Vampyre Tea Co

Thanks to mtchyg for this sample! He knows I’m a sucker for all things gothy & skull. VAMPYRE TEAS? Obviously I’ve gotta try those.

I type this today wearing this t-shirt:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/130683669/cryptozoology-tracking-society-blackmoon
These leggings:
http://www.lollicouture.com/bottoms-leggings-fel1-3536oborangeblack.html
And these boots:
http://www.shoetopia.com/media/catalog/product/r/s/rsacalblack_1.jpg
And it actually ESCALATES as Halloween approaches. I start in on dark lipsticks and painting my nails black.

The tea itself is touted as an almond/vanilla Earl Grey on Vampyre Teas’ very confusing hot mess of a site:
http://www.cupoflove.net/vampyre-tea
I mean, I have a question out the gate: Are they Cup Of Love tea or Vampyre Tea?
Do they NEED all these fonts and styles?
What’s with all the little “FREE SHIPPING” trucks? They’re under every tea, so why isn’t that just put somewhere else on the site as a statement about them all?

You guys, I want to like this site. I want it to be perfect because it’s everything I love: gothiness, kitsch, horror, tea.

But the tea, at least, is very tasty. It’s a nut/cream Earl Grey. There’s something a little astringent/metallic in there, which detracts a little bit from the overall experience. But in general, this is a pretty good blend. Not at the tippy-top of my list, but I’ll happily finish out the sample.

Thank you oodles to mtchyg for the sample!

I had a very strong anti-cherry stance until fairly recently. I associated cherry with cough syrup. But lately, I’ve been… growing as a person? Horrors. I hope that’s not it.

This tea is very bright and fruity and fun. It’s named after Nosferatu, which is silly, because it’s nothing like a vampire at all. It’s more of a fairy tea. But, you know, Vampyre Teas have a reputation to maintain.

Which reminds me of being a teenage goth. Every once in a while, I’d want to wear a color — but I’d feel like I was trashing my CREDIBILITY by doing so. I had to maintain a balance… so I’d wind up with some sort of shitty combo like a pastel blue GAP tee with black lipstick. Or a flowered dress with a GIANT DRAGON NECKLACE. The marketing for this tea is a little like that, a compromise that doesn’t quite land.

I think I under-leafed this tea. It doesn’t have as much kick as the dry smell would indicate. Next time, I’ll add more and re-evaluate if 80 is the correct number.

The dry scent of this tea is pretty amazing. It kind of makes me want to eat it like granola. Very rich fruity scents wafting up from the tea. The flavor gets a little lost upon brewing. There is still some of the fruit there but now instead of rich and sweet it comes across as a bit tart and thin. I’ve brewed multiple times using progressively more leaf and less water and increased steep time to see if I could strengthen the sweet fruit flavor. I would say I was minimally successful at that.

This is a decent tea and is drinkable. The scent of the dry leaves kind of made me want to flavor of the tea to be different than what it is.

This is a nice mellow tea with a slightly tart apple flavor. I think that the toffee is there but it is very gentle and gets lost a little behind the apple. Perhaps it blends and highlights the apple flavor a bit. A hot steep seems to work better than a cold for this tea.

I have since brewed this tea hot again and did a cold brew with it. The cold brew is definitely better. The black tea base is way too bitter for a hot brew. I’ve tried multiple steep times with the hot brew and it always has a bitter astringent note to it. At least cold brewed it mellows out and allows some of the vanilla and lavender to shine through.

I probably should wait to review this because I WAAAY overleafed this on my first brew. 3 minutes at 205 and yikes. Normally I am very calculated and measure everything out. Not today. Today, I threw caution to the wind. And look where it got me. With a brew that tasted of nothing but bitter. So, I poured out that steep and resteeped the leaves for about the same time. This second brew is still dark but some of the bitterness is gone. Not worth drinking however. There is potential here though. There are hints of lavender and vanilla. It kind of reminds me of Liquid Prousts Oolong Spa tea.

Despite me screwing this one up, the scent here wafting up from the brewed tea are lovely.

I ordered this for my tea book club. We are reading Let The Right One In and so I ordered a few vampire based teas, this being one of them. But they don’t have brewing parameters/suggestions on their packaging or their website (that I have seen). So here I am testing them out before the book club meeting in order to get them right. Hopefully I can do an updated review later when I actually steep it correctly.

I’ve been drinking this tea all day, having it iced while I clean house, paint my nails gray, set up the crock pot, prune the plants, etc.

The dry leaf of this is fragrant and inviting — flat green sencha speckled with chunks of white dried papaya and pink strawberry. It smells a lot like strawberry candy, very fruity and summery. Well, maybe not candy. Perhaps strawberry jelly.

The liquor is a springy greenish yellow, as expected. The sencha is good quality, slightly buttery, but falls into the background as the fruit takes center stage. The strawberry is dominant, pairing with the papaya well. Sometimes papaya can be kind of pungent in a way, almost musky, but not in this case. It’s all bright, happy fruit.

I tried it hot on Thursday and liked it that way, too. Versatile.

Now this is interesting. Most tea companies are not brave enough to blend lapsang souchong as a base for a flavored tea. The stuff is not for everyone. But of course, I’m all over it. I love smoky tea in winter! (Not that you could really call it winter yet…)

The name has Bauhaus’s guitars and Peter Murphy drawling “The count!” in my head. Its dry aroma is heavily smoky and yet tartly fruity from the little bits of hibiscus and berries mixed in. I think they’re cranberries? I can’t tell and the site’s description doesn’t list them.

