Janet's Special Teas

Had this yesterday in a thermos with NOTHING ADDED. OMG.

It was really nice. Orange-vanilla.

Yum.

My taste still isn’t OK. I had this with some sweetened condensed milk this morning (because it was in my fridge!) and…

It tasted like vanilla orange dirt.

Sigh.

SIGH.

I have a random yunnan black from Dexter’s box in my lunch bag. Here’s hoping that one doesn’t taste like dirt. :/

LOL. Janet’s Special Orange.

Creamy orange julius/creamsicle tea in my mug. I added a lot of cream, and it’s so good. Vanilla, jasmine, orange. :D

Sadly the curry dip I had for my veg has drowned some of my taste buds so I can’t appreciate the tea as much as I usually do.

Made this morning, but unfortunately really not good with eggnog. Well. Almond nog.

Whoops.

This really needs to be called “Janet’s Special Orange”. Just saying. It’s what I search for whenever I log this tea.

With milk. So FREAKING good, omg I just can’t describe. The orange is amazing, the vanilla, the base tea is nice and present but not overpowering… LOVE.

And so tonight begins. I am frosting cookies to look like eyeballs, AND I am reorganizing my tea stash. Non-caffeinated, caffeinated with 195F to boiling water, then the rest sorted as per my kettle temperatures. ~160, ~175, ~185. :) I tend to steep cooler then suggested, so yeah. Hopefully this gets me drinking more! (Not necessarily more volume, but more variety.)

Had this morning! Yummers.

Eeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you SO MUCH, Bear With Me, for the teasplosion! :D

So excited. This tea is SO GOOD and I have a whole 50g of it.

I also have 4 (FOUR!) new rooibos blends to try, one of which is plum, and smells fantabulous.

So yeah. I came home, got the perfectly sized package (no really, it fit in my tiny mailbox), and immediately put the kettle on. This is Tea 1, but I shall be having a Tea 2, and possibly also a Tea 3. :)

Just as good as I remember, especially since I added some milk. Creamy orangey goodness. No wonder I always refer to it as “Janet’s Special Orange”.

Sipdown! I like this tea, and am sad to see it go. However, I’m plotting a trip to Victoria so I should be able to restock a bit by the end of summer! YAY!

I keep on thinking about it as “Janet’s Special Orange” because my brain is so foggy.

It’s nice. Orange, creamy, vanilla. Yum. So good with a bit of cream. I still need to try it as a latte!

Soooo good this morning! I made it with a little honey and cream. The vanilla and orange in this are just so tasty. Present, but not overpowering.

Thanks, Ceylon Star!

(2.5tsp in 16oz)

WOOO!!! Thanks, Ceylon Star!

Smells SO GOOD. Like an Orange Julius, almost.

Yeah. If an Orange Julius were a tea, I think this might be it. Will probably update more in comments later. Must flee!

Maybe it’s because I used maple syrup to sweeten, and perhaps too much, but this tasted funny. I’m gonna try it again with my organic cane sugar next time and see how it goes.

Backlog. The last of the three samples I picked up from Janet. The scent of the dry leaf makes you think that it should automatically earn a gold star, but I’m not really a fan of the taste? Probably because I’m not a huge fan of citrus + spice teas. I mean, they’re ok, but they all seem to taste almost the same. The taste was kind of… convoluted, muddled, confused-faced. But no loss since I love her Dolce Orange anyway. This is also a sip down because I drank the whole sample in one day.

Blargh, official sipdown. Well, actually, after giving it one more shot, I decided to dump the last couple cups worth into my composter. This tea has totally gone south. Extremely artificial, so artificial. And it’s not just me either. I got my mom to taste it last time she was here and she said that it reminds her of this mysterious orangey syrup that her grandmother used to buy in stores. It was a big glass jug of juice concentrate, and it apparently tasted a lot like this. She did not enjoy drinking that stuff, but you know, when you have a family over for an event, that was what was served at the kiddy table. Good enough for those kids!

Although I clearly haven’t experienced it, just imagining that makes sense, because the kind of artificial that this orange is reminds me of those orange syrup filled hard candies that I used to catch at Canada Day parades. You know, those hard candies which pictures of fruit on the wrapper. Ech. So damnit, it may be good enough for kids, but not good enough in this context.

Truly sad because the sample I acquired last year was quite good. More like orange peel with a touch of creaminess. This next round was just wrong. Not sure if I lucked out on the batch, the formula was changed, or what. For the record, this batch was purchased back in September.

I’m going to lower my rating. Nothing personal, Janet, but something went awry and it’s not just me.

Had another cup of this with some half and half. This batch still isn’t as good as the original sample I had. So hormones are ruled out? But it’s still pretty decent. At least the base doesn’t go bitter.

Epic Rant Time

Off-topic, but man am I ever fuming about online orders/shipping right now. Aside from the Herbal Infusions fiasco, I made a Bare Minerals order whilst visiting my mom here in Alberta at the end of October. The company never gave me a tracking number, and since the shipping notification email vaguely said that they sent it either via USPS or Fedex, I assumed they therefore sent it via the former. Weeks went by and nothing. Finally decided to contact Bare Minerals to inquire about tracking. Took nearly a week for them to respond, saying that they need to retrieve the tracking number from the warehouse. Finally got an email from them this morning, the freaking day I’m flying back to the West Coast , giving me a Fedex tracking number, and the employee orthographically giggled gleefully and assured that the package should be here by December 2nd.

