Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea

Thanks again Sil for this sample forever ago!
I enjoyed this one but it is a smidge too smoky for me to order a whole tin

Thank you for the sample Sil

This one is fairly smoky which is something that I don’t reach for very often. 4 oz is WAY too much of this tea for me! Maybe if it came in smaller quantities I would consider it.

I did enjoy it though, it is woodsy as well, and I find it to be a fairly complex tea.

The description on here included astringent which is how I would describe this. Quite an eye opener in regards to the strength of the taste. Dry malt in taste, but the mouth pucker is much more noticeable. It’s possible this would be more for someone who like their strong Assam or even Ceylon teas but for those who want a chocolate Dianhong or delicate Darjeeling this may just tickle your taste buds the wrong way.

Thank you for the sample Sil!

Yesterday, I had a big mug of this delicious tea. It was malty with some fruity and raisin notes. So good.

Thank you for the sample Sil!

This one was really good, a nice caffeine kick. I mostly get notes of malt, woodsy with just a touch of smoke, and slight fruity notes similar to a Keemun that I had recently (but I can’t remember which one). The astringency is fairly mild.

To order or not to order, that is the question….

It seems that I never have time to sit down and have a hot cuppa before work, so I have beeen cold brewing black tea. I don’t want to wake up my household turning on my kettle and don’t have the time (cough…patience) to wait for water to heat.
This actually turned out awesome as a cold brew. I was a little skeptical at first. I never should have doubted the tiger! It was still fairly bold with malty notes

Just what a tiger should be….big, bold, a little scary, but smooth and beautiful.
Note to self: please Do NOT overleaf and oversteep this, it gets very astringent. I ruined my last cuppa this way and I was a little scared something happened to the tea. It turns out that it was just user error. Oops. I won’t make that mistake again!

I forgot to log that I finally ordered this tea after wanting to try it for so long! And boy, I am glad I ordered it because I just finished off my favourite Assam. This isn’t quite as delicious as my favourite but it’s pretty darn close. The tin is awesome with great graphics, but it is a little hard to pry open. It’s worth it I guess for the tea to stay fresh!

Anyway, I really enjoy this smooth, malty cuppa breakfast deliciousness. It will likely become a cupboard staple from now on!

I tamed down the tiger a little bit and it was delicious this time! There is less astringency and it is a little less bold, which is to my liking. The malt makes this a smooth cuppa. And there is certainly a caffeine punch to this tea! Great for the morning!

Thanks again for the sample Sil!

Thank you for the sample Sil!

I have been wanting to try this FOREVER but didn’t want to buy 4oz of something that I had never tried before! So now, to figure out which one(s) I want to order from this company!

I have a fascination with tigers, they are just amazing creatures. So of course this is the tea that I brewed up first. It is malty and smooth, a high quality assam for sure. It is bold, however, I am getting quite a bit of astringency. I seem to enjoy my blacks at around 3 minutes, so I will try that next time. I really enjoy this tea and I am guessing that this will be on the order list.

I enjoyed this tea. Smokey for sure, definitely evokes a fallish feel. I would be happy to see this in a sampler, and might even order a small bag of it. I appreciated the quality of the leaves.

Geek Steep S1E17 – Doctor Who

Obviously I had to drink my Doctor Who themed tea while watching the special for this week’s episode, but it wasn’t lost on me that an equally perfect pairing would have been a good British style cuppa – and that led to choosing this tea for the recording.

An English Breakfast or something in that vein probably would have been equally fitting, but this is a tea I so rarely steep up so I liked having the excuse to. I’m not the biggest fan of it in all honesty – I just don’t love bergamot, and this is a very strong and intense bergamot. Probably the most heavy handed bergamot of any other tea in my stash right now. However, it just felt so perfect that I didn’t mind!?

Not to mention it’s just a good tea. Like, it’s not my normal preference but it’s VERY well done and uses super good quality ingredients. When I am in the mood for this sort of assertive, full bodied black tea with the briskness of the bergamot used here there is literally nothing else that matches it.

