VariaTEA Send Message

Cold Brew Sipdown (326)

So first of all, why is an ingredient for this on steepster “puerh leaves” since there definitely are none?

Anyways, I am inventorying my teas again because it calms me. This time I am doing a new excel spreadsheet but I likely will also do a written one soon enough as well. This tea is what I have been sipping on while doing that. A sipdown which means one less tea to log.

This was a good one and I will miss it. If I were placing a teavivre order, I would consider adding this to the cart though I wouldn’t place an order just for this.

The other day I had a really weird sausage that could only be described as a sausage made by the Terry’s Chocolate Orange company if they decided to give up on chocolate and refocus their efforts to sausages. Basically, the sausage had a lot of orange flavor, but not just any orange, that very distinctive orange flavor in a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. It was not bad but it was weird and then it got me thinking about those chocolate oranges which brought this tea to mind.

This tea, like most other Necessiteas blends, is spot on for that flavor. It is much better hot but the flavor continues through even as it cools. I just personally think flavorwise it lends itself to a hot tea much better.

I saw this one described as tart and I’m surprised because it’s not tart at all for me. I was expecting tartness though and I decided to prep the sample cold brew to mitigate that. It worked well and made for a juicy blueberry flavour. Thank you Sil for the sample!

Gong Fu Sipdown (327)

I won an instagram giveaway and got a $40 voucher for a company whose teaware I’ve been eyeing for a while now. I definitely spent over the $40 but ended up with a bunch of new lovely teaware, including a lovely new tea tray, a glass gaiwan, and a cute monkey teacup. Pictures: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-N1BobAOo-/

The teaware showed up and of course I had to break it in and this tea just ended up standing out to me. I got about 8 steeps with the main flavor notes being cocoa, leather, and malt. At times, it got smokey. At other times, some raisin came through and in the last steep, even a touch of baked bread. It was smooth and full-bodied and quite a nice session of steeping while watching the Masked Singer on Wednesday.

I started brewing this as a latte and then realized there was no milk. I tried using half and half cream and I definitely don’t recommend it. This got dumped.

I wanted a latte and this is pre-2019 (just barely since it’s from December 2018) thus in my sipdown box(es and drawer) which is where I usually check first when I’m not sure which tea I’m looking for.

This one always smells so awesome when steeping and while my cup was good, it wasn’t as good as this usually is. The flavour was just a bit more muted than usual but that brought out the bergamot a touch more than usual as well. It was still very enjoyable and didn’t take long to drink down.

I need to try this next to Earl Grey Cupcake as those are my preferred Earl Grey teas now that Marshmallow Snowflake Earl Grey isn’t a thing anymore. It would be interesting to determine which I actually prefer thus I can focus my voting efforts for things like the 12 Teas of Christmas appropriately.

I cold brewed this and while I can get a tartness pop up at times, it mostly tastes like a cross between what I remember juicy fruit and hubba bubba tasting like. Thank you for sharing, Roswell Strange!