Mince Pie

I seem to be in the minority, but I absolutely love this tea. I’m working on sipping through a tin of it, and still have 4oz (maybe 6oz actually) sealed in my backup stash. I love the marzipan/almond flavor combined with the sweet candied fruits.

SIPDOWN as a thermos tea

I prepare it in thermos as I was going to inventory check, but unfortunately didn’t had much time to drink it. I was thinking it is clove heavy, but apparently they are not in.

But almonds as well, but based on taste of brewed tea… I am afraid they went rancid. It was highly unenjoyable and bitter as well. Moreover, only lukewarm when drinking it.

I won’t lower the rating with this one unpleasant experience, but I see that I overall didn’t liked this tea so much.

I think this was another of the teas that I was sent in lieu of what I ordered. It sounded interesting, but with the potential to be really generic given a pretty standard set of warming spices/other ingredients. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the first cup not tasting entirely familiar – the flavour was a bit different, and in a good way. I’m not getting it so much in the second infusion (which I’m drinking now), so I’ll have to remark on what exactly this difference was later. But I was certainly pleased. It was, though, fairly astringent – but that’s probably on me because I heavily oversteeped it (aka forgot about it for probably 20+ minutes).

In other news, this was my first tea on my first day back to work! (Yesterday.) Aside from the matcha latte I had, but I don’t feel like that really counts, even though I’m going to log it at some point.

The first time I had this tea, I found it to be lightly nutty with a little bitterness. The second time, I brewed more carefully, so there was no bitterness. I didn’t notice as much nuttiness (though few nuts went in the infuser, so that makes sense), but found an orange flavor creeping in there and some malt from the base tea. I haven’t tried it with milk because it seems like that would be weird for this blend. This is one that I like, but I don’t love. It doesn’t totally capture the flavors that it’s going for, but it’s decent.

A tea I have the chance to try due to a sale from Cameron B! Thanks so much! I wanted to try this one while it was still colder weather a couple days ago. The dry leaves certainly smell wonderful… reminds me of some type of food I eat, but it definitely isn’t mince pie, since I’ve never had mince pie. I’d probably like mince pie if I tried it, but it seems like that was around in the US more when I was a kid. Not so much anymore. The blend is a strong black base with almonds that taste like marzipan. I’m certainly glad I managed to wait for almost twenty minutes and steeped for a relatively short time… the tea was a little brisk even with one heaping teaspoon. So note to self: don’t steep over a teaspoon. I’m GLAD it’s a heftier Ceylon these days though (also, the black tea leaves were fairly small.) The flavor is lovely, it has almost an apple note, without actually being apple, with a nuttiness and baked goods type of flavor. It’s really good. But be careful with the steeps!
Steep #1 // 1 heaping teaspoon for a full mug // 19 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep

Holiday Tea-son! Second tea from my advent calendar, and another of their holiday seasonals for this year. The cinnamon and orange notes are coming out strongly in the dry leaf, so I’m imagining this will be a bit like an orange spice black tea?

It brews up a pretty burnt sienna tone, and the aroma is a very enticing combination of cinnamon, orange, and some sweet notes that smell a bit like a more subdued amaretto; a little nutty, a little cherry, but not overbearing or syrupy-sweet.

The flavor comes out with a very forward cinnamon note, and then follows with a very sweet almond taste; a bit like marzipan but not as strong or as syrupy as most teas that go with a sweet, desserty almond taste. I keep my steeps pretty brief to try to cut back on possible bitterness/astringency that I don’t like coming out in my blacks, but this Ceylon is pretty strong; it’s malty, and most of the fruitiness of the tea seems to be present back in the base, where I’m getting the orange peel, a bit of a subtle cherry note, a little citrus tang, and there is a moderate black tea astringency after the sip. Even with my short steep, it still comes out a bit bitter beneath the sweet cinnamon/almond flavor.

It’s fine, but nothing that excites me overly much. Mostly because it just tastes too bitter/astringent for my particular tastes, despite the flavoring.

Bird & Blend Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 17

Running a bit late on teas today! Lots of meetings at work and then I was wrapping presents for a bit…

Okay, so I admit I have never had a mince pie. But as I understand it, it’s a sort of heavily spiced fruit pie with apples and dried fruit and booze and such. But this tea tastes quite marzipan-esque to me, which is somewhat confusing. Yes, there are spices too, but marzipan is the strongest note for me. There’s a touch of fruitiness.

So I don’t mind it, but I’m confused heh. shrugs

044/365

Sticking with the Christmas theme…

This one is bagged, and it came out of a Christmas gift set I bought for myself last month. I bought it mainly because it contained the four limited edition seasonal blends, and a few at least were new to me (and I think actually new new, although I’ve been MIA for a while in tea terms..) This was one of them.

I can’t claim to be able to comment with any authority on similarities to an actual mince pie, because I can’t stand the things. I do like this tea, though. It reminds me a fair bit of yesterday’s Adagio Christmas, although it’s a lot less orangey. There’s a similar cinnamon/ginger vibe, but this time with lots of almond. It adds an almost-creamy, pastry like element, which is really nice. There are lots of red pomegranate flowers in the blend, for reasons unknown to me, although they are pretty. I expect they’re a carrier for some of the “flavouring” that’s otherwise unspecified on the ingredients list.

On the whole, this one tastes like fruit cake and pastry. If you like Bluebird’s Christmas Cake blend, you’ll probably like this one too.