Sipology by Steeped Tea

Sipology Advent Calendar 2023 – Day 3

I was excited when I saw coffee beans in the little Sipology tin this morning! And I do love tiramisu, so even better.

However… I don’t understand what they were thinking with this blend. There is so much cinnamon, it’s by far the strongest flavor. And unless I’m mistaken, tiramisu doesn’t even have cinnamon in it? So a strange choice IMO.

So it ends up being more of like a cinnamon coffeecake paired with a cup of coffee to me? I do taste the coffee beans, but they’re somewhat subtle compared to the sweet and even the apple.

I do like it, but it’s not tiramisu to me. More of an apple cinnamon tisane with a touch of coffee.

Sipology Advent Calendar 2023 – Day 2

I was excited to see this in the advent. Then I saw it was a green tea, which lessened my excitement just a little. Then I smelled it and was no longer excited. XD

This actually reminds me quite a lot of DT’s Elf Help. It has that same weird powdery and tart candy sort of flavor that makes me think of Smarties. Maybe a bit of bubblegum in there as well. There’s nothing Earl Grey about it in my opinion either, it does have a citrus note but it very much reminds me of a lemon or orange cleaning product. It has that sharp essential oil sort of vibe to it, if that makes sense. Also, the flavoring is just too strong in general.

Nope, not for me! :P

Sipology Advent Calendar 2023 – Day 1

Another chocolaty black tea for today. This one is meant to be cookies & cream flavored, but mostly I’m just getting the chocolate flavoring. It’s quite heavy and boozy, which equates to artificial on my tongue. I do get a little bit of the cream, but it’s mostly overpowered by chocolate. The base is slightly tannic, which doesn’t bother me. It would probably take additions quite well.

Overall, not my favorite but also not a tea I would choose for myself. It looked very pretty in the tin though!

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0VSS6pO2CN

So I ordered the advent calendar from Sipology, and they had a special offer where since I spent more than $65, I could get the monthly special for half price. For October, it was three 25g pouches of matcha for $18. Normally you can only get their matcha in 100g (?!) bags so I figured I would try it, even though two of the three flavors are sweetened.

Unfortunately, I can’t get past the stevia aftertaste here. The matcha itself seems decent, it’s a bit on the yellower side of green but the flavor seems nice enough. I do like the salted caramel flavoring, and overall it’s not ridiculously sweet considering it contains both sugar and stevia. But that cloying stevia sweetness at the end of the sip, sigh…

Into the rehoming box it goes! :P

Yum! Really good cold brewed or as a tea latte.

Needs to be brewed more like 5 min, the 2-3 min on the package is too short.

This is really nice! The chocolate and rooibos add a lovely depth to the mint flavour. These blend wonderfully, making a nice, soothing minty tea with a smoky layer. Excellent today with my sore throat.

This may be the weirdest thing I’ve ever tasted. I’m not sure if I like it or not. It does have the smell of root beer, and brews up nice and cleanly. It has both notes of a nice mellow root beer, something like A&W, and the green jasmine taste underneath. So very, very strange.

SkySamurai’s mystery advent tea #11 backlog from 12/24
Penultimate tea here! I didn’t want to post all the advent teas at once, so it has taken a while. I think I have shuffled through about 85% of my holiday teas during the holidays so I would say that was successful (mainly because I skipped most of the Angry Tea Room advent teas this year.) But I enjoyed this advent! The tea for today looks like a black tea and has an aroma of a plain black tea – like a robust bready black tea. I can’t detect any flavors so it must be plain, which is a nice change of pace from all the flavored teas in my collection lately. It’s a strong black tea! Lots of tannins. My guess: English Breakfast. Was I correct? Yes. Sipology has many interesting looking teas….
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for full mug // 20 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 30 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
2021 Sipdowns: 14 Cornelia Bean – Academy Road Rooibos

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge Sunday, September 19th: Talk Like a Pirate Day Tea #2

Another pirate tea… it’s the rum!  I really like this one.  And great for one of the last warmer days of the year, trees just now turning orange.  Which is yet another reminder of the Western US fires, and as of an hour ago, the sequoias are now in jeopardy.  I always wondered how they were spared every year.  I’m hoping for the best….  I’ve probably already said it somewhere this year, but the new Lord Huron album really helps, so I’m listening to it now.  It’s still one of my favorite albums of the year so far.

