Cornelia Bean

Morning cuppa.

Very, very thick and creamy mouthfeel with a rich but not sweet pistachio flavour. I think it’s really important to make that distinction that even though the pistachio was a strong flavour it wasn’t a sweet one; if anything it was more salty and the entire cup leaned very much towards the umami side of the taste spectrum. Also a bit of a “meatiness” to the earthy pu’erh base tea. Very full bodied though and a good tea to sort of start the day with – very ‘bold’/present.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41CchibIF74&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ&index=2&t=0s

I was craving something nutty, and this certainly hits the spot. It’s just got such crazy full bodied and well fleshed out pistachio notes it’s almost even a little bit too nutty. It’s also creamy, and has just a slight bit of saltiness to the point where it just kind of feels like I’m drinking the equivalent of yummy, natural lightly salted pistachios. Of course earthy undertones from the pu’erh as well – it’s very hard to drink a flavoured pu’erh and lose the base flavour: it’s so distinct.

Made this one up as a latte today!

I was going to just do a regular hot tea for my first tasting, but it was a pretty crazy day so I figured I’d treat myself and go for the ‘upgrade’. I took extra time to make it look super pretty too; I only got to make the one tea at work today so it felt good going all out with it.

Flavour wise this was pretty nice! It wasn’t overly sweet, and I think I actually would have liked a little extra sweetness – adding a pinch of vanilla would probably do the trick! However, the pistachio came through quite nicely/clearly and was a very well rounded nutty flavour! Obviously the milk made it creamier; though pistachio is a pretty creamy nut in the first place. Strong earthy undertones from the base, but not as strong as I would have imagined. Not without room for improvement, but I definitely liked this one overall! Cornelia Bean seems to really excel in the flavoured pu’erh debartment!

Cold Brew Sipdown (637)!

A little torn about this sipdown because everyone loves a good watermelon tea, and that feels like a flavour that is definitely a cupboard staple for me. However, I do have other watermelon teas on hand right now. Plus, we’re coming out of summer and I think that just makes it the right time to say goodbye to this blend. I’m sure I can get it or something similar to it again next summer.

As for this brew specifically? Definitely way less apple heavy than the hot cup of it that I just recently had; this was more of a watermelon jolly rancher flavour crossed with watermelon juice (the kind you buy from the store, not the actual juices of a watermelon). It’s sweet and just a little tangy – a great summer treat!

Hot cuppa.

I’m close to a sipdown with this one, so made some hot cuppas for myself, my sister, and my mom which left just enough tea leaf for a cold brew. Tasting note to come on that cold brew later. For now lets focus on the hot cups. I let mine steep for a really long time, so it got really rich and potent. Problem is that there’s a lot of apple in this blend. I don’t know; not really a problem I guess, but definitely a BIG contributing factor to the taste of this tea. It gets a little like a sweet cider, but with a note of equally sweet watermelon. So, like a watermelon cider.

I love it; but it’s also weird. So, this is a little bit better iced just because it feels more normal…

Cold Brew!

This was a lovely cold brew; very refreshing/hydrating with a cooling watermelon note overall. Apart from that delicious watermelon flavour this was a little bit one note as a brew, but I pieced together an AWESOME food pairing for this one and that really elevated the experience/made it bloody brilliant.

Essentially it was my cold brew, but with a dish of Blueberry Basil gelato paired up with it and some freshly sliced honeydew. So, there were multiple layers of melon and just an extra boost of refreshing/cooling from the gelato. Plus, I find when you pair something herbaceous (basil) and fruit it always makes the fruit pop. Which was definitely the case here!

Yum yum.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhuxRjLHSjW/?taken-by=ros_strange

Iced, from earlier in the week.

I think I slightly underleafed because this was a little more watery than the last time I drank it but it was still very delicious! Definitely more watermelon candy than actual watermelon, with some interesting apple and bubble gum sort of undertones going on? The bubble gum sounds weird as a tasting note in this blend, but it’s certainly not the first time I’ve experienced bubble gum as a flavour when it comes to melon blends and I doubt it’ll be the last. I agree with my first impression – this one channels some serious DT Luscious Watermelon vibes as a whole.

It’s really, really good though.

Hot cuppa.

Reminds me a lot of DAVIDsTEA’s Luscious Watermelon which makes sense, there’s a lot of ingredient overlap. I liked all of the melon teas DT did this summer, and I understand that doing Luscious Watermelon on top of all of them would have been excessive but I was a little sad when it didn’t make a return. Nice to know I have something very similar to fall back on, though!

This is a little milder in flavour in my opinion with some more obvious apple and strawberry notes in addition to the mellow but I’ll take the trade off ‘cause it actually makes for a brew that’s a little less candy sweet and bubblegum-like. It’d make a pretty stellar iced tea or cold brew, as well.

