August Uncommon Tea

A gift from AliasHali for Valentine’s Day – many thanks!

I got peckish a couple of hours after breakfast so I decided to have elevenses since I really wanted to try some of my new tea! Served with hot buttered toast.

Just last week someone’s tasting note on here got me craving a good vanilla black, something I don’t have on hand right now with the exception of Vanilla Comoro, which is decaf and not quite the heft I was looking for in the a.m. Perfect timing, Hali!

I only made enough for me as Ashman doesn’t care for smoke, but I really don’t get smoke from this. Maybe that’s because I like Lapsang and prefer a hearty black tea base with hearty smoke, so this was tame by comparison? Anyway, the smoke was so mild that I gave Ashman a sip to try and he didn’t seem to mind the smoke.

This is rich and perfect for the breakfasty treat I was looking for, and I would definitely repurchase.

I followed the steeping instructions on the bag. I would not have thought from the get go to steep a green tea for four minutes. The front of the sip is very light and it’s hard to pick out the flavors. Something changes towards the back of the sip and I can taste the fruit. I know it’s pineapple, but my brain is reading orange. The finish is where it gets interesting. The fruit flavor lingers and becomes more substantial with some floral hints. I’m still having to think pineapple to get pineapple. It’s a candied fruit flavor. I can’t pick out the barley or lemongrass on it’s own, but they merge into a nice fruit flavor. I bet this would be fantastic cold steeped. So far it’s been fun to try, but not something to keep in stock. Maybe cold steeping will change my mind on that.

The powerful scent of candied orange greets me when I first open the bag. The first few hot sips aren’t as delightful as I had hoped, but that often happens when I can’t wait for a cup to cool. The orange is there, but isn’t as dominating as I had hoped and the rosemary is barely present in the background. The taste changes a little once I let it cool and sip further. I still get the lighter than I’d like orange with the slightest bitterness on the sides of my tongue. I don’t know that I can pick out caramel on it’s own, it’s more of a candied orange flavor and I can’t detect the rosemary at all. I want to love this, but the flavors are all dialed back from what I’d like. I might try different steeping parameters and see if I can coax a little more intensity out of it.

There’s an old Della Terra blend that’s name is escaping me right now, which was like a caramelized/bruleed orange peel profile on an oolong. This blend is reminding me very heavily of that profile. Same sweet, burnt sugar notes and slightly zesty orange notes. A bit more herbaceous and pine-y because of the rosemary in the blend though, and this with the brisk and full body from the black tea. Not entirely sure I need the rosemary here, but I like the black base more than I did the oolong in the Della Terra blend.

Unfortunately I didn’t notice until I went to remove the strainer, but I guess for the last five or six minutes I’ve been “steeping” my tea in water that was just barely above being lukewarm. The tea doesn’t taste bad, but is clearly a poor representation of how it should properly taste. Notes of vanilla/woodruff and something fruitier that remind me of some kind of banana or berry gummy candy from my childhood. I see how this could be very nice, so I’m definitely reserving all judgement until I can rebrew this…

August Uncommon’s smoked blends are often really unbalanced feeling to me, and can easily come off as quite busy and overwhelming to my palate – and that’s coming from someone who actually really likes smoked tea. However, they’re always so conceptually interesting to me that I want to try them despite that higher risk factor…

This one? I think more a hit than a miss! It is very smoky, but in a way that really leans into the bourbon vibe that they’re going for and I’m not mad at those woodier, oaky note and the initial impact of the lapsang. I think a huge part is that the peach here is pretty sweet and honeyed tasting, and maybe a little floral? It comes in after the smoke and does a pretty successful job of immediately softening that harshness and closing out the sip with a sweeter note. Dare I say… it balances it!?

Like, I’ve only had one mug so I don’t want to oversell it. However, that one mug was pretty pleasant! I have more smoked teas from this order to try but, between this one and Mojave (the smoked cherry) that I had recently, I’m wondering if maybe AU has taken the note from the past that they’ve overdone the lapsang and dialed it back!