SkySamurai’s mystery advent tea #10 backlog from 12/23
A green tea with some fruity bits!  Looks and smells like pineapple or papaya/mango.  I’m a fan even before the first sip.  :D  The flavor is plenty fruity and very thirst quenching.  The green tea makes itself known in a lovely balance to the fruit.  I like it.  The second steep was also heavenly.  My guess: Sencha with pineapple, papaya or mango and mayyybbbbeee blueberry flavoring.  Was I correct?  Kind of.  Replace the blueberry with rum BUT this blend does have pineapple, papaya and mango. 
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoon for full mug // 35 minutes after boiling  // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 30 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep

Samurai TTB #53

I love caramel, so I had to give this one a try! The dry leaf is VERY finely ground (almost like matcha) but I followed the directions to steep it like a traditional tea and add milk. The aroma was intensely sweet and caramelly, but I didn’t get much of a caramel flavor from the brewed tea…it just came across as a sweet, milky rooibos. Pleasant enough, but not the rich caramel experience I was hoping for.

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #2

Couldn’t resist trying this one, as I don’t think I’ve had anything under the Sipology brand/Steeped tea umbrella before. I didn’t make it into a latte because I’m still at the office and we don’t have milk right now – but I slightly underleafed from the package directions in an attempt to compensate for that.

It’s very sweet tasting but quite good – impressively accurate to the flavour of real caramel which is very hard to convey in a tea blend, I suppose probably in part because of the sugars in the blend but I don’t really mind that. It’s a little creamy, and coats the mouth pleasantly. Can’t really taste the rooibos at all…

I imagine it would make for an EXCELLENT latte!

No numeric rating because I didn’t make it as intended on the packaging, but might revisit it if I have time among the other samples I set aside. Just have to buy some milk first…

I was excited to see some rooibos in the tea box! Unfortunately, I don’t love this one. The flavor is strong, but kind of harsh and strange. I get the rooibos, but whatever they’re using to make it taste toasty just comes off badly. Maybe it’s the fenugreek I’m not enjoying? Frankly, that’s a really weird choice of ingredient for this blend. With sugar and milk, this makes a tolerable cup of tea, but it’s all just to cover the weirdness.

‘Samurai’ Traveling Teabox – Tea #12
Another interesting one to see in the teabox.  I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions though and made this as a normal tea instead of the latte.  This is the finest ground rooibos I’ve ever seen.  It almost looks like rooibos matcha but they say to put it in a teabag.  The ingredients say rooibos, vanilla bean and fenugreek for some reason.  The resulting brew is surprisingly light.  The flavor is vanilla enough but there is also the tiniest hint of an off flavor, like onion or something? I looked up fenugreek and it says it should have a maple flavor? 
Steep #1  // 1 teaspoon for full mug // 10 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2  // just boiled // 3 min

Another day: The second steep session, I tried to steep how they say on the bag:  A teaspoon in a teabag in half a mug of water for five minutes (or less), then add milk to it.  I don’t usually adding milk to my teas, but I wanted to try the LATTE brew.  I can’t say I liked it better this way.  It was fine. The milk really brought out that onion flavor though.  If you can ignore that, it DOES really taste like caramel.  But it mostly just seemed like milk.  I’d rather just drink this brewed normally, without any milk.
Edited to add the next day: on the second steep, I brewed for about 30 minutes at boiling (despite the warning of bitterness on the package) and it was very good. No onions this time, which is odd that it disappeared if I brewed it longer. It’s only about the strength that I expected this tiny of rooibos to be. But the cup was tasty anyway. More maple.

Very smooth tasting tea with deep roasted notes. Unfortunately, this tea is no longer available from the company, but I would love to find something similar or the original.