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Sipdown (172/174)!

Even though I’m just drinking this one – this is sort of a sipdown on my Tiramisu Oolong as well. Or, at least, I’m sending the last cup of it to Cavocorax.

A while ago she sent me some samples, including this tea, so now that I can afford to I’m happily returning the favor and sending her some back! Currently I’m sipping on a lovely cold brew of this blend while packing up her tea.

This cold brew is pretty awesome! I set it up yesterday afternoon/last night but forgot about it overnight so it didn’t get strained until around an hour ago – I was worried that sitting that long would have made the cherry too potent and maybe medicinal, but it’s actually still quite delightful and lovely.

There’s a slight grassy undertone, but the strong balance of cherry and grapefruit flavours overcome it in a pleasant enough way.

I’m sad to see this one go; it’s something I would maybe consider reordering for cold brewing. Who knows, perhaps I’ll see more of this in my future?

Round Two for the evening.

This was the convenient tea option while I was painting my nails.

Does anyone else do that thing where they crack the can open enough that they can suck the pop out of the can but it still visibly looks closed? Tre noticed for the first time tonight that I do that and he was baffled by it. He asked why I do it and I told him I didn’t remember, but that was actually a bold faced lie since I knew he’d mock the real reason.

Truth is I remember very consciously making the observation in around fourth grade that my classmates were all more interesting than me, so I purposefully developed small habits to give myself more “quirks”. Among them were crossing my sevens and only cracking my cans of pop partly open. Now those things are just second nature to me…

Anyone else ever do things to deliberately be quirky and then have those things become real quirks? Or just me?

Our lovely MissB talks so highly about this one that the last time I was in Tea Desire I took the plunge and bought 50g of this to take home. It wasn’t a hard sell; I trust her opinion a lot plus it has caramel in it and a lot of it, which is a favourite flavour of mine in general, and I got to smell it in store as well so it wasn’t like I was just blindly ordering from their site. It smelled awesome, by the way.

I finally made it up tonight. I wasn’t sure if this was a Pu’Erh that really needed to be rinsed, so I did a quick 20 sec. rinse with warm water just in case. A five minute steep later, and I had my mug of this ready to go. It still smells incredible!

Man, this is a flat out tasty, tasty tea. It has the familiar caramel/toffee flavour I’ve experienced in other Tea Desire blends like Victoria Mint or Sweet Toffee but this is much earthier and almost “gritty” – but in a good way. It’s thick and creamy too, and very very rich.

I honestly think this is the first (but hopefully not the last) Pu’Erh I’ve tried that I’d want to keep restocked or in quantity; and hey, I have 50g of it now so that works out well! Looks like I’m going to need to clear out a spot in the tea closet for tins of Pu’Erh – at the moment such a section does not exist.

On a whim I decided to search the data base for this one…

Whenever Tre and I order in pizza, we always get the “2for1 Movie” deal, which comes with four cans of pop. Neither of us drink pop regularly, so we get Nestea since this is the “most agreeable” option for both of us – so there’s usually a few cans sitting in our fridge that eventually get drank.

Since we ordered pizza tonight, this holds especially true. I happen to be drinking one of them right now, actually.

Personally, I think that this gets a bad wrap among tea drinkers at the “Steepster” level (by which I mostly mean tea drinkers with lots of knowledge and many types of teas under their metaphorical tasting belts) – sure, it’s highly sweetened – but as a convenient kind of tea I think it’s probably the best in its respective class/market.

I know that personally, I would prefer a glass of this than the typically shitty, over steeped Lipton bagged green tea most restaurants offer. And at least when I’m eating out the average non-tea drinker knows what I mean when I say I’d like a Nestea, unlike when I say “Do you have any oolong?”. That counts for a lot, in my book.

It’s good for what it is.

Sipdown (173/175)!

This was an easy sipdown to take because I know it’s only temporary; my incredible tea triplet VariaTEA has picked up 50g for me so soon enough I’ll have a whole bunch of this to enjoy and play around with!

This cup was awesome; though the rose was the heaviest and most present I’ve had in a cup yet it still didn’t cross into artificial or perfume territory which, to me, is just another mark that this is a really, really good blend.

My headache is finally gone as well, so hopefully I’ll get a couple more cups in by the end of the evening. I didn’t feel like cooking after such a miserable day though, so I ordered in pizza for Tre and I – it was kinda my turn to do so anyway. Greasy pizza and fancy pants tea make for an excellent combo.