Cucumber mint is one of those flavour profiles that can easily be really awful and fake/artificial tasting like the Bath & Body Works products of the early 2000s, but when executed well it can also be super amazing. I think this one falls more in the middle, but leaning towards the really good side. My big thing is just that I want more cucumber. It’s got the mint handled! Fresh with a crispy finish. The cucumber comes through a little with more of that pulpy note that’s especially cooling and vegetal in a good way. I just think we could lean in heavier, y’know? I do think the inclusion of lemongrass is a nice touch, especially in as modest a quantity as this. It sort of gives off “spa water” vibes in a way I’m into. Next up is trying this cold brewed, which I think is going to be such a banging way to drink this tea during the summer.

I love this blend name, but I think I need to drink the tea itself at least another time to make my mind up about it. It was a nice cup though, and I think delivers pretty solidly on how it’s described (Raspberry Burnt Sugar). The raspberry comes through quite clearly. It’s sweet and a bit more like a jam or pastry filling with a tiny bit of tartness. The next thing I taste is more of a sweet, mouth-coating anise. In reality I think it’s actually barley that’s in the blend and not anise, but it just read to me a little more like that black licorice sort of flavour. It’s a sweeter blend overall, but does have some briskness from the black tea itself and a little bit of a roasted flavour and nuttiness that pulls the sweetness back a touch.

There’s some pretty substantial differences between the two blends, but I can’t help but kind of compare this to DT’s Bohemian Raspberry (long discontinued), which is a raspberry anise rooibos blend. The raspberry note in particular feels really similarly jammy to me.

If nothing else, this is interesting. I feel like it might be a bit of an acquired taste or one of those teas that’s easier to enjoy once you’ve had it once and kind of know what you’re getting into. I’d also love to see how milk changes the flavour. That feels like it could be really good OR really bad…

Surely I can’t be the only one who has noticed August Uncommon’s weird fixation with adding Lapsang Souchong to different tea blends. And, like, I’m usually first in line when it comes to trying a weird smoky tea but a lot of the time I feel like they don’t really nail the ratio of lapsang to other ingredients and the resulting blends are just… nope.

However, this one? Oh, baby. This feels like a tea developed specifically for my taste preferences. It’s got a rich, sweet and juicy cherry flavour that tastes a lot like a melted popsicle, as well as a hint of banana. Not a gross, greasy banana flavour like what’s in AU’s The Black Lodge blend, either. This is more a candied banana vibe. But those flavours finish with this sultry, smoky kind of profile that breaks up an otherwise very sweet, ripe fruit forward-blend and takes it to this place of sophistication?

I can immediately picture like twenty craft cocktails riffing off this tea using mezcal, freshly smoked cherry wood, and amarena cherries. Or, maybe it’s the reverse and this is the tea version of some kind of mouth watering, complex cocktail that already exists in some award winning bar somewhere. New favourite AU blend? Maybe.

Regardless, I’m all in baby!

Some time during the pandemic August Uncommon stopped shipping to Canada, and that remained the case until quite recently. When I realized they were shipping to Canada again I placed an order for basically every tea that had been released over the years that I’d not been able to try…

I picked this one randomly to start with, and it was a delight. It definitely has an eerily familiar taste and it’s killing me a little bit that I couldn’t totally nail down what specifically it’s making me think of. Overall, however, it’s bright, zingy and fresh with a playfully nuanced citrus flavour with floral undertones. The lemon myrtle comes through really distinctly to me, and the overall profile has a lemon curd quality to it like what would be in the filling of a Lemon Meringue Pie. More of a lighter body on the whole, but not something I’d call delicate.

I think the next thing I’d want to try with this tea would be cold brewing it! I can only imagine how refreshing that would be.

TTB! This tastes smoky and a bit savory with a hint of fruit. Cold with milk and sugar, it’s drinkable, but super not my sort of thing. I shared the cup with my dad who said, “I like almost every tea you make me, but not this one.”

I bought the smaller sample size of this and opened the bag this morning to see that I only had two servings left. One now. I guess I’ve been enjoying this and haven’t made tasting notes yet. It has a very deep chocolate taste on the sip that morphs into cherry in the finish. There is something a little tart and briefly hollow in the sip. Chocolate can be tart at times and the hollowness might be the lack of sweet messing with my brain’s established idea of chocolate flavor. If I sip too frequently the flavors get muddled. This is a tea to sip slowly. As it cools I get more of an overlap of the chocolate and cherry. It’s a very enjoyable tea that is easy to drink. I think I’d order this one again.

