Verdant Tea (Special)

Perhaps I under-steeped this one, because although pleasant, it was unremarkable to me.
I make home-made snickerdoodles with cream cheese and roll the balls in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar…I tasted no cinnamon, and if snicker doodles? …very generic :-/
Sorry Verdant…

This still isn’t tasting right again. Is it my Finnium, or something else? Tastes bitter and a bit off, with less cocoa than I remember.

Hm. There’s something off about this today. Something bitter in the fennel is my guess? I don’t get it. I think my tastebuds are off. Boooo….

1.5 tsp in 12oz.

Always perfect, always delicious, especially when trying to (still) get sinus gunk out.

Interestingly, the bit of this that I got from (I think) CelebriTEA had zero chocolate or cacao or whatever in it. This blend that I just got direct from Verdant? Full of big pieces of what looks and tastes like something cocoa-ish. I think I like this blend more.

Okay, so I enjoy this so much that I caved and bought some Verdant last night. 2 oz of this in that order. It definitely helped kick whatever stomach ick I’ve been fighting the past week.

Bringing out the big guns now to feel better. Love this tea anyway, so it’s just a good excuse. ;)

Hung out with a friend last night who has been fighting a cold for som time now, and now I’m feeling a bit off myself. Time to crack out the elderberry! Steeped this just over 18 minutes, and it’s still delicious, although I am getting more licorice than previous incarnations.

So… my last sample (that was a sipdown) came from OMGsrsly. This sample (a full pouch!) came from CelebriTEA. Wowza! So glad I love this.

Working on transitioning to a brand new laptop. Whee! I just wish it were a bit easier. Win 8 is a bit… weird. Love the keyboard though, and the actual laptop itself. And so, I’ll be up late tweaking. May even set up the new printer, too.

Thank you Sil for labeling our swap with your handle on them; I need to start doing this as well, and marking the ones I receive as I get them. Why? Because it could be one of four different people’s swaps. JustJames? CelebriTEA? akgrowngirl? OMGsrsly? I dunno. I also have several packets of this now, and huge thanks for that as well! It’s become a favorite.

The deep, dark purple in this makes me want to dye wool with it. I’m getting closer to my dream of dealing with wool from shearing to finished product, and I think when I get to dying my own wool, it’ll be with elderberries. http://sewnnatural.com/blog/2012/09/natural-dyeing-with-elderberry.html

Yum, yum, yum! Had a big mug of this tonight before I went out for a (late) date with a (young) gent.

Thanks to OMGsrsly for this lovely sample and swap earlier today! So much fun.

I may have steeped this for 20 minutes. Possibly. It is still delicious as-is. It’s a lovely dark purple — which makes me think I should try and figure out what it is that turns the tea this color, to dye wool with. It’s naturally sweet, zero astringency, full, with a bit of bite to it that isn’t hot, more zesty and sparkly. Hard to describe. Definitely on my to-order list.

I suddenly found myself in the mood for a chai.
I’d like to publicly thank the Devotea for setting me straight on chai making.
I poured some vanilla almond milk into a pot, turned in on low, added probably way more tea than would be recommended (basically, the rest of the contents of the envelope), & just let it sit there for awhile, checking to stir occasionally. You can disregard any lame reviews I’ve written about this chai in the past, because what I’m drinking now is f*@}!&g awesome!
And it’s a sipdown…uh…326, I think.

Hmmmm…..
Another Hot Chai Latte…this time I used 2 Tb in about 4oz of water, steeped for awhile, then added the ‘milk’, steeped a little longer, & I’m drinking it, it’s not bad, but I’m not sure how I feel about it. It has a mustard kind up under-taste, which is a little weird.

I put the leaves of both this & the laoshan village chai in the last of the milk, & it is simmering on low to try to get a little more flavor out of them.

Final Note: the resulting last cup, which was roughly 4oz, was actually pretty good, although I put way more Maple in it than I should have, LOL.

And this is another sipdown. (168 – with my Butiki order!)
I don’t know what it is, but I’m not really digging something in this blend. It’s ok, but it’s making my throat scratchy. I wonder if that means I’m allergic to something in the blend? Someone mentioned that earlier – maybe JustJames? in regards to rooibos?

I just finished up the last of this.
So sad. I would never have thought to add clove to Earl Gray even though clove is my favorite holiday spice…lol…Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter… I have a pineapple and
orange marmalade glaze that I spice the ham with and added cloves :-)
Mmmm…..not a better glaze anywhere :-)
I love Earl Grey Tea, and Verdant’s spicy variants are the best ever…in my book

OMG!

I swear this could be a new CLASSIC… Adore this.
It tastes just like Christmas Day to me.
Bright, Cheery & Warm.
It does NOT get any better than this.
Thank you Verdant, but PLEASE make this a permanent offering ;~}

I am truly not a mint Tea person, but I loved this.
The cacao nibs, fennel, cinnamon and two mints…
Well, it is remarkable…very FRESH tea

My granddaughter Schey is truly one of those special people (like MOST of you here on Steepster) with a giving heart…full of kindness and love. She loves me not in words, but with her time.

Nobody spends time with me other than her.

One of these days, she’ll be swept off her feet by someone that I know won’t be quite worthy of her…but that’s another story.

In the meantime, we have tea together, she calls me often…and yesterday she came over to bake with me.