Our Website: https://www.geeksteep.com/
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Listen to us on Buzzsprout:
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DB topic:
https://steepster.com/discuss/42133-geek-steep-a-new-tea-and-fandom-podcast

Had this one yesterday morning with some pumpkin flavoured agave – one of my favourite way to “spooky up” some more normal/unspooky teas…

I don’t remember when I first discovered the combination of pumpkin and Earl Grey, but for a few years now I’ve been making these almost “pumpkin fog” type EG drinks around October and I love them. I don’t know why I feel like the squash-y sweet flavour of pumpkin compliments bergamot so strongly, but it just has an uncanny ability to make me really enjoy a cup of Earl Grey. So, that’s what happened here. Intense, full bodied Earl Grey with such a brisk black tea base and that autumnal kiss of sweet pumpkin.

Mmm!

From the “weekend” – in quotations because I had an extra long weekend that stretch from Friday afternoon until Tuesday, so I got lots of rest/relaxation and good tea drinking in!

It’s taking me forever to make my way through this tin of tea – Earl Grey just isn’t my jam. I don’t hate this one though, and this cup in particular was actually REALLY good! Very smooth and full bodied, with more mellowed out bergamot than I’m accustomed to experiencing with this blend. Almost a little brassy, in a pleasant way?

What I liked most about this infusion, though, was how well it worked with the macarons I was munching on! They were so incredibly sweet and sugary! I don’t even know if they had a particular flavour other than “sugar” – though don’t get me wrong, they were also delicious. So I liked that they added a bit of sweetness to this cup, which isn’t a very sweet Earl Grey, but also that the brassy, full bodied and more tannic elements of this cup also broke up some of that sugar bomb, indulgent dessert vibe.

It snowed pretty much all last week, which I simply just wasn’t emotionally ready for.

However, on one of the evenings when it was particularly snowy and chilly I just found myself sort of piling layers and layers of blankets over myself and making some comfort teas. Earl Grey is not a favourite flavour of mine, but I do find something sort of comforting in a cup of it when it’s really chilly. I know it’ll definitely get far colder but all the snow was so out of no where that it felt especially striking to me.

I added some pumpkin agave to this because I wasn’t ready to succumb to the winter feels yet, and pumpkin seemed like the perfect way for me to stay a little bit in denial about the winter. I mean, it’s such an autumn thing! Pumpkin was also just a good compliment to the VERY strong bergamot notes in this blend. I mean, it’s such a brisk/intense flavour that the sweetness and additional flavour are really needed to make this palatable, in my opinion.

Cozy.

Trying to put in some work drinking off older teas…

This one doesn’t taste like it’s aged at all though; which is good! I found it to be a little better once it was just above room temperature; much smoother tasting overall. Lots, and lots of bergamot flavour. I do enjoy this one as an EG, but since I don’t reach for EG often I feel like it often gets neglected a fair bit.

I had a fun morning experimenting with some of my new flavoured honeys from the farmer’s market yesterday – kicking things off with this one.

I made mugs both for myself and my mother with some milk and coffee infused honey mixed into the steeped tea. I chose coffee because when I was doing my sommelier course there was a section in the Food Pairing/Cooking course about tea infused cocktails and one of the ways EG was suggested to be infused was alongside drinks incorporating Baileys and/or Kahlua. I can kind of see it, I guess.

Honestly? The coffee honey has a pretty light flavour overall anyway so it wasn’t really intensely present in the steeped tea anyway but the delicate sweet and creamy coffee undertones and addition of the honey flavour DID nicely suit the bergamot in the blend. All in all it came together as a surprisingly delicate, soothing drink with relaxing and peaceful flavour notes.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC34pEYL5Ps&index=2&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ

So…

We’re having a staff meeting at DAVIDsTEA tomorrow and like last time everyone is supposed to bring a food of some kind to the meeting to share. However, unlike last time I actually work during the day prior to the meeting and I only have an hour long gap in between my shift and the meeting, so I had to make my food today and it had to be something I could take to work with me that wouldn’t require a fridge or freezer.

Tea infused bread it is!

This time around, I decided on a (gluten free, because one of our guides is celiac) Zucchini bread but I couldn’t just leave it there so I made an Earl Grey infused zucchini bread with pecans. I incorporated the EG in two different ways as well for added EG flavour! The first was with this EG which I infused into the oil used in the recipe. Yes, this is a variation on a box mix recipe because I’m not that fancy, and I don’t own a breadmaker. The second way was with the contents of two Duchess Grey teabags from Williamson Tea cut up and stirred into the batter. The fannings in the teabags are so fine that they don’t throw off the texture of the bread itself.

