Hella Tea

In my head I remembered the lemon and mint notes of this tea being stronger while this cup was very yerba mate forward with a lot of those grassier, slightly smoky and mineral notes. However, the lemon and mint still delivered with a present brightness and a clean, cooling finish.

Steeped earlier in the week. It’s a straight forward lemon mint profile, but very clean and refreshing with good balance between the flavours and just a hint of a grassier undertone from the mate. Really enjoy this one!

Second tea of the day!

I’ve been liking the lemon mint flavour combination so much this summer that I just had to make this one to enjoy this morning while writing – and I hoped the yerba mate would help me channel some focus too (it’s working so far)!

This is more lemon forward than lemon/mint, but I probably could have done a better job to shake up the bag before measuring my tea leaf. Regardless, it’s such a nice bright and clean tasting lemon that it’s hard to be disappointed at all by the absence of mint in the mug. I’ll be finished it before I know it, and then on to something else…

Second tea that I tried from this order – I’ve been seeing VariaTea posting about the lemon and mint tea that she’s been enjoying from Cup of Te a lot recently and even though I’m mostly over my lemon tea binge, I admit that I saw this in my order and immediately craved that classic combination…

This is one of the blends I’ve noticed inaccurate ingredients for on the packaging. It’s labelled on the website as a herbal tea, but when I opened up the package I was able to very clearly see that it contained a relatively large about of green/unroasted yerba mate; something that is not listed on the ingredients list printed on the package. Now, yerba mate is technically a herbal ingredient – but not labeling it is more than a little concerning because it’s also a stimulant/caffeinated. Definitely not ideal for anyone who might be purchasing this with the intention of having it as an evening/nighttime blend…

Now, I don’t personally mind the yerba mate at all – in fact, that sort of makes it more interesting to me than a straight up lemon/mint herbal tea. I enjoy the taste of yerba mate, and that subtle grassy and rainforest type of herbal/earthy note combined with a bright, clean tasting lemon and slightly cooling, crisp mint (and a hint of gotu kola) was very refreshing to me. I thought the was well balanced, and a good and classic feeling take on this flavour profile. It’s another tea that I feel like makes a really solid “daily drinker”/cupboard staple type profile – classic in a way where it’s unlikely you’d get sick of it with frequent drinking.

I really found myself craving more "mono flavoured’ black teas today – just something super classic and simple with a singular flavour note. This brisk, full bodied black tea with that straight forward fresh lemon note was exactly what I wanted. Unsweet, but still flavourful with a bit of malt and florals from the black tea. It gave me RTD vibes, but nicer. Probably best tea of the day!

Cold Brew!

Once again I can’t remember exactly what the flavour of this is supposed to be. Regardless, it was very tasty for a sweet and punchy herbal/fruit blend. It reminded me a lot of some type of red Kool-Aid in that kind of nostalgic retro/throwback sort of way. Not sure which red Kool-Aid but one of them just without so much sugar and a lot less artificial. Kind of the “all grown up” version of that flavour.

From earlier in the week!

I underleafed, so the taste and mouthfeel was thin. I knew right away that it would be because the liquor was a very pale pinkish/red instead of a more pigmented red from the hibiscus. More strawberry seemed to come out with the lighter leaf, instead of the dense/syrupy grenadine notes I normally get.

I think I prefer the grenadine, though.

Geek Steep S1E2 – Homestuck

So, the format of our podcast is a rotation of four episodes starting with something we’re both fans of, then something I know and Marika doesn’t, the reverse of that, and then something that’s new for us both. That means this week’s episode was a fandom that I selected to introduce Marika to! And what a fandom!

Homestuck is this massive, beast of a webcomic – it’s the fifth longest piece of English language literature in the world (and still ongoing, technically) and rings in at a whopping 1.4 million words – not counting the words on the visual panels that accompany the text that makes up each page. It’s also super complicated, with all sorts of weird time shenanigans, a dozen different themes, and several hundred characters.

This is the tea that I chose to drink while recording the episode – and I had it cold brewed. Unlike the week prior, I didn’t put a great deal of thought into this choice; I just knew it was stupid hot (we record in my apartment, and turn off the AC while recording to cut off the ambient noise, so it gets up to about 30c while recording) and I already had this cold brew in the fridge and ready to go! Sometimes your tea pairing is simply a pairing of necessity! I enjoyed this one though – I got more strawberry from it this time around, but it was still really grenadine like in terms of flavour!

The tea I chose to drink during my reread was Bitterleaf’s “8 Ball” Banpen Raw Puer. I’ve started holding back reviews for the teas from podcast episodes and am going to keep doing so – because no spoilers! However this was actually the first tea/rewatch that I did when we started planning out the podcast/deciding on episodes so I actually have already posted that tea review on Steepster and IG:

https://steepster.com/roswellstrange/posts/405997#likes
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDZe24DgGQx/

I did allude to why I chose 8 Ball in my tasting note, but if you want more of an explanation and my thoughts on whether or not that pairing worked with the Geek of The Week then you need to listen to the episode!

Our Website: https://www.geeksteep.com/
Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geeksteep/

Listen to us on Buzzsprout:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1286036/podcast/website

DB topic:
https://steepster.com/discuss/42133-geek-steep-a-new-tea-and-fandom-podcast

There’s also a Sneak Peek for next week’s episode on the Discussion Board :)

I ordered from a bunch of different Black owned tea companies over the last month as a way of supporting both small businesses and Black business owners; I was going to order from one each pay period for the summer, but I’ve ended up ordering from more than that in the last month (and will continue doing a minimum of one per pay period this summer). I figure I’ve got the means right now – there’s no such thing as too much support…

This was the first one that I ordered from, and the first to arrive as well – I ordered five teas but to be completely honest I only had a vague idea of what I might be getting; this company doesn’t actually list the blend ingredients on their website so I had to guess what I might like based on the tea descriptions and cute little cassette art on each tea’s page. I’ve made it through 4/5 of the teas I ordered so far, and I think I did an alright job at guessing what I would enjoy.

Thankfully, most of the teas do have ingredients lists on the backs of the packages – but they’re not complete/accurate for all the teas (more on that in other tasting notes). This was the only one that doesn’t have an ingredients list at all, but on the website it’s described as strawberry, hibiscus, lemongrass and rosehip…

I will say that I did enjoy the flavour – I thought it definitely had that slightly more generic “red fruit” type of flavour but, interestingly, if I had to blind pin point a fruit the one that I really strongly feel like it more resembles is actually cherry and not strawberry. It’s a good, somewhat sweet and somewhat tart cherry flavour with a bit of hibiscus and a bit of lemongrass. There’s nothing innovative here, but in terms of flavour execution it’s smooth and enjoyable – and I could see this being a good “cupboard staple” type of tea for daily drinking, especially as an iced tea or cold brew. I will easily work my way through this tea – it’ll be a good one to have on hand for the summer.

Honestly, so far (speaking of all four teas I’ve had so far) I only really have the criticism that the lack of ingredient clarity on the website and inaccuracies on packaging are a concern – especially from the perspective of allergies/food sensitivities. Great company otherwise, though!