The NecessiTeas

Another from Tiffany:)!   Thanks very much.   I have ALWAAYYSS wanted to try this blend and I know how rare it is to snag Necessiteas blends.  So I was especially appreciative of seeing this one in that amazing package of teas.  The blend itself looks good enough to eat with big peanut butter chips and tiny marshmallows.  Also some banana to go with the honeybush.  I will say I have always been a fan of banana & peanut butter sandwiches, and also peanut butter & fluff sandwiches, so this tea has a lot to live up to.  Really, it’s a great dessert tea with all of these sugary ingredients.  A little nutty, a little bit of banana, a lot of sweet.  I really wish for more of those flavors though.   I could try going dry leaf overboard, but I don’t want to go through this tea that quickly! I’m glad it’s one of those teas I have been dreaming about I can check off the TRY list though.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 19 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 10+ minute steep 

Cinnamon is definitely the dominant flavor here, as it should be for a snickerdoodle cookie. I wish I did taste the cookie aspect though. Or some sort of pastry. I think without it, this just because a simple cinnamon honeybush. Don’t get me wrong – it tastes really good – but I would love to see more cookie since it’s a cookie tea. Thanks, vallhallow, for sharing!

Hmm there’s something a little fake and weird in here. I recently made homemade samoas, so the flavor is pretty fresh in my mind, and this isn’t it. I taste a sort of jarring sweetness that doesn’t really match the ingredients I see in the blend. I prefer to have this one with soy milk to cover up some of the weirdness. It’s not at all coconutty. It’s just sort of strangely desserty – not terrible, but after 4-5 cups of it, I don’t want more.

TTB 2022
The label on this pouch says Peppermint Hot Cocoa and I thought this was the closest since the hot chocolate entry for NecessiTeas doesn’t have peppermint in it and this was mostly peppermint for me. Like a weak peppermint patty candy, there is chocolate lurking in the background but mostly refreshing mint. The temperature here got down to 60 last night so this morning was a good time to try a cup of this, certainly not at the heat of a 90 degree day today.
Thanks to who put it in the box, glad I got to try!

Mastress Alita’s Monthly Sipdown Challenge
July 2022 → A tea paired with a biscuit/cookie

Chocolate chips cookies for breakfast this morning and I have no regrets. Pulled a few scoops out of the freezer so I could have them fresh and hot out of the oven. Can’t say whether chocolate chip cookies traditionally go with banana fluffernutter, but the combo tastes pretty good to me.

The aroma here is strictly roasted peanuts, but the taste is banana all the way! I wasn’t sure if I was going to get all the flavors, but I’m really pretty excited to experience at least the majority. No marshmallow coming through for me, but the banana/peanut mix is tasty.

Cookie recipe if anyone wants it → https://asassyspoon.com/chocolate-chip-cookies/

Thanks to vallhallow for sharing this one!

I get a vague strawberry banana flavor from this. Not bad but turns out it’s not a flavor I am really enjoying in tea form.

This is pretty tasty. My friend and I are trying a new tea each night and this was last night’s. Sadly I don’t really get the “float” part which I was hoping would come from the marshmallows, but overall it’s a pretty tasty root beer tea that will be nice to have on hand.

This was a sample that I had received in one of my earlier orders from the Necessiteas. I have been making it as an full fat oatly latte and it is really nice.
Preparation: Western Latte (Full fat oatly added)
Tasting note: This is really nice it reminds me of cinnamon sugar and is buttery and creamy. It’s really yummy. I don’t love Necessiteas black tea base on its own but they make decadent lattes.

Sample from vallhallow! This one smells like root beer and tastes like butterscotch and root beer mixed together. The flavor wasn’t super strong while hot, but I let part of this cup get cool and it was much stronger! I think this is one that could work well with milk, so I might add some oatmilk when I brew up the rest of this sample

Another tea from vallhallow and Necessiteas. This one is pretty tasty too! It’s a nice creamy chocolate mint. I wish they had managed to capture some cookie flavor in there too, but to be fair they don’t actually claim to do so.

The mint is very smooth in this and works well with the chocolate!

Sad sipdown! I’m definitely getting more of this in my next order

This is a sample sent by vallhallow and I’m so happy they sent it over. I’ve been trying to find the perfect chocolate orange tea for a while and this might be it! It has the Terry’s Chocolate Orange distinct flavor and scent and kind of just tastes like someone melted one down. Looks like I may have to place my first Necessiteas order once this is gone!

