Lemon Lily

The ingredients of this one were so simple, I probably shouldn’t have gotten it, I just love lemongrass in a tea! It turned out quite straightforward, as expected. I mostly taste lemon, and it’s a bit tart for me at times. So this one is sort of like having lemonade. I enjoy some cups more than others.

This ends up pretty savory, but in an enjoyable way. I’ve been experimenting with steaming and frothing milk, and this tea has been a great base for that. As far as spiced teas/chais go, I’ve had so many weak ones lately, but this one is quite hearty. It packs in a lot of spice and flavor despite being an herbal tea, and it’s a unique tasting spice combination. The 2 oz bag only made a few cups, but it’s one I’d consider getting again. The resteep is super strong too.

I finally got around to trying this (one of my last teas to try from Toronto Tea Festival) and it was just okay, at least to me. Maybe I’d like it more if I liked coffee more, but it wasn’t really the coffee I took issue with. The coffee was smooth, full bodied and earthy with a sort of medium roast to it. It tasted kind of like how it smells when you walk into a Starbucks or similar coffee chai. I really wish I’d tasted more cherry, though. Instead I thought the bit of top note bright fruity flavour read almost more like the natural acidity that would come from roasted chicory or dandelion roots instead of cherry. Sort of a so-so cuppa for me…

I love when I can taste an authentic maple flavor in a tea, and here…I can’t really. It’s sort of generic and generally desserty. Nothing makes me think maple unfortunately! The rooibos base is pretty good, so it’s still fine to drink.

Iced!

Tried this shaken up with the water bottle method and it was fine, but I definitely should have used more powder. I thought it would be plenty because the colour was so rich and deep indigo but the taste was fairly mild with mostly just a sweet candied lavender note. Not bad, but just kind of a shadow of what I think it could be based on past tastings.

Tea Pop!

Finally got around to trying this powder I picked up at the top of the year from Toronto Tea Festival. I was hesistant to make it after being pretty disappointed by Lemon Lily’s sakura powder. Honestly it was pretty solid, though! Definitely whisks up a STUNNING purple-y blue colour that only gets more intense and over time as the finely ground butterfly pea flower continues to infuse.

The flavour is definitely lavender first, but a very smooth and approachable lavender without that sometimes “sudsy” taste or being overly perfumed. The presence of sweeteners and vanilla helps for sure, though. Definitely smooths things out and takes an edge off the florals. The blueberry is there too, but a little milder. Less tart/juicy than I’d have expected, but it does work with the whole macaron sort of inspiration.

I bet this would be a very good latte, and probably lean more into the macaron element. I liked it as a tea pop though! Refreshing and not too sweet. With the vanilla note, it was almost like a lavender cream soda? So much less sugary though. I’d 100% make it this way again though.

I drank this one yesterday, but actually not as a latte despite the name. Instead I added a ton of the powder to a bottle of ice water and shook it all up until I had a beautiful, soft pink bottle of iced tea. The flavour is incredibly delicate so it still barely tasted like anything despite how much I included but I did get a little bit of that lightly floral and sweet cherry blossom note on the backend of the sip. More than anything, this was just refreshing though.

One of two powders I picked up from Lemon Lily!

This one caught my attention for a few reasons. The first was the very simple ingredient list: powdered cherry blossoms petals and cane sugar. The second was the absolutely breath taking pastel pink colour. So stunning! I can just imagine the field day the creative director at DT would have taking photos of it.

I know it’s advertised as a latte powder, but I wanted to try it on its own first to get a more true sense of the taste. Whisked up it’s still a stunning pink colour. Fragile and soft and just really romantic looking!? I thought the taste, however, was lacking. Not unpleasant but just so incredibly light that I felt more like I was drinking the memory of sakura over the cherry blossoms themselves. I can only imagine that, with milk, it would have been even more masked.

So I think either you need to use a TON of the powder or this is really more of an aesthetic play over a flavour forward one. Both options kind of seem like a bummer…

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2s0PrrOpqr/?img_index=1 (Second Pic)

Song Pairirng: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnGNKxk-F8E

Another Toronto Tea Festival buy!

Lemon Lily had a few interesting powders this year that I picked up, but aside from that this was the only LLT they had that caught my eye. Mostly because there was just so much maple sugar in the blend!

I made a giant mug of it a few nights ago and it was a little different than expected, but still very pleasant. More rooibos forward than I’d have imagined and despite such a large quantity of maple sugar the flavour was actually somewhat gentle and definitely not too sweet at all. As a first impression it was perhaps a smidge underwhelming but I think that’s because I had high expectations. My opinion after finishing the whole mug what that I could easily see this being the kind of tea that has a softer initial impression but ends up quickly being a long-term favourite because of the reliable flavour and the fact it’s not intense enough as to only fit very specific moods.

Geek Steep S3E16 – Downton Abbey

This is the tea I drank while watching the episodes we’d selected. I knew pretty much immediately when we put this fandom in our season three outline that whatever tea I chose would be consumed out of a fine china teacup – and I held true to that.

As for the tea, I wanted something that had a strong “British High Tea” kind of vibe to it and this mash up of Earl Grey and Darjeeling was so strongly on the nose that I couldn’t dare pick something else. As someone with an almost embarrassingly large teaware collection, I know intellectually that very rarely is it the teaware itself that makes a tea good; it’s all just an accessory to a moment. But even still, there’s just something about drinking a good cup of Earl Grey from an antique teacup that just feels more correct. The bergamot is more aromatic and perfumed, and the black tea is more brisk and full-bodied. Plus, adding in handful of blackberries so perfectly ripe that they practically melt in your mouth certainly doesn’t hurt either.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CwawdKqu5gJ/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COxBC7WkuIc

Cold Brew!