Dry leaf smells SO incredibly boozy! Brewed, the tea itself; oh my goodness, wow. Smacked in the tastebuds with salted caramel, golden syrup, butterscotch, brown sugar, and a splash of navy rum. These flavours dominate, of course, but the baked pumpkin is there too, emerging slowly in the background. It is very sweet, and so I’d say you definitely need to have a sweet tooth to enjoy this; fortunately I do so that’s okay. The rooibos isn’t too detectable, so if you’re not a fan then don’t let that put you off. Definitely no medicinal vibes here! This one is unbelievably decadent, and absolutely the perfect dessert blend for Halloween.

My second pick from the August Uncommon sampler. Initial sip is all natural strawberry; delicately sweet and a touch juicy. Underlying is the deeper, honeyed sweetness of chamomile, freshened with a hint of lemon. It’s smooth and creamy; possibly the smoothest herbal I’ve encountered in a while. The liquorice root ultimately destroys this for me, though; it’s just too cloying and adds an artificial sweetness that builds with each successive sip and becomes throat-coating in a way I don’t enjoy. This is personal preference of course, but to my mind this tea minus the liquorice would really allow the strawberry its moment in the sun. As it is that moment is disappointingly fleeting, but delicious while it lasts.

Breaking into my August Uncommon sampler this morning, and picked this out as my first tea to try. I have had a few from here in the past, but a long time ago now. The Library (or Leatherbound, as it used to be known) wasn’t one of them, but I love books so it has always intrigued me.

The dry leaf smells like a Quality Street Strawberry Delight. In taste terms, very prominent almond – but sugared rather than plain. Lots of dark chocolate, and a lick of navy rum. The buttered toast the packet suggests? Not so much, although it is smooth in a buttery kind of way. If we’re talking bread then this is more reminiscent to me of rye bread. Very malty and creamy overall, quite sweet. A great tea to start the day with, and one I’m glad to have finally sampled!

I can’t recall if I’ve had this one before. It’s a little bit herbal on the sip, with a complexity that reminds me of bitters if they weren’t bitter. Definitely a smokey dark profile to it. I was getting more of the bright orange when I started drinking this cup, but it seems to have faded. A little sweetness from the blackberry leaves. It’s a nice cup. Not something I’d rush out to buy.

Smells very caramel apple like when dry. The flavor is much lighter when steeped. I get apples, caramel and oolong. It’s a little buttery in the sip with that milk oolong flavor in the finish and a touch of sweetness. It’s nice, but I wouldn’t run out an buy it.

I don’t know why the scent makes me think of kombucha. It doesn’t taste like it, but it triggers some scent memory, maybe of a rose kombucha. The rose is very present and dominant on the start of the sip. The clove kicks in pretty quickly, mingling well with the rose. I don’t get a strong cocoa flavor, but I think it’s there in the background rounding things out. I really like this. If I were doing an AU order and not trying to sip down my massive cupboard, this would likely make it into my basket.

Steepster TTB 2025

Too intriguing not to try, and worth the sample. I’m mostly getting a candy green apple flavor with a bit of chamomile and hay, but gentle hay, not overpowering. There’s maaaybe a smidge of grassiness from the green base, and then I guess the unidentifiable note (to me) is the sweet woodruff. I wouldn’t say this is bubblegum-y, but I can understand why they included that descriptor, if that makes sense (it doesn’t)!

This might be a keep from the TTB.

Sipdown 24 – 2025

This was good, but I don’t know that I need to purchase it again.

Made hot, and it’s surprisingly delicious. Not a trace of bitterness, and a nice balance between the orange and vanilla.

TTB 2025. I’ve gotten on my soapbox about this company before, so I’ll spare y’all the screed this time. Suffice to say, I find their framing extremely pretentious and disrespectful to the history and tradition of tea as well as other companies that have been innovating in the fun-flavored-tea realm long before August was even an idea. I’ve had some good blends from them, so I’m not opposed to trying one that’s new-to-me, but I have no interest in giving them my money or space in my cupboard.
That said, this blend is pretty tasty! The strawberry note hits first, followed quickly by an apple-y chamomile. Some gentle tartness at the end of the sip. I don’t know what kind of bubblegum they’re chewing, but I’m not getting anything bubblegum-like. I also can’t really pick out anything about the base green tea here. A very easy drinker.