Sipdown (713)!

Finished this one off iced over the course of the week. It’s really gotten strange with age; still drinkable but has a more pronounced apple note to it and the pineapple feels a bit funky/waxy – like the bulk dried pineapple you’d get at Costco. Meh.

Last cuppa from yesterday; was just looking for a herbal tea that I hadn’t had in a long time and this one jumped out while I was rummaging through my stash…

It was kind of weird; sort of a waxy tasting pineapple. I want it to be juicy, fresh pineapple with undertones of citrus for the ‘mimosa’ aspect but it was just somewhat weak/watery citrus and that aforementioned pineapple note. Noooopppeeee.

Late night evening cuppa.

I definitely let this steep for too long because the liquor was so sickly sweet; it tasted like I was drinking some sort of pineapple syrup; maybe like Italian soda syrup!? Even the mouthfeel of the liquor was too viscous and syrupy to be really enjoyable. I mean, I certainly like pineapple A LOT and I don’t mind a good sweet pineapple flavour either but it needs to be balanced with something else so it’s not so one note OR it has to be more mellow. This was overwhelming and ultimately not as enjoyable as it could have been steeped at a more controlled time.

So, like, four or five minutes verses fourteen.

Early evening cuppa.

I was certainly feeling the caffeine from my earlier session with Camellia Sinensis’ Jin Die so I needed something caffeine free to kind of mellow out a little bit for a while. This was part of my vacation haul, and I’ve been pretty excited to dig into it so I figured why not give this one a whirl.

Is it just me or have a lot of companies been going for this “Pineapple Mimosa” flavour lately, though? I know I’ve seen a few companies here on Steepster but even just in general I know I’ve seen others that aren’t on Steepster just from cart building on different websites in the last year or so. I think the first time I heard of it as a flavour was when DT did it a few summer’s ago as part of their cocktail collection. I liked it a lot then, but it was really new to me as a concept. Is this is a thing now outside the tea world that the tea world has then set out to replicate or is it a thing that’s unique to the tea world!?

It’s good though! Very, very strongly pineapple flavoured without a lot much else going for it other than sweetness and apple undertones. I mean, I like pineapple A LOT – it’s my favourite fruit and definitely in my top five favourite foods of all time. So, you know, I’m down. I could see this being a little too cloying or “candied pineapple” tasting for some though, and if that was the case I could see people easily being turned off by it. Understandably, as well. It’s a touch weird as a hot tea though; I think I’d be much more into it either iced or cold brewed…

Also, even if I like the profile doesn’t mean I’m sold on this whole “pineapple mimosa” thing as a concept. I mean, a mimosa is champagne and orange juice – right? So even if we’re, in theory, replacing the orange entirely with pineapple shouldn’t there still be something in this to replicate the flavour of champagne? ‘Cause right now it’s essentially just a sweet but straight up pineapple flavour. I think if you, as a tea company, really were committed to the idea of a pineapple mimosa you’d do something to introduce another flavour here to actually give a proper nod to cocktail you’ve named your tisane after.

But that’s just my opinion.

Cold Brew Sipdown (2620)!

My mom was recently in Winnipeg and I asked her to stop at Cornelia Bean for me to pick some teas up – this was one of the ones on my wishlist but I guess they don’t carry it anymore. It’s a shame because it’s such a unique flavoured pu’erh blend!

Anyway, without the ability to restock it, I figured it was as good a time as any to finally finish off the last bit I’ve been holding onto. It was just enough to make a cold brew, which seemed like a fitting send off. Definitely a very, very smooth tea with a grounding earthiness mixed with the sweet, fresh flavour of peppermint and spearmint. The hint of lime adds brightness and really ties the whole Cuban Highball profile all together.

I will miss this one!

This was my first tea of the day today. I got up a little earlier than usual and I decided to use the extra time to watch the season finale of The Good Doctor with a mug of tea. It was a really good but deeply emotionally upsetting finale, so really I spent the first hour of my day sobbing like a baby while sipping tea in between emotional wailing…

The tea was really good though – crisp and clean notes of mint and lime a top such a full bodied and strong earthy base of pu’erh. I was actually a little choked up (on top of my already emotional mood) to see how empty my tin of this is! I know I don’t tend to reach for it often, but I also really don’t want to run out of it! It’s such a unique pu’erh – I’ve not seen anything like it, and it’s really consistently quite good too!

