gmathis Send Message

It’s been a nice bookends Saturday: a little time to begin and end the day with a cuppa in the backyard glider. Weather, delicious; day’s activities, ordinary but satisfying.

Since our weather pattern is finally shifting a little, I’ve also been shifting some tins to the front of the lineup that have been out of rotation during deep-fryer season. This one is perfect for early fall: a little raisin, a little pineapple, some white chocolate chips, carrot shreds which provide more atmosphere and color than they do flavor, and brown-sugary, cake-pixie goodness. (I made up cake pixies, but I’d sure like to meet one.)

I’ve reviewed this multiple times and, averaged out, they’re all pretty much the same: it’s a good, fancy-pants tea with a little mild cocoa and honey flavor, but not nearly strong enough for my morning wake-up needs. One expects something with a name like Black Dragon to roar and smoke and whap you with its tail. This one just whimpers and crawls back into its cave.

The current Palais des Thes product description says, This delicious black tea, also known as “surgeon’s tea” because it awakens without overstimulating, has a honeyed scent and is ideal for the morning.

Yes on the honey scent and flavor; very smooth and mild. Eyes were open and brain was engaged, unprompted, at 4:30 a.m., so it’s going to be an uphill battle on the “awakening” aspect.

This is the grocery-shelf lemon tea I was craving. Found it at a King Cash Saver, one of those sneaky grocery stores with a 10% upcharge, but I was there, it was there, and it was worth the extra 30-ish cents just to grab it and go.

Bigelow has kept this in its rotation for a very long time, and it’s been reviewed fairly favorably pretty consistently since it first appeared on Steepster. It differs from the echinacea/vitamin C version I recently tried (subtract licorice, add “a dash of spice”). The addition appears to be a trade secret, but I wonder if it’s similar to the cinnamon/clove combo that’s the hallmark of their Constant Comment blend.

At any rate, I’ll confirm what 13-ish years worth of reviews largely agree on. It’s a decent tea on a light base. For whatever reason, this week, that hit the spot.

Not sure why, but I have been craving bog-standard black tea with lemon. Bigelow’s Lemon Lift is my favorite cheapie, but it’s only on a few shelves at stores off my normal shopping route. So, any port in a storm, I grabbed this at Walmart last night.

Of course, I didn’t read the fine print until after we were home. There’s some licorice root in the blend, which made me approach it very cautiously this morning. But at a sloppy 4-minute steep, the citrus balances out the licorice so it’s smooth but not sticky.

Final judgment call: performs as advertised—black tea with lemon. A vitamin C boost never hurts, either—school opens next week, and I am drowning in close-proximity people events over the next few days.

One of those drudgey, mopey weeks where “This is no fun; I need a cookie” has been on repeat in my brain. So I made one this morning, first thing. Nothing new to say about it; I’m just in awe of Yorkshire’s ability to duplicate shortbread in liquid form. Running low; this will be a reorder when stuff quits breaking at our household. (I am, or my little car is, the proud owner of a new and very pricey throttle body assembly. Say that five times fast!)

This is turning out to be surprisingly tasty and reliable for a store brand tea! Enough rose that you get it, not enough to make it taste like perfume, just a teeny bit sweet. Moderately strong tea base underneath that stands out well, either iced or conventionally steeped.

Martin, I think this is the last of the fruit infusions you shared with me. I put it straight into a Mason jar to steep and it looked like a magic potion in motion—immediate swirls of red curling around the jar. Almost as fun as watching jellyfish in an aquarium! But I finally pulled my eyes loose and tucked it in to chill.

Fortunately, any hibiscus in the mix was well-behaved and only added a little sharpness to the fruit flavor. Like the other Basilur entries in this series, you might be hard pressed to guess “cranberry” in a blind taste test. Kool-Aid red fruit punch, more like. But on a hot afternoon, friendly, fruity and cold is all you really need.

A very, very long overdue sipdown; nothing much to add, other than this iteration of a genmaicha held up well under reasonably careful storage (that’s spelled h-o-a-r-d-i-n-g) and has encouraged me to hunt down some more—same brand or different.

Y’all know me … I’m too antsy and impatient to coddle oolongs much. However, a delicious, unseasonably cool and cloudy, sleepy afternoon encouraged me to take it easy on this one, with a very pleasant result. Smells a little flowery in the cup, but it doesn’t taste perfumey; with a lighter temp and steep time (didn’t use a thermometer; western style for just under three minutes) it had a creamy consistency that I hadn’t noticed before. Very pleasant, especially while doing hummingbird watch near the zinnias. (We’ve got some neon red ones that have been catching their little eyes.)