Last year I decorated my home for Christmas and nobody came over. I felt bad. (This is something that happens to people when they get old) Young people are busy…(I know this) but it’s a hard reality to sit alone in a beautifully decorated room with your tea. Sigh…

I’ve learned to dig deeper into my heart this year. The source of my being happy is no longer dependent on having people around me, even though I do like it when I have a visit or when I go out to tea.

Schey is allergic to regular ‘Black Tea’. It makes her weep and she gets depressed and moody rather quickly. I’ve never seen anything like it. Puerh, green tea and oolong’s are all fine. I know the reason (too long to explain here).

When Schey arrived for our holiday baking, Pandora was set with classic crooners…Bing Crosby, Michael Buble, Nat King Cole…all the old tunes we could sing along ‘loudly’ in the kitchen. http://youtu.be/_ONkQD1uxkY

We made a double recipe of spice cake (grinding the spices ourselves) and then peanut butter chocolate fudge. http://flic.kr/p/ipxxdi

While the cakes were baking, we sat next to my Christmas tree and watched two recorded epidodes of Once-Upon-A-Time. http://flic.kr/p/ipwDAn

I made a combo tea: Peppermint Bark Herbal and loose Shu Puerh in a large pot.

I know this might sound strange to some people…but most chai’s and herbal blends taste great with loose puerh, especially with cream and honey or sugar. (This tea can be rebrewed once or twice)

The flavor of mint and spice with the puerh I chose (this one was mild) was festive. Perfect pairing for our afternoon! I brewed the tea 3 minutes…longish-yes…but I didn’t add lots of puerh, and the Herbal needs time to release (not the 1 minute suggested by Verdant).

Crafting a latte binds the herbal blend and puerh together into a rich, smooth holiday drink.

I took a picture of Schey. Her peanut butter chocolate dessert was going to both the servers at Happy Lucky’s Tea House and employees at the local Grocery Store. My cake is for tea with my 3 year old grandson’s.

Don’t you think that best memories we have are doing things with other people? This usually doesn’t cost much money, but takes some of our time.

Don’t forget to take pictures over the holidays. (So many people forget to record time with people they love and time is short!)

Wish I could bake together and have tea with all of you!

Not sure what I think about this one… the flavours were much milder than I had anticipated (which is good!), and nothing was unpleasant, but I can’t really taste the elderberry… or anything else specifically, for that matter. It’s just kind of a spicyish water. Maybe it’s partially related to the fact that I’m kind of sick, although I do seem to be able to taste reasonably well at the moment.

I think I’ll try steeping it for longer next time to see what happens. It did only get about a minute this time, as per the recommendations.

Sipdown! 259/365!

Yep, not my favourite chai blend, though it gets points for being unique. And interestingly enough, I’m kind of getting that same baked goods cinnamon/ginger note from the previous blend, which is quite enjoyable. I really wonder what ingredient that might be from, because I like it. This is making my final cup of this blend more delicious than I expected!

Hmmm. Not sure what I think about this one. I’m getting quite a bit of pepperiness over a very dark, almost burnt-tasting base black. There are hints of chai-y flavours reminiscent of Chocolate Phoenix Oolong Chai (? that’s not right…), particularly in the aroma, which smells like gingerbread, but at least straight, it’s a bit too heavy on the black tea/peppery flavours for me. I’ll try it with milk/honey at some point, and I’m sure it will be divine, but at this point, it’s nothing special beyond Verdant blends I’ve already tried. (That said, it’s tasty. Just not overly different/special IMO.)

The first “Verdant Blends Club” tea that I’m reviewing! I have tried one of the others from the previous month… but can’t recall which it was, nor really what I thought of it… so I’ll have to try it again and write something later.

Of the 3 November teas, this one sounded the most interesting to me. Some of the ingredients in these blends are making me a bit hesitant – I tend to dislike a bunch of herbal add-ins that are used – but nothing here is an ingredient that I know I hate, and the previous Verdant blend that I’ve tried in which coriander was a feature ingredient was quite delicious.

Aroma-wise, I’m smelling a bit of toastiness, a creamy oolong, and definitely a gingerbready sort of aroma, which is probably the coriander (although why coriander comes off as gingerbread, I have no idea). Flavourwise, this is a delicious mash-up of oolong, genmaicha, and spice. The sip starts off with the spice, morphs into toasty genmaicha flavours, and ends with oolong and a bit of a spicy kick from… the cinnamon? I’m not really sure. Either way, this is quite a delicious blend. I’d like to compare it to… that other one with coriander (I sent some to my mom at some point, so I’m sure I can achieve this at Christmas); I’m not sure if I like the toasty oolong or green beany laoshan green better as a base tea.

I cancelled my blends box last month because I was going to save money for this month but when I saw the spoiler on Facebook for this month and I saw this one!! I HAD to order!
I drank this one all morning and all day. This morning I whipped up some French toast waffles and had this along side me. I was so hoping to have that cinnamon-y snicker doodle-esque flavor. But wow! Coriander and ginger! So powerful the first steep. The second steep was creamier and I got more of the cookie flavor. The coriander and ginger weren’t so strong but still there. The third steep the coriander and ginger were almost gone. It was a very very like clean steep:
While this wasn’t at all what I expected it was a nice experience. The second steep was definitely my favorite of the three. The first steep was steeped 1 minute, 2nd was 3 minutes and 3rd was 6mins. I highly recommend over leafing a tad bit and longer steeps. This one definitely needs a little sweetness to bring out the cookie flavors. I might have this one one more time and then probably add this to my stash that is being sold in a discussion:)