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It’s Doctor Who day! I saved enough of this sampler (3.5g) for my quintessential British English breakfast 16 oz. pot of tea with my McVities digestive biscuits for the episode viewing with my friend, then used up the rest of the sampler for my black tea hair rinse with my morning natural hair care shower regimen.

American Tea Room has gone out of business, and this was a free sample they gave me when I placed an order with them during their “going out of business” sale. It’s a blend of Assam and Yunnan black teas. What I find interesting is the last English Breakfast tea I drank was entirely Ceylon teas and I didn’t get any citrus notes (which is apparently common of Ceylon blacks?), and this one is lacking Ceylon blacks, but I definitely noticed a citrus note in it. Huh.

This tea had that typical malty/baked bread base, leading to a bit of a slight burnt toast flavor with a more subtle spice note mid-sip, and then a hint of citrus toward the finish. The astringency was rather mild overall, especially when I think back to the last few English Breakfast blends I’ve tried. This was a full-leaf blend rather than CTC, which may have contributed to it being a little more smooth.

Overall, a rather pleasing cup. I think now that I’ve started to experiment more with English Breakfasts (a tea I really never cared for much in the past), I’ve found that my tastes seem to fall with blends that are predominently (or entirely) full leaf and that have a strong Chinese black component to the overall blend.

Trick or Treat! I made a big mug of this, latte-style, because I just find matcha too bitter for my tastes to take plain. This is really nice though, like a combination of hot chocolate and a matcha latte, and since there is a bitter cold wind blowing tonight, this and my fuzzy slipper socks is just what I needed to warm back up.

I used a teaspoon of matcha whisked in 200ml 175F water, mixed with 200ml warm and slightly frothed vanilla almond milk. The matcha still has a nice, pronounced grassy flavor, but there is a noticable slightly bittersweet, dark chocolate note. Mixed with the vanilla almond milk, which adds a nice off-setting sweetness and creaminess, it really does taste like a perfect fusion of hot cocoa and matcha latte. So if you’ve ever wanted a cup of cocoa with enough caffeine to keep you up for a marathon of The Great British Bake-off (now you know what I’m doing with my Saturday night, go me!) this is the drink for you!

Trick or Treat! I picked up this sampler from Ost’s cupboard sale, thank you Ost! It’s an herbal blend so I made this as my desserty before-bed cuppa tonight.

I was a bit worried by the abundance of lemongrass, which tends to be my least favorite of the lemon herbs (I like myrtle and verbena better), but the flavor actually does come out like a light lemon cream and not with that strong lemon cleaner flavor I dislike. It is quite sweet and does have notes of lemon and vanilla, but it is far more citrusy than vanilla, reminding me a bit of a lemon sorbet, so calling the tea “vanilla” swirl rather than “lemon” swirl (or at least “lemon cream” or something that evokes that citrus) seems a little odd to me?

This is nice though. It’s a flavor combo I like, especially when the citrus has that soft, sweet, meringue/dessert sort of taste and doesn’t come out like dish soap.

Trick or Treat! I got this tea from Par Avion Tea, and also as a sampler from the Here’s Hoping Teabox (as “Sue’s Blend” from The Angry Tea Room, so thank you tea-sipper and all contributors of the box!), both of which wholesale and repackage blends from Tea Guys.

For the Par Avion Tea batch, this tea just smells of candied ginger. And steeped… it just tastes of candied ginger, too. Where in the world is the chocolate? It lists roasted cocoa beans, dark chocolate chips, and dark cocoa powder in the ingredients, and there isn’t so much as a hint of chocolate anywhere in the flavor. None! Just a really, really sweet gingery taste (not spicy at all), like those sugary ginger candies. The flavor actually reminds me exactly of their Ginger Darjeeling Peach tea, minus the peach flavor. It’s rather bland, without any of the other flavor notes that should be in the tea coming through.

So I actually pulled out some of my leftover cocoa shells from the Simpson & Vail sampler to see if I could… I don’t know… force some chocolate flavor into this to try to make it taste how it should? That certainly helped a bit, but I still wasn’t getting strong chocolately notes, and I added half a gram of cocoa shells, so it seems to me the candied ginger is just so strong it simply overwhelms whatever they were trying to go for with a chocolately-ginger tea.

