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Sipdown! (91/395)

Thank you Hapatite for the sample. Unfortunately this one wasn’t my favourite. The black tea didn’t really add much, in fact I didn’t realise it was in the blend until I came to review it! It wasn’t awful, but when it comes down to it there are other things I’d rather be drinking, and I preferred the hibiscus on its own to this blend. One plus I did notice though is that this didn’t need as much sugar to counteract the sour hibiscus.

Sorry about the short and infrequent tasting notes guys, life has just gotten unexpectedly more stressful lately and even though I don’t have a lot going on (the opposite, actually) I haven’t felt in the right frame of mind to be writing up tasting notes and I haven’t even been drinking that much tea. Fingers crossed I’ll get out of my rut before it gets too deep, I’ve been there before and I’m not going back.

Sorry about the slightly dark turn that apology just took, too…

Sipdown! (90/395)

I really liked this one. Today I had it with some peppermint sugar and it was like drinking a minty mocha. If it were still available I’d probably pick some up. Upping my rating from 76 to reflect this.

Sipdown! (89/395)

MissB sent me this a long time ago and it lingered around way longer than I thought it would. From the name I fully expected to love this tea, but each time I drank it I was disappointed. Over the last couple of days I finished this off I drank it a few times, using different parameters each time and couldn’t settle on one which made the flavours pop like I wanted. The base tea is not the greatest – it’s not the worst, either, but it’s fairly astringent and needs milk, even brewed at lower temperatures and for less time than a lot of blacks can stand. It’s also pretty flat, and I like a base tea with nuances, or at least one good solid note which I can hold on to and this didn’t have that for me. The lime flavour, especially when shorter brewed, actually is present and pretty nice. It has a sharpness but also a jammy quality and is brought out with a little sugar, but the coconut is nowhere to be found (and I love me some coconut, so this kinda disappointed me a lot). What’s more, the absolute killer for me is that the astringency means I can’t drink this without milk, and when milk is added the lime flavour is almost completely drowned out, and it doesn’t even help add more coconuttiness so unless you like your tea bitter there is zero point in even having this. I really like the idea of this tea, but the execution is poor. Ah well, on to better teas.

Sipdown! 88/395

Thanks to Hapatite once again for sending me this tea. I drank the last of it a little overleafed because there wasn’t quite enough for two cups left, so it was stronger than expected, but the flavour profile was basically the same. The flavours of this were nice; herbaceous lemony soothingness with a kick of pepper at the end of the sip which built throughout the cup. My issue though is that it sort of coated my throat uncomfortably, and by the end of the cup it was quite scratchy and uncomfortable to swallow. I drank this while having a Lush bubble bath and reading, and until it started to get uncomfortable it was a good choice for my relaxing afternoon. I liked it well enough and I’m grateful to have been able to try it, but I wouldn’t buy any more.

I underestimated how much leaf I had left of this and the last couple teas I’ve had, so no sipdowns from my last few cups. I’m slipping… Still, I’m not complaining, because now I have an extra mug of this, which makes quite the tasty start to the morning. Thank you Janelle for sharing!

Brewing, the scent threw me off at first. I was expecting chocolate milkshake, but what I got was closer to Butiki’s Coffee & Cigarettes (which is stored completely separately and can’t have contaminated this). It had a roasted coffee note from the mate which was prevalent and a sweeter, creamy back note more akin to what I was expecting. Taste-wise, though, they’re not so much alike. The mate naturally gives off a note very similar in flavour to Butiki’s coffee flavouring, though more robust and natural. There’s also a wisp of smoke here right at the end of the sip, but the comparison ends there. Chocolate in tea is very hit-or-miss-y for me, and this has a great chocolate flavour. It’s not by any means the most dominant flavour, but it pairs incredibly well with everything else that’s going on in my mug and adds a rich, indulgent background. It’s like I’m drinking a mocha with my tea this morning, and it feels a little bit naughty in a good way. An actual mocha from a coffee shop would use up about 1/3 of my daily SmartPoints, but this is only a 30th, and only because I added a little sugar to enhance the rich creamy chocolate notes. The malt note comes in mid-sip, which is weirdly making it seem thicker than it really is. It’s also making me want to try a malted chocolate milkshake, which sounds incredible and based on this tea absolutely would be. Malted milkshakes aren’t so much a thing over here (why do we miss out on so much?!) but surely there has to be somewhere that does them… hmm.

Sipdown! 87/395 – I got a couple of samples with my Bluebird order that’s bumped my total up a bit.

This was a tea I received in my first ever swap from Hapatite and it’s taken me a while to get through because it isn’t often I’m in the mood for hibiscus. When I am, though, I actually quite enjoy it! It’s tart and fruity, and I really do get notes of pomegranate. I used to add something crazy like four sugars to this back when I first got it but now I only add one to stop the tartness from being too much. It’s definitely best hot, because it gets more tart as it cools, and I find that I have to add extra sugar if I let it cool too much. I wouldn’t say there’s anything special about this particular brand, but I would definitely think about repurchasing a straight hibiscus tea from someone at some point in the future.

Sipping on the last of my old pouch of this but it isn’t going anywhere because I just got 50g more of this in the post! This was one of the first teas I tried from Bluebird Tea Co. back in the day, and it’s still one of my favourites so when I saw that they brought it back as a limited edition I couldn’t just not buy more, could I? Even three years old (!!!) this is super tasty, but I can’t wait to dig into my fresh new batch. Nommy nommy noms.

I’m upping my rating from 90 just because I can’t bear to be without this tea in my cupboard and it deserves a higher rating.

A happy sipdown #86/393! Sorry, MissB, but this is just not for me.

I was doing pretty well with focusing on my sipdowns, but I got really busy about a week ago and haven’t been able to get much progress made since. Finally, though, I have two days off work in a row for the first time in a month, so expect many sipdowns to come in the next couple of days!

This one I’m pretty stoked about. I’ve had it for a long while now – it was one of my oldest teas – and I’ve never been a fan. It smells a little like sour milk, and tastes like out of date pineapple juice watered down a lot. There’s a sort of sweet artificial back note that most likely comes from the little candy hearts, but there’s nothing particularly complex about it. Each time I drank this I would avoid it for months, until I forgot that I didn’t like it and had another cup. It has been in my focus box for seriously a year, and I’m really pleased with myself for finally getting through it. Pineapple is on my list of tea-dislikes for a reason, and the reason is this tea.

Actual sipdown! I’m not updating my sipdown challenge for this particular tea because I’d already logged it as sipdown #25 two years ago, until I found a one-cup sample today which I took from the EU TTB before receiving the bigger sample in my swap with KittyLovesTea. So it’s been gone from my virtual cupboard for a long time, but now it really is sipped down. It’s lost a lot of the flavour I remember from back then, but what’s left is still tasty. In fact, the passion fruit note seems more prominent than it previously was, because I couldn’t identify it originally but it’s quite obviously passion fruit now. I might bump my rating up a point or two from 67 to reflect that.

Sipdown! (85/393)

I changed up my steeping parameters for my last cup of this in the hopes that I would like it better, but to be honest it didn’t change all that much. This time around with half a sugar added the root beer flavour was maybe a little stronger in small sips, but again the astringency was too much and I had to add milk, killing anything root beer about it. Maybe it was because I used an extra 1/2 a tsp of leaf this time, but I lowered the steep time and water temp. enough that I thought if anything the root beer flavour would be boosted and the astringency dampened, but no such luck. Oh well, time to move on and accept that this wasn’t for me.