I really had planned to leave the loaf intact for the meeting tomorrow, but the smell of the bread baking and then how visually stunning it looked after I’d pulled it from the oven made me cave, and I cut a small “test slice” out of it just to make sure it tasted good. You know, quality control. I couldn’t be serving my coworkers shoddy bread, could I? And man is it good! I had to hardcore saran wrap the loaf/pan after my slice so I would completely eliminate any and all temptation to eat more of it prior to the meeting.

It’s just so rich though, with a nice flavour from the EG and really nice nuttyness from the pecans. I like the “crunch” of the pecan crust/coating I added to the top of the loaf, and the ones that baked within the batter are soft, sweet and delectable. Plus, the zucchini keeps everything perfectly moist which, although it may be a shit word, is exactly what you want in a slice of bread. No one likes dry bread.

Some pictures of the endeavor:

https://www.facebook.com/resteep/posts/10209514255907221

First tea of the day!

I had this one in a teacup with some added eggnog. Not only that, but for extreme decadence I used to last of my pumpkin spice oreos from my Halloween/break-up junk food binge to dip into the tea. It was so truly divine. The spice in the cookies matched the nutmeg in the ’nog and the citrus notes of the Earl Grey still came through and provided a sweetness of the same level as the pumpkin but of a different, contrasting flavour type.

Not the world’s most healthy breakfast but definitely a hella tasty one.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kC87v_z2IU&list=WL&index=5

Finally followed through with what I’ve been telling myself to do for months now…

I drank this as a hot cup of tea! From a teacup, and first thing in the morning because that seemed like the perfect way to do so. Earl Grey in the morning is one of those things that you really can’t beat because it just feels so right. Like starting the morning off with English or Irish Breakfast: you know it’s gonna be a good day.

The tea was so much better hot than it is cold: the bergamot seemed less dull/flat and had a more enticing and enchanting citrus quality that kind of just wrapped itself around you and dragged you in very close. It built up slowly as a mild flavour note until it was all you could think about in the sip: good, fresh bergamot! Mmm! The tea also had creamy qualities to it, more so when it was very hot as opposed to when it had cooled down. The finish was just a little floral; a bit of a mix between jasmine and lavender like notes.

And all the while as I enjoyed this cup, I was working on a very special project that has to do with VariaTea that will most definitely require your address (because I’m not totally sure if the one I have currently is accurate anymore; it’s been such a long time). It may or may not have something to do with a comment you made in the last few days. Can’t send it off until I get paid because I’m a broke, broke person; but I’m excited!

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqKZ_WIK5ms&list=WL&index=9

Actually only found this cover a few days ago; but I already ADORE it. It’s just as enchanting and captivating as the tea was. There’s something ethereal about both.

Cold Brew…

Strong. Strong. Strong.

Very, very bold notes of bergamot that were impactful and rich. At the same time, there was a vibrantly strong floral note that made me think of really intense lavender. I’ve had EG with lavender before and wasn’t the biggest fan – and there actually isn’t lavender in this which makes me wonder what about it is making me think of that flavour.

Also; just skimming through my tasting notes for this I realized that I’ve actually never had it hot – only cold brewed. What’s up with that? Earl Grey is actually best hot…

So, future Roswell Strange: BREW UP A HOT CUP OF THIS.

Today’s cold brew!

I’m feeling really drawn in by the deep, intense bergamot notes of this brew. I don’t know what it is about my mood today or the emotional place I’m currently in, but in conjunction with the tea I feel very grounded at the current moment. Hmmm, it’s almost like this brew has a bit of a citrusy/bergamot laden “musk” or “dankness” to it. But in a very pleasant way…

Don’t know if I can phrase that any better at the time being…

Cold Brew!

This was the first tea I drank (other than that premixed Vanilla Chai Latte thing) after getting my wisdom teeth out. I was super pumped about it ‘cause I’ve heard good things and I’ve liked the A&D teas I’ve tried. Enough to buy a tin of this one blindly ‘cause I’m almost out of the EG that I DO have on hand and I need to replace it with another solid EG blend…

First off; the tin is SO COOL! But getting it open was a bitch. Not entirely sure if I like the design of the tin – I need a butter knife to wedge into the top to pop it off (kind of like how you’re pop the top off a paint can) and that’s just sort of inconvenient if I’m being honest. Plus I worry that over time it’ll misshape the lid badly.

Long story short, I didn’t wait long enough to drink this one though because all I really tasted was my own blood from the gaping holes where my wisdom teeth were and a very metallic type of note. Again, probably from my own blood…

Will revisit this once completely healed up. No rating for now.