Bloom Teas

Sipdown (1369)!

Pleasantly surprised and impressed with this Chai blend! It seemed really simple/basic when I read through the ingredients list and smelled the dry leaf in the sachet but it steeped pretty brilliantly. Smooth and warming spices with heavy emphasis on clove, cinnamon, and cardamom – in that order for me. I don’t often get into Chai very much, but that’s probably as close to the perfect spice combo that you can get for my personal preferences. Loves that it was deeply spicy with a creeping/building warming note over the course of the sip. Cozy, tasty, and traditional feeling. Great balance.

Sipdown (1371)!

The word play of the name of this tea makes me smile.

Despite a pretty stacked ingredient list of “sleep inducing” herbs and roots, I didn’t feel like this one made me too terribly sleepy as I was drinking it – it’s got linden, chamomile, valerian and lavender, all pretty relaxing ingredients. That said, the combination of the rooibos and sweet honey flavouring were really enjoyable for me. I love creamed honey for its more beeswax-y type of flavour, and I felt like that was really the flavour direction I was getting here. Not much of any of the other ingredients besides that and the rooibos, in all honesty. However, tasty!

Sipdown (1373)!

This was an okay cuppa with some really good foundation flavours from the brisk and full bodied Sri Lankan black tea and the simple but clear tasting chocolate, but… I think I must just really not like the combination of milk chocolate and spearmint because any time I really focused on the sips and tasted both flavours (and not just the peppermint) it felt disconnected to me. Not sure why chocolate and peppermint is fine but not spearmint but it doesn’t work for me – gets into uncanny valley territory flavor wise, y’know?!

Sipdown (1374)!

Had this one at work earlier in the week and I thought it was pretty good! I except it to be tangy or sour because of the passionfruit but it was a bit more of a candied fruit taste with more low notes/no acidity to it – more generic “yellow tropical fruit” versus passionfruit in particular. It reminded me a bit of DT’s Green Passionfruit which has similar style passionfruit notes – but I liked this better because there was less obvious green tea and it didn’t have the bordering on medicinal notes of the black currant.

Smooth and sippable.

Sipdown (1372)!

This tea smelled quite potently of ginger as I was whisking so I was a little worried that I might find it abrasive, but it’s honestly pretty light. I get the lingering sweetness of the ginseng mixed with vegetal and umami forward green tea, a bit of sugar snap & then a tickle of ginger in the back of my throat. Not a bad midday pick-me-up at all!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMu6xBiBSuj/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwVJN-IVoag&ab_channel=TheOrionExperience

Sipdown – but I forgot to add it to my cupboard so no stash number decrease.

The name of this one is really accurate because it tastes super strongly of licorice root and mint and honestly not really anything else. I like black licorice/anise but not licorice root and with the natural sweetness of the mint it just made for a deeply cloying cuppa, and the sort that coats the mouth/throat and lingers. Good for fans of that profile – Throat Rescue from DT comes to mind – but not something for me. I like that it was a yerba mate blend though; that’s a cool twist on this style of profile which is usually all herbal.

Sipdown (1975)!

Histocially, when I’ve been tasting through a company like this and had a lot of sachets/samples to get through, I’ve started with the flavours that seem most fun and interesting to me – but the result of that is that I always end up ending with the boring ones or the ones with flavours I’m quite certain I won’t like as much. So, I’m trying hard here to actively mix it up more with what I drink from this company…

This isn’t really exciting – but it’s classic. For an “unnamed” breakfast blend (ala “English Breakfast” or “Irish Breakfast”) I think it leans more Irish in that it’s mostly thick malt without some of the fruitier/more raisin-y notes that typically come through in something like an English Breakfast. I personally like most English Breakfast blends more because, as much as I’m a malt monster when it comes to black tea, I do also like sweet teas a lot and the raisin notes you get are sweeter.

Wouldn’t personally feel compelled to revisit this in any form, but I think the quality is just fine for not only the teabag format but the price as well.

Sipdown (1376)!

#2021SteepsterSipdown

In all honestly I couldn’t remember if I owned an Irish Breakfast this morning, when looking for an Irish inspo tea, and I didn’t want to do a matcha – so instead I just grabbed the first green tea I could find from my recent Bloom Teas order…

I don’t really like Gunpowder Green tea – I think I have ONE blend that it tastes nice in and it’s alright in a good quality Moroccan Mint but overall I find this style/grade of tea tastes incredibly course and unrefined. Very abrasively vegetal, without much redeeming qualities to it. The one thing it has going for it is body – which is, I think, why it does work in Moroccan Mint. Plus appearance, I suppose.

So this was fine, for a Gunpowder, but not… great. Didn’t expect it to be though.

Sipdown (1365)!

This was the second most requested flavour to start with, from my IG post for this tea order haul. I personally would not have started here, because coffee teas are usually a bit more whatever to me – but people seemed excited by the idea of a tiramisu tea.

I don’t find this nearly as week as the Raspberry Panna Cotta was, but it’s still a smidge light. The coffee flavour comes across very strongly/clearly though – it’s actually more of a dark roast coffee than the kind of coffee I’d think of being in a tiramisu, and coupled with an absence of chocolate or vanilla/cream I’m not personally sold on the “tiramisu” profile. There’s also a little bit of a dryness to the mouthfeel that I think is actually from the cinnamon, though the taste isn’t heavy cinnamon.

If this were just a coffee tea profile, I think it would be really nice – just a good roasty, true to profile coffee flavour. As a tiramisu? Misses the mark for me.

Sipdown (1366)!

I ordered one sachet of every single tea from this company around a week or so ago, because it was shockingly cheap to do so and I love basically “speed running” through a company’s tea assortment – there’s no better way to get to know them!!

I asked on instagram which of the many samples I should try first and this was pretty strongly the one that people seemed more intrigued by – I get it, I spent most of the day eyeing up this sachet in particular, as well.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMQY4TZAsv8/

Steeped up, I feel like I can taste “the bones” of something good here – there’s a bit of a sweet and bright raspberry, a little cream, and it all seems like it should work well on this delicate white tea base. However, it’s ultimately very weak/mild. Like, I have to focus more than is ideal when sipping on a mug of tea to really nail down those flavours. I want to try one of two more of the sachets, but if this seems like a trend then I’ll scale back the amount of water I’m using for each sachet. So, until that point reserving judgement/critique – but just not the most “wow factor” starting point.