BlendBee

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Thank you for sharing this one with me, Roswell Strange! It was the perfect choice for a tea that reminds me of someone for the Valentine’s Bingo on Instagram. Alas I think this tea is long past it’s prime. It’s sweet Berry and then nutty, almost hazelnut like, and then sort of musty. That’s age…and I think the white tea base.

P is for…Punch Drunk Love

I decided to pull this out since it has been in my stash for a while and in Roswell Strange’s stash for even longer. In fact, her last note mentioned flavour deterioration and I believe that was from before I even had some so this is past its prime and a “P” tea thus a good time to have it.

It steeped up a pretty pink color and I like the strawberry at the front of the sip. Alas, the base tea is a bit musty and a white tea that I think I may not have loved even at its prime. Still fun to try. Thanks for sharing, Roswell Strange!

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This was shared with me by Roswell Strange whose ex-boyfriend customized it with her guidance. Is this the one that sort of took on a diaper-vibe to it? Is that why I forgot about it?All I know is something in the smell of the steeping tea didn’t sit well with me – either the thyme or the nettle.

Ultimately, this one is not for me. I am not a herbs in tea person and this has a lot of herbs. Herbs and hazelnut. Also, not a huge fan of breakfast teas in general. So I am drinking this and it’s fine but just not to my tastes. Still fun to try something made by a friends so thank you for sharing Roswell Strange!

It’s not a very comforting thought when the creator of a blend only rates it a 32. Plus it’s an earl grey which has been growing on me lately but still isn’t a favourite. So basically I’m going into this expecting to hate it…

Well…I don’t hate it, but I don’t really like it either. The bergamot is there but not overly present. Instead I’m getting muddled rose and apricot and hazelnut, which sounds good but it’s as each has gone slightly off as there is a woodiness from the combo and it sort of all falls flat at the end. Yeah, it kind of starts as flavours and becomes cardboard.

I like the idea here but age hasn’t served this well. Still fun to try though and definitely not terrible.

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Roswell Strange was nice to share some of her own blend with me. She suggested I refer to her posts to learn more about the blend and I learned a few things:

1. I have never experience static shock;
2. This was inspired by her bf at the time which is nice to be inspired by someone to make a flavorful tea;
3. This is blueberry, ginger, fennel and cinnamon; and
4. This tea hasn’t aged well and tasted like baby wipes the last time RS had it.

I don’t love licorice so this would never have been a favorite. However, the fennel/licorice flavor is not as offensive as I expected. Also, while I can see how this could be construed as baby wipes, it hasn’t quite reached that for me (thankfully). I get the cinnamon and the blueberry is underlying everything but not very present. This is warm and pastry-like. It is not my favorite tea but I am enjoying this much more than anticipated in light of the baby wipes and fennel.

Thanks for sharing, Roswell Strange!

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A little better the second time around – just a little more flavourful, with more rhubarb and hibiscus coming through and a bit of underlying sweetness. A touch flat, but overall more well rounded and more body than what I experienced the first time around.

EDIT: And those two sentences almost say the exact same thing. Whoops. I’m written like 20 tasting notes in one sitting though – so I’m feeling a TOUCH tapped out right now.

A share from VariaTEA from, well, ages ago…

I can taste the rhubarb in this blend, and a bit of strawberry – it’s nice. I imagine it would have been A LOT nicer when it was fresh; as it stands the tea is pretty old and so there’s a lot of general flatness to the flavour. I could probably perk it up a bit with some agave, though. Also; this really makes me want to go make more of my own tea blends on Blendbee – I had such a fun time doing it last year and the bulk of them did turn out REALLY well…

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Another share from VariaTEA – and I think this is the first tea I’ve had from BlendBee that wasn’t something I had custom made for myself!?

In concept this sound like a really good idea, and it definitely doesn’t taste bad but it doesn’t really remind me of Biscotti at all either. I think it’s because there’s just SO MUCH lemongrass in here that it’s the dominant flavour by a landslide. I could sort of see some pastry-esque elements though because there’s a little bit of a buttery vanilla element, however it’s a stretch. At best I think we’re looking at a “lemon butter tart” or “lemon sugar cookie” sort of thing.