Yaaaa… I think I’ll use this one up the same way I used up the Ginger Darjeeling Peach, by cold-steeping it in lemonade, which left the lemonade with the candied ginger flavor and at least gave me some tasty lemonade, if nothing else.

The batch from the teabox was a bit better, actually having some chocolate notes present, which almost makes me wonder if Par Avion Tea received defunct product. The base tasted a bit like a bittersweet Mexican cocoa, with a nice spiciness to it. There is a sweet cinnamon flavor that settles onto the tongue, and then a warmer ginger spiciness that lingers in the aftertaste. I think the sweetness from the cinammon and the cocoa helps add a bit of balance there. There is a nice warmth and a slight kick, though. It reads more as Mexican cocoa than a chocolate ginger bourbon, but was a much better blend than the complete lack of chocolate found from the Par Avion leaf.

I’d give a 37 to the Par Avion batch and a 70 to the batch included in the teabox, so I’m averaging the scores to a 54.

Trick or Treat! This was my work thermos tea today, and after a refill on my lunch break, I have another T2 sampler down!

The base tea tasted very much like a Chinese black to me, having a somewhat slightly spicy and smoky taste, so I really enjoyed this! It was very smooth and lacked astringency. The flavoring also wasn’t too overpowering as they tend to be in dessert blends; there was a soft, burnt sugar flavor, with hints of caramel and nuts, and they just sort of added a gentle sweetness that played into the base nicely rather than steamrolling right over it. As the fall weather is starting to really set in (it’s expected to freeze tonight!), this mix of smokey black and burnt sugar syrup flavors really did it for me this morning!

Trick or Treat! This is another sample I had stashed from the Here’s Hoping Teabox, thank you tea-sipper and participants! Decided this would be my desserty herbal of the night.

Plain ol’ cocoa shells. They smell delightfully chocolately, semi-sweet with those slight bittersweet notes I like in a good chocolate, and I always notice that tea blends that include cocoa shells rather than nibs or chips or flavoring are always so much creamier, so I’m hoping that will come through here. I used boiling water and gave it an extra long steep of around ten minutes.

The steeped aroma smelled like home-made hot cocoa, and a bit like warm chocolate dessert topping. The flavor tastes of semi-sweet chocolate or a bittersweet dark chocolate rather than a sweet milk chocolate, and as a fan of chocolate with a little bite, I am all about that! I was also getting some very subtle notes of nuts and coffee. Honestly, I enjoyed this just fine drinking a pot of this steeped plain, but am curious how this would taste in latte form (I’m imagining mixed with milk it would taste just like hot cocoa, since the milk would add that creamy texture), and I can also imagine this would be nice to have around just to add to other “chocolate” teas that just never seem to taste chocolatey enough.

When I have room in my tiny apartment for more tea again, I’ll definitely have to keep some of these in stock!

Trick or Treat! I decided I wanted to rewatch one of my favorite movies, the vampire comedy mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, so I decided to brew up this tea I received as a generous free sample from Ost when I got some teas from her cupboard sale. Thank you Ost!

This apparently is a green tea, but it didn’t appear to have any green tea leaves in mine that I could see… luck of the sampler, I guess? So I decided to brew this as an herbal, rather than how I would brew a green, with water just off the boil that would really steep the flavor out of all the dried apple pieces. The dry leaf smells just like caramel popcorn, though. I really enjoyed Angry Tea Room’s Caramel Popcorn Movie Night blend, which has a black base (and is still one of my favorite caramel black teas I’ve tried), but I do watch a lot of late night movies/TV when black tea isn’t a good option for me. Honestly, ending up without the green leaf in this so it’s just that heavily caramel-flavored apple tisane may be entirely to my favor, since something that evokes caramel popcorn but won’t make it so I can’t sleep after the movie may be exactly what I want and need!

The brewed tea is a golden yellow color and really does smell like warm caramel popcorn. The flavor, however, has such a sweet apple note to it beneath the strong caramel that the taste I’m getting is caramel apples. Which is certainly not an unpleasant flavor, and fits nicely into the fall motif right now. It has a sort of buttery sweet flavor which is very pleasant. I enjoy the taste I’m getting, but if caramel popcorn is supposed to be what it was going for, then the apple is coming through too strongly… and perhaps the fact my sample was lacking the base green tea leaf could have a lot to do with that. I imagine the green tea may have helped mellow out the apple some? Ah well, just rename it “Carnival Night” and s’all good.

