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I forgot that I’d already tried Ohana, so when asked, I tried it again. I ended up brewing this particular batch rather weaker than the first, because I didn’t have quite enough of the sample left to brew a full mug. It actually was better weaker! The passionfruit was able to get past the nose/taste of the pineapple, and made things rather more balanced. I could even taste the jasmine and rose.

I think I actually brewed it a little too weakly this time, but now I know it’s something to remember. It does still have a distinctly acidic mouthfeel, so it’s not a tea I will be seeking out (the fact that I am allergic to fresh pineapple may simply be making me more aware of the pineapple acidity) but it’s definitely better than my previous rating.

So. Brew slightly weaker than you think you want, and you’ll get more flavors out of it. :-)

:shrug: I could smell the caramel, but I couldn’t taste it. The tea taste wasn’t particularly interesting either, and I couldn’t taste hazelnut or almond at all. This one left me going, “meh,” which oh well.

The nose on this is delightful. I can’t think of any other tea I’ve tried that actually smells like pistachios, which for the record, I do like. (Pistachio ice cream was a favorite as a kid.) The flavor is less strong than the nose, but it is still there. The peony is also probably there – except I don’t know what peony tastes like. ;-) It also rebrews nicely – the second cup was almost as strong as the first.

As a pu erh, it’s fine. As a tea, it’s fine. It doesn’t grab me by the lapels and say, “Oh, yes, THIS,” but that’s rare anyway. It’s a proper brew, at least.

If those coconut chips are sweetened, it would make the inexplicable sweetness of this tea make sense. But it’s possible they aren’t, and it’s just a sweet-flavored tea. Either is possible, neither is bad; the sweetness was thankfully not overpowering. Just enough to make the tea taste of strawberries and a bit floral, which was nice. (There have been too many punch-me-in-the-nose teas recently.)

This was an unexceptional but enjoyable tea for my morning. The fact that the strawberry leaves actually tasted of strawberry was quite pleasant, and the fact that I could also taste the tea in there was delightful. I won’t be seeking it out to keep in the cabinet, but I am happy to have tried it.

Sadly, it rebrews weak, so this is a one-and-done with the leaves. Oh well.

In the evening, I try to avoid caffeine, but since rooibus is not tea (grumble) I drink decaf real tea. My spouse got this one for when we have Japanese food for dinner, and indeed, it is a thoroughly acceptable green tea.

There’s nothing special about it – it’s what you’d get in the teapot of any generic “Asian” restaurant. But it’s decaf, and it works very well for the purpose of, “I would like green tea to go with my sushi and I would like not to be awake all night.”

We will continue to keep this in the cupboard. It’s not shiny or special, but it works just fine.

Steepology Advent of Tea calendar: Berry Delight

This tea brews up almost the color of a dark red wine, and the nose is very strongly elderberry and black currant (at least to me) which always makes me think (fondly, to be clear) of the cough drops and cough syrups I used to be given by friends from the U.K.

Unfortunately, the moment it’s in my mouth, all I can taste is the hibiscus. I wish companies would stop sticking it into teas like this one – they’re advertised as berry teas, and they don’t actually need the hibiscus in them at all. And for those of us who taste hibiscus very strongly, it completely overpowers everything else. I’m sure that if I added honey, I could mellow it out – but I prefer to drink my herbals unsweetened, because if I’m drinking them, it’s usually late in the day when I don’t want sugar at all.

Hard pass on this one. I poured out the remainder of my cup. :sigh: Oh well, on to the next herbal.

I got this for myself because I knew my advent calendar of teas was liable to have a fair number of herbals in it, and in the morning, herbal absolutely doesn’t cut it.

It’s a perfectly nice tea. It doesn’t jump up and grab me the way, say, a Golden Yunnan or other single-source really nice tea does, but it also doesn’t make me sad the way many other blends do. I’m happy to drink the rest of my sample of it over the next month or two, and I’ll buy more if my preferred breakfast Assams are out of stock. It will do very handily.

But it also isn’t Harding Spring. :-)

Steepologie Advent of Tea: Day 7 – Cafe Latte Tea. Well, that does indeed taste like the additions to a cafe au lait. The hazelnut and cocoa are quite strong in the nose, as well. I am particularly tasting the cocoa nibs near the back of my tongue, and only when swallowing, which makes me think that the hazelnut nose is overwhelming the cocoa except when some can get in the back door, so to speak.

It’s a pity that this tea is hitting my mouth with an unfortunate aftertaste that I suspect is something to do with the hazelnut pieces. I find that the aftertaste is strong enough that it’s also mixing with the individual sips of tea, so I’m losing the taste of the tea to the aftertaste. :-/ This is not what I want my tea to taste like. And it’s definitely not what I want my mouth to taste like.

I am probably going to pour half this tea out, and not resteep, and go find something strong and unflavored-by-things-not-tea to clear my mouth out. It’s a pity, because I really like hazelnut, and I really like cocoa, but whatever they did to the ingredients before they went into this tea is really not doing it for me.

Another Steepologie Advent of Tea – this one was tucked in on Day 4 with the Peppermint Bark, which is good because today’s tea is a Rooibus, and yesterday’s was an herbal, and I am in dire need of caffeine right now.

I like jasmine tea – jasmine oolongs are one of my favorites for when I have Chinese food. (I learned to love them while eating out, when you couldn’t get milk for your tea, and I continue to drink them without milk.)

This one, being a black tea with added jasmine, I adulterated with a bit of milk, and it came out just lovely. The jasmine flavor is quite strong, but there’s an odd aftertaste that I can’t place – possibly the milk? I’ll have to try resteeping the leaves and drinking it straight.

I won’t be seeking this one out since I have to mail-order my tea from Steepologie, but I would quite happily drink it again. Definitely on the list of “yup, this one is worth it.” And if I’m ever in the store and am looking to just get a cuppa, I’d be happy to have this one.

Day 4 of the Steepologie Avent of Tea Calendar. (I actually got two samplers on Day 4, and didn’t drink either of them on the day of, because my refill box from Adagio arrived and I was absolutely going to drink some of my Chestnut, having had only an empty tin of that for almost a month.) Yes, this smells very, very much like peppermint bark. The aftertaste is also like peppermint bark – peppermint and chocolate.

During the drinking…there’s less flavor. I’m not sure if I didn’t steep it long enough or hot enough, or just didn’t have enough in the sampler (I brewed 24 ounces of water with it, so it might be a trifle anemic) but the flavor of the tea while it’s in my mouth is quite mild. The peppermint aroma almost overwhelms the taste of it.

If I wanted to drink a candy cane, this is the tea I would go for. I don’t, so I won’t be buying this one. But I’ll finish my mug, so that’s fine. If I were going to buy this tea, I would want to put more black tea in, to perhaps dilute the peppermint a bit and give it a bit more body – but I am the sort of person who likes her tea to be thick enough that people mistake it for coffee some days.