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The coconut aroma is quite strong, but the flavor is very subtle, and somewhat overwhelmed by the rather grassy taste of the green. Unlike many green teas, I find that I’m OK with this one in the winter, although I don’t usually keep it in the house. I wish I could make it slightly more coconutty, but it’s perfectly serviceable as is.

This is one of the ones from the Steepologie advent calendar that I didn’t get to during Advent. I figured having it for New Year’s Day was appropriate.

The apple is very strong in the nose; when I opened the tea, I could briefly smell fig, but then it was overwhelmed by the apple. Similarly, when poured into the mug, the smell of the apple was much stronger than the fig.

However – happily! – when brewed, the fig comes through in the taste.

Totally acceptable tea. Not one I need to seek out, but happy to drink it.

Oh wow, it’s a tea I don’t have to input to Steepster because I’m not the only one drinking it! Neat!

I liked this one, but not enough to want to buy it. It’s a cheerfully chocolate tea, strong in the nose, but when I drink it, the chocolate somehow got muddled in with everything else and I lost it somehow. This doesn’t make any sense at all, but it’s what my tastebuds did with it.

(Also, because it’s got real chocolate in it, it left a glaze of chocolate on the walls of my teapot and I had to wash it rather more thoroughly. Fair warning.)

Anyway. If a friend offered it to me, I would cheerfully drink it and be happy about it, but I don’t need to keep it in my cabinet.

The last tea in the Advent Calendar from Steepologie (though there’s a few I missed/haven’t done yet because hahahah holiday season is frantic) is their Masala Chai tea.

I love masala chais; spice has been my thing since I was a kid, and discovering that there was an entire class of teas that were spiced made me very happy as a young adult. This one is just fine – heavier on the cardamom than I usually go for, but quite tasty on a chilly morning. The ginger is also quite distinct.

I won’t seek this one out for a refill, but that’s mostly because I adore Steepologie’s Majesty’s Chai, which started off the advent calendar. Nothing has yet dethroned that one as my favorite masala chai.

A particularly nice thing about this particular tea, however, is that the aftertaste in my mouth when the tea is gone is quite pleasant. Zingy, and with lingering ginger. :-)

This particular masala chai doesn’t do anything in particular for me. There’s nothing wrong with it? But it’s a fairly standard masala chai. It’s a little more mellow, a little more malty than the ones I usually drink – I suspect that’s because the tea itself is aged. The peppercorns aren’t particularly strong (nothing like Prepare For Trouble) and I can’t taste the cardamon at all.

Nothing wrong with it, but not one I need to keep around. It came as part of a sampler from bigger order we got from Friday, so when I finish off the last of my advent teas, I’ll be on to those, but it’s dark and gloomy here this afternoon, so I figured a dark chai might be the way to go.

Normally, when I add a tea to the database, I like to link back to the website where I can order it. This tea, which came in my Advent of Tea from Steepologie, appears to have been discontinued between when they shipped the advent calendar and now, which I am bemused by, and which also is a bit of a shame because I liked this one.

This tea tastes like a be-tea’d version of my spiced peach cobbler. I don’t make cobbler in the winter (I can do it with canned peaches, but it’s not as good) so getting a tea that reminds me of summer on the second day of winter was a delightful surprise. It’s not as strong as my cobbler (unsurprising, really) but given that it has no sugar and no actual peaches, that’s OK.

As it’s been cooling while I write this, the flavor has been getting stronger, too – apparently, this is one that needs to sit a bit in the mug after it’s poured.

Oh well. Can’t buy this one, but I do recommend it.

This tea tastes really strange. It smells fabulous, although slightly soapy (?) – like one of those really fancy soaps you can sometimes find in spas or something – and looks lovely, but it tastes WEIRD.

I can absolutely smell the apples in it, and the plums. It does not have the overpowering currant flavor of a black currant tea, so if the currants are there, it’s subtle. There is no taste of saffron at all, which isn’t surprising, as although the name says saffron, there’s only safflower – not the same thing. This smells like something I’d want to render down into a sauce and pour over a roast pork loin, and I rather strongly suspect it would go fabulously.

