3240 Tasting Notes
Fortnum Advent Sipdown #18
Why am I pushing myself to finish all these teas by the end of January? Because the wooden advent box is large and I want to keep it as a Christmas decoration rather than leave it out all year. I want to keep all the empty tins in it and I don’t want to have to get it back out again after I get it all put away neatly so tins must be emptied ASAP.
Darjeeling isn’t a favorite tea type for me, nor for Ashman although he didn’t mind this one. I had a lot left so today it became a gallon of sweet iced tea! It tastes pretty good this way actually, and we will definitely enjoy polishing it off this way much more than laboring through several pots of hot tea.
As an iced tea, the color is especially nice. It has such clarity and tastes as clean and fresh as it looks.
Advent sipdown #17 (I think)
This one has an aroma that could be very offputting. It reeks, and I mean REEKS, of cherry cough syrup. It smells like it is made of red rooibos and cough syrup. But…it tastes good.
I am not sure if I would peg this as cranberry had I not known the flavor, but very fruity and it has the sharp tartness of cranberry without being hibiscus-like. Very good with breakfast and Ashman sipped the rest down later in the morning.
Seven to go…
Advent sipdown #16
It doesn’t look like I will meet my goal of finishing the advent teas by the end of January but it will be very close! The Christmas green will be become sweet iced tea later today, but the Earl Grey will probably have to be drunk on my own because Ashman isn’t usually a fan.
This one is still too strong for me to drink without either food or milk and sugar. We had our third weekend in a row of “winter event” that caused Ashman to have to work by night and day. (He is currently asleep on the floor in the bay window with Sam the King of Dogs, having put in 130 hours in two weeks.)
I welcomed him home this morning with blueberry Belgian waffles (frozen not homemade) topped with homemade blueberry syrup and whipped cream. Bacon on the side. The tea was very good with it because it was such a sweet meal and the whipped cream no doubt mitigated it. I thought it was fine.
Shortly after eating I poured the last cup of tea and tried to drink it by itself and the horrendous trademark throat and tummy burn started. Poured out the last few ounces. Sad.
It is probably a good tea but there are so many breakfast teas that do this to me, usually teas from India. I shouldn’t even try to have them without milk. Ashman drank his with milk and sugar and liked it just fine. I bet builder’s tea lovers would dig it!
Reposting this from mobile to see if our computer is the problem or Steepster…
Advent sipdown #16
It doesn’t look like I will meet my goal of finishing the advent teas by the end of January but it will be very close! The Christmas green will be become sweet iced tea later today, but the Earl Grey will probably have to be drunk on my own because Ashman isn’t usually a fan.
This one is still too strong for me to drink without either food or milk and sugar. We had our third weekend in a row of “winter event” that caused Ashman to have to work by night and day. (He is currently asleep on the floor in the bay window with Sam the King of Dogs, having put in 130 hours in two weeks.)
I welcomed him home this morning with blueberry Belgian waffles (frozen not homemade) topped with homemade blueberry syrup and whipped cream. Bacon on the side. The tea was very good with it because it was such a sweet meal and the whipped cream no doubt mitigated it. I thought it was fine.
Shrotly after eating I poured the last cup of tea and tried to drink it by itself and the horrendous trademark throat and tummy burn started. Poured out the last few ounces. Sad.
It is probably a good tea but there are so many breakfast teas that do this to me, usually teas from India. I shouldn’t even try to have them without milk. Ashman drank his with milk and sugar and liked it just fine. I bet builder’s tea lovers would dig it!
<3
Derk: This comment gave me the first email notification I have had from Steepster in YEARS!
:)
Don’t know why your note doesn’t show up on my dashboard (found it in /recent) but I hope others will feel the <3. Thanks for sharing your day with tea. I’m glad the exhausted Ashman had a friend to accompany what sounds like a much needed rest.
It isn’t showing up on my dashboard, either, so I was very surprised you saw it!
ADVENT SIPDOWN 14!
Iced, of course. Although they call this plum (maybe), apple (maybe tart apple?) and cinnamon, I pretty much sip this and get jamaica, so really this is almost pure hibiscus flavor to me. As an iced drink, it is a nice accompaniment for meals or pleasant to sip on its own, as long as I sweeten it.
