6444 Tasting Notes
Latte Sipdown (288)
This tea has such a strong rooibos flavor that I hoped a latte would help soften the rooibos and bring out the vanilla.
I pulled this out since today’s september sipdown is about dessert teas. With that in mind, I topped this latte with whipped cream and caramel and chocolate syrup. It was an alright drink. The chocolate pulled out some vanilla fudge notes which were nice but overall it was still a lot of rooibos flavor.
Fun to try but not a tea I will be looking for again.
Sipdown (289)
This was my sister’s random number selection pick tonight. I also didn’t realize it would be a sipdown but when I opened the package, I realized there was basically enough for a 16 oz serving so I just finished it.
Now that I am drinking the last of this, I am wondering how sugar or something would have helped this. It’s a nice warming coconut flavor and I could even see coconut pie but the lemon isn’t strongly present. It’s a good dessert flavor but seems to be missing just one thing. This will sound weird but the flavors you do get are almost bottom heavy so it seems like you need a pop of something on top. I think it is a bright lemon or even a sweet lemon note (like the lemon flavor in Butiki’s Lemon French Macaron) that would make this really rounded out.
Sipdown (290)
I do NOT like this plain. At all. It tastes like cheap and thin hot chocolate. It needs a latte prep for sure since this just feels like its lacking something without it.
Dropping my rating slightly from 72 because if a tea needs milk/latte prep this badly, it probably isn’t the best tea to start with.
Sipdown (291)
Today’s #septembersipdown prompt is about making a pot to share. Personally, I don’t live with tea drinkers and I don’t usually drink from a pot, however, I pulled out my mini pot for this prompt. I couldn’t convince someone to share though so I am drinking the pot by myself. Oh well.
When deciding what to make, the bottom of the pot said to use your favorite English tea and enjoy it in the English teaware. I don’t have any English Breakfast blends but I do have this tea which is an Earl Grey (which I associate with England – though that might be incorrect) from an English tea company. Good enough!
This tea was a free sample in my last Bird and Blend order. It was not something I have been enthused about so I figured why not just have it and it be done. So, I tossed the tea bag into my teapot and got to brewing. Of course while pouring the water, I managed to not catch the tag on the end of the string before it fell into the pot and then I had to fish it out. I also might have spilled both while pouring into and out of the teapot. Like I said, I don’t use a pot often.
I added milk to the glass since I thought a earl grey would need it. It does. The bergamot is strong but calmed slightly by the milk. It’s not bad this way. And I kept topping up the glass with the tea from the pot as a drank so it got less milky as I drank. It was still tolerable even as the milk:tea ratio got closer. Overall, I think maybe it is decent. I just don’t think its for me.
I know the feeling! I used to live in a house full of tea drinkers, which made it super easy to use up teas I didn’t prefer. Now it’s just me, and sometimes it builds up.
Same here. I don’t have anyone to share tea with either, though I do occasionally foist teas I don’t like on my parents.
Yeah, whenever I fly home for the holidays, my luggage is always filled with tea in dozens of little foil packets, which I’m sure the TSA doesn’t find suspicious at all.
We used to drink a lots of tea, usually a pot for the evening, but recently it is that everyone makes a juice or something fast and simple. And cold! I hope every fall it will change again, but not that much, unfortunately!
I live alone and don’t have any local tea-drinking friends to share with, either. This is why it takes me EONS to sipdown my mountains of tea… just too much in here for one person!
I think this is why I am always happy for the chance to share tea. My sister has gotten into the habit of occasionally grabbing my mug and trying it so maybe with time she will get into it too.
Latte Sipdown (293)
This is fine. It’s a bit more anise than I’d like but still a tolerable amount. The mix of spices is also alright and balanced/not muddy. Honestly though, if I am having a chai latte, it will be the Chaiwala one…or some flavored variety like DAVIDsTEA’s Pumpkin Chai. So this is rather middle of the road for me, which makes it one that is probably forgettable and one I likely won’t be getting again.
I tried this as a tea lemonade once and now I keep having it that way and have worked my way through the large amount of leaf I’ve had for quite some time. It’s very nostalgic because it tastes like a mango lemonade I used to get at a restaurant my aunt would take me too.
I don’t like plain earl greys. I like some flavoured earl greys that trick me into thinking I like earl greys and leads me to buying bags of what are essentially just earl greys. That’s what happened with this tea. The solution? Earl grey-infused hot chocolates. Yum!
I have never tried infusing a hot chocolate with tea. As soon as we get some cool weather again I want to give a try!
https://www.ohhowcivilized.com/the-very-best-earl-grey-hot-chocolate-recipe/ This is the recipe I use. It’s really good.
VariaTEA: thank you! I have it pinned so I won’t lose it before cold weather gets here!
Sil said this one should be called coconut cake and when I brewed it up it was a lot of that sort of lotion-y coconut smell. So I was worried. Thankfully, it is creamy but not lotion-y. Plus, it’s not ALL coconut. I means it’s a lot of coconut but with a generic berry flavor underneath and at the end of the sip. Honestly, I am getting a super thick and coconut cream mouth feel as if someone put a whackload of coconut whipped cream on top of some macerated berries. But like the ratio is like 2:1 or maybe even 3:1 coconut whipped cream: berries. Nothing says cake to me though. Also, I am getting the slightest bit of green tea base but not as much as I worried there would be given this is a green tea but was steeped for 5 minutes at 200F, per Dessert by Deb’s steeping recommendations.
So I’d say this one is good but not great and not one I need more of. With that said, this is a sipdown of the sample that came in my July order with Sil and Roswell Strange but I got another sample of it with the Fall teas that arrived yesterday.
