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Midnight breakfast!

I made scrambled eggs with shredded apple as a topping , toast with pineapple cream cheese, and three cups of tea to eat/drink while rewatching my favourite Malcolm in The Middle episodes! Also, I shut all the vents that were spewing hot air into the apartment – and I’m feeling a lot better now. It’s a nice way to spend the evening/early morning!

This one was really good; as always, hard to describe – but really good. I think this cup leaned a little more towards the Lapsang part of the blend, but it worked as something to offset my very sweet breakfast. That is, it worked right up until the last swig of tea which was just an overwhelming amount of tobacco-esque smokiness. Ick.

At least I have more tea to wash the taste away, though ;)

Also, I think this is my first time reviewing this since the new “flavours” list was added to tasting notes, and I have to say that I had a lot of fun picking out the flavours in this blend – this one is so complicated and has so many layers that there were a ton of applicable flavours – some of which were ones I hardly ever get to include in tasting notes.

Sipdown (185/187)!

Somehow VariaTEA has managed to get her cupboard number lower than mine, again! I need to step up my sipdown game – which is sad because I thought I was doing so well!

Anyway, I cold brewed the last of this sample from Rosehips today for about seven hours – I hoped it would switch up the flavour notes a little bit. However, it’s not really doing that, which is pretty disappointing! Mostly I taste funky, weird floral black base and nothing else. I don’t even get weak orange notes!

I’d actually toss it; but the coldness of it is making me feel pretty good so I’m drinking the rest of it despite not liking the taste. I feel like I’m really burning up and am also really dehydrated; though I know the latter isn’t true – I’ve been drinking tea practically non-stop all day. Bleck.

This blend is so simple, and yet so so very perfect!

Like I mentioned in a few other notes today, I feel like I’ve been burning up/over heating the last few days despite wearing as minimal of an amount of clothing as possible (while still being clothed, because roommate and all) and letting 80% of the teas I’ve been drinking go stone cold before getting to them – so I thought that maybe some crisp mint would make me feel better.

It’s not, but at least it’s deliciously on point!

I don’t care what DT says; keep the steep temp. on this one low! This has both white and green tea in it, and there’s definitely more leaf than added in fruit bits – so unlike Movie Night or some of the other white/green blends with high steep temps. you cannot get away with steeping this one like that!

That’s my little mini rant of the day; which I’m only pointing out because I nearly steeped this at that high of a temperature because I feel loopy and like I’m overheating (I am now convinced that I’m getting sick) and I wasn’t being the most tentative tea drinker/maker. I’ve made this mistake of doing this one at a high temp. before and it was sickeningly bitter and made me feel very nauseous – I definitely don’t need that now if I’m getting sick again.

But anyway; this is tasty (when done right)! Caramel Apple goodness!

Had to search for this one in my cupboard; I couldn’t get it to come up in the search bar. Oddly enough, I couldn’t get ANY Root Beer teas to come up in the search bar – and yes, I double and triple checked to make sure I was spelling things correctly.

Thanks a million to aisling of tea for sending me (unprompted; just as an extra “add in”) about 50g of this blend! I adore root beer teas; and I’ve been holding this one, just based on the one cup I’ve had of it prior, very highly in my head. In fact, I consider it the best root beer tea (with a black base) that I’ve ever had – and second best overall, with Butiki’s blend ringing in at the top spot.

I’m happy that now that I’ve brewed up a cup of it (alongside a big bowl of buttery popcorn and some good TV), it’s living up to how I’ve held it in my head! I’m especially thankful because the many, many cinnamon chips in the dry leaf (way more than there were in the one cup sample I received from Kittenna) were frightening me a little bit. Cinnamon has no place in rootbeer! Thankfully, I can’t taste them individually so they must just be doing something to contribute to the overall flavour.

This is super creamy and rich, both in taste and mouthfeel – and it really captures not only a very “pure” rootbeer flavour, but the essence of a “float” with that very decadent scoop of vanilla icecream on top. In this case, I believe they’re using white chocolate to do the trick – but hey, whatever works right? And this definitely works. I drank the first half plain, and then added some milk to the second half – and that just made this even thicker and better. Mmm!

