52teas

Realized I hadn’t had this in a while today so I brewed it up. Think I’m gonna grab some condensed milk this weekend and make 52teas’ latte mix thing. Just got the craving for it as soon as I started drinking the tea.

It is really hard to cut my caffeine intake when I just love black tea best :(

I have declared today…COCONUT DAY.

It all started when I realized I had not had Coconut Cream Pie in, like, a week and a half, which is just wrong and strange and needed to be remedied as fast as possible. Added in a bit of ye olde soy milk and it was delicious as usual.

Then, I was thinking, I am kind of in the mood for Thai Chai as well AND while trying to find the buttered cinnamon raisin toast I opened up my tin of Coconut Pouchong and decided I must have that today as well. Therefore…Coconut Day! (Buttered Cinnamon Raisin Toast can wait until tomorrow.)

This brewed up oddly light today. I wonder if I didn’t put in enough leaves. Still good! Just….light.

Oh man, like the cheesecake chai, this too is better than I remember it, leading me to believe that a vacation from your tea cupboard does you good every now and then. So coconutty and delicious!

It kind of makes me crave the Golden Moon coconut pouchong. (I am planning on getting that as a bday present for myself…just as soon as I have a stable shipping address)

With all the excitement of getting new teas in, I have not had a coconut cream pie latte in DAYS. I was thinking about that this morning walking back from turning in my paper (on time, yay!) and debating on more cheesecake chai or coconut cream pie. I decided due to our long separation it was time to reunite with this tea though.

Mmmm, still so tasty. I love the texture of this tea when it’s got milk added. It’s kind of funny because I was most underwhelmed by this pouch when I first ordered it, but now it’s the one decreasing most rapidly.

Well, I couldn’t take it anymore and tossed out the rest of the fail almond milk, replacing it with some Almond Breeze, instead. Hurray for no more almond milk fail! Today’s coconut cream pie latte was very very nice :D

(Extended) Weekend Backlog One Sentence Logs: This Is The Last One, I Swear!

The almond milk almost didn’t fail, but then it did; damn you almond milk!

I tried this with vanilla almond milk today to see if I could get the same effect as with the latte mix, since I ended up not being able to drink all of that before it went bad. Weirdly the almond milk decided to clump up a bunch. I’ve never had that happen before. At first I thought maybe the milk had gone bad, but no expiration date is next year so…dunno! My roommate says it happens to her coffee every so often as well, so must be some weird milk thing.

So, basically ever since I figured out how to make this to my liking in latte form, I can’t get enough of it. It just works with the latte mix soooo well! I’m on my second cup tonight and have to keep reminding myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty because it’s fat free…

slowly, but surely, the rating inches up….

Risked this in the evening. Decided to try less leaf (I usually do a heaping teaspoon, but went with a flat one) and to be more exact about the 8 oz water recommended per teaspoon on the sachet. I then added about 2 oz (this I eyeballed at about 1/4 of what was currently in the cup) of the latte mixture.

Success! Once again, actually paying attention to things produces results! It’s amazing how often that works.

I am also somewhat weirded out because this is basically a tea that I don’t want to drink without milk or milk like thing (fear my double negative!), where usually I am against milk in my tea at all!

YES. I have DONE it! MWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The perfect balance of strength of tea flavor, milk, and sweetness is MINE, ALL MINE!

And now I will never be able to do it again.

Actually now I drink more of it, the flavor of the tea could be a bit stronger. But it IS the second steeping, so a slight weakness is to be expected.

And now, for your edification, a short skit:
“So, you’ve made a cup of Coconut Cream Pie that you are satisfied with?”
“Yep”
“And you like it and feel comfortable rating it?”
“Yep”
“But you’re rating it below your other 52teas teas?”
“Well, it’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t overwhelmed with its awesome like I was with the other two.”
“So…you realize you have just rated toast higher than pie, right?”
“…sometimes, the world works in strange ways.”

Looks like this tea and I have some wrangling to do. I tried the latte recipe from the 52teas website…too sweet! Waaaaaaaaay too sweet. (for me) Which means that I need to do some messing about with proportions. Fortunately, as noted on the site, the recipe makes enough latte mixture for me to experiment with this to my heart’s content. All I can say is: thank god for nonfat condensed milk, or I would be feeling SOOOOO guilty right now.

Once again, I can taste the potential! But mostly I just taste sugar.

Honestly, am I ever going to feel comfortable rating this tea?

Whoo boy, first go at this did NOT go well. Got into a raid right after setting it to steep and was too busy killing dudes to go and pour it for…well, a while. Needless to say it ended up oversteeped and holy buckets was it ever astringent. I tried to tone it down by adding milk, but I think I added too much milk and it ended up somehow too mild but still astringent. Very weird.