What it tastes like is very difficult to describe. The apple is fairly pronounced, moreso than the plum. The celery is also fairly obvious – more than I would want, honestly. I can’t pick out the quinoa either, but I don’t doubt that it and the celery together are what’s making this tea taste very peculiar to me.

The celery is jumping out at me in the aftertaste, and not in a great way either.

I…have no idea whether to recommend this tea. It’s certainly something that I’m sure somebody would like. I’m definitely not that somebody, however. I don’t think I’m going to finish this mug.

Yup, that’s definitely a currant-flavored tea. Smells like it, tastes like it.

Initial thoughts on this particular advent-of-tea from Steepologie: This tea needs more tea in it. There’s a LOT going on in here, but the currant flavors are the strongest. I could pick them out pretty much instantly, then the apples, and a little bit of the licorice. Handing it to my spouse, he tasted it and said, “This might want sugar.”

I added a little honey, and indeed, all the fruit flavors got stronger – as did the honey flavor, which melded very well with all the others. Unfortunately, the licorice is leaving a pronounced aftertaste in my mouth – not a pleasant one, alas. Also, the tea flavor is being completely drowned out by all the fruit. I think if I were to drink this one again, I’d cut it about 50-50 with a black ceylon, because it doesn’t need anything as malty as an assam or a yunnan. But if you want tea (I want tea) this one may not be for you.

If you want fruit, though? Yup, this one’s fruit all the way down.

Oh, how I want to love this tea, and…it didn’t happen. But it might not be the tea’s fault.

I love juniper. I love the smell of it, I love the zing it adds to things. (I love how it’s rot-and-insect resistant and can live for at least 3000 years and maybe 6000 years.) So, this tea? I wanted to love it. And when I saw that I’d gotten a bonus packet of it in the advent calendar, I was ecstatic.

Unfortunately, the Steepologie advent calendar only gave me a small sachet of it, and like a complete doof, I steeped in the 16 oz tumbler that came with my advent calendar – which was probably too much water.

The smell was there – but not strong. The taste was plain tea. No juniper flavor at all.

My reaction could be summed up as a Luke Skywalker scream of, “NOOOOOO!!!”

I’m such a fool! And I don’t have any more of it to bulk it up. :-( Suffice to say, I need to buy an actual sample of this tea (none of this sachet nonsense) and try again. And if that doesn’t work, I will take the second half of the sampler and mix crushed juniper berries into it to see if that fixes the problem. But in the meantime, this tea remains unrated, and I’ll be over here kicking myself for being stupid about how much water to use.

Steepologie Advent of Tea Day 14: This tea would smell like lemon-scented cleaner, except the basil in it adds a very strange meld to it in my nose, and keeps it from smelling that way. Actively holding the mug to my mouth and sniffing makes the basil scent clearer, but it is still strongly overpowered by the lemon in general.

The taste reminds me of the lemon-basil shortbread my father makes around the Christmas holidays sometimes. And because of all the lemon (and because it’s an oolong) I’m not adding milk to it, so there’s a tangy mouthfeel to it that I don’t normally have in my teas. The acidity of the lemon, however, is leaving my mouth slightly puckered after drinking. Not in a bad way, but definitely in a “you have encountered citric acid” way.

I’m not sure I like it. I don’t think I actively dislike it, but it’s not a tea in my usual frame of reference. (I freely admit to having been tainted by my heritage, I drank nothing but cheap black ceylon with rose petals in it growing up.)

I think this tea wants to be paired with something like a good strong Pho soup, or possibly hot pot. It’s not the sort of tea I should be drinking while eating oatmeal or even biscuits. Or, y’know, I could pair it with my father’s shortbread, except he’s 9+ hours’ drive away and I don’t know if he’s made any this year.

Regardless, not the correct tea for me this morning, but not a bad “nope, throw that out” tea.