SIPDOWN!
I was beginning to despair of having the advent finished by end of January but there is a light at the end of the tunnel!
This was the most easy to drink of the plain black tea blends, enjoyable but not earth shattering, reliable, good with no additions, but no replacement for my dear Queen Catherine. Mild and innocuous. Not too sour, not too brisk, not too malty, just a nice, drinkable breakfast or afternoon tea.
Another Fortnum advent sipdown! Thirteen down, eleven to go.
This was okay, and good with food, but I am not sorry to see it go. It had too much clove tingle for me once the food was gone and I was drinking it by itself. Food tames the least attractive aspects of a tea quite often, and with a meal was the only way I really enjoyed this one.
Advent Sipdown #11 – I could have sworn this was going to be number 12 but I just counted the empties.
I only had enough left for a single cup and Ashman is at work for the winter storm, so I am eating nonstop, drinking tea, reading, and throwing wood on the fire.
I wanted a simple black tea to have along with a Harney and Sons Blueberry Green White Chocolate candy bar, and it needed to be able to cut the sweetness. This classic Ceylon did the trick mighty well.
I’m almost done with this one too!
I have a few tins with only a cup’s worth of leaf in them, but a few that are shockingly full! I still hope to finish them all by the end of January.
Hope the siege is over soon! Whatcha readin’?
Sounds like a lovely way to spend the day.
What is going on there with storm? Downed trees? Snow banks?Hope this all passes easily enough.
Gmathis: I am revisiting the Thrush Green series by Miss Read. It has been a decade or two since I read them!
Evol: Cold! For us, anyway! We had rain, then freezing rain, and finally last night a beautiful snowfall! About three inches I guess? Last night, the bridges iced up quickly. They couldn’t brine beforehand because of all the rain. It would have been pointless. A few places had power out from downed limbs and trees and but really it was mostly a dry powdery snow here once the freezing rain stopped, so far less trouble than expected. Ashman still has to work 12 hour night shifts until at least tomorrow, which is actually an improvement as he sometimes has to spend days at a time out there in various types of storms.
The big issue now will black ice at night as the melting snow refreezes on the roads. Temps in the teens are rare for us but here we are…
Wow…for your part of the world, that’s Snowpocalypse! You and Miss Read enjoy the rest of your weekend. I’ve read a couple of them salvaged from the 25 cent bin at Always Buying Books, but I’ve never hunted them down in order.
Oh dear. That’s a lot.
Hope things are back to normal for you soon. And that this becomes easier for you all to cope with.
The snow here is up to my knees, but this is an area that should be used to such things at this time of year.
When Ashman first started drinking tea, he liked Tetley British Blend with an obscene amount of sugar and some milk. He loved it, as well as other black teas, but decided he wanted to drink things he liked plain. That meant mostly greens and whites and oolongs. There are only a couple of black teas he likes plain.
This is one he took with milk and sugar but he adds a lot less sugar now. And he commented that this was especially good!
I like this one better than Afternoon Blend, which is also Ceylon. I get the feeling this has a ratio of low to high grown that suits me better. Classic crave-able black tea that goes well with meals and desserts. Coppery, resteeps well, and not a bother to sip down this little advent tin.
I stayed up until 3 am waiting for the storm, and Ashman had the alarm set for 4 am to go to work….because of the storm.
He and I drank this together yesterday for breakfast, and he really liked it. He drank one cup of it without milk or sugar, and there are very few black teas he can do that with. He did prefer it with additions and drank several cups that way.
There was one scant teaspoon left so I finished the wee tin with my solitary breakfast – Nonni’s Gingerbread Biscotti and tea.
This grew on, and I liked it more the last two times I had it. I have always liked Ceylon tea pretty well, as long as it isn’t high grown. This is a good one for breakfast, and as Ashman demonstrated it goes well with and without additions.
I doubt I would re-purchase but it was good. If I am going to buy a Ceylon tea, I would get Kenilworth from Harney or their Ceylon and India blend. I miss A Southern Season’s Ceylon Extra Fancy. I don’t know when I have ever seen such huge tea leaves, and it holds a special place in my heart.
