Tickled Tea

meh. not fan. Sample from VariaTEA which i appreciate, since i love trying new teas but this is another tickled tea i don’t need in my life

sample from VariaTEA. this just tasted sort of sweet and lemony. I wouldn’t call it gummy bear specifically but it wasn’t a bad cup of tea :)

this is really sweet…and not very good lol. happy to try it out but as is often the case, not so much ticked teas. Just too sweet…yes there’s cinnamon and i guess what you’d call cake…but mostly it was just sweet.

Sipdown!

another one from variaTEA. I do love chai….but this one is is a little heavy on the cloves or something. Not the right balance for me. Decent cup but there are better out there.

sipdown of this one! i’m not usually a fan of tickled teas but this one seems to hit the right notes for me i suspect it’s the cardamom :)

Sipdown (300)

It could be age but this tastes like card board. I dumped the cup and tossed the rest of the sample.

Sipdown (328)

I’ve had this since June 2017 and just haven’t gotten around drinking it until now. I debated if this should be made as a latte, mostly because I want more white chocolate lattes but I decided just to make it plain.

This doesn’t really taste like rum or cola though. It’s quite the letdown because it’s mostly a so-so black tea base with some lemon. That and cinnamon. I’m not really a fan so this went into my swap box.

Sometimes this is good and actually tastes likes it’s namesake. Sometimes it’s not good at all. But it’s a cake tea in order of my tea twin’s birthday. Happy birthday, Roswell Strange!

Sipdown

It’s fine. But it’s chamomile heavy and that’s not for me.

In other news, my university deemed that classes for the rest of the semester will be online so I told my family I need to go back to London to pick up my textbooks…and my tea. Priorities.

This does not taste like gummy bears. It doesn’t taste bad and it is fruity but it is definitely NOT gummy bears. I get a lot of leafy flavor from the raspberry leaf. It is more savory, for lack of a better word, than anticipated. It’s fine but nothing special.

Another sweet Apple tea. Got a touch of maple which was not really what I wanted since it was already pretty sweet. No bacon, which could be a good thing but salt, smoke, or even “meat” would have been welcome to cut through the overly sweet apple. Maybe it’s me and this cold or maybe I’m just off apple teas but once again, not loving this.

Sipdown (230)

I decided to stay in London this weekend with a plan to get lots of work done. However, yesterday I flip flopped about whether I would be getting on my 7:45 pm train so much that I basically kept myself in a state of limbo where I was stressed about everything. Should I do a gaiwan session? Well if I stay then I have time but if I go it may make me need to pee a lot and I don’t like using the train bathroom. Should I do work? Well I don’t want to start something to have to stop in the middle to catch the train? Should I stay dressed or should I shower? All me being ridiculous and if I just made a decision, I likely could have gotten a lot done yesterday but I did not so yesterday was a bit of a write off.

Then when I decided to stay, a bunch of my friends in London were like “cool, you are here for once, let’s make plans!” So now I have someone coming over tonight for dinner and a movie and tomorrow I am going out with someone else for dinner and a movie and I suppose so much for staying in London to get more work done.

This morning I have been productive though, though not in relation to school…yet. I have plans to watch lectures shortly. However, first, I cleaned my apartment which was a bit disastrous since I basically just crash here a couple days a week and then spend the rest of the week in Toronto or Waterdown with family. So, I finally tidied up the place and it is looking so. much. better. The only thing left to deal with are my teas. I have gotten new ones and rather than putting them in the drawers where my tea is stores, I just have boxes or bags of tea lying around. So I will have to deal with that but after my overhaul of everything else, I decided to make tea and picked this one out for a latte.

I had a bit of an issue because when I went to pour the milk out of the bag, milk came both out of the bag and the container it was stored in despite me just opening the bag. So I had to investigate what was happening and I couldn’t really locate a whole in the bag other than the one I cut but to be safe I drained it and tossed it. Bye a full litre of milk I just bought :(

Once I did sort out the milk issue, I got to making what ended up being one of the foamiest lattes ever. Honestly. The foam was put on the latte like 5 minutes ago and it is still standing and it is still wiggly which is a weird thing to say about foam but just know it is impressive.

