16936 Tasting Notes
Sipdown another that was finished prior to entering my cupboard!
Thank you Kat_Maria for the added in teabag.
I have a few friends from my old city who think they’re big time tea drinkers but are more the ‘type’ of tea drinker that basically only owns teabags and kinda does it because it’s ‘trendy’ to be a tea drinker and drink Starbucks tea. Only a few even know what loose leaf is, and I think they’re only aware of DAVIDsTEA. Look at me sounding all ‘Tea Elitist’ ; that’s totally not the intention here. To each his/her own, and you know – move forward at your own pace, right? If teabags do it for you, then right on.
My point, anyway, is/was that the most recent time I talked to one of them I made the mistake of bringing up tea and she got very excited about this tea in particular and asked if I’d ever tried it, to which I responded that I’d heard of it and was familiar with the company/brand, but had never tried it personally. She just went on and on about how great it was. I believe at one point the phrases “Best tea in the world” and “Hibiscus is so great!” were uttered at least once, which I thought some people here on Steepster might find amusing.
So anyway, I received this one unexpectedly from Kat_Maria and finally took the opportunity to try it to see what all the “Tea Drinking Hipster” hype is all about, and I can summarize this in one word which makes practically every Steepster user simultaneously cringe: “Hibiscus”.
How the hell do people love this and drink it on a regular basis!? It was one of, if not the, most sour/tart and way overly sugary teas I’ve ever tried and I was puckered up throughout the entire mug full. Some kind of horrible cross between cloying and painfully sour/tart. It was so bad. Yeah, I’ll pass on this one in the future…
Sipdown (200/202)
Hooray for never ending backlog…
This is part of the set of teas I was trying to log yesterday but couldn’t finish because I had to go for my interview, which by the way didn’t turn out too well. I knew it wouldn’t as soon as I got there though: I clearly didn’t fit the “type”. All the employees were East Indian and very slender/thin with super high end fashionable clothing and the other eight candidates there were also East Indian with the same appearance… And, the all seemed to know each other. And there I was, not really ‘fitting in’ at all, and in my opinion at quite a disadvantage. Oh well – I did take the opportunity to distribute some resumes at other stores in the mall.
And I have another interview on Tuesday, as well!
This tea was made in a timolino because that was an appropriate size to use up the whole sample from VariaTEA. It’s another “Forever Nuts” type tea, and I think the last one I have left to try/finish off other than Forever Nuts itself. But you know, taste wise this one (just like Tealish’s Toasty Almond or Toasted Almond, whichever it was) tastes identical to Forever Nuts which I guess means it was an enjoyable enough cup but I’m just going to keep defaulting back to Forever Nuts because it’s the most convenient to get a hold of.
Sipdown (201/203)!
This is the last of yesterday’s backlog I’m going to be able to squeak in a write up for, at least for today. I need to go get ready for my interview and eat something. Still, I made a nice(ish) dent in it!
I finished this off quickly because I could see the sipdown potential and was not worried about hoarding it. The last was prepped in a timolino to allow for the little extra bit of leaf, and I mixed in some milk just like I had pondered doing earlier this week.
I was actually less impressed this time around and thought this mug worth taste rather burnt/bitter, and almost had unwelcome notes of cinnamon. Despite maintaining a “cookie like” taste, this was not so delicious and the milk did nothing to help at all. I finished the whole thing in the hope that by the time it cooled down a little it’d be better (just slowly sipping at it in the mean time), but it never did and in hindsight I think I should have just dumped it and saved myself some time.
I’m going to lower my rating.
Good luck today!!
Good luck!! And I am sorry this wasn’t good. I had a lot of the same issues with it as you did. Luckily I was able to send it to Josie Jade who seems to really enjoy it.
Fingers crossed with the interview!
Interview didn’t go too well, but as soon as I got there I kind of knew it wouldn’t. The staff was all East Indian employees, and all eight other candidates besides myself were also East Indian and all seemed to know one another/the staff. Oh well, just gotta keep looking.
That is weird. I always wonder why they interview people when that happens. I’ve had a couple interviews like that.
Sipdown (again before it entered my cupboard)!
Another generous add in from Kat_Maria.
Typically, I hate teas like this one which promise/boast about having great health benefits because I really don’t think that’s what tea drinking should be about. If those benefits are true, that should be like an “added bonus” for drinking tea, not the sole reason you do it because most of the time the benefits are way over hyped/played up.
An example would be the belief Green Tea is great for weight loss. The way some people push this, it sounds like Green Tea on its own is going to help you shed the pounds, but you need to combine drinking green tea (on a very regular basis) along with a good diet and exercise to see any real benefits. I once witnessed a girl purchase 100g of Bancha from Tea Desire. She had no tea knowledge at all, and was quite clearly asking about Green Tea (she just asked if they had ‘Green Tea, like is healthy for you’) because it would supposedly help her lose weight and I just felt so bad for her (she was a bigger girl, and couldn’t have been more than 15 years old) because it was clear she was looking for some cure-all when it really doesn’t work that way.
That said, and semi-rant over I actually thought this one was surprisingly very tasty, though I can’t remember what was in it. It was sort of fruity but also kind of minty/refreshing and vaguely reminded me of cookies. I’d totally drink it again, but because of the flavour and not its ability to “purify the skin”.
I agree! My friend here found this tea company that boasts all these things a few weeks ago and the box of bagged tea was $30! She asked me if I wanted to do a joint order. Uh, nope.
Haha. I remember someone on here was like “saying tea is good for your health/weight loss/whatever is like telling people to have sex to burn callories”
Better be a damn big box for $30!
