Tea Desire

Roswell strange sent this one my way and i was a little excited to drink it, especially after she corrected my cupboard to get the right tea in to it… turns out i like this one a lot. while the banana tea from Rivertea is basically liquid banana bread – this one is a little less sweet and slightly less intensely banana. i attribute that to the chocolate. still not a huge fan of the weird looking tea is produces, but i did enjoy this a lot. and in the grand scheme of teas, i’d probably be able to drink this one more often than the river tea one because of the fact that it’s a little more laid back. :)

sample from Evol this one is kinda boring for me. It’s not a bad cup of tea but it’s just too light. I’ve had this before, but it seems that my tastes have changed enough that this is not so much for me anymore :)

yay! tea from roswell strange and VariaTEA this was one of two? overlaps between the girls when they both sent me teas…i figure that’s pretty good since i know how much sharing the two of them do :) i liked this one a lot…though i can’t for the life of me remember what i liked about it because my other half came home and tucked me in to bed and i fell asleep. clearly i needed it..i only ever nap when i’m not well. soooo thanks for sending me this one. i’d drink it again lol

Another one from Roswell Strange I’m trying to drinka few teas from most of my swap buddies, though i suspect the teas from YYZ and Boychik will wait for tomorrow or another weekend as i want to do a few comparisons. I think i still prefer the scottish toffee caramel puerh from majesteas here in toronto, but this one is a close second. It’s got that delicious creamy caramel taste that rides along with the base of the puerh for a really enjoyable cup. at least in my opinion :) thanks for letting me try another version of this one RS! :)

Another tea out of my MissB box of awesomeness (thanks so much!!)….
Last night I wanted an herbal something. Perhaps it was because we were going to watch the latest Game of Thrones episode, and an herbal mug seems like something a Maester would give you (although, I’d only trust one if it was handed to me by Maester Aemon….)….. This reminded me a lot of the traditional medicinals blends I used to drink all day when I had little babies (my youngest is 9 now…I have no idea how that happened….). Although, this is MUCH better….
The herbs are defined but balanced, and while I’m sure it’d be yummy with honey added, I didn’t go that route since it was sweet enough as is.
I’m really happy that I got to try this, since when I shop for tea, I tend to skip over herb blends like this, and I really should be paying more attention to them.

Sipdown (113)!

Well, I stuck with the ‘plan’ and did one more cold brew with the last big piece of orange included in the leaf and it definitely tasted a lot more like I wanted the last batch to taste! Light, vegetal creamsicles! And I know that doesn’t sound super appealing ’cause of the vegetal part but it just works anyway. Really refreshing and hydrating overall!

And good thing too; the bus I usually take to get to work (I take a different one home) is a University route, and from May to the end of August when there’s no classes it doesn’t run at all. So, come tomorrow I’m going to have to walk to get to work (or pay a ton of money to cab) – the irony is that walking actually takes the exact same amount of time that busing takes but it’s like an hour long walk and most of the way is uphill. To kind of “prep” myself for the coming months I’ve walked to work the last three days to kind of adjust to it. Having a good cold brew to drink along the way has proven invaluable!

And so, the job hunt for more fulfilling work has been made a bit more of a priority. Still, I’m being very selective about where I apply; it’s not that I dislike my job or really need a new one but I just don’t feel satisfied being there either and this is just another ‘con’ to add to the list.

As for the tea; even though this brew was significantly better than the last I’m still pretty over it. I’ll probably be relying a lot more heavily on Buddha Bamboo, also from Tea Desire, to get me through this summer. The last 10g or so of this one ended up going to Nathan, one of the people from work. Between him and Chef Darcy a lot of not bad but less desirable tea has been sent their way…

Today’s daily cold brew, and coincidentally the only tea I’ve had so far today. I definitely need to get on that pronto! And I will, I just wanted to free up the mason jar first so I could use it for a flowering tea…

This tastes off today; too much vegetal/bamboo and lemon notes and not enough creamsicle goodness. Actually, there’s really no orange at all today. I know there’s at least one big dired up orange slice left in my bag of this one – but otherwise I think it may just mostly be bamboo now.

Just as well; I’m kind of bored with this one and I definitely debated bringing it in to work to give to Chef Darcy or one of the dietitians. While it’d be nice to have around in the summer, I think Buddha Bamboo is gonna be more consistent. So maybe I’ll brew this up one more time using that orange piece, and then pass this along to someone else.

Hot cup of this blend mixed 50/50 with Butiki’s Birthday Cake a few nights ago. It’s been a little while since I did something for operation “Mix Birthday Cake with All The Teas!” or whatever it was that I was calling it.

