World of Tea

Another tea from the BBBB, thanks to Sil.
Oohh, Ahh, I love Assam. This was my breakfast pot of tea, & although I don’t have any real notes to share, it was bold, malty, & delicious!

I drank a cup of this this morning, from the BBBB, & there was just enough left to brew a pot, which I shared with a student this afternoon. This is a decent tea, just a basic dian hong, no fancy bells & whistles, but still tasty & good.

Another busy day!!
This was my first tea of the day, one of Sil’s offerings in the BBBBox. I drank it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I can’t really say what it was like, because that was hours ago! :)
Luckily there is enough for me to drink again, & hopefully have time to comment on.

Sipdown! (More or less)

I drank most of this one despite my visit to the store being not so good.
I have to tell you tho. I didn’t care for this tea. I couldn’t get a good taste out of it no matter what I did. It was too strong. I tried with less leaves, shorter steep times you name it. Lots of milk and sugar, no milk and sugar… it just came out not good. I didn’t like it at all.

I had enough for probably two cups worth and I ended up throwing it out. I couldn’t do it.
Life is too short to drink tea you don’t like.

So, I’m going to start this tea review with a rant! Beware!

I went to DavidsTea in Ottawa as I was there for the weekend for a wedding. Beautiful wedding, great food, fantastic to see family again. I’m very happy to have gotten to go! Very long drive from where I live, but such is life.

Anyways, my rant starts now. I left the Davidstea with a smile on my face and a hot tea in my hand to drink and walked down the street with the hunny.
I see this store across the street down a ways and see it’s called World Of Tea. I think, ‘Hey, let’s go in! I love tea!’ My awesome husband said we shouldn’t ‘cause we had Davidstea in our hands, but I was like so what? Me walking in there will show them I’m not partial to one tea company over another or whatever (I know that I am partial to Davidstea over others, but I will absolute try other teas)… I thought they’d appreciate my business.

So we walk in and from the moment we walked in, to the moment we bought a tea before leaving (we ended up feeling bad for walking in there with Davidstea and wouldn’t have felt right not buying anything), the guy started just absolutely dissing Davidstea. It was unreal. I may not have said much when in there, but I wasn’t happy. He was dissing my favourite tea company. He almost made me feel bad for liking Davidstea so much. And the weird part was, he wasn’t super rude or vocal about it, he was quiet and did almost like small jabs at them. Dissing the quality, dissing the chain… etc. (Calling them the Walmart of Tea Companies for example).

We walked out and both my husband and I were stunned. We weren’t happy. He doesn’t drink much tea, but my husband really likes Davidstea. We always get amazing service and great products. I love the variety, the quality, and just the overall bright atmosphere. So after we left there, we went back to our hotel for a bit, before we left for the wedding, but even after we got to the hotel, I could tell my husband was still shocked and upset about what the guy had said. He started to google a few things about what the guy said. I ended up checking out the website. He ended up charging us $2 more for 50g than what the website has the price listed at!! I couldn’t believe it! I’d personally NEVER go back there again. I was very disappointed. He made it sound like his tea was the only good tea out there and that Davids was basically crap.

ANYWAYS, Onto the Tea!
I got this one after he showed me three different Darjeeling teas. They were harvested at different times of the year. This one apparently would have been harvested around the fall of the year.
It calls for 2tsp for 250ml (8.45oz come to find out).
Another thought, if it’s such high quality, why do you need SO much for this one?! I find a lot of the plain black teas only need 1tsp per cup or around that much.

I ended up doing 1.5tsp for 12oz. I added just enough milk to change the colour of this tea, and a tiny bit of sugar, not even enough to taste really.

I wouldn’t have gone any stronger for this one. Any stronger and I would have had to dilute this one. It would have been much too strong. I let it only steep for 2-2.5mins as the instructions said 2-4mins, and I thought I better stay on the safe side this time. Again, wouldn’t have steeped any longer than that. I could see that one going bitter quickly any longer.

So, my overall thoughts… The tea itself is quite nice. I love the rich flavour of it. I do love the smell of the dried leaves as it’s nice and almost malty smelling. The flavour is good too, but I’m really not sure how to describe it. But it’s a nice rich tea and I do like the flavour.

I won’t be getting this one again. I don’t want to deal with that man ever again, even if it’s just online. I’d rather either stick with Davidstea or Metropolitan tea company, and I KNOW the Metro company have teas that taste like this one. I can get great quality and great service elsewhere.

Sipdown, 145. When I first had this I didn’t even look at the ingredients list, so I didn’t realize that it had green rooibos and that the pieces were apple, not pear. Anyway, I cold brewed the rest of my sample and had it today with lunch. It was a pretty decent cold brew, but there was something a little funky about it. Maybe it was just the green rooibos, and I’m not used to the flavor. I wasn’t bad, just a little odd. Anyway, decent, but not particularly exciting.

A mystery tea from Sil! It is at least in the database, but otherwise mysterious as it has no tasting notes, nor can I find anything about the company online. But the leaf is interesting because it looks like pretty nice tea leaves with nice chunks of dried pear.

Steeped, it smells nicely juicy with a hint of slight fakeness. I consider pear to be a difficult fruit to get right, and honestly I have to say my expectations are usually pretty low when it comes to random fruit-flavored greens. Green tea has become a difficult to get right when it comes to flavoring for me. The usual sencha base has become not to my taste, and fruit flavoring can so easily taste fake with it, moreso than with black tea I think.

I have to say that this is pretty ok. Yes, cheap sencha base, but the pear is relatively authentic. There is a hint of generic-fruity-flavored-green-tea to it, the kind of thing that pops up commonly in wholesale blends, but it’s decently tasty. I know, I’m very effusive about this tea. I will definitely be cold brewing the rest of it, because cold brewing is often my favorite way to drink flavored green teas!

This was my first tea of the day. Another from the BBBB, this one via Sil. I love a good assam first thing in the morning. This one is super malty, but doesn’t have the little bit of sweetness that I’ve come to love in #49 & the Tiger. Still a great morning cup and am glad I have more to play with! Thanks Sil!