This tea is old but it is still nice. I don’t know if its pumpkin pie per se but I am definitely getting cinnamon and cloves and those great pumpkin pie spices that work well in lattes, especially this time of the year. I put off trying this sample for so long b/c of the base mostly (a Chinese green tea which I think is probably a hojicha) but it actually worked really well with the other ingredients.

VariaTEA sample from yesterday. Candy apple this is not. It’s spiced apple – cinnamon and apple and that sort of cider-y type of apple tea. Good tea, but not what it’s advertising :)

Final Count: 60

Iced Sipdown (618)!

Finally pushed myself to try (and finish off) this sample, which I have been sitting on for a REALLY long time now. I don’t know what it says about my ‘tea drinking journey’ that this is only one of like a dozen bacon teas I’ve had now. I mean, I just never would have assumed that would be a point I’d reach when I started getting into tea.

What’s more – I find myself confused regarding this tea because it’s easily the least bacon-y bacon tea I’ve had; and is that a good thing!? Is it a bad thing!? Should I be judging bacon teas on their accuracy to bacon flavour or do I like that it was milder and less intrusive, with most of the flavour notes actually coming from the woody/honey like rooibos base itself and those hints of apple? I DON’T KNOW WHAT CRITERIA I SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON. I mean…

Bacon teas are just weird, ok!? They. Just. Are.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI2f8eA8x4Q&index=2&list=WL

Lavender. Chamomile. Why did I buy this? I think I got excited and got one of everything at Tickled Tea and that’s how I wind up with a blend that really isn’t for me. With that said, despite having some ingredients I really dislike, this is not as bad as I expected. Chanomile is definitely the strongest flavor and lavender is close behind but the lemon keeps everything in check and it’s all balanced by the mint so that even though I know I don’t love this, I can see how it might be enjoyable to others. The last of this sample is probably going into the swap box.

Another sample from today. I had some hopes for this one, but it wasn’t meant to be. Brewed it was weak tasting and more like a sweet almond tea than apple crisp. My apple crisps are made with tart apples, so maybe that’s on me haha. Still, good to try but not for me outside of this cup. thanks VariaTEA!

Count: 43

This is preferable hot over iced and comes off a lot more liked a baked apple tea as opposed to candy apple. As such, it is roasty and cinnamony and comes off a lot more like a fall/winter blend than a summery candy apple treat.

Check out my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2018/07/10/candy-apple-from-tickled-tea/

Iced Latte Sipdown (260)

I thought this might work as an iced latte now that we finally have milk back in the house. However, this tea isn’t great and it really doesn’t taste like much in the latte. Got kind of a low quality black tea flavor and then icy milk. Oh well. I got this free and now it’s gone so no big deal that it wasn’t really good.

Sipdown (359)

Like all other Root Beer Float teas, I decided to try this as a latte and tbh I do not like it. Perhaps age is to blame since this is over a year old but despite this being distinctly root beer flavored, it just isn’t great. The base is imparting too much flavor, and its imparting a flavor that does not meld with the root beer or “float”. Plus, I am not loving the fennel in this. It’s all just a fight between milky root beer, brisk black tea, and a herb quality and those three things just don’t belong in the same mug. It was drinkable but not great.

Usually spicy teas aren’t actually spicy. This is not really an exception however you do get the little hit of chili at the back of your throat. Unfortunately other than that hit, this tea is a whole lot of weird. I don’t like the cinnamon or the beet or the chili and all of it is on a slightly metallic gunpowder base. Everything is fighting and none of it is all that good.

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I won an Instagram giveaway by Tickled Tea and it arrived today. When adding the teas to my steepster cupboard, I noticed how low I rated this (30) and was curious if I still felt the same way. Tbh, I highly considered just putting this right into my swap box (or the bag for Sil which has taken the place of my swap box while I wait for her to come get her teas), but I decided to give it another try.

Honestly, this tea is still not great. But it also isn’t “30” bad. It’s mostly just flat and muddied generic spice blend. I think they may have reworked the ingredients b/c I recall this having stevia in it but when I checked the site just now the ingredients contain turbinado sugar and maple flakes instead. That could definitely explain the improvement. However, while it is certainly better than it was, so many companies know how to do this flavor profile so much better. Glad I gave it another try though.