Toffee Dream

Thanks so much to Inkling for sending me some of this! I couldn’t find brewing instructions online, so I went with the Steepster average of 180f for 3 minutes. This is surprisingly hefty for a white tea. I really quite like it. Very good toffee flavor, smooth and thick mouthfeel, nice savory-sweet aftertaste. This makes for a nice dessert tea. I got a good second steep at 180f for about 5 minutes (didn’t time it the second time).

Sipdown!

Sample sipdown – thanks to Anlina for the sample!
This is pretty good. The dry tea has a really intense toffee aroma, which is there but much lighter in the brewed tea. The base tea has a light, vegetal, sightly sweet flavour. I’m getting mostly cucumber notes from it, actually. I like both the base tea and the flavouring, but I’m not totally sold on the combination. I think the toffee flavour might go better with a sweet Chinese black tea, maybe. Having said that, I’ve slurped back the whole cup while typing this review, so I can’t complain. :)

This sample came from Roswell Strange. I once tried a tea from Zen Tea Life that had the same name and looked identical to this one, so I’m going to assume they’re the same tea and it’s from some kind of wholesaler. The white tea leaves are fairly broken up and there are tiny blue flower petals mixed in. Dry scent is mild and sweet caramel.

The steeped tea smells quite caramel and toffee-like with a touch of cream. Hmm, this tea is just okay for me. The caramel and/or toffee flavor is much milder than I expected, and it sort of tastes coconut-y for some reason. There’s also a vegetal flavor from the white tea that reminds me of cucumber, and it doesn’t mesh all that well with the sweet flavoring. It’s also a touch musty. Meh!

Thanks to Roswell Strange for passing some of this on to me! It was pretty tasty (although to be honest, I’m not sure whether I was drinking Zhena’s Double Vanilla or this tea). I’ve had Toffee Dream by one or two companies before, and I have a recollection of one tasting/smelling quite playdough-y, which this very nicely did not. I’ll have to rate this once I’m actually certain of which tea I’m drinking :D

I’ve been curious to try this one since Anlina reviewed it a few weeks ago and she was kind enough to include a sample for me in the Cooking TTB. I haven’t had many dessert teas with a white base before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. This is lovely! It is light and smooth, but still very flavorful…lots of caramel/toffee and just a hint of hay from the base. So glad I got to try this! Looking forward to sampling more teas from this brand.

Sipdown (125)!

Despite consistent sipdowns it feels like my cupboard is jumping up quite a bit again; thankfully I packed a few things for my trip to work on sipping down, and I have several more sipdowns to write about that are buried in my queue.

The bus is very quiet right now; for a while there was a kid crying but they’ve fallen asleep now. You can sort of just here the faint clicking of the keys on my laptop keyboard being struck as I write. I hope I’m not pissing people off. I did sit in the back away from everyone else though. If need be I can placate the masses by feeding them the strawberry Pocky I packed for nourishment.

To finish this tea off I had it hot. It was rather unremarkable and not so worthy of a long winded tasting note; plenty of hay notes and something a touch vegetal, but light – and then a sweet, toffee flavour. Cold brew is better. If you have this one do it cold brewed or iced.

My butt is falling asleep from sitting in the same position for an extended period of time. Darn. In between tasting notes I’m sort of just doing random quizzes. This is one I thought was pretty interesting/well done. It’s Canadian slang words. I’m curious how Americans, Europeans, or even Canadians (or people from other areas of the world) would do on it. My score was 16/20. So obviously I’m not a perfect Canadian after all.

http://www.playbuzz.com/debbiemorgan10/how-many-canadian-slang-words-do-you-know?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=prom-hotstuff&utm_campaign=how-many-canadian-slang-words-do-you-know&utm_term=FB_lookalike_fb_shares_ca

Nooooo! I picked this up, opened it, put it down on the counter, and then picked the bag up upside down. Half the bag dumped out on the floor, which is not very clean, before I realized what was happening. I managed to salvage a few of the larger pieces of leaf, but it’s mostly pretty broken and will need to be vacuumed up. Sadness – that was probably at least 10g of this tea.

Double sadness, because this is a bit of a pricier tea and it’s really good. It has an intense sweet toffee fragrance, and the taste of burnt sugar with some floral and hay notes from the tea. It has all the qualities of being sweet without actually being sweet. Light, smooth body without being watery.