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Tea 8/10 from my Halloween Tea Marathon! (I can’t believe I’m still going with this). Again from MissB ’s Mystery Box.

This is going to be a super short tasting note because a) I barely remember drinking this any more, b) I want to get the final three done tonight so I can go back to posting normal notes, and c) I thought it was a brilliant idea to go to the gym at 10:30pm, and so I am now completely exhausted and may fall asleep any second.

If I don’t fall asleep before I get to them, the same will apply to the remaining two.

I drank this right after the Pumpkin Creme Brûlée, which I think I preferred, although this one’s nice too. It’s an oolong so I’d feel bad adding milk to it, something which I like to do with pumpkin blends – for some reason, I just find them really comforting, and adding a touch of sugar and milk turns it into a hug in a mug. This is missing that, although there’s a lingering creaminess which kinda almost makes up for it. I don’t see any mention of spices, but I think I tasted some. Perhaps I’m misremembering, or my brain just associated so pumpkin flavour with spice flavour. Either way, this is a pretty decent creamy pumpkin tea, but if I had to choose, I would go for the pumpkin creme brûlée.

Halloween Tea Marathon 7/10

This is a sample from MissB ‘s mystery box. I drank this a week ago and can’t remember much of my thoughts, other than that it was tasty and comforting. I drank it plain, and could taste definite caramel notes as well as the pumpkin ones. There were definite ‘pumpkin’ notes present, rather than just ‘spices sometimes combined with pumpkin’ which is sometimes the case. This makes me a happy Nattie.

I think I will try this with a little brown sugar next time, for a sweeter dessert tea.

6/10 in my Halloween Tea Marathon, and yet again it’s from KittyLovesTea.

I absolutely adore pumpkin tea, and this has been on my wish list for quite a while, and one of the ones I most wanted to try, so I was very excited to receive it in the secret pumpkin swap. It did not disappoint. I had the first cup of this plain, and was happy to find that the pumpkin flavour was prominent, with the spices complimenting it rather than overpowering it. A huge plus in my book! I have since had it with a pinch of brown sugar and as a latte, which blew my mind. I’m actually pretty sad that I love this one so much, since it’s a DAVIDsTEA and once it’s gone I have no way of getting any more. Please, David’s, open a store in England!!

5/10 from my Halloween Tea Marathon, and 5th secret pumpkin tea from KittyLovesTea! I swear not all 10 are from the swap…

First off, I was an utter doofus when I brewed this. It was really late and I was working, so without really looking at it I assumed it was a black tea and dumped a load of boiling water on top of it. Despite the astringency of the burnt tea, I really enjoyed my small cup of this, and am looking forward to trying it again when I can treat the tea properly. It was really yummy! The dry leaf didn’t smell of much, but brewing, the scent is beautifully minty with a hint of vanilla. The mallow sweetness goes really well with the spearmint, and even steeped at too high a temperature the tea isn’t drying. If it were still available, this is one I would definitely consider reordering.

4/10 in my Halloween Tea Marathon.

The rest of these notes won’t be very long, as Halloween was almost a week ago and I should probably get them out of the way. Plus I’m starting to forget the finer points of what I thought of the teas. I haven’t used my entire sample for any of them, so there will be a longer, more detailed review of them all at some point when I haven’t put as much pressure on myself to get a tonne done at once.

As far as I remember, this tea was pretty much indistinguishable to me from the Candy Corn one I had before it. I’m guessing Frank used the same base tea for both, and since they’re both sort of sugar flavoured, I’m fairly unsurprised. I did wonder before I drank it how he was going to translate the flavour, seeing as how candy floss is usually pretty flavourless. I don’t actually like candyfloss, so I haven’t had it for years, but I don’t think this tea reminded me of it. It was sort of sweet, though.

ETA: This was another sample from the secret pumpkin swap with KittyLovesTea!

Steepster keeps eating my notes D: I’ve just spent ages writing about this tea and it froze then published my note blank ): is this happening to anyone else??

Anyway, this was the third of my Halloween Tea Marathon teas, and yet another sample from KittyLovesTea. I have actually finished my marathon now, but I’m quite behind on publishing my notes due to uni work and Steepster issues.

