bravo, and it looks like a dead ringer for it. I plan to seek this out once my tin is empty to refill it.

How have I not logged this yet? I could have sworn I had.

Well, my fiance brewed it for me today, so I can’t tell you what the temperature was, but this is probably one of my favorite Earl Greys at the moment (and not just because of the tin). There’s these little scraps of lavender and visible bits of bergamot in it.

But it is tasty. The bergamot and lavender have an…… what’s the taste equivalent of audible or visible? presence. The lavender sort of softens the bergamot, but both are definitely there, blending into the tea. It’s very calming.

If this is what Federation issue tastes like, I’d be happy to join!

Got the four-tea sampler for Christmas. This is the best of the bunch, a perfectly serviceable chai. Nice with a little vanilla almond milk.

Got the four-pack sampler for Christmas. Agree with other tasters – way, way too much Jasmine. At least, I assume that’s what it is, since all there is in it is green tea and Jasmine and it wasn’t green tea I tasted. If you like Jasmine/floral flavors, give it a go.

Note: All the ThinkGeek teas have exactly the same preparation instructions – five minutes, boiling water. I used water of a temperature more appropriate for green tea. Didn’t help.

Got the four-pack tea sampler for Christmas. This stuff is just nasty. I don’t know if I just don’t care for bergamot, or this particular blend wasn’t good. (This is the only Earl Grey blend I recall drinking.) But extremely bitter and tasting of unripe fruit.

Got the four-tea sampler for Christmas. Found this pretty boring. No idea how long it was in those little tins. Not awful, but nothing I’d look for again.

I made this as a London Fog Latte using 6 oz of water and 4 oz of steamed and frothed milk.

I got this tea as a Secret Santa gift as I really like tea and Star Trek.

This is really heavy on the Bergamot. It’s perfect on those days that I want a flavored tea. You can’t really taste the tea base on this one. The dry leaf looks really pretty with orange peels (or is it begamot peel) and little blue cornflower petals dispersed throughout, although I’m not sure the flowers actually contribute anything to the tea.

I’ve heard that tea used for this brand is also sold by Adagio as Earl Grey Bravo. The picture on their website looks the same and it’s a lot cheaper than the Think Geek Brand.

Again I don’t know who sent this but Thanks! I tend to like my chai pretty spicy and with a lot of cardamom. A nice chai but a bit lacking in cardamom. Liked the name but the tea isn’t particularly exciting.

Not the best EG that I have had, but it did have a great aroma and was not too strong if steeped for 4-5 minutes. Not my favorite, but I wouldn’t turn it down!

Sssssipdown! This time, I tried adding rice milk right after I was done brewing the tea rather than halfway through drinking it. It’s much better this way – presumably something to do with the tea being hotter when I added the rice milk? Anyway, this is nice and creamy and spicy. Good while it lasted!

I’m glad to have the empty tin now so I can put some samples in it, but I can’t get the chai smell out…

I bought this sampler back in December 2010. I gave the Earl Grey to my partner and finished off the green tea and the blood orange a while ago. Somehow the Pirate Chai took longer to work through. These tins are great though. The chai held up quite nicely in one even after 2 ½ years. The tins are also super cute and great for storing opened Teavivre samples.

This tea’s ingredients are not listed anywhere but appear to be clove, orange peel, black tea, and maybe cardamom. It tastes like there’s cinnamon in the blend, but I can’t make it out visually.

I used 1 tsp for 8 oz, steeped in boiling water for an unmeasured amount of time (probably about 5 minutes). Spi-cy! The clove slams into you up front, the cinnamon takes center stage mid-sip, and there’s just a smidge of citrus throughout. I can’t make out much about the black tea base other than that there’s just enough astringency to make it clear that this is a black tea (the pain in my stomach also confirms that it’s a black tea – I’m a bit of a dummy for drinking this at all). I’m not tasting the cardamom, but that might be because I’m not quite sure what cardamom tastes like…

I added some rice milk halfway through, but I don’t think it improved the flavor any. If anything, it made the tea less enjoyable. Somehow how the creaminess just didn’t mesh well with the spiciness. Maybe brewed too strong? Not enough rice milk? Needs sugar? Whatever the issue is, I liked this tea better straight than creamy.

The aftertaste is all spice and tingly lips. Lovely! This would work better as a morning pick-me-up than an evening tea, though.

This was a Christmas gift last year from my youngest daughter. I can’t believe I haven’t tried this one before, but I am not a big chai drinker. That being said, this is the sort of chai I prefer – no pepper, no turmeric, but just ginger, cinnamon, and clove as nearly as I can tell.

The tea base seems a bit weak to me. There isn’t much black tea flavor here. I am drinking it plain, but I think that people who add milk and sugar to their chai would enjoy this more than I do. It isn’t terrible, it just isn’t the best chai I have ever had.

The tins are so cool that as each one is emptied, I will probably refill it with a better version of what was inside. So Earl Grey Hot will get Harney and Sons Earl Grey Supreme, this tin will get Rabbit Hole Chai, Zombie Blood Orange will probably get Orange Grove Vanilla, and Timmy’s 1Up Jasmine will get a Teavivire loose jasmine.

