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Sipdown (113)!

Thanks to Sil (I’m pretty sure) for the tea! I remember asking for this one in a swap once, I’m pretty sure, though I don’t recall with who. They only had a cups worth though, so I was more than ok with not trying it. And turns out it worked out so I get to taste it anyway!

I cold brewed my sample; it’s been absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous here lately so I’m not making hot tea for my commute to work anymore – which means I’ve had to be a little bit creative with what I’m picking out for cold brews. And since it’s a jumble of tea types, part of me was also relieved about not having to figure out what temperature to brew this one at hot.

This was a very weird tea; there’s certainly a lot going on with it. I tried it semi blindly; I hadn’t looked it up before hand but I had seen reviews on it so I knew to somewhat expect strawberry and caramel notes. Otherwise, I had no prior knowledge.

My experience was that the oolong stood out the most of all the teas mixed in here; and then the black tea – didn’t really pick up anything particularly like green tea. Perhaps the little bit of nuttyness at the front of the sip? But that note could be attributed to the other base teas as well. In addition to some nuttyness, I noticed a fair bit of toastier notes and mineral notes at the start of the sip; this is partially what made the oolong stick out a little more for me.

This transitioned into the body of the tea, which had a sort of ‘medium’ sweetness and richness to it; definitely the caramel. While this flavour was strongest in the middle of the sip, it was still present all throughout. The finish is where the strawberry kicked in for me; though I found it more of a soft, generic red berry sort of flavour and a lot less distinctly like strawberry.

Now that I’ve looked up the tea I know there are also some floral ingredients. I don’t recall pinpointing anything distinctly floral at all – but it is possible (though perhaps a bit of a stretch) that the presence of these flavours, if there at all, were just kind of smooshed in with the flavour of the oolong for me. With all that was going on with this tea I think it’d be perfectly reasonable for me to have missed them again.

I would totally drink this again; the impression I got is that this is definitely one of those teas that gets better the more you drink it. Thank you Sil!

So a couple nights ago I made a fun, experimental batch of cupcakes. Basically, I didn’t have super high expectations for them but I thought it’d be cool to mess around and use up some of the ingredients sitting in my kitchen just in case.

What I ended up with was Zucchini Vanilla Cherry cupcakes iced with a Strawberries and Cream Matcha frosting! I don’t know if that sounds good to anyone else – but it sounds mouthwatering to me!

Tre was my Guinea Pig; he got to eat a cupcake before icing and one afterwards. He definitely prefers the one without matcha icing – he says it’s moist with a rich cherry flavour. Somewhat surprisingly, the reason he doesn’t like the icing isn’t because of the vegetal matcha but because he thinks that the strawberry blends into the cherry too much, and it just because an overwhelming flavour. I can respect that, I guess.

Personally; I love the icing! I did use a lot of matcha, so the flavouring certainly isn’t subtle – but I find it distinctly separate from the cherry flavour in the cake itself. The matcha didn’t do anything weird to the consistency of the icing either; I’ve made a few kinds of icing with stuff “infused” into them and weird texture can definitely be a problem when doing that.

So; these cupcakes are a total win! And I’ve been munching on them pretty much non stop. Definitely wont be doing a tasting note for each one though – that’d be like 24 tasting notes for this tea alone, and definitely a pain to write out along with being a disproportionate number for my “most logged” teas. I may do one or two more tasting notes for them though, if anything interesting crops up.

Sipdown (114)!

Sipdown of another super old bagged tea. I think I initially really liked this one, but as my palate has changed over time (fairly dramatically) I’ve fallen very out of love with this one. And, I think the coconut has kinda turned which I’m sure doesn’t help at all.

As it stands this last mug was super, super buttery in a really gross and over the top way with an ok mango note to finish off the sip. All I could think was; at least this ends on a nice note instead of ending with gross straight butter. Certainly wont be seeking this one out again; I’m really over it. It feels nice having it out of my cupboard.

And of course, this sipdown only came about so quickly because I brought most of the teabags into work for the staff to finish off. Surprisingly, this was the one they all seemed to like the most since all of the teabags were gone by the end of the first day I brought it in whereas it took like a week for the rest of the flavours/blends to disappear.

I bumped down my rating from the previous, and excessively high, ‘80’ I had it sitting at. What was I thinking!?

I’m really fighting the urge to put in a What-Cha order right now. I have a cart built and everything; those yellow teas are calling to me! But I also have impending Ette Tea and Dammann Freres orders (yay group ordering!), just bought stuff from McQuarries here in town, and in a week from now am gonna have to shell out another $300 for my next set of tattoos! So even though it feels like I’ve got some disposable income right now, the reality is sort of otherwise…

But damn it, yellow tea! Oh well – after I’m done with the group orders and my next set of tattoos I guess my priority is a What-Cha order and a Red Leaf order. And somewhere after that Tippy’s, I suppose…

Sipdown (115)!

From March’s Amoda subscription box. I ended up not renewing for April (to the people who did; what was in this month’s box?) but I haven’t ruled out renewing for May/future months all together though…

I cold brewed my sample, and I’m gonna humbly admit that I had already convinced myself I wouldn’t like this before even trying it. However, it actually had a much more distinct/unique taste than I would have expected given the ingredients which I find are very commonly paired together for herbal teas.