Since this tea, on its own, reminds me a little of a creamsicle I thought that upping the vanilla factor would work out really well. What I didn’t anticipate was that the spongy, fluffy cake vibe from Birthday Cake and the light, summery vegetal bamboo in pure life wouldn’t mesh really well. What ended up happening is a created a blend that reminded me so much of Butiki’s Tangerine Creamsicle guayusa which I didn’t much like at all – but on a less earthy base.

I’ll just quote what I said in my tasting note for that one: “I don’t get Ceamsicle so much as I do curdled citrus and milk”. I wound up not finishing the mug. Is this my first fail in operation “Mix Birthday Cake with All The Teas”? I think so. It had to happen eventually.

Now I know.

Cold Brew!

Mostly bamboo, lemongrass and orange but in a delicious way that combined with the mysterious coconut/vanilla flavours really equate to “Creamsicle”. I love the surprising sweetness/creaminess of this one contrasted with the light, summery citrus and vegetal flavours going on.

It was a great, refreshing one to drink yesterday during break! Gonna try and start brainstorming ways to switch up preparation of this one so I can enjoy it in different ways. Maybe as a latte? Would that be weird?

Last tea of the night, and the last thing in my queue (for now)! Today may have started on a negative note, but I feel like I ended up accomplishing something anyway! Now to try and not let it get so out of hand again we all know it’ll happen again though.

I had so many plans for this one, honestly. I was going to have it hot and set it up to cold brew for tomorrow, and then none of those two things happened. I ended up setting up La Tropicale instead for a CB and I had Buddha Bamboo hot instead. But I still really wanted this so I made some tea syrup out of a heaping tablespoon of it – except then I wound up making a Saskatoon Berry milkshake and decided that I didn’t want to spoon it over ice cream like planned.

So what I did end up doing was turning it into a tea soda! And even though that’s definitely not what I was originally going for I’m happy with the results. This was light and sorta “spritzer-y”. It basically was like really bubbly orange/lemon soda with vanilla or cream notes to it, and some very very light coconut notes in the background. It worked surprisingly well considering the vegetal bamboo base or lemongrass (which sometimes tastes like lawn clippings to me) in the blend.

Fresh, fun, and light!

And my Dad has just arrived so gotta make this last tasting note very quick. Thankfully it’s the last one left in my queue anyway.

Anyway, this is a cold brew; and a good one. Nothing out of what I’ve observed to be “the usual” for this blend – cream, coconut, oranges, lemongrass, bamboo. All wonderful flavours combined together; it’s light, summery and refreshing! Actually a really nice way to start the morning!

Since picking this one up I’ve been determined to try it as a cold brew, and with my recently picking up the Carnival collection from DT with many of them in mind for cold brewing I seized the opportunity to try this one before I focus on CBing those blends.

Basically to keep things short: this was very good, and definitely screamed “Summer is here”! There was a light vegetal taste from the bamboo base that kind of kept things soft and fun, and then an intensely rich and vibrant orange citrus flavour that just made everything really “pop”. And then I got coconut from it again, although like I think I remarked last time I had this one hot, I don’t know if there’s actually coconut in the blend?

Coconut and orange seems like such a weird flavour combo; but I like it! It’s fun and splashy in a good way! They make each other really stand out as flavours.

Overall, I think I like this one almost equally cold brewed as I do hot. I think maybe the orange is a little more bold this way, though.

So I bought this bad boy yesterday in store because I was so excited by the fact that Tea Desire now has a second bamboo blend! I really, really love their first one Buddha Bamboo and this smelled amazing too!

Dry, there’s an intense aroma of sweet oranges, lemon grass, cream, and coconut, which is weird to me because coconut isn’t actually a listed ingredient but I definitely smell it! Steeped up, this is pretty damn good! It’s sweet oranges and lemony citrus in a completely non-medicinal or “pledge” like way with a creamy coconut body and a presence of delightful, slightly vegetal bamboo.

Admittedly, I looked up a lot of the ingredients like Lotus to see what those are supposed to taste like though (because I was curious where the coconut comes from given it’s not a listed ingredient). Apparently Lotus is often compared to olives and Ginko is woody but sweet. I don’t get olive or wood notes, but perhaps that’s good. I don’t think I’d like a combination of olive, wood, orange, and coconut. As for the Jiao Gu Lan? Apparently it’s a part of the cucumber family. I can buy into that: cucumber provides an incredible light and crisp vegetal quality to tea and I get that from this blend.

This is marketed by Tea Desire as a wellness blend similar to how they market their Buddha Bamboo, and a lot of the ingredients in it have some large health claims. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that and it’s certainly not why I bought the tea, Regardless, it tastes delicious and I’m super excited to try this as a cold brew or iced. Tea Desire, in my humble opinion, has done it again!