This is getting old, but it was really tasty at breakfast. Then I worked my butt off cleaning my car, steamcleaning the mats, and cleaning the outside refrigerator. (Is that common anywhere but the South? My mom and mother-in-law had an extra fridge outside as well as a chest freezer for grains – we grind our own flour – and chicken feed cuz I buy the organic whole grain stuff that expires so I need lots of fridge and freezer space.)

Anyway, my face was so red I looked like a heat stroke victim. I took the leftover tea in the pot and poured it over crushed ice. This was unsweetened and very different from the iced tea my mother made that had three cups of sugar per gallon. Everyone loved her tea. But this was excellent plain. It made me growl a little it was so good. I think I’ll live.

And I am guessing that these teas are actually from Adagio.

For the past three weeks, hubby has had to work later than usual on Fridays, so we have treated ourselves to the Chinese buffet when he finally gets to come home. The sad news is that when I asked what kind of tea they had, they said black.

?

IT’S A CHINESE RESTAURANT FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!!

Oh well, my remedy is to have water with the meal and tea when I get home. Tonight I called youngest and asked her to prepare a pot of this and a chocolate bar for me so it would be ready when we got home.

It was the Teavivre Monkey Picked that I drank this week that had me craving this kind of oolong. This one is very good, I mean, if I hadn’t had Teavivre’s I would probably say it was excellent. I am really enjoying it, but it just doesn’t have as much flavor as theirs. So still thumbs up, but this isn’t the very best one I have tried.

It is fun to know that this particular one really truly was picked by monkeys!

Guess what I got for Mother’s Day? Yes, the kids found a way to combine two of my loves – tea and thinkgeek, or geekiness in general. My youngest daughter ordered this tea and the little tea cups that look like Control, Alt, Delete buttons. LOL!

I was very surprised by the instructions on the tin. They say to use one teaspoon of leaves for a small pot of tea, or 1/3 teaspoon for a single cup. What? Well, I decided to go with the amount I normally use as I was making two large mugs. I put one teaspoon of leaves in my 8 ounce tea press and steeped three times in a row, combining the three steeps. Using this method, I got a well-flavored cup. This is a dark, roasted oolong and tasted very good, though I want to review it again at home with my regular teapots and non-beach water. The water here is very good compared to the beach we used to go to. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t even consider making tea with it.

My oldest daughter who just started drinking tea not long ago had the other mug of tea. When I asked her later how she liked it, she said she didn’t remember! We supposed that if she had hated it she would definitely have remembered that!

This is a 2 ounce tin, bigger than the tiny tin set from Thinkgeek.

Thumbs up from me!

I have already had a lot of black tea today, so when youngest said she was making tea and asked if I wanted some I initially said no, thank you. But awarding that kettle made the Pavlovian reaction as expected and I started hunting for something. Since I did lots of black tea, I chose this green.

This is a novelty tea, so I was afraid it would be pretty bad last time I had it. But it is really drinkable, even if not the finest example of green or of jasmine. It is a cute tin, a pretty standard green base, and a decent if sometimes mildly soapy jasmine.

Youngest gave me the set of four teas from Thinkgeek for Christmas.

I steeped for about 2 1/2 minutes at 175 degrees. The liquor is pretty dark for a green, a nice, light orange. The jasmine is very subtle. The green base is pretty smooth with grassy/hay notes. It is only the slightest bit drying, though that may change as it cools. An enjoyable tea!

Quite a tasty chai mix. Brewed it up with cream and sugar as I didn’t have the patience to steep on the stovetop. Leaves were beautiful to watch unfold.

I’m going to hold off rating this until I actually brew up an entire pot. I tried my gaiwan with this and was shocked and how shredded the leaves were and there were also a lot of stems. At times it tasted a bit soapy. So I’m thinking that jasmines aren’t the best teas to drink with gaiwans if they’re green tea based.

While part of my summer marathon of Earl Grey, I wanted to try this one to appease my inner nerd! Can we have a show of hands for who has tried EG simply because one of our favorite starship captains happens to enjoy it? Both my husband and I would have to rather sheepishly raise our own hands!

I tried this first without milk, and it was a fairly straightforward EG – better than a bag, but not really unique in any way that I could discern. Adding milk did bring out some hitherto unknown floral notes. I think the search for the best EG will continue, but thank you, Emilie, for giving me the opportunity to try this one!

I have been downing this one pretty much every day before work. I still say that it is too harsh for me without milk, but with milk it is perfect for the mornings. It provides enough of a flavor and caffeine kick to wake me up, and the milky tea just goes perfectly with pretty much anything that I’m having for breakfast

I’ve been pretty harsh on Adagio brand Earl Greys before, and this one was no different. However, I tried it again today after avoiding it for a while, and I enjoyed it much more. I’m not sure if it has mellowed out with age, or if my tastes have changed. I still wouldn’t drink this without milk, but with milk its a nice strong tea that I can see myself enjoying in the morning for waking up. I’m always happy when I get to raise my previous score for a tea!