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The best thing about working the night shift (I think I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating) is that I no longer hate mornings. If I haven’t worked the night before I’m usually in bed early and up by 6:30 or so. It’s madness – do you know how much you can get done if you are up by 6:30?!

Today I hopped out of bed and decided I wanted a hearty breakfast so I made bacon, eggs, toast (in the oven, since our toaster broke and we’re slacking on getting a new one) and put this lovely tea on in the Breville.

Weekend breakfasts are one of the best things ever!

Backlog from yesterday morning.

I love this tea! I have settled on the fact that it tastes like the coconut cream pie and banana bread teas blended together. This is not a bad thing, since those were two of my favorite 52Teas blends anyway!

I think the coconut does give the banana flavor that creaminess that suggests pudding, especially when you add in a little milk and sugar. It would probably be amazing as a cold latte! I know Frank had posted a recipe for how he did his iced lattes a long time back, so I’ll have to find that again and give it a shot.

Okay. Iced…not so much.

I made a gallon of this (took a leap of faith, whoops!) in my usual iced method (30 g. leaf and 1 minute 45 second steep since it was astringent at 2 minutes when hot) and something about that cherry just turned medicinal once cold.

It’s only really noticeable if you’re not eating anything else with it, so I’ve been making sure to have it with meals, but still…I wish that the cherry flavor that came through when it was hot would be the same as when it was iced.

Eh. Still looking for a good cherry black, then…

This was a backlog from a few days ago.

Okay, 2 minutes really made a strong, bordering on astringent, brew!

It seemed to get less astringent as it cooled, and the cherry and black tea went really well together.. reminded me of a maraschino cherry taste, which was pretty good. I like fruity teas when they are iced so I gave that a try today too – my next note will be on that version!

This is a fantastic earl grey cream.

It is smooth, as the name suggests, with a good balance of bergamot and vanilla. It was also pretty flexible on the steep time, too…I forgot about it and it went for 3:45 instead of 2-3 minutes as recommended. (Not a huge overage, but some teas really don’t let you get away with even that!)

This is one of the best of it’s kind, that’s for sure.

Well, I’m kind of embarrassed that I’ve had this tea in my cupboard for so long without even trying it. Today I’ve been loving fruit flavors, whether actual or in tea, so this was a good choice.

It is a pretty tea once steeped – brown with lavender undertones. It’s possible I’m seeing purple because its in the name, but blueberry does tend to give anything its in a purple tinge.

This certainly smells like blueberry! It reminds me of blueberry pancakes, but I think that’s because both those and this tea are served hot and have blueberries in. The steeping parameters were right on, too – there’s no bitterness, though things haven’t cooled down enough for me to say whether that’s the case for the whole cup. Right now I get all aspects of a natural blueberry – sweet, tart, perfect.

I’ve never had a purple tea before so I can’t attest to its flavor in this. If you like blueberry then for sure give this a try, though – it doesn’t get more fabulous, and it doesn’t need any additives to make it that way!

SO GLAD I restocked this with my last 52teas order. I was nearly out and that would not have been a good thing!

This really is such a consistently good cup of tea. Today it was mapley buttered pancakes in that order. Perfect way for me to start the morning before I go play around on my piano! I love days off!

Some sugar in this made all the flavors pop. I mean, the flavors themselves were good the first time I had this – unsweetened dark chocolate with that toasted rice undertone – but there was kind of a burnt edge to it.

With the sugar, honeyed caramel and chocolate notes just overwhelmed any char flavor and made it unbelievably good. Chocolate rice krispy treats in my cup. WOW.

Pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself!

I have such awesome coworkers. I mean, I really could see myself staying at this job indefinitely because of them.

Case in point: last night, one of them came up to me and said “so I tried this tea – Earl Grey. Did you know it’s citrusy?” It’s like when little kids come home from school and tell you things they’ve learned that are completely obvious to us (e.g. shapes, counting etc) but they don’t realize we already know about it. Almost like an innocence? Anyway, it made me smile.

Guess I’ll be bringing her some EGC to blow her mind on Friday. Loose, no less, so she can really be amazed.

I had this one a few days ago and it’s really the only tea I’ve had in a while. I have the next few days off though so I’ll probably change that. I’m almost through one pouch of this and I’m glad I have another to gall back on…I really do reach for it quite a lot, especially considering the variety I have on hand to choose from.

I keep looking out for it when its reblended but I’ll probably just need to buy in bulk for myself. It’s so consistently yummy!

5 g. leaf, 500 ml. water, below parameters. No additives.

In a nutshell: smooth, malty unsweetened cocoa powder with a peppery bite at the end of the sip and a thick honeyed texture as it cools. The liquor is mahogany, with no sediment since the leaves themselves are so long and spindly. I got the boyfriend to give it a shot because it meets his criteria of not being a dessert tea.

He liked it. Well at least, after he took a sip and handed me back the cup he said “what is this?” in a tone that indicated he would like to recreate some for himself. The beauty of this is that it’s a breakfast tea I can have without milk or sugar – between this and East Frissy I’ve it covered I think!