I could tell that it had potential though, so I’m trying out a second steeping now, with a much lower milk to tea ratio. Naturally, since I oversteeped it the first time around, it came out a bit tasteless but I am also getting a better sense of the potential of this tea. I think it’s one that would definitely benefit from the addition of a vanilla milk substitute of some kind. I am thinking almond or rice milk. I also really want to try out the iced latte recipe that is on the 52teas website. By the time I got to the end of the my first cup, the tea had cooled significantly, and I could definitely see its potential.

So, I guess after all that, I am…intrigued. The tea is definitely quite coconutty, and the vanilla seems to be present around the edges of it. I don’t know. I definitely need to try it again without brewing it for twice as long as it is meant to be brewed.

Another sample from Ricky—More nutty than chocolatey, although not much of either. Tea flavor too understated. Disappointing as I love white chocolate and cashews—

Dang, I totally thought my package in the post today was going to be the Mayan Chocolate Puerh. That pesky scamp sure is taking its sweet time to get to me!

As a cinnamon fiend but candy averse, its entirely possible that I have just overlooked the existence of red hot candies this entire time – though I will be upset if you can’t get them here! Confession time: I definitely had to stop myself from sifting through the entire bag just to pick out and eat all them.
Anyway, yes. The tea. This tea is gooooooood. A smooth black tea (that is so good it requires italics and extra ’o’s), which follows through with a loud whisper of cinnamon sweetness. Yes, I still love my punch-in-the-face jaw-dislocating facial-reconstructive-surgery-needed cinnamon black tea, but this cinnamon tea is perfect for those times when you need an upstanding flavoured black tea that makes you say “Mmmmmm!” rather than a string of expletives.

I finally reached the end of this pouch as I was deliberatly seeing how far I could stretch it out. I have noticed that these last few cups have been a bit lacking in flavour so I guess it’s fair to say that this tea has reached its consume-by date. Not that I begrudge it; this was a great got-to tea whenever I felt like a flavoured green tea and it also made an excellent refreshing iced tea (which I forgot to log – oops).

So I bid this tea a fond farewell, and it’s definitely high on my list of 52Teas blends I’d bring back if I had a choice in the matter. ;)

Oh man, this is a good tea! The dry leaves smell fresh and and faintly melony and there are little bits of dried cucumber and melon mixed in with the (resonably whole) green tea leaves.

The tea itself is awesome; light and golden-coloured, the green tea base is very smooth and quite mild aswell. I can pick up both the freshness of the cucumber and the lightly-sweet flavour of the melon. The melon – honeydew melon I think – is very natural-tasting and it doesn’t have that artificially sweet quality some melon-flavoured teas have.

Also, I’m happy that this tea manages to taste like cucumber without smelling like a mix of cinnamon heart candies and dill pickles (yeah, I’m looking at you Adagio; seriously what did you put in that tea?!).

It resteeps well too, which I don’t find with 52Teas black blends, so it’s a nice surprise.

Steep Information:
Amount: 4 tsp
Water: a bit over 750ml filtered water brought up to 212°
Tool: Breville One-Touch Tea Maker BTM800XL (Black, i forget)
Steep Time: a little over 3 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: more like a Cracker Barrel cinnamon broom than red hots (not a bad thing)
Steeped Tea Smell: black tea, cinnamon stick
Flavor: black tea, cinnamon stick
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: slightly astringent, bitter
Liquor: translucent orange-red-brown

The name makes me expect Harney & Sons hot cinnamon spice, instead I get a nice black tea with a very natural and not candy like cinnamon flavor.

Next time I think it needs sugar.

If your not looking for candy, but a natural flavor this is what you want.

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/05/52teas-loose-leaf-black-tea-red-hot.html

Seems like a lot of people have been logging this lately. It really made me crave it, so…here I am! Mmmm, this tea is definitely one of my favorites from 52teas so far. I mean, it just WORKS so well, I still can’t believe what I am tasting half the time.

It’s warm tea day today, since it’s weirdly chilly. I guess autumn is coming! Hot tea for today then. Delicious cinnamon toast tea, to be precise!

I LIVE!

Back from Japan and at last ready to have some tea that I do not have to make the stupid entry for before logging!

Naturally, I turned toward an old favorite to welcome myself home. So delicious! I think I’m gonna go on a little 52teas buying spree when I get the chance. Unfortunately, I may not for a while, as my biggest priority right now is finding a place to move into before my lease expires in, gulp, a week. But after that! Buying spree. AND maybe a little contest? A little Japan-related contest? We’ll see!

My roommate having pancakes reminded me that I A. had this tea and B. had not had it for a really long time, so….Toast Tea time!

Oh man, I had forgotten how amazing this tea was. Mmm, so tasty. A little cinnamony this time, but that was fine.

Lunch tea! So nummy. I continue to be amazed at how exactly like it’s name this tea is. It makes me very excited about the impending arrival of my vanilla bean cheesecake chai :D