Another tea that I drank in a little bit of a heat induced delirium. I know I had it kind of lukewarm, because I brewed it hot but then felt too hot to drink it at a hot temperature; and I’m pretty sure I drank the entire mug of it in one big gulp. It had the cooling feeling of mint, but I don’t actually recall really observing any of the details regarding the taste of this tea…

I feel like I must have just been really craving lime this week, because I pulled this one from my stash the day after I brewed up A Quarter To Tea’s Toasted Coconut Lime green tea blend, and when I was drinking it the notes that were resonating with me the most/making me the most happy were the incredibly bright, sweet lime notes. So much so that I just wasn’t focusing on anything else going on in the tea.

One track tea mind.

Iced.

I still can’t taste any rum in this one; I’ve been brainstorming ways to introduce the flavour into the tea though. I think what I want to try and do is reduce this down into a tea infused simple syrup and then mix that with some Ginger Beer and dark rum to make a tea infused Dark & Stormy…

As for this brew; it had so much punch from the lime! Just a really intense, vibrant flavour contrasted by notes of undergrowth, wet leaves and earth, and woody qualities from the pu’erh base. It’s a weird contrast between something with so much life and the danker pu’erh notes that almost have a decrepit forest vibe to them. It works though.

Currently sipping on this one.

Steeped aroma smells a little fishy, but the tea tastes fine. Actually, tastes more like lime than anything else, with sweet earthy and rum undertones. Even though it has rum notes, it’s not overly boozy though. Actually quite smooth despite unpleasant aroma. I want more mint in the actual sip ‘cause right now there’s none – but at least I get mint in the aftertaste as a haunting shadow of flavour.

Tempted to add actual rum…

Another more unique flavour Pu option from Cornelia Bean!

To be perfectly honest, when I grabbed this one I wasn’t totally sure I was actually going to like it but I thought it was super unique/I’d never seen a pu’erh flavoured like this so I figured I’d probably really end up kicking myself if I passed it up. Today, I made it iced in my tea press because I figured that it’d likely be well suited to iced prep since it is inspired by a cocktail.

I actually enjoyed it quite a bit! My first observation was actually just how straight forward I found the flavour to be. The top notes are light, fleeting earthy tones from the Pu’erh base and then the body is a very full bodied, stretched out lime note that persists for quite a long period of time, but then finishes really crisply and cleanly. I think a lot of that freshness and crisp/clean profile can be attributed to the mint in the blend, although I don’t actually think the profile of the tea tasted all that minty. It was really unique seeing a lime flavour on a base like this, and I liked that it was sweeter and not really acidic/sour. Really satisfying, actually!

I think this would make a KILLER cocktail base too! Maybe I’m influenced a little by the music I was listening to, but I’d like to see it either paired with tequila or a mix of rum and ginger beer! That would be so good.

Song Pairing: https://youtu.be/GshEzAUVcvQ

Geek Steep S2E21 – The Witcher

Early in the start of recording this podcast episode Marika commented that her first thought for her recording tea was a shou and I think I must have subconsciously been thinking the same thing because for this fandom shou pu’erh just feels so… right…

However, in the moment, I just felt like this sweet and comforting black licorice flavoured tea was exactly what I needed. This tea is a blend just packed full of polarizing flavours (something true about both of the teas we chose to drink while recording) but thankfully for me thick, coating molasses rich black tea and camphorous pu’erh are flavours that I just love so much.

Great tea!

Just black licorice, baby!

https://i.giphy.com/media/3oz8xTcvjApMyFW0x2/giphy.webp

Still delightfully sweet black licorice goodness, with a hint of sweetness and creaminess. Nothing about the flavour had changed over time at all really, but that’s a good thing!

You ever wake up in the middle of the night with a deep craving for something? Well, that completely happened to me a few nights ago. I found myself wide awake at 4AM with the strongest craving for this tea. I managed to get my ass back to sleep, but not before rummaging through my tea stash to find my bag of it and packing it into my work backpack to bring with me to the office the next day to drink there.

Sure enough, I made a HUGE mug of this first thing when I got into work the next day. Literally the biggest mug that I could find in the whole place! Which, actually, was pretty damn big. I really, really wanted those thick and intensely sweet anise notes though! It was like getting bit on the tongue with black licorice – totally not for everyone (in fact, no one else in the lab liked this tea AT ALL – they all found it too licorice-y), but 100% a flavour that I adore.

Thank you, weird middle of the night cravings, for making me revisit this one.

Midday cuppa from yesterday!

I really wanted something sweet and dessert like, but in a non-conventional sort of way. By which I mean I didn’t want the typical chocolate/caramel/vanilla/etc. sort of tea. For me this was just a logical pick, because although it’s got some spice elements (cinnamon) and a really molasses and earth heavy undertone black licorice/anise are just a very enjoyable sweet taste to me!