Received this as a sample from vallhallow. This is pretty good. I mainly taste juicy, fresh pineapple. Like vallhallow said, it reminds me of eating a fresh pineapple but a little less sweet. A solid pineapple tea, I’ll have no problem finishing the sample, but probably wouldn’t order as I prefer my pineapple teas with a bit of creamy coconut in them.

Though I did have a tea the other day that I felt could use more pineapple… I wonder what they would taste like combined.

This reminds me a lot of Lemon Cake from Red Rose without the extra Stevia. Lemony and creamy.

Back to normal work-life balance. Other than that, I have been sending tea swap packages out for a couple steepsters this week, so if anyone is interested doing a tea swap in the US or Canada, I am quite at my leisure. Mainly would like to share some of my black tea blends (dessert) and straight teas (black, oolong, green, white) though.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Notes:
This is a sweet fruity tea for sure. It reminds me a lot of those Easter sweet tarts candies that are shaped like chicks and bunnies. I think there is sort of a cotton candy aspect to it too, but I am glad it is not identical to the real thing. Personally, I don’t like actual cotton candy, it is way too sweet for me. I think this tea is sweet but I appreciate that the fruit is both juicy and a slight bit tart so it has balance. This is a really good dessert tea. I don’t think I could have more than one cup in a sitting though, it is candy.

Pulled from TTB 2022, shared by Dustin.

James says this one smells like buttered popcorn, and I can see it. The coconut stands out to me in the dry blend, but the lavender comes through more in the cup. I’m not usually a fan of lavender in tea, but I loved the way this one smells so I decided to try it anyway. Unfortunately, the lavender ended up being too strong for me. Hopefully someone else will enjoy it more. I won’t rate this one since lavender’s not my thing, and I knew that going in (but still didn’t listen to my brain).

I taste a lovely cola flavor, though definitely not as strong as 52teas soda flavors. It was refreshing and authentic. It’s best quite cold. I didn’t include any marshmallows in my cup, but I sweetened it plenty, which helped bring out the nice cola flavor. The cold resteep is full of cola flavor as well. I’m trying this for the third time now, and I have to say that the soda flavor isn’t as strong as in previous cups. I mostly just taste rooibos with maybe an aftertaste of cola.

I made as an unsweetened latte (or no additional sweetener added).

Preparation: Western + oatmilk
Tasting Note: It was kind of fun to have this as an unsweetened latte. It looked like a blue milk from my childhood. The oatmilk made the coconut, butterfly pea tea, and lavender much less potent and seems less sweet. It was a lightly sweet and floral dessert tea.

Preparation: Latte with oatmilk and honey. Also, honey drizzled on foam too.
Tasting note: Yum, the foam is like a banana-y marshmallow and the tea is rich, chocolate, nutty banana. This is a nice dessert tea.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: Right away, I get a sweet cherry and sweet warm brown sugar notes from the cinnamon and brown sugar. The brown sugar in this has really done a lot to ensure that the is a sweet cherry note and not a overly tart one. The lingering note on my tongue is a cherry creamy one which the oat come through.

I think this is one, if not my favorite blend from the Necessiteas. It really feels the cherry crisp in tea form because of that, I want to drink it all the time.

Currently, it is out of stock on the website but, I think it is one that I will hang around for.

John requested this one as a “creamy tea” aka oatmilk tea. I haven’t had this one really one its own yet but I would like to try that next.

Preparation: Western with oatmilk
Tasting note: The butterbeers I have had in the past at wizarding world and a friends rendition have mainly been extremely sweet and butterscotch and whipped cream. I would say that is something I dont typically love. This tea did not remind me of that luckily. The tea with oatmilk reminded me mostly of a rootbeer float with vanilla ice cream. The sasparilla was mellowed by the oatmilk but I don’t always detect the butterscotch. It’s there just ever so faintly. I enjoy the rootbeer/float flavor without the crazy sugar buzz and if I had the tea without oatmilk, I think, I would note the butterscotch more.

Preparation: Western
Tasting note: I tasted this for a moment before I added oatmilk and honey, it pretty much tasted like black tea and the slightest of marshmallow flavor. There is rice krispie cereal in the blend but I don’t think it does much of anything to be honest. I was hoping that we would get some puffed rice like a black genmaicha but I was sorely disappointed.

As soon as I added the milk and honey, this tea was pretty plain, the marshmallow flavor had been covered up so it tasted pretty ordinary. I think I would try to brew this tea a little lighter and not make it as a latte in the future.

Side note: Hopefully, I can hunt down the marshmallow treat or strawberry marshmallow treat blends in the future, they are currently out of stock. I think that a roasted rice blend would be much more interesting and closer to the intended dessert.