I’ve spent far too long on trying to write up this tasting note, so I’m basically going to attempt to write it quickly before it closes itself again. Controversially, I am not a huge fan of this tea. I have never had candy corn, so I don’t know how faithful an interpretation it it, but to me, this just tastes like a generic base tea with a slightly honeyed aftertaste. I think next time I will eat a candy corn from the dry leaf first. So I have a better comparison to go off. For all I know, it could be a perfect representation. As it is, I am drinking this blind and don’t think it’s really anything special. Sorry, Frank!

Tea number 2/10 of my Halloween Tea Marathon.

This was another sample from my secret pumpkin KittyLovesTea, which I was really pleased about since I’ve been wanting to try this blend for a while.

I’ve read a few reviews of people wishing this was smokier, or had some lapsang in it, but to me it hits the nail on the head as far as bonfire toffee goes. For any non-British followers, this is the classic British sweet it resembles: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfire_toffee

I used to have bonfire toffee every Halloween, even though I hated how it stuck to my teeth and had a sort of bitter aftertaste. It was a Halloween/bonfire night classic, how could I not? I haven’t had it for a couple of years, but this tea immediately brought me back and made me really nostalgic. It has the dark, caramelised taste of bonfire toffee, combined with the hint of apple which makes it almost reminiscent of toffee apples, too. Yes. This is exactly how Halloween tastes.

Happy (belated) Halloween, everyone!

So Frank’s dad is staying this weekend, and I didn’t have time to write much up last night, which was when I had this tea. I received it in my Secret Pumpkin swap from KittyLovesTea, and now is of course the perfect time to drink it.

I looked through a lot of my samples yesterday, and picked out 10 which were Halloween-inspired, some more than others. The plan is to drink all 10 over the weekend, although I might have to include Monday as a “long weekend” depending on how it goes. Some I have drank before, and some are completely new to me. I am also doing them in alphabetical order, partly because it’s easier to remember, and partly because I’m both indecisive and anal.

So here goes, tea 1/10 of my Halloween Tea Marathon!

Visually, this tea gets 100. It fits the mood perfectly. There are little candy pieces in the tea – black cats and orange sprinkles. The real magic, though, happens when it is steeped. As soon as I poured the water over the dry leaf, it turned a green colour. Over the duration of steeping, this became darker and darker until it was a murky almost black colour. It definitely put me in the Halloween spirit! (Haha, spirit, get it?).

The smell of the dry leaf was utterly divine, all tropical and sweet. I think this tea requires a lot of leaf, though, because even though I only brewed half a cup of it (on account of the drinking 10 teas), the scent diminished significantly when brewed.

The taste confirmed that more leaf is required, and I think that next time I have it I will use up the rest of my sample. I used a heaped teaspoon for only half a cup of tea, and I could still barely taste anything when drinking it plain. I was forced to add a sweetener, which was kinda too much but at least brought out some of that tropical fruit I had been expecting.

Overall, I am not disappointed in this tea as I expect it was mainly a quantity error on my part. I am excited to try this again!

Frank pointed this out to me when we were shopping one day, so I bought a bottle to try because why not?

I would describe it more as a juice featuring tea than a tea itself, as the fruit juice definitely takes centre-stage. That being said, the green tea is definitely present in the taste and aftertaste, adding an interesting grassy note which I am almost surprised goes so well. It is certainly done better than other similar juice teas I have tried. I haven’t looked an the ingredients or nutrition information, but I have a feeling there is definitely some added sugar in this. It’s sweet but tart at the same time, but definitely not as sweet as most soft drinks. It is still fresh enough to be refreshing. I wouldn’t actively seek this out, but if I were out wanting a drink and saw this, I would likely choose it over a bottle of pop.

Sipdown! (5/180)

This review isn’t going to be very detailed, I’m afraid, as I had this one ages ago and forgot to review it at the time. I also left it in the fridge uncovered, and after the first couple of cups it started to taste like fridge. From what I remember, though, it tasted fairly similar to root beer tea, and I couldn’t much tell the difference. I’m not a big fan of root beer, so that’s affected my judgement a bit. Still, I remember it being pretty decent.

Sipdown! (4/174)