Flavor-wise, the lapsang is definitely dominant over the spices and other ingredients. It reminds me of a campfire, smoky and leathery. How very goth. I understand that there is cinnamon and coconut mixed in. I can see them, but I can’t taste them. Coconut is a fickle flavor, so I know how that goes. However, the hibiscus and fruit shine through and add an interesting layer of tartness. The cinnamon is sort of there on the exhale. I’m wondering if next time I should drop in a cinnamon stick. Yay, an experiment!

“Undead, undead, undead!”

Coming back to this after giving it a go with more leaf. I used about twice as much as my last cup, which made a darker and more fragrant brew. This is one of those teas that you pretty much have to do that with because of the sheer amount of fruit and non-tea ingredients.

Since I ended up with more fruit just because I used more scoops, it got a lot more tart. This isn’t a problem, though, as I could easily balance it back out with more sweetner. I still can’t really taste the toffee, though…

The sleepy aspect of this tea is wonderful. It’s a lot like valerian in the way that it makes you more comfortable wherever you are. It kind of makes me feel heavy, like the bed is pulling me down into it. Very relaxing. I’m definitely going to have to explore more passionflower teas.

YOU GUYS! The Vampyre Tea Company moved into the unit next to my office! Can you believe my good luck?! It was originally going to be a vegan cheesemaker, which I was excited about too, because cheese, but this takes the cake. So thrilled!

So, I recently met Stavros, the owner of the company. A cool name and a cool guy. I was instantly charmed. He came back to talk to my boss today and ended up giving me a bunch of really generous samples of his teas. It was like it was my birthday or Christmas or something! I will be reviewing them all, of course. This company needs more love here on Steepster.

My only reservations are that I’ve never tried passionflower tea for sleep before. It’s not listed as an ingredient on the website’s description, but it is on the tin for some reason. I know it’s a common ingredient, but I’m kind of hesitant. Or at least I was until I smelled the dry leaf! It smells like a sweet, fruity dessert! The fruitness reminds me a lot of osmanthus flowers, strawberry, and apricot. I suppose that’s the rose hips and apple pieces. I also want to mention that the bits of passionflower vine look cool mixed in with the dark decaf Ceylon, candy, and fruit. They’re pale, tight little corkscrews.

The tea steeps up to a cloudy tan with a trace amount of oil on top, probably from the toffee. Mmm, toffee, such a guilty pleasure of mine. As far as flavor goes, it’s a little on the mild side. I’m afraid I didn’t use enough leaf. I went with 2.5 tsp in a 10 oz mug. The flavor I am getting is very pleasant, though. The rosehips and apple are what stand out to me the most. There is a hint of cinnamon in the exhale, followed by a little tartness that I’m liking a lot. I can’t really taste the toffee, but again, I think I didn’t use big enough scoops. The website said to fill your infuser ball, so next time, I’ll try that. (I generally use a cup-shaped metal infuser.)

Will report back with the sleepiness factor later!

English Toffee with in my tea? I’m all over this one!

This tea is delicious and the fact that it is from a company called The Vampyre Tea Company. . .I’m all over it! This is probably my favorite tea from this company. The tea is sweet but not overly so and you can pick up each flavor. Pretty tasty!

For the rest of my ramblings on this and NosferaTea . . . Happy Tuesday all!

http://www.cuppageek.com/index.php/2015/10/27/nosferatea-coffin-nightcap-from-vampyre-tea-company/

Good morning all! It has been crazy of late with the wedding planning. I think I say on a daily basis it would have been better to elope. Oh well.

This tea was different and honestly confusing. I think with the 19 ingredients in the blend, the tea itself didn’t know which way it wanted to go either. It reminded me of that muddy flavor you get from certain Adagio Signature Blends. Not one I would need to try again hot, but I’m hoping that with some cold brewing this tea will start to pop.

http://www.cuppageek.com/index.php/2015/10/09/some-halloween-tea-fun-from-vampyre-tea-co-my-new-mug/

This particular tea is a blend that Vampyre Tea Co is working on (isn’t available on the site just yet)and they asked me to try it and see what I thought of it. Since I’m not the biggest chai fan I wasn’t really looking forward to trying it but I told them I would. I brewed this up like you would any other chai and tried it and it was ok but that is when I got all sorts of creative.

I make myself overnight oats just about every day for the next morning so instead of adding in the normal amount of almond milk I usually do, I added in some of this chai tea brewed a bit stronger than usual. The next morning I had chai tea overnight oats. It was so good. It reminded me of cinnamon oatmeal with a spiced kick. I’ve had it now the last couple of days and I’m pretty impressed. I think if there is a tea I don’t really care for and is just so-so I’m going to start trying this to see if I can find a way to still use it.

http://www.cuppageek.com/index.php/2015/08/10/it-is-okay-to-play-with-your-food-my-attempt-at-overnight-oats-with-phoenix-chai/

My inner geek exploded with giddiness when I found this blend @Vampyre Tea Co. When the tea arrived yesterday I couldn’t wait to dig in. I was impressed. This is a nice black/green tea blend with jasmine. Yes I’ve been on a floral kick. But I think Marzipan hit it on the head the other day. I crave floral teas in the warmer weather. Either that or I crave a soothing and relaxing tea when work is crazy stressful.

For the rest of story. . . http://www.cuppageek.com/index.php/2015/07/01/tea-of-the-day-jazilla-from-vampyre-tea-co/

Happy Wednesday all!