Thanks MissB for including this in my mystery pack. Definitely not something I normally would have tried because I don’t seem to like teas that are promoted as or implied to help you lose weight and is also part of the reason it took me so long to get on this crazy tea journey. I cold brewed this anticipating I would not like it because of the licorice and that is what the cold brew brought out licorice, yuck. I’m so glad I saved a cups worth to try hot because I can actually drink it. It taste and smells like a light chai. I’m really enjoying the stimulant from the mate. Can’t say I would ever buy it because of the name I would never want to drink it and that is why it took me so long to try it.

I agree with other people’s reviews in that the orange flavour tastes artificial, like those chewable vitamin C tablets. The oolong itself is also rather grassy tasting and lacks the sweetness I’m used to in a green oolong like this. Not thrilled with this one.

Really not feeling well today, but this tea is doing a wonderful job at making me feel a bit better…
I had been saving my last bit of this from MissB, knowing a day would come where I really wanted it…that day has arrived, and it’s just perfect!
Deep and earthy, sweet, and so full of that warm plum pudding thing that puerh does for me….
Really love this one…

It was so hard to pick which tea to try first out of the insane box from MissB that I found on my doorstep today (This box is tea heaven, and I feel like the luckiest person in the world….), but I decided to go for this one. I’ve been wanting to try a caramel pu-erh, since I always read such great reviews for them on here, and I’m so excited that I finally got to…
This tea was absolutely delicious…
Buttery and rich upon sipping, but ending with this light, clean finish… so interesting!
As it cooled slightly in my cup, the tea became so creamy and decadent.
The caramel is right there, bordering on butterscotch to me, with the richer, more brown sugar notes…. mmmmm!
Off to resteep for a third time :)
(Thanks again, MissB !!)

Sample sipdown!

Not as dark and rich as the one I had from BeTeas, but a similar flavour. I felt like I got more steeps out of the other one, but I certainly still enjoyed this.

Sweet and caramelly and very comforting with a decent splash of milk to make it extra creamy.

Thanks to MissB!

Another sent over from Miss B, thank you!

I may have underleafed so I will try again later. Not as dark and rich, nor as caramelly as I’d hoped.

So far that honour, the honour of dark, rich, caramelly pu’erh of my dreams, goes to BeTeas, the company whose TOTMC my hubby had signed me up for last year.

This one is still tasty, just not as potent as I’d expected!

I love the smell of this tea – it’s a fragrant mix of fresh green tea, ginger, and candied pineapple bits. Unfortunately the pineapple sort of gets lost in the flavour and I find the taste to be more herbal and gingery than fruity. The lemongrass does give the tea a nice zing and combined with the ginger its rather nice.

Cold Brew and Plain Tea Sipdown (268)

So today’s #31daysofHallotean prompt is the tea you’d drink if you could only drink one tea for the rest of your life. I couldn’t pick a specific tea but if I had to, I could probably be ok just drinking black teas. That said, this is not a black tea. It is an old tea that I decided I would finish off by comparing a cold brew of it with the hot tea. And, I set up the cold brew before I realized what the prompt was. So, I have had predominately black teas today but this is my exception and its so I can stick to my plan of having at least one tea from my sipdown box of teas from 2017 each day until I finish them.

This particular tea is another from Evol Ving Ness. Thank you and I hope you are doing alright since its been a while since we have seen you on the site!

I started with the hot tea which had cooled by the time I got to it. It has a generic fruity flavor to it and it’s got a grassy green tea base. Neither of those things are at all unique in a tea, nor are they really that interesting to drink.

The cold brew is more of the same. It actually might even be more grassy and drying. This one just isn’t for me. And it seems I have had it before and didn’t love it. Still, it is always nice to revisit things since tastes change so thanks for that chance, Evol!

Sipdown!! (155)

Thank you Roswell Strange for the chance to try something new. Having had it both hot and cold, I can say this is definitely better cold. The mango and lychee flavor come out much more whereas the base takes a back seat to the flavors. Good, not great but the rating will get bumped a bit because the cold brew is certainly an improvement.

Thank you Roswell Strange for the share but I am not getting anything out of this. I actually had to double check what I was drinking because all I taste is a roasty vegetal base. Not horrible but not something I will ever crave. The rest of this sample is cold brewing for later so we shall see how that goes but for now this is a tea I will certainly pass up in the future.

I love the smell of this when I first opened it. It’s a pretty tea to look at. I’m surprised at how light the tea was after I steeped it. Light in color and flavor. Not a lot of apricot flavors but very fall, cinnamon, chai flavors.