So, kind of a mediocre tea as a whole.

I got a lot of creamy lemon notes, more akin to a pastry than a biscottea. However, as this cools, the lemongrass drowns out everything else. It was nice but best when you drink it hot.

Check out my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2018/07/17/lemon-biscottea-from-blendbee/

meh….this is a whole lotta lemongrass tea versus having any other nuance to it. Thanks for the share VariaTEA!

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This was such a delicious tea with a really brilliant balance of juicy peach and savory thyme with a bold brisk black tea base. I’m glad it tasted delicious right up until the very end, and maybe some day I’ll recreate this tea. Until then, this feels like saying goodbye to a bittersweet part of my past – something I wasn’t sure I was ready to do for a while, but that I feel good about now.

Lots and lots and lots of thyme!

Still, the peach adds a needed sweetness to break up what is otherwise I mighty savory tasting tea. I enjoy this blend a lot – I actually debated a restock of this and others from Blendbee not too long ago but when I was cart building it seemed like their shipping to Canada had changed and was more expensive so I opted against it…

So, I love this tea – don’t get me wrong. There’s something magical about the combo of herbaceous nettle and thyme, with a peachy sweet finish and nutty undertones. However, I was drinking this one yesterday with my breakfast and that breakfast happened to be an omelette with quite a large amount of rosemary in it. It was just too much herbs.

Herb overload.

Just a small teacup of this one late at night because I was craving the fruit and herb pairing. Very sweet, bright peach made juicier and more vibrant by the contrasting savory thyme! A bit of nuttiness and a cinnamon finish. This one has so many layers/facets of flavour and they all pop so, so much! Very tasty!

Welp…

So, I have a few of these custom Blendbee teas that I made over the summer either with my now ex boyfriend or just inspired by him – and I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do with them. I mean, to be perfectly honest they’re all good teas/taste fine so it really, really feels like a waste to toss them out when they were expensive and actually taste good. They’re the only physical/tangible thing I actually have left from when we dated though; and I just find that I feel a little, I don’t know, ‘weird’ drinking them and being reminded of these cute, sweet romantic things/in jokes that we shared.

And that’s probably most definitely because I’m still not 100% over everything. I’m working on it though – and making decent enough progress, I think. It’s getting a lot better, anyway as the weeks go by. I’m still stuck in a purgatory between just being angry/resentful and feeling like I’ve lost something really important to me. So, I don’t know…

Anyway; I did make a cup of this one today to drink on shift and it really wasn’t so bad in terms of that weird/uncomfortable emotional feeling. Largely this is because at work we’re still in the throws of Black Friday promotions, so it was so busy at work that between slurping up mouthfuls of tea I didn’t really have time to think about the origin for this tea/the ex the same way I think I would have reflected on it if I was drinking this during a moment of peace. Flavour wise, it was very thyme heavy with sweet, juicy peach undertones. Very bright in addition to that glorious savory element. Still stellar.

So yeah – just throwing that thought/reflection out there. What do I do with these three teas now!? What have other people on Steepster done with things from failed relationships that remind you of the ex? Do you get rid of them or work towards breaking those associations?

Another custom tea!

So, this is probably the most important tea from my last BlendBee order, and consequently also the tea that I had the least amount to do with. I thought it might be a nice thing to get him to make his own tea – and this is pretty well what he came up with. So, since he really didn’t have any clue where he wanted to start, we very loosely modeled this after DT’s Long Life Oolong blend since that’s one he really enjoys.

Instead of an oolong base, he opted for an English Breakfast black tea because he’s definitely more of a black tea person overall – and EB is fairly close to his all time favourite black tea as well, Irish Breakfast. The of course we added peach and apricot flavour because those are the fruity notes in LLO. Next the nut element; LLO uses almond but instead we chose hazelnut to keep things a little different, and because hazelnut is a bit sweeter in both of our opinions. Then is was time for the other ingredients meant to accent the flavour and provide some contrast – this is more where I stepped in, and helped select some of the ingredients. We chose cinnamon because I thought it might be nice to have a warming spice element to help tie in the nut and the fruit components: cinnamon also compliments peach well and hazelnut.