I swear we order from Pizza73 (a local pizza chain just blocks from our house) way too often though; enough that we have a regular and favourite delivery guy, that we no longer have to write in the comments to come to the side door (they just do it), and currently there are four empty pizza/wing boxes sitting by our garbage and that’s not including the pizza I ordered tonight.

I think we fall into the “student living” niche pretty well…

Headache is subsiding. Hopefully saying that doesn’t jinx anything…

My tea drinking has been slow today; it’s hard to be motivated enough to leave the couch/my bed when all I want to do is hide under my big, cozy Spiderman blanket and mass watch old episodes of House. However, I did set this one up to cold brew yesterday (30 hour cold brew…) so I strained it this morning when I made my matcha, and I’ve been sipping away at it all day since then.

The flavour is strong; and definitely rootbeer. It’s good, and refreshing and probably helping a bit with the headache – but honestly, and weirdly enough, I think I prefer this hot to cold? That seems weird to me because root beer is typically a cold drink so a cold brew would make more sense, but there’s just something about a hot cuppa this that the cold brew is lacking.

Not sure what.

I woke up today with a pounding headache that just wont quit; thank God I don’t have work today. The upstairs tenants (my landlord, his daughter, and his girlfriend) are in the house for the day working on their renovations (they’re not living here atm – but come in every few afternoons to work on things), and for a while they were vacuuming which was killing my head, and now his daughter is playing really, really loud rock music. I can’t actually hear the words, but I can “hear/feel” the bass line and it’s like a drill to my temple.

I’ve also reached the daily limit on Tylenol/painkillers – so looks like I’m just going to have to wait it out. Ughh.

Anyway, I’m finally trying this matcha in cold milk – something I’ve wanted to do for a while but haven’t gotten to for various reasons, work being the primary one. I have to say it’s so much better than just shaken into cold water.

I have to say this has an additional thick, creamy richness that mildly reminds me of white chocolate; however it’s a little weak (still better than the cold water). I don’t one hundred percent feel I’d know this was white chocolate flavoured if I was blindly drinking it. Though I think I’d be aware it wasn’t straight milk, too. I also know this is delicate level flavoring though, so perhaps at distinctive this would really shine?

And at least it’s not grassy.

I really want to try this at a hot latte – maybe it’d be sort of like a white hot chocolate? A really, really rich and creamy white hot chocolate.

So yeah – overall thoughts and feelings are that this is good and could possibly be made better if ordered at a stronger flavouring, but probably not something I want to reorder (even at that higher flavour level) because I’m not sure the risk is worth the potential payoff. I have/have tried far better matcha flavours and I want my first official order to both incorperate totally new flavours and familiar favourites.

I apparently forgot to log this one a few days ago.

I made it at work with honey because my was feeling a little sore/scratchy, but then I got called to the front (despite being on break) to deal with a customer complaint, and didn’t get to it until the end of the night with closing paperwork. By then it was stone cold, and my throat was feeling better anyway so it had lost its point.

It still tasted good, though.

24 hour cold brew!

Like I said in my Tiramisu Oolong tasting note, I split this 50/50 with Morningstar today when we were on break. She said this one wasn’t too bad, but I know she wasn’t that impressed with it. Not sure if that’s because of the roobios, the fruitiness or the fact it was cold. Maybe something else?

I have to say, personally I didn’t find this to be “wow” worthy this afternoon either, though it was agreeable and definitely captured the lime/cream elements well enough. Maybe it just ended up cold steeping for too long and could have benefited from a shorter time…

In a timolino for work, no additives.

This was really coffee/cream rich today, and tasted especially cakey. The chocolate/oolong were both much lighter in flavour/presence.

Morningstar and I were on break together today, and while I was drinking my tea she asked me to explain what each of them were, so I broke down the ingredients to this one and my cold brewed Lime Chiffon and when both smelled/sounded good to her I split each 50/50 with her so she could try them out.

This was her favourite of the two (I’m thinking because she’s a coffee drinker normally, or maybe because it was hot). Honestly, it was my favourite of the two (today, anyway) as well. I think I must have successfully converted her to tea though, because she said she’d pay me back if I ordered a pouch of it for her. I was really sad when I had to tell her this one isn’t sold anymore.

I promised to bring in some other ones I think are similar for her to try, though. That seemed to make her pretty happy. I think I might bring in Tea Desire’s Latte Macciato (because of the coffee/chocolate element) and then a Bourbon Black (because I know she likes booze) early next week for her to try. And maybe DT’s Choconut Oolong…

It was a cool bonding type moment, though!