ashmanra Send Message

December Sipdown Prompt – an herbal tisane

Yesterday my daughter surprised both me and Ashman with homemade advent boxes full of gifts and candy! Tonight she had another surprise.

Every December for over 25 years, we have read one Beatrix Potter book each night for the first 23 days of the month. We light a candle on our Cradle to the Cross advent spiral from The Keeping Company (a newer addition to our traditions) and have a very short reading with that as well. On Christmas Eve, we read Luke 2.

Tonight as we prepared to listen to Ashman reading Squirrel Nutkin, she made a pot of tea and brought it to me, saying that it was supposed to arrive in time for Peter Rabbit but was delivered late.

I had no idea what was in it and guessed apple first. That was the chamomile I was smelling. I guessed green rooibos and that was correct. The spearmint and strawberry flavoring gave a sweet candy vibe, but I would not have pegged it as strawberry tonight. I would have guessed a fruity bubble gum.

It was really good and I am glad to have a new night time tisane for the cold, dark months ahead. I bet it is super good iced, too. I have to do that soon!

Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 2

This is a favorite from their advent line up and I am happy it has been in every advent since we started buying them, including the sachet advent.

The aroma is fantastic. The bergamot is strong enough but not overpowering. It has a candy sweetness in the aroma but is very refined in the cup, and smoother than many Earls. I really like this one and I think it just keeps growing on me.

December 2 Sipdown Prompt – World Pollution Prevention Day: drink an organic tea

I usually have this for lunch after overnight cold steeping, but it is chilly today so I poured it in a mug and heated it in the microwave. (Please be kind. Many of us do it. No shaming.)

This is a mild English breakfast style tea and neither hot nor cold does it need any milk or sugar for taming or enhancement. The flavors are light and playful. They suggest drinking like a glass of chilled wine, and I agree that it is a lovely way to take this tea.

I love this company and their sister charity! So many good teas doing so much good in the world – let’s have more of that!

Fortnum & Mason Advent – Day 1

The order of flavors will be different from other people who bought the wooden advent refill, as they are shipped in a box in no particular order. I checked to see if they were intended to be placed in the calendar some certain way, but none of the corner tins were their Christmas blends which is how they come in anything pre-packed. Also, they didn’t sell the wooden advent itself this year. It has been replaced by a nice cardboard box, which probably can survive and be filled with the refills next year.

I asked my daughter to take out a Christmas specific blend and put it last, and then put the tins in however she pleased. This way I am still surprised! Ha ha!

The mandarin flavor in this is so authentic! When I was growing up, we received oranges and tangerines and walnuts and such in our stockings. We rarely had citrus fruit in the house except at Christmas, so this tea smacks of Christmas for me!

We did our double steeping treatment on this. Three teaspoons of leaf in a Stump pot which holds about 18-20 ounces, steep and pour into larger pot, then steep again.

Even with this treatment, the color is deep golden yellow and the flavor is bright and fresh. It paired nicely with the quince jam in the Bonne Maman advent.

Would repurchase sometime if a citrus green tea were needed on shelf.

November Sipdown Prompt – a tea for which you are especially thankful

Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate! I am thankful for all my Steepster peeps – more than you know.

Apparently the point of this tea is that they don’t tell you what the flavors are, and I am a bit rubbish at pinning flavors down. What I do know, and Ashman concurred, is that it tastes like a black tea version of Jardin Sauvage, a green rooibos tea that we both enjoy very much. Mostly I get mango but I thought I got a bit of banana once in the first cup.

This morning I asked Ashman what he wanted for our breakfast tea and he said he wanted something with fruit or berry flavors. We only drank about half of the big pot because we had a lot to do to get lunch ready.

After lunch, we wanted to have tea with our pound cake and instead of making a new pot I offered to heat it (calm down calm down) by mixing it with my cold steeped English Breakfast from Rare Tea Co. Cache-cache was room temp at that point. The strange thing was that even with 12 ounces of a good black tea added, I fully tasted Cache-cache. It was delicious with our pound cake and homemade ice cream.

November Sipdown Prompt – drink your cheapest tea

We go through a quite a bit of this one and the decaf version. Ashman takes this one to work and we drink the decaf at night – sweet and iced. Not bad, but not great. Just serviceable and quenches thirst. I think I had the decaf today but I am too lazy to add it to the database.

November Sipdown Prompt – your oldest black tea

After buying tons of this tea during the pandemic, I was shocked to see that our current tin is past the best by date. This was the first black tea that Ashman enjoyed without milk and sugar so we bought tons of it, and at the beginning of lockdown there were articles circulating that said black and puerh tea might have a small amount of efficacy against those types of viruses, preventing high viral load, so Ashman drank some each day.

He expanded his palate and now he drinks a lot of black teas plain, so I guess that is how this one started to get neglected. It is delicious, though not a breakfast favorite for me because I like the oomph of Keemun and such. It is definitely nice gong fu style, and a very good tea, and we will probably repurchase it one day when the cupboard gets lower. It is a nice afternoon or summer time breakfast tea, for sure.

Now that’s more like it!

This was a sample I received with my Lupicia Christmas (mostly) and I was really excited to get it.

A while back I purchased Harney and Sons Salted Caramel tea blend with high hopes, but they were dashed. The aroma was fantastic but the base tea was weak and the caramel flavor was just meh. I added black tea to it to make it more drinkable.

This was just what I was hoping for. The tea base is plenty strong enough but doesn’t need additives to tame it. The caramel is rich and true in aroma AND taste. I would definitely purchase this so the sample worked. I will wait until my cupboard is a little more in control, though.

Sipdown!

We have had big pots of this in the evening with snacks. It is one of the few red rooibos teas I like. I haven’t had red velvet cake in many years – decades, even. I don’t really remember what it tasted like so I don’t know how authentic this is. Definitely dessert-like and would be even more so with milk and sugar, but we like it plain.