Then I picked some herbs: nettle leaf because I know it also compliments cinnamon and peach well and I thought it’d add a nice, soft earthy herbaceous quality that would add some depth to the blend. Marshmallow root for some sweetness. Finally, I chose to add thyme. Now, this is the ingredient I was most excited and cautious about: thyme is a REALLY nice complimenting flavour to peach, and I’m personally a huge fan of savory teas. However, I’m also concerned that the boyfriend wont enjoy the flavour of it because it’s SO outside his comfort zone. The thyme is also the ingredient that sets this one apart from DT’s LLO blend the most in my opinion and while the boyfriend may have modeled this one after that blend loosely, it was also important to me for it to be its own thing.

Also – we named the blend Watchmaker’s Brunch; the ‘brunch’ part of the blend being a play on the fact we used a Breakfast tea as the base and the watchmaker part being a reference to the fact that the boyfriend is a watch repairman and LOVES watches.
So while I stand by the addition of thyme for flavour is also allowed me to be able to make this awful pun:

_Every good Watchmaker should make a little thyme in their day for a good cuppa tea._

(BlendBee has a letter cap so I couldn’t call this one Watchmaker’s Breakfast but if there wasn’t a letter cap that’s what we would have gone with)

Anyway now that my explanation of our intentions behind the blend is done, the actual review portion of this tasting note starts here:

First thing I notice drinking this is that the thyme is really strong. I think that’s a wonderful quality because it adds this really fun, unique savory element right off that bat, and it’s almost immediately followed by a smooth, sweet peachy note that contrasts it perfectly! The peach seems sweeter/juicier against the herbaceous thyme and, to a lesser extent, the nettle that also contrasts it. The thyme feels earthier and more grounded against the brightness of that Georgia Peach/apricot combo!

However, as much as I’m swept up by this stellar top note and body flavour combo I’m also immediately worried that the boyfriend is not going to like it. What I find elegant and nuanced I worry will be WAY outside of his comfort zone.

Transitioning out of the thyme/peach and nettle/apricot body flavours, we see more of the sweet and nutty side of this blend – while I don’t think the hazelnut actually distinctly comes off as hazelnut it IS obvious to me that there’s something rich and nutty going on here that adds yet another really interesting layer of flavour to the whole cuppa. I like that it’s very lingering as well, along with a strong lingering peachy note.

The other noteworthy things in the blend are the cinnamon and the English Breakfast base. I don’t think either are really vibrant flavours in this mix overall but they ARE both noticeable as consistent background flavours. The cinnamon is light and warming and adds a very comforting quality, and while it’s certainly a LIGHT flavour it may arguably be the most important because I think it really ties all of the other elements together in a very concise way. It literally compliments every other ingredient in this blend. The English Breakfast is like a solid backbone to the cup! It adds strength and body, and just a hint of maltyness. Also definitely important.

Overall, I really like this one! I think it’s really playfully nuanced and fun, and I like that it’s both very sweet and savory. It came together in a really great way, and I think that the boyfriend should be proud of it! However, I’m still very concerned that he’ll hate it just because of how strong the thyme is overall…

Morning cuppa!

I’m really getting the Hawaiian Punch inspiration out of this mug: it’s just a nice smooth and medium bodied mixture of distinct sweet pineapple with a more soda-type strawberry flavouring. Still gentle though, from the white tea base. One of the nicer mugs of this blend that I’ve made in recent memory and a fun and flavourful way to begin a Sunday morning spent writing tasting notes!

Cold Brew!!

Enjoyed this one yesterday evening – the flavour initially was strawberry compote and hints of caramelized sugar which was delicious. Unfortunately, the finish was a bit more of a musty white tea flavour, just flat/dull from aging.

Not a bad flavour – sweet strawberry and candied pineapple. However, I’m realizing that something about the combination of hibiscus and white tea I just generally don’t like; it brings out this astringency that I don’t think is largely noticeable in either one of them on their own, for the most part. I mean, they both can be astringent but this is a different type of thing where it’s almost like a sandpaper against the back of my front teeth astringency but a touch tamer. Not tame enough to not be distracting, though…

Light and fruity!