But wait, it gets better. Look up the tracking number and you will see that my parcel has in fact been here since November 6th and they attempted to deliver it four times. They didn’t have my phone number since Bare Minerals didn’t ask for one when placing the order, plus my mom lives in an apartment with 28 floors so I didn’t see a shipping notification tag (and neither was I looking out for one since this entire time, as mentioned, I was expecting a package via USPS/Canada Post). Plus the apartment doesn’t have a buzzer. So, of all times, they decided as of 12:11 this morning to send it back to Bare Minerals and has just left the facility. So I missed it by one day after all of this.

SO, I called Fedex asking if I could possibly get it rerouted to my Victoria address since I’m heading back there today and the employee said nope, no can do, it is already in Saska-freaking-toon on its way back to the Bare Minerals warehouse in Ohio, so I’d have to ask them to reship it to my Victoria apartment when they get it back.

An email later asking for them to resend it to my address once it gets back to them and I am sitting here on pins and needles. Ugh! Crossing the fingers they won’t recharge me for shipping and won’t have a problem with a reroute.

And have I mentioned that I was never able to make a Dammann Freres order because my bank thinks that European addresses are evil and has therefore barred me from using my credit card to order from their site?

End Rant

On the upside, I snagged some great local teas yesterday and will be enjoying/writing about those once I get back!

More Dolce Orange whilst I wait for more pink to be injected into my hair. Still getting artificial orange. Definitely convinced it’s the batch. Or maybe a reformulation. Oh wells.

Yeah, I’m not sure what’s going on with this batch but this time around I’m still getting Della Terra’s Orange Brulee oolong out of this. Freakily artificial orange, in other words. No fresh orange peel like my original sample. I swear my tastes haven’t changed!

I bussed up to Janet’s to load up on some of her teas since I haven’t been there since the spring due to having no life. Now that I do, I thought, “Hey! I need some more of her teas!” and needless to say, I went a little nuts since my stash has dwindled down quite a bit over the past half year anyway, plus who knows when I’ll make another trip up there again.

So, this was by far my favourite when I picked up a few samples last time. Like Orange Peel City, which is a good thing. When she opened up the tin again, a glorious orange cloud surrounded the shop.

The strange part is, though, now that I’m opening my bag at home, the orange smells a little bit different. I’m sure some Steepsters know what I mean, how sometimes there are teas which smell a certain way in a huge canister in the store, but morph once you bring a bag home. It smells kind of… harsh now? Like a cleaner maybe? I can’t figure it out.

So I made it as I did last time, with half and half to get that orange creamsicle thing going on. And yeah. The orange doesn’t see the same this time. A little on the artificial side, like the orange flavour in Della Terra’s Orange Brulee oolong. But I’ll definitely continue experimenting with it. Who knows. Now that I have a pouch of it, I can also cold brew it.

Sad sip down. This was totally rockin’ that orange peel like no one’s business. I’m definitely getting more of this in the future. That sample simply wasn’t enough.

A mock orange tea latte sounded like a good idea just now, so I went for it without giving it any further thought. I say mock because I just pour a bunch of half and half into my mug, and voila, latte.

This tea is lusciously fragrant. Heaps and heaps of orange peel, with a subtle creaminess in the background.

As soon as I poured the water and let it start steeping, it triggered thoughts of sipping on Fauchon’s Un Soir de France. Must be the orange peel. And that it is! The first sip is all about the same orange flavour profile that Un Soir has going on. This is just missing the roses and barely-there apricot.

And the half and half enhances that smooth creaminess. I wouldn’t call it an orange creamsicle. Maybe more like a white chocolate orange truffle.

Then after a few more sips I grabbed my bottle of organic vanilla extract and let some dribble into the tea. Excellence.

Sinus issues this morning called for a chai, so I brought this one out. I do still like it but I feel like this batch is not as good as my original. I feel like the chocolate is less pronounced. Still, I do like the coconut aspect to the chai, and it is still quite tasty. I’ll have no issues finishing the bag.

Sipdown!

Made this last serving latte style! I think it is really good! I will definitely look at restocking this tea! Hopefully, I will not be the only person to review it.

Seriously love this tea.

Chocolate and coconut with delicate chai spices, simply wonderful. The base is just right, not overly astringent, smoky or strong…very mellow and balanced.

This week has been really stressful and rough on me, and what I’ve needed most is support and comfort. This tea certainly fulfills the latter requirement. This tea is like drinking a coconut cream pie with a chocolate crust, and just a hint of spice.

Once again, the base tea here is smooth and mellow, with little to no hint of bitterness or astringency. The predominant flavour here is chocolate, with coconut coming close in second. They’re almost even. The chai spices are present, but they take the background and just add a nice comforting bit of warmth to it all.

This tea was made with both milk and sugar on both steeps that I did. I think that it will be awesome as a latte, as well as steeped chai style in the milk directly. I think this one deserves getting more. So far, all three of the four teas I have gotten from Janet’s are good and I would repurchase. I have not had the Canadian Maple yet, but three out of four is good regardless of how that one will be.

Sipdown! Still a very pleasant tea. One I should have cold steeped as I feel it would be a great one for that, but maybe next time. I’m in Spring Clean 2014 mode as my mom is here next week for a few days. So I’m just trying to clear out some tea to make it look less bad of a problem to her. :P