Twinings

Great tea but maybe not the best choice to be paired with my cheesy chicken enchilada dinner

Made the Creme brulee tea and as it steeped, something in the scent made me crave this one. So I brewed this up too. Not much new to say so instead I will tell you if my new project.

I recently started a diet to lose the weight I put back on in the past couple of years. As I experience new recipes that I have enjoyed, I have kept them which lead to an ugly stack of recipe printouts…until today. I went to indigo and got a cute recipe tin (https://riflepaperco.com/polka-dot-kitchen-recipe-box/) with some fun recipe cards (https://m.indigo.ca/product/gifts/recipe-cards-kraft-set-of/826635144717?ref=by-shop%3agifts%3arecipeaccessories-cardsrefills%3arecipe-accessories-cards-refills%3a2%3a) and now I’m compiling all the recipes. Not the most exciting thing in the world but when your tools are new and lovely than it makes the experience that much better. Plus, anything is better than studying for my 6 exams :P

MissB originally sent me a sample of this tea to try and I am so glad she did as this is not something I would have picked myself. However, one taste and I was hooked. This tea is really delicious and luckily I figured that out before I went to London so I was able to pick up a box of it while I was there. Consequently, I know I reviewed this before but I suppose steepster ate my note. Oh well.

Today I am having it cold brewed as I have sort of given up on hot brews until I am back in Toronto tomorrow (though maybe I won’t be brewing tomorrow given my sister has ,e going to Bridal shows with her all weekend and I may not get a chance). I think I prefer this hot, however I had the hot cup May or earlier so I don’t remember it distinctly enough to say why. What I can do is discuss how the cold brew tastes and the simple answer is like a buttermint. The slightly longer answer is that the first whiff you get is creamy mint but the flavor that hits your tongue is just cream which gradually gets more buttery as you near the end of the sip. The mint, though present in smell, doesn’t really hit until the very end and its almost like a “Ohh, there you are!” moment as it seems to just pop up. The end result is a the taste of buttermint left on your tongue long after you stop drinking. Still very good but for some reason I can’t help but think this is better hot. Someday soon I’ll try it that way again and hopefully be able to determine why.

One of my go-to teas when I need a pick-me -up.
I like the strong flavor and it doesn’t get bitter too quickly when steeped.
I prefer buying it in bags though, I had a bad experience with their loose leaf version.

Ohhhhhhh my goodness, this smells amazing. I have a failed (the dough was weird so it never cooked through yet it burned on the outside) gingerbread loaf sitting on the counter, and I can say that this smells very similar. Molasses, some spice, sweet baked goodness. It also smells a little like genmaicha. Green/seaweed and toasted rice. Yep.

Actually, that’s not bad at all! There’s some warmth from the spices. It’s a bit too “green tea” for my preference, but it’s really not bad.

If only the flavour was available as a black tea. :)

Thanks so much, MissB!

Haveteawilltravel kindly sent me a sachet of this one in his Christmas card. For a Twinings tea, this one seemed suprisingly high quality! The leaves I could see through the sachet were fairly large and unbroken, with a few golden tips. And the flavor was robust and full-bodied with lots of malt and honey notes. There was a bit of astringency, but with milk added, it was just about perfect. I just may have found a new favorite bagged breakfast blend to take on the road!

Sipdown (161)

This has a thick mouthfeel that I am finding rather bothersome. It’s somewhere between a liquid and a gel and I’m not sure how that’s happening but it is making this seem like a salted caramel jello. That’s not a good combination so I guess I am glad this is done.

It’s gotten me through many an all-nighter.

Sipdown (111)!

I know I have a really large influx of tea headed my way, so I’m working on getting in as many sipdowns as possible in the meantime; starting with this tea from OMGsrsly!

I didn’t like this one as a hot tea, so I’m going against my gut instinct and trying it cold brewed! If nothing else, cold brewing will burn up the leaf much faster. But actually, not only did cold brewing use up the leaf but it actually made this taste considerably better! The clove was a lot more well balanced and I could taste other flavour notes as well like cinnamon and vanilla! Best of all, it was smooth without any bitterness or astringency.

I still wouldn’t buy this one and I’d be perfectly content with not drinking it again but I’m grateful for the sample and happy I found a way to make it work more for me!

Thanks OMGsrsly (and I think MissB by proxy) for the tea!

This is the one tea I had set aside today specifically for today! That said, now that it’s steeped up and I’m actually drinking it I don’t like it a whole lot. There’s SO MUCH clove and normally that’d be a huge plus for me especially when I’m sick but I’m finding that accompanying the strong clove is a lofty amount of bitterness and astringency.

But that certainly doesn’t make it any less festive!

Sipdown (166)

Merry Christmas all!! What better day than today to finish up this Christmas tea sample (courtesy of the wonderful MissB, I believe). Alas, the tea is mostly tasting like perfume and cloves. Not really for me but that could be due to storage of this sample rather than the tea itself. Still, it was nice to try and definitely festive.

Sipdown (99)

The problem with having tried so many teas? You forget the ones you tried. Apparently I tried this before and got green pepper and then a tart green apple. Today I am not getting the green pepper but the apple is appearing. Also, too bad I didn’t find the note before I made the tea because I suggested trying it cold and I could see how that would have made this better. Alas, I used the one tea bag I had on yet another hot cup.

Sipdown (171)

Call me crazy but the first sip I took of the tea tasted like a green…pepper. Yep. Pepper. Not an apple which is made even more confusing by the fact that as soon as water touch this tea bag, the aroma of crisp apples filled the air. As I continue to drink, I am picking up more of a tart, green apple flavor (definitely hints of the hibiscus, though in this case it helps create the flavor rather than destroy it). Still, I can’t help but feel that this may have been better suited as a cold tea (either cold brewed or iced) to help bring out the fresh apple crunch I know it is capable of having. It’s a nice enough tea and despite my pepper misstep in the beginning, the end result is certainly an apple tea, though not one I will miss too much now that I have used up the only tea bag I had of it from London (one I had to literally run across a marathon to get!).

Ugh, I am ILL. Not only that, I’m at work. At work and ill is a bad, bad combination. It’s also nearly Christmas, which makes it all doubly rubbish because I was hoping this might be the year when I actually managed to escape being ill on Christmas Day. Probably this will not be the case. In an effort to try and make it the case, though, I’ll be drinking this tea on repeat all day. My first choice would have been Bluebird’s Kung Flu Fighter, but I’m out of that and it’s a bit late to be ordering any now. So I have this. It actually has a reasonably high proportion of Echinacea (20%) which is better than most similar teas I looked at in the supermarket yeterday (5%, for the most part). I’m hoping it’ll do at least a little bit of good.

Taste wise, it’s not too bad. It’s mostly hibiscus, and it’s a little tart and sour in the way of most Twinings fruit infusions. There’s the tiniest hint of raspberry, but it’s mostly drowned out except in the scent. The Echinacea is a little earthy and helps to augment the tartness a bit, but I have to be honest and say that I’m not drinking this for the flavour. If I was, I wouldn’t be particularly impressed.

I think it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t drink this one if I wasn’t ill, but as something that’s currently making me feel better it deserves a reasonable rating.

Yup, this again! I forgot my ~ fancy teas at home this morning, so I am having Work Tea.

This is less strong than the stuff I had last night, I think. Maybe. At the very least, it’s less of a squeaky-teeth tea. I wonder if the differences are legitimate differences of Twinings Canada and UK blending? Or if the differences are all in my head?

Anyways, it’s almost time for lunch, and it’s gloriously sunny outside. I hope I get some fun mossy pictures for Instagram. :)

(2 tea bags for 2 cups or so)