Primary flavours were a balance of candied pineapple notes and fresh, just slightly under ripe strawberry. Definitely brightness in the top of the sip, but the overall profile had weight to it and the mouthfeel was thicker and almost syrupy. Strong hay and malt notes mixed in with the fruit notes in the body profile; you don’t lose the white tea in this one at all. Only little whisps of the passionfruit, but they were drawn out a little more by the fact I was actually eating fresh passionfruit at the same time as I was drinking this one.

Song Pairing One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fai3TF5c9ts&list=PUa8Zt6zg9KNOCg41_TkX29g&index=4

Song Pairing Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bcFezD7n9w&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ&index=19

Another iced tea.

This one wasn’t as good iced as it was hot; it kind of picked up this slight musty/dusty sort of quality in the finish and aftertaste that tasted really flat and stale. It’s the same sort of “drab attic” sort of taste/quality that I associate with DT’s Raspberry Meringue blend, as well. Just not very pleasing/satisfying.

It’s a shame too ’cause the rest of the cup – the top notes and body – were actually really delicious! Very strong, sweet strawberry notes with more tropical undertones. I taste the pineapple a whole lot more than the passionfruit, to be honest. Both are present, but one is clearly the superior flavour. As a punch flavour, it would be really nice…

If it just weren’t for the aforementioned dusty quality. Wish I could pinpoint what caused it…

Revisiting this fun creation again, but this time as a hot tea.

I made sure to drink this one in a clear mug, I really wanted to see the liquor colour. It’s really pretty; there’s just enough hibiscus in this one to give it this really soft, warm pink hue but not overly impact the flavour.

It’s a very fruity brew; a mix of tropical/exotic fruit notes from the pineapple and passionfruit combo with a sweet, juicy strawberry finish. Everything tastes really ripe and sweet and it’s hard not to picture fruit juices dribbling down your chin. I think it definitely captures a punch like flavour, too, with a softness to it from the white tea base. It’s not in your face kind of rich/full bodied in flavour – but it doesn’t need to be. It can be flavourful without being this slap in the face of rich, cloying punch notes.

Now, to be fair, I let my mom try it and she actually wanted a more robust flavour. I hadn’t told her what the tea was because I just wanted an unfiltered opinion and she described it as “watered down fruit punch” so I guess it’s only fair that to some people this might be a little weak. I just prefer having the option of something punch like that’s a little more stripped down/mellow.

Also; I did forget I was drinking this halfway through so the last half of my cup was pretty ice cold – and I have to say, it’s still killer as a cold tea. I mean, I’ve already tried it cold brewed BUT just letting a tea naturally cool is a little different than the cold brewing process…

Song Pairing: https://youtu.be/05v4nfUmBYI

Something fun, for a fun tea.

One of my custom teas!!!

This one is supposed to be like a sweet, fruity Hawaiian Punch sort of flavour. It’s got a white tea base because I wanted something soft and smooth that would really lend itself to letting all of the fruit flavours stand out. I added a bit of strawberry leaf and hibiscus, and then passion fruit, pineapple, and strawberry flavouring extracts!

I’m trying it for the first time as a cold brew because this is something that I envision working best as a cold style of tea, be that cold brewer or iced.

- Strong pineapple notes!!! Yummy!
- Pineapple is definitely the same pineapple as my From Pele’s Kitchen blend
- Which of course makes sense; it’s the same flavouring extract/oil
- It’s a very sugary pineapple though, with less acidity/tang to it
- The strawberry is also quite strong; very, very ripe/sweet!
- Has a bit of a “fruit punch candy” vibe going overall
- The passionfruit is light/mild – more just adds to overall tropical flavour/feel
- I actually don’t really taste the hibiscus, however my brew is slightly pink in colour
- So I know that it IS in there…
- I’m pretty satisfied with this one though
- It’s a REALLY niced iced/cold brewed sort of profile
- Once you let go of the idea of it being realistic fruit notes instead of candy like
- It’s a shame I waited until practically the end of summer to create it…

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Finished off in a larger pot of tea, sipped on while watching a movie. Age hasn’t done wonders for this tea – there’s something weird happening with the flavourings and now the combination of blueberry and strong licorice notes (fennel/anise) are making this tea taste like baby wipes to me. Yuck!