Yes a 14-day “teatox” for $35. The company isn’t on Steepster as far as I can tell. I’ll take my regular delicious tea any day, thanks. :)
Haha I went to Teavana and the woman at the store very excitedly pushed Weight To Go and told me her manager dropped 10 pounds in a week just by adding the tea to her usual routine. My mom and I just looked at her like “Wtf have you been smoking?!?” because it was just such an absurd statement to make.
I totally agree with your rant there. That sort of thing is more than enough to make NOT want to try something.
I once had a tea that was just called “Weight Loss Tea” and even though the tea itself was pretty tasty I never wanted to drink it just because I hated the name!
I can only tell you that it did not purify my skin!
A dramatic reduction of dairy in my diet did, though ;)
Sipdown!
This was an extra on top of the Stash bagged teas I so generously was given by Kat_Maria from the Take It Away thread, and I sipped this one down before it even entered my cupboard. Go me! I was not going to let my tea number increase.
I’ve only tried a few Twinings teas, and that was a fair while ago. Stash is definitely my tea bag company of choice. Overall, this was pretty decent but a little bitter and harsh on the end sip. For a bagged Earl Grey, I’ve had much worse though.
So, apparently this one had been removed from my cupboard a while back despite my still having it which is disappointing because it means my numbers were a little off.
Anyway, I enjoyed a large cold brewed mason jar of this yesterday with lunch. It was absolutely delicious cold brewed, and ate up a ton of leaf so I think that’s likely how I’ll finish the bulk of it up. It was like drinking liquid maple (which I now realize is a stupid thing to say, because that’s essentially what maple syrup is), but without being cloying at all. Also, I could hardly taste the rooibos in it.
Catch up (going through previous tasting notes/notifications from yesterday) only took about half an hour today, so I surprisingly still have time to log some of yesterday’s backlog. Normally I’d be able to catch everything up but I have an interview later this early morning/afternoon! Yay me! I’m also going to take advantage of being in the mall and distribute some resumes.
I kinda of get all the fuss about this one now that I’ve had it (whisked into cold milk) because it does smell and taste surprisingly like Caramel Popcorn complete with the buttery flavour. That said, I’m not so sure how much I like it because of that. I’m not typically a fan of butter-y things, for example the buttery taste of 52Tea’s Pancake Breakfast is my least favourite thing about that blend (the exception to this rule is Movie Night, which I think works for me because it’s so light in flavour in general).
I’d probably stick to plain caramel over caramel popcorn, but this was still pretty good. I wont have difficulty finishing what Cavocorax so generously shared with me.
Flavors: Butter, Caramel
And so concludes yesterday’s backlog! And consequently Tre just got home, so I don’t get to log any of today’s tea… So, tomorrow there’ll be backlog all over again. What an unpleasant cycle.
Teabags from Kat_Maria showed up a few minutes ago, so over 200 teas… Again. At least several are just one bag amounts, so easy sipdowns. I’m going to try to finish them all today, and maybe sipdown a few other things?
This cup was nice, though! I steeped the leaves for a shorter amount of time than usual, and consequently the raspberry and coconut were more prominent. Sadly, this cup was also fairly oily? Not just visually, but kind of it mouthfeel too, but that was maybe a fair trade off?
Ha ha. Totally made me laugh. I love it when someone finds out I am a tea drinker, then goes on and on about how awesome Tetley tea bags are (or something like that). They just get a blank stare when I launch into loose leaf and French teas, etc.
You changed your profile picture! It threw me off momentarily. I was all “Steepster said Lala commented… But that’s not Lala’s image. Oh, wait!”. Cheshire cat is pretty awesome, though.
Sometimes I think the reason non-tea drinks don’t drink tea is that the only ones they try have hibiscus. They look at all the fun fruits and flower and they don’t know about or see the hibiscus until too late. It seems to be in some of those “energy” teas and looks so pretty and then disappoints :(
If only we could warn them all…
Also, I always think back to my Step Aunt. When we were up in her city for Comic Con my Dad told her I was a “big time tea drinker” and she got all excited because she ‘just loves tea’, and then proceeded to pull box after box of bagged Lipton/Tetley teabags out of her cupboard. Her idea of fancy tea was tea with chocolate in it, and she tried telling me about the crazy new store called DAVIDsTEA that her niece loves (she has ‘like ten tins of their tea’). I just went along with it; she in her late 60s and seemed very impressed with herself.
Haha. I have one friend who gets super excited about bagged chais and then got some gunpowder tea as a gift and keeps talking about it as if it is super special and unique. I don’t have the heart to tell her that it is a pretty common type of tea.
One of my coworkers loves this tea! I think the spices are neat, but I could never drink it all the time. It’s just too much. I’ll occasionally get it iced in the summer. :)
The restaurant Tre works at just started making their own Saskatoon Berry Earl Grey (which sounds amazing) and he came home and very excitedly told me they were making it by putting large quantities into a vat of cold water and letting it soak for a long time. He seemed so impressed that he was making tea in a way that was new to me, and I kind of just coldly answered back (because I’m a horrible roommate who doesn’t care about his feelings): “It’s called Cold Brewing, and what the fuck do you think I’m doing everyday with my mason jar? You’re not special.” and he kind of just shut up for the whole night.
Roswell, I just about spit out my tea!
I actually really like this brewed cold during the summer. I really hate the taste of plain water and this hydrates me in a pinch. When it’s really hot, the tartness is actually refreshing (similar to lemonade – but unlike lemonade doesn’t give you horrible stomach aches if you drink too much).