So I bought Cara’s Tea for Travelers sampler!
It’s my first Adagio sampler, although I’ve tried all of the Harry Potter and Firefly blends in their respective samplers, and sampled a few odd ones from other samplers. I have to say, the tins are precious and adorable and once they’re empty I look forward to finding stuff to keep in them. Although, I have to say they were pretty packed – almost to a point where I’m unhappy because when I opened a few of them it was impossible to not spill the leaf despite how careful I was trying to be.
I’ve decided I want to try at least one cold brew and straight cup for all the blends, and then go from there and fiddle around with things – and I started with the “Majestic King” (aka Thorin) as a cold brew. I ended up straining this one, and then drinking it on my day out with my Aunt and Grandma yesterday when they came to visit. We stopped at my store because my Grandma wanted to see where I work, and then we went back to my Aunt’s house in the city where we just watched daytime talk shows like Dr. Phil and Ellen and had a nice sit down meal. So it was a relaxed, casual day.
Taste wise; I don’t know how I feel about this. I mean to be fair, there are a lot of ingredients in it that I’m not huge on such as the ginger but even still there was something sorta weird and off about it. There was this very oily/slimey taste present throughout the whole thermos and immediately my mind went to the Pu’Erh in the blend because of the whole “fish” comparison, but it could possibly have bee from something else. I did taste the ginger fairly clearly, and recognized Adagio’s black base – other things like the cinnamon or orange were much, much more subtle and hard to pick out.
For now I wont rate until I’ve tried this hot; partly because I know I have some bias towards the ingredients, and partly because of the weird slimeyness that I’m not one hundred percent sure was from the tea; it’s possible something else like my teaware was causing it (though I am pretty confidant everything was properly washed).
As for character accuracy; I can definitely see the intentions behind what went into the blend and for the most part I think they were well thought out; I don’t know how well I think the oranges mesh with everything else though and I’d have liked to see something sweeter in here (vanilla, perhaps) to sort of emphasize how Thorin’s attitude develops in regard to other characters, like Bilbo. Oh well.
Dude, I had the same problem with the tins. How do they get all the tea in there without it going everywhere when they close it?!?!