Milk & Honey

This one does taste a bit like honey – it’s quite a pleasant complement to the light black tea. I added milk because I thought that would make it even tastier, and it did! The flavor is mild, but nice. Really a perfectly sweet tea to start the morning. Thanks to tea-sipper for sharing this one!

This is either my second or third time trying this tea and I’m officially giving up. It sounds like something I would love, but no matter how I brew it, it comes out very astringent and bitter.

Thanks so much Cameron B for allowing me to try this! It looks like plain black tea with some yellow petals. I really didn’t expect anything spectacular from this and I was correct. On the first steep there is a hint of sweetness which I suppose could be “honey” and on the second steep it tastes mainly like a plain black tea. I’m at least grateful that the black tea is a strong one and not the weak Ceylon B&B once used for most of their black teas. I think I steeped it to the best the flavors would allow, especially on the first steep: cool water, short steep usually lets most of the flavor into a tea without allowing the base to take over, in my experience. I do like the base but wish the milk and honey flavor was more distinct. I can’t love them all, I guess, and I’m glad that I don’t.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 12 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 2 minutes after boiling // 4 minute steep

Home – 7:30 PM

So today was EPIC TEA MAIL DAY!

I got my Lupicia order, which I wasn’t planning on making but I didn’t want to miss out on Kumquat and Yuzu, and then have to wait a whole year for them to come back. I also got a couple more teas, a packet of strawberry matcha au lait, and a teabag set for a Christmas gift.

I got my David’s Tea order, which was a bunch of holiday tins, a cute holiday latte mug with deer on it, and a packet of Sticky Rice Oolong with my frequent steeper credit. I may not generally like David’s teas, but they do always have really cute teaware, and their tins are both nice and cheap.

But the big arrival was my giant Bird & Blend order! It contained both advent calendars (tea & matcha) along with no fewer than 28 packets of tea. To be fair, most of them are 20g sample sizes. And I got 3 50g packets for free because I had emailed them about there not being a free shipping threshold for international orders, and they offered to add some freebies to my order to compensate. Lovely people. ❤

So I now have all of the tea.

I chose this one to try first (after promptly sniffing all of my new teas) because it smells like honey graham crackers in the packet.

To be honest, this is quite underwhelming. It’s perfectly nice as a breakfast tea, but I wouldn’t know there was added flavoring. It’s quite strong, with some bitterness and astringency, which makes sense as this has both Assam and Kenyan black teas (both of which I would associate with being quite tannic). There is some malt and raisin as well, but I don’t taste honey or milk. I think next time I would steep it a bit less.

I don’t mind, as I don’t actually have a breakfast blend in my cupboard at the moment. So this would be one to go for if I’m feeling like adding milk, which is becoming more and more likely as the weather cools. But it definitely doesn’t live up to its name.

ETA: I’m starting to taste a little bit of creaminess and perhaps a hint of honey in the aftertaste as this cools more…

Trying this again and it’s just not doing it for me. It’s not bad, but it’s not delightful either which means it’s just going to sit in my cupboard taking up precious space while I reach for other teas. To the “get rid of” pile!

294/365

This is another from Bird & Blend’s recently released Autumn collection, and one I was pretty intrigued about. It’s a blend of three black teas – Assam, Kenyan, and Sri Lankan – and cream/honey flavouring. I looked at the ingredients list, and decided to add milk to my first cup since there was nothing that really suggested milk/cream already in there, but that was a mistake. Upon trying it, I figured adding milk had washed it out, but it still came across as a decent breakfast blend – very similar to B&B’s Great British Cuppa, if you’ve tried that one.

I made up a second cup shortly after without milk, but sadly it wasn’t much of an improvement. It’s slightly sweeter than you’re average breakfast blend, perhaps, but not in a way that would make me think it was flavoured if I didn’t know that to be the case. It’s malty, as you might expect, but also slightly astringent. There were no real honey and/or milk/cream flavours to speak of.

I’ve got enough left for a few more cups, so I’ll fiddle around with my parameters to see whether I can coax a better cup out of the leaf I have left. I’m kinda disappointed with this one, though.

I am really enjoying this tea. I received it in my August Bird and Blend Tea of the Month box. It smells absolutely divine when you open the package. I was hoping the taste would carry over but it doesn’t what you’re left with instead is a really lovely, but mild black tea.