New Tasting Notes
Spring 2022 harvest
Soft and nectary sweet gives way to dry feeling and tartaftertaste. Subtle and complex character. Main vibe is tropical fruity-nectar, floral like Angel’s Trumpet and slightly vegetal cucumber mixed with spicy-dry pastoral associations — so many nuances once could pick the tastes apart as a hundred different variations. This is a really nice silver needle. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t contain caffeine or contains very little though I’m not positive.
I most enjoy going very light on leaf in a glass gaiwan. A good tea to mix with blue lotus flower in a large glass pot.
Flavors: Bark, Cream, Cucumber, Drying, Eucalyptus, Floral, Flowers, Fur, Honeydew, Hot Hay, Leather, Lemon, Lychee, Marshmallow, Mushrooms, Musk, Nectar, Nuts, Oats, Pear, Soft, Spicy, Sugarcane, Sweet, Tart, Tropical, Vanilla
Preparation
2023 sipdown no. 84
The notes from MS include “honey, rose and dark oolong goodness”. I would say it’s mostly dark oolong with some honey. I didn’t get a lot of rose (but I’m not upset about that haha). The honey was lovely, but not as nice as some of their other offerings or other Taiwanese honey-like teas I’ve enjoyed. Overall a good cuppa, but not a permanent cupboard resident.
Preparation
The sachet does have stripes of yellow marigold in it and the leaf looks pretty sizable. A few of the other sachets I’ve had from this collection appeared finer ground. This one steeps up in a nice amber color and smells strongly of peaches. There is a good brulee burnt sugar flavor and I do detect peach in the sips as well. Love it when the flavors match their names! I had expected it to be a very sweet tea but don’t find it that way.
Flavors: Burnt Sugar, Cream, Peach, Vanilla
I don’t venture into bottled teas often, but this one deserves a mention. According to the label, there’s Java tea leaves and there’s water and that’s that—no unwanted accoutrements. Brassy; not much of a bass line, but still strong enough to suit builders tea preferences. Will hunt it out next time I need a cold to-go.
Interesting! The bottled iced tea around here has more sugar than a Pepsi, other than the rare occasions I can find a Harney one. They are both delicious and very low in sugar.
No H&S bottles anywhere around here!
I see it’s same everywhere. Only one without added sugar is Pfanner one, which is quite expensive compared to others; and even Pfanner ones with sugar are, luckily, with not so much sugar.
Most local convenience stores have bottled tea, but it’s more citric acid than tea.
Good stuff.
The base is a little too prominent for me. I don’t get much chocolate flavor, but I taste plenty of coffee. So I don’t know that the mocha descriptor is super accurate. I liked this one more when I mixed it with other Teeccino blends that had more flavoring. This one isn’t bad, just a little plain.
No. Just no. This is day 7 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar (I’m suuuuper behind but hoping to finish it off in the next month or so). I just really didn’t like this one. It smells and tastes like Bazooka Joe bubble gum, which is not a profile that I ever expected, wanted, or, as it turns out, enjoyed in a tea. One of the rare teas I couldn’t even bring myself to finish.
Flavors: Bubblegum
Those are flavors I would never have expected in a Christmas tea!
Lol a few of their teas taste like bubblegum to me too, and this is one of them. :P
So good to know I’m not alone! Day 10 has mysteriously disappeared from my advent calendar. Since that’s the black Christmas Tea though, I’m not sure I’m missing much? It’s bugging me because I don’t want to go out of order or have to skip a day, but I don’t feel especially distraught about the specific blend that I might not get to try.
I actually like their regular Christmas Tea, it’s more fruity than anything which is unusual. I know with my advent last year, some of the sachets slipped out of their spots and I had to go hunting for them in lower slots. Does kind of spoil the surprise though lol.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll do some extra digging!
Months and months ago, Cameron B. mentioned cold steeping hibiscus in lemonade. I’ve wanted to try it ever since, but only keep whole flower hibiscus around and it always felt wasteful to use that for an experiment like this. So I was pleased to get a sample of this with my Adagio order and finally be able to try hibiscus lemonade! The flower is very crushed up, so I put it in a tea filter bag, put the bag in a glass of lemonade, and stuck the whole thing in the fridge to cold brew. The lemonade started turning pink almost immediately. I let it cold steep for about four hours. Maybe I should have gone longer but I was really hot and needed something refreshing to cool off with! Unfortunately it was hard to tell whether the hibiscus really added anything flavor-wise. The color was a gorgeous, vibrant red, but it tasted sweet and tart in a way that lemonade usually does anyway. I’ll revisit this concept at some point, but this particular experiment seems to have had unremarkable results.
I want to try this now! I happen to have a pitcher of orange blossom salted lemonade in the fridge right now. Might do just a glass to start off and then try it again with a pitcher that doesn’t have as much going on.
Meanwhile I want to know more about orange blossom salted lemonade, that sounds delicious!
I found a recipe on The Spice House website and altered it! We make it both ways. For a half gallon – one cup lemon juice, one cup sugar dissolved in hot water (so just simple syrup really), 1/2 teaspoon salt, and one tablespoon rose water.
Fir the orange blossom version, I do every thing the same but leave out the rose water and substitute 2 tsp. orange blossom water.
We always double the recipe because it goes down fast! The salt adds texture and supposedly this is made with salt in the middle east to better satisfy thirst and to replace minerals lost in sweating.