My only “gripe” overall is that it has that same gross looking oily/waxy scum on top that you get in every cup of DT’s White Chocolate Frost. And there very clearly is a common denominator: the white chocolate. But it doesn’t translate into the mouthfeel in an unappetizing way so it doesn’t bother me on any level other than the aesthetics of it.

I’m boosting my rating, because apparently I rated this much lower than I remember doing so – probably because of the oily/scummy appearance. The taste is divine though, so my rating should reflect the taste way more than the appearance.

I steeped this cup up like a green blend because it does have green tea in it, despite being mostly black. Even still, only one word comes to mind “Ick” – and if I’m allowing myself a second word, it would probably be “bitter”.

Sadly, in order to get a sipdown (without just sending this to other people, or throwing it away) I do have to actually drink it – and secretly I have hopes that if I experiment enough then I’ll be able to find a way it actually tastes alright.

At least I paired it with the new Supernatural episode from last night! One of the two is definitely enjoyable, that’s for sure!

Tragic Sipdown (186/188)!

I waxed poetic about this one yesterday, so I wont do the same today – but this is a really heartbreaking sipdown. This blend has already been added back to my shopping list though, and I have plans for when the perfect time to restock this will be; so this sipdown is thankfully only temporary!

So my sample of this is marked as from Cavocorax but I swear I got in from VariaTEA. Hmm, how peculiar. Maybe she received it from Cavo before passing it on to me?

Now that this is steeped up, I’ll admit to being a little thrown by it. I know it’s supposed to be chocolate/coconut – and I totally get those two flavours, however, there’s more to it than that and it’s weirding me out a little – I’m not sure whether I’m enjoying the cup! Although, I definitely don’t dislike it either…

I swear, this reminds me of a black version of DAVIDsTEA’s Jessie’s Tea blend, with the addition of chocolate also. I’m getting weird floral notes along with the coconut/chocolate, specifically the same sort of lavender I get in the DT blend. I wonder if it’s my mind just fucking around with me though, because of the little purple flowery things in the blend (which I looked up, and they’re amaranth petals – definitely not lavender).

I’m definitely going to need more than just this cup to make my mind up on this blend, that’s for sure!

Sipdown (187/189)!

Very short “blip” of backlog, seeing as I had this last night but fell asleep before logging it. Literally, I fell asleep with the page for this open, and my laptop on my lap. Tre says he moved my laptop so I didn’t knock it off the couch or anything stupid. And now he’s making fun of me because he left for school at 9AM and got home at 3PM and I was dead asleep at both points in time – meaning I slept for a straight twelve hours…

But this was nice; I had the last of it from Dexter3657 (I’m always going to second guess whether those numbers are in the right order) coldbrewing yesterday afternoon and I was just waiting super impatiently all day for it to be finished so I could enjoy it. After twelve hours, and at 10 PM I declared it “good enough!”. It was perfect timing; despite hanging out all evening in a tank top and boxer shorts, I felt like I was perpetually burning up – and a cold, refreshing tea to sip on all evening was perfect. Maybe I’m getting sick? That would explain all the sleeping, right? I better not be getting sick! I sure as hell don’t have time for getting sick…

This is so perfect though! It’s totally a spring/summer tea – but I would drink it year round regardless. It captures the lush, juicy taste of Dragonfruit perfectly and I was in love the moment I tried it! I would not hesitate to stock either this one or Cuppa’T Specialty Tea’s Dragonfruit Cranberry blend, which tastes eerily similar! And definitely at least 100g worth! Mmm! So good!

Slowly finishing this one off.

This is actually tasting pretty stunning right now – and it hasn’t in quite a long time, though I’m thinking the reason it seems so good is because tonight it’s the follow up tea to a very disappointing blend; so just the sharp contrast is probably making this seem a little better than it really is.

I’m getting tons of lychee tonight; though the downside is a really grassy finish to the floral notes of the lychee. Better than my previous cup tonight; but still a “no”.

I’m sleepy again, so I may take a power nap and do some more tea drinking closer to around midnight…