I picked up a blueberry pie with my groceries over the weekend and, ever since, I’ve been really craving teas with that same thick, jammy blueberry note. I’m actually drinking this one currently, and it’s a little bonkers how eerily similar this blueberry taste is to that pie I so gleefully gobbled down. It’s not just that the blueberry flavour has the right amount of sweetness and that it lingers so nicely after each sip but that there’s a hard to explain thickness to the mouthfeel that almost makes the taste feel even more jammy – and it goes past the normal full body I’d expect from the black tea.

Lemon Lily is a company that I’ve kind of had in my peripherals now for a few years, but no one has ever recommended them to me and I haven’t seen enough reviews to spark an order. They were at the festival though and I got to smell a bunch of their teas, so I decided to give them a shot and try the one that smelled best to me (this one) and the one that they identified as a best seller; review on that one at a later date…

We all know I’m a simple bitch who loves a blueberry blend, but I think the things that caught my attention with this one in particular was that is smelled shockingly sweet and juicy for an organic blend. In general, organic blends tends to have more “mellow” flavours because of the restrictions in organic compliant flavouring – among other factors that only add to the problem. The other thing I found interesting was the inclusion of butterfly pea flower. Not for the colour it adds to a blend (which makes sense thematically for a blueberry tea) but because they’re also so notoriously hard to source in organic…

I steeped up a mug last night, and I actually thought it was pretty dang good! I know I got some butterfly pea flower in the leaf I measured out, but I didn’t really see a significant impact in my steeped colour. Not that I particularly care, personally. The taste was nice. Definitely on the sweeter side, and not nearly as bright as I’d expected given the intensity and freshness of the aroma – but certainly not lacking in flavour.

It’s hard for any blueberry black tea to beat out Blueberry Jam, which is a DT blend that I just love but this would be a pretty suitable back up for me if I ever found myself in the highly unlikely situation where that tea was no longer available to me.

Sipdown (617)!

A little bit brisker than I recall it being the last time I steeped this up, with a lightly astringent finish. Still a drinkable cup though; relatively average in terms of quality and more of a generic fruity sweetness over “cherry” or “vanilla” specifically – but it doesn’t taste bad! Thanks for the share VariaTEA!

This is the other tea that I brewed up when I got home from work tonight. A caffeinated pick to try and help with the whole staying up late/sleeping in tomorrow thing. Also just because I haven’t had this one in close to literal ages…

I definitely did that thing where I made my tea then set it aside and forgot about it for a while, so when I did get back to drinking it the temperature was weird and lukewarm. Flavour wise, it’s… interesting? I mean, I guess that’s the best word. The big thing that’s throwing me off is the fact that it tastes like under ripe bananas to me. I mean, that’s not a bad flavour but it’s just so far off from what it’s meant to actually taste like. Apart from the weird banana thing, it’s got malty cereal(ish) notes, a hint of grenadine, some malt, and a bread-y finish. It’s just so, well, weird.

Many, many thanks to VariaTea for sending this to me… ages ago!

I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get around to; all my ziploc samples are in a different box/part of my cupboard and because of that they so frequently get forgotten about. I should really do something about that!

Anyway, my thoughts!

- A little bitter/astringent
- I get both the cherry and vanilla though!
- Probably would have assumed this was a sort of wonky Monk’s Blend though…
- Had I not read the ingredients, anyway
- Hmmm, maybe a little cough syrup-y as it cools down though?

Yeah; bottom line is that this one smells really good but when it comes down to taste it leaves me a little unimpressed. I don’t dislike it though, and I think with some tweaking it might be redeemable. My first thought is that it could be a sweeter iced tea, and if it works well with milk that might take the edge of some of that astringency/bitterness?

I’ll have to see what I end up doing, though.

GCTTB

Hmm. This is ok. Woke up this morning in an adventurous frame of mind. Usually, I want my first tea of the day to be a sure thing, something truly worth waking up for. Today I was prepared to take a risk.

Thank you, VariaTEA, for adding this to the box.

This makes me think of Cherry Vanilla coke, but without the coke under taste. I don’t know what it is about this one, but I absolutely love it. I added some milk and rock sugar because I prefer it that way. I find the sugar pulls out the cherry flavour much better. And I like the milk to just smooth it all out and bring it all together. This tea is just such a lovely blend.

Another sample from VariaTEA. this one is a miss for me. It’s not a bad tasting tea, it’ s just not sure of what it wants to be. All i got from this one for the most part was “sweet”

Made this as a teapop. I think this is the best prep method so far but still not my favourite. It was actually sort of weird because when I poured it over the ice, it had a coffee with milk color to it despite me simply brewing the tea and adding nothing to it. I have no idea what is in this that would do that since I was expecting a clear liquid.

Tastewise, I’m still having trouble coaxing out the cherry and vanilla. I get the base and maybe some creaminess I can blame the vanilla for but cherry is completely MIA. Perhaps next time I’ll toss in sweetener or grenadine to help this out because so far it has been a miss for me.

I ended up waking up very early this morning so I had time to brew a teapop and between the cherry, vanilla, and grenadine, I thought this would be awesome. Turns out I was wrong. It’s not bad but it is not great. I’m find the flavors, though present, are really flat. I get notes of vanilla sweetness and a cherry/grenadine mix (think maraschino cherries) is probably the most prominent flavor and yet these flavors should be bright and sweet and dessert-like but they just aren’t. It is almost as if there is flavor deterioration but since this is stored properly and purchased fairly recently that should not be the case. I will continue to explore though and hopefully find a way to coax out the flavors.

I picked up a tin of this yesterday and was really hoping for the best given it was fairly expensive ($17/100g) however I think this cup was either overleafed (4tsps) or oversteeped (4min) because this isn’t all that awesome.

Wanted to give it another try but still not a fan of it.