Trick or Treat! Strawberry Cupcakes for breakfaaaaaaaaaaast! Hey, we’ve all been there. I had a sample of this from the Here’s Hoping Teabox, so thank you to tea-sipper for organizing and all teabox participants!

2.5g in 350ml, steeped for 3 min. The tea is a chocolately brown, which is fitting, since it smells very chocolately; I guess these must be chocolate cupcakes with strawberry frosting? My coworker makes some with chunks of strawberries inside too, which are so good… There is a hint of a sweet strawberry smell in the aroma too, and it is sort of a sugary-sweet, candied sort of smell, rather than a juicy or fruity sort of smell.

The flavor of the tea reminds me of a lot of other choco-strawberry teas I’ve had in the past, though thinking back, I believe all of those had a pu-erh base, so they were a bit darker and richer than this, with those deeper earthy notes beneath the sweetness. The chocolate note is really good here, it’s coming off a lot stronger than many chocolatey teas I’ve had, and something about the subtle briskness of the black base is making it taste very much like a rich bittersweet dark chocolate. Yum! The strawberry is very much that sort of light, artificial, sweet candied strawberry flavor, which always makes me think of strawberry frosting or marshmallows, and it comes out toward the end of the sip. There is a touch of briskness/bite to the black base that is used, but all the natural sweetness of the chocolate notes balances it out a good deal, and the astrigency left after the sip is relatively mild. Overall, a solid choco-strawberry dessert blend, that especially delivers in rich chocolate notes.

Trick or Treat! I had a sample of this from the Here’s Hoping Teabox, so thank you to tea-sipper for organizing and all teabox participants! I’ve been excited to try this one since I quite like rootbeer blends. I steeped the 3g in 400ml boiling water, steeped for four minutes, and then set that in a mason jar to chill, since I felt a rootbeer tea would be nice as an iced brew. But since I didn’t want to wait to try it (patience, who has that?) I reused the leaves as a second steep, making a 350ml cup steeped for five minutes, hoping there would be enough flavor left to enjoy a cup while my iced tea was getting icy.

The hot tea was still quite nice, even for a second steep (and yes, confession, I rarely do second steeps when I western brew because I usually find they just don’t have the “oomph” I’m looking for). It had a nice root beer flavor, tasting mainly of sarsparilla and sweet vanilla. It was quite naturally sweet, and I didn’t notice any bitterness or astringency from the black tea blend.

The iced tea was equally nice as far as rootbeer flavor, but did seem to have a little more black tea briskness and a slight astringent quality left on my tongue and the roof of my mouth, and I’m not sure why the difference, other than the fact the leaf was more “used” on the hot cup and thus a bit more mellowed out. It wasn’t too abrasive in my iced tea, but it detracted just enough from that syrupy-sweet feel of rootbeer for me that I did something I don’t do by principal with my teas, and added just a teaspoon of liquid sugar, which took that problem right away and really made it hard for me to think I was drinking tea rather than rootbeer that had lost its carbonation. If I had the chance to make this again, knowing what I know now about adding that touch of sweetness to curb the astrigency of the black tea base a bit, I would’ve added a teaspoon of honey while it was still warm before icing it instead, which I think would’ve been even better.

So this was my pot of tea to accompany my dark chocolate covered digestive biscuits, because I wanted to feel properly British while watching the Doctor Who Season 11 Premiere with my friend today! Another T2 sampler down, and I’m getting pretty close to having cleared out most of the English/Irish Breakfast samplers in my stash, too.

This one is only a blend of Ceylons, so even among English Breakfasts, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite (I prefer the ones that add a little Yunnan or Keemun), but still better that ones I’ve tried that were extremely Assam-heavy. The leaf was CTC so I steeped it briskly since I personally don’t prefer my blacks too biting, and it turned out quite nice; it was quite malty with a rich baked bread flavor, and actually had a lot of sweet molasses mid-sip, that led to a sharper, slightly woody flavor toward the finish. The astringency following the sip was quite mild and it made for a nice late afternoon pot, especially paired with the sweet dark chocolate biscuits.

That was a most enjoyable Doctor Who premiere. Full of tea and biscuits and got to geek out with my mate… life is good.