I did pour some of it in a jar this morning and add a bit of hibiscus petals. It came out such a pretty color! Since it is already quite flavorful I didn’t really taste the hibby. I will definitely be doing this again, Ashman loved the color! He loves all foods pink, whether cupcakes or cookies or lemonade.
Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to trying this out!
Let me know how you like it!
Sipdown!
Interesting that I never left a note about this. I certainly had enough to do so! It was…. okay. Spicy, gingery, but… almost too many spices? I don’t recall if I ever thought “gingerbread” too clearly. I’ll admit that I didn’t care for it enough to have finished it off myself – my husband was fed the majority of it via large mugs of tea with honey while sick, as he wasn’t averse to the flavour. I just have so many other teas and flavour profiles I’d prefer to drink.
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Sipdown!
Review for the Dec 2019 version (the remnants of my second and last bag). I let myself sip this delicious tea down because it got reblended, yay! I believe I tried the reblend in the advent calendar, and also stocked up, so it will be with me for a long time. This is similar to Vanilla-Whipped Lavender Grey, just without the lavender. Deliciously creamy bergamot and a solid base (it can get a touch too robust if you oversteep – learned my lesson).
Sipdown! (3 | 200)
Got my Savoy order, which was mostly full of samples. Also grabbed a tin of Squash Buckling Chai, because it was sold out when I wanted to buy it last year, and I want it for fall!
Anyway, this one wasn’t for me. The berry has that chalky taste to it that I sometimes find in berry flavoring. Overall it just tastes a bit vague and generic, and the Chinese sencha base isn’t helping things either.
So sort of tastes like lemon and berry Tums-flavored dry grass.
Flavors: Artificial, Berry, Chalk, Dry Grass, Grassy, Lemon
Preparation
Sipdown!
Review for Dec 2020 version (the OG). Just a perfect tea, great base, wonderful creaminess which blends the lavender and bergamot seamlessly. I think I powered through this entire pouch (small) in a couple months, which is not typical for me, as I don’t usually like repeats.
While I was super excited for this blend as I love Apple and cinnamon… it just didn’t do it for me. It was very lightly Appley and had no spice or caramel as expected. I steeped another cup to see if I didn’t steep it long enough but… nope I did it right lol.
Flavors: Apple Skins, Brisk, Watery
Preparation
I bought this on a whim last November for my stocking and kinda wished I had bought a second box. This has an excellent dessert flavour reminiscent of cream and digestive biscuits. It really says “cream” to me more than just being creamy or milky. It has a natural sweetness as well (but no stevia! hell yeah!). The biggest downside is that it is caffeinated. However, this does mean that the black tea base isn’t hidden or washed out like decafs can be. You get a lot of malty, strong black tea flavour. It’s got a very English tea with digestives thing going, which I love. I love digestive cookies (especially with tea)
The only way to drink this is with vanilla soy milk/milk of choice. You could also add sweetener if you wished but I don’t think it needs it.
Flavors: Biscuit, Cream, Malt, Smooth, Tea, Vanilla
Preparation
I’ve missed you all dearly. I have a bunch of reviews saved that I want to post, so please excuse the spam.
I got this as a sampler from Well.ca and was delighted that they had a free sample I actually cared about. This is a wonderful peppermint. My teabag was called “Minty fresh” but it seems to only contain peppermint.
This is a fresh and strong peppermint with a lot of menthol. I brewed this sachet (single serve mesh sachet – but both the sachet and the wrapper are compostable/recyclable) in hot water (~90 C) for 5 minutes. I could smell the mint right away. Even as a dry leaf it smelled very potent. I’m impressed! It wouldn’t be my go-to just for cost reasons but this is one of the best straight peppermints I’ve had.
Flavors: Menthol, Mint, Peppermint
Preparation
Sipdown! (1 | 198)
This seems to be a nice sakura sencha, with dark shiny leaves and sakura blossoms and leaves mixed in. However, in my tin at least, the leaves were super broken, which made it easily become bitter. I found I had to shorten the steep quite a bit, and even then there’s a bit more bitterless than was probably instead.
However, otherwise it’s quite tasty. Very savory with a noticeable salinity from the salted blossoms, a thick texture and intense vegetal-umami flavor profile. Very spinachy, but with a touch of sweetness. As always, love the savory-floral flavor of the sakura.
A nice enough tea, but I don’t think I would buy it again. It’s quite expensive and I feel like some of my other options for sakura sencha are superior.
Flavors: Bitter, Floral, Fruity, Sakura, Salty, Savory, Smooth, Spinach, Sweet, Thick, Umami, Vegetal, Viscous
Preparation
Ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge | July 2023 | A tea that makes you smile
I wasn’t intending to use this tea for this prompt, but I made the last serving of it into an iced tea, and it unlocked a memory that really did make me smile!
Back in high school, at the height of my Lord of the Rings obsession, I was super active in various online LotR fandom communities (and was known by my elf name * hair flip emoji *). I befriended a group of fellow fans, and we chatted over AIM pretty frequently. One gal had a penchant for Snapple’s peach iced tea, which she called by its initialism/acronym: SPIT. I remember trying SPIT a few times, just because I knew she liked it.
When I sipped this iced tea today, I had a sudden memory of SPIT, which reminded me of those innocent days where I basically lived on the internet and would stay up till 6:00 in the morning over summer vacations, talking with my friends on AIM until I heard my parents wake up, at which point I’d scamper into bed and hope not to get caught. Those were the days! I often miss the internet of the early aughts, which I think is why I appreciate Steepster — it reminds me of those early, tight-knit, often fandom-based communities and forums!
2023 sipdown count: 41