The initial taste was very robust ginger and honey, and that quickly faded into more of an apple/citrus heavy taste with a ginger/honey backdrop. I did taste the papaya a little bit but is wasn’t as strong as the other fruit flavours. I thought the finish was rather licorice-y with some super sweet honey notes as well, but after looking at the ingredients and refreshing my memory a little bit I know I was tasting a combination of the licorice root and the ginseng in the blend. The mint must be very sparse in the blend, I didn’t taste it at all.

Overall, this was better than I had anticipated for sure – though I didn’t love it. At least it didn’t fall perfectly into the mold of other herbals that utilize a lot of the ingredients here. After a while they start to feel like the same blend with different names. I wouldn’t buy this one to drink casually, but I could see it working well as a “sick tea” – it utilizes all of things that make sick teas work: licorice root/ginseng, lemon, mint (sorta), and ginger…

Made this one as a latte!

I admit, I haven’t found this one as tasty as I expected to but it hasn’t been a bad tea either. And, I wanted to do something a little different with it – so latte it was! It certainly came out as a subtly flavoured latte, but the flavours were still all there.

Apart from the very thick and creamy mouthfeel, this had some very silky, smooth cinnamon, vanilla, and hay notes with a bit of buttery goodness and starchy potato-like notes. The squash was more noticeable in the back of the sip, while the vanilla/cinnamon were the initial front taste. I may finish off the last of my bag as a latte; it’s probably the tastiest way I’ve had this one so far.

That said, it did take a lot of leaf to make this one – and because it was pretty subtle/nuanced I definitely think you’d have to A) know that this was Cinnamon Vanilla Squash before drinking it and B) probably have tried the tea straight as well to really experience the latte.

Sipdown (116)!

Queued tasting note.

I actually had a few more cups of this one left since it’s pretty light, meaning 25g stretches pretty far. I gave it to Tre’s friend Kaitlin though ‘cause I haven’t been super into it, and kinda felt like I’d done enough exploration of this one to know it isn’t for me.

This last timolino’s worth was probably the best batch I’ve steeped up though; it was tarter than anything else I’ve brewed up and had a whole lot less of the cream flavour that I’m not digging with this one. It actually reminded me a whole lot more of raspberries than blackberries this time around though. Very tasty overall; but I’m still glad I gave the rest away.

Today’s word of the day is… Cascade!

A cascade is: “a steep usually small waterfall : a downward flow of something”.

EDIT: Apparently this was tasting note 2600! That certainly happened quickly…

Sipdown (117)!

Queued tasting note.

Another one of my most drank teas – it’s a life saver in the mornings when I’m just totally exhausted. But I decided that after this cold brew I was going to take a break from it for a little while; I’ve relearned recently that there can be too much of a good thing and I don’t want to make myself sick of this tea.

This cold brew was pretty overleafed; I wanted to use up the bits at the bottom of the tin so I could clean it out and pop another tea in there instead. As such, the mate was way stronger than the flavourings in it – very grassy, damp, and hay like. The papaya was also pretty strong; I think a lot of the little candied papaya chunks had sunk to the bottom of the tin. It was a very tasty cold brew; and I appreciated the little differences in flavour!

I’ll eventually get back to this one; I’ve just gone through a lot of it and want to switch things up a little bit.

Timolino with cold milk.

I definitely thought the berry was a little bitter stronger than the ‘pie crust’ (cinnamon, butter, phillo dough) elements this time around. It was delicious as per usual; I think that when I finish this one I’m definitely going to have to add it to my next matcha order…

So far I’m looking at Pistachio, Champagne, Apricot and now this tea for that order. Cashew is another that’d be interesting, though. We’ll see though; I need to finish off some more matcha before I can even think about placing it.

I am running out of unique ways to prepare this one though…

Good thing I’ve only got about another chawan/timolino worth though before it’s gone. Thanks again Stephanie for this one – I’ve really enjoyed it!

Sipdown (118)!

Thank you MissB for the sample!

This is actually one of the teas you sent that I was most excited to try – I don’t know why I left it for so long. As is pretty well known, I love pineapple but don’t actually like spices too much. However, I have had pineapple curry before and I really enjoyed it so I was super open minded about this one.

The smell of this one is lightly pineapple, and steeped up it’s very supple with a soft sweetness to it. It’s a little bit candy like – but not over the top or overly artificial tasting. The osmanthus in this was nice; even though I don’t recall seeing any in the measured out leaf I felt like I was tasting the slightly sweet, whispy floral notes that I associate with it. I’m a big fan of pineapple and floral pairings – as far as I can recall everyone I’ve had has been well executed. I’m personally not very familiar with mistletoe so I don’t know if I can accurately weigh in on how that ingredient presented itself in the blend. I did try looking it up, but the one relatively reliable site I found said it has a very bitter taste – and that’s certainly not something I observed with this blend, so either that’s not an accurate description of mistletoe’s flavour or it doesn’t come through in the tea.

Sadly, neither did anything remotely ‘curry’ like – not even a little bit. That’s definitely disappointing especially since the curry aspect is in the name of the tea. If you can’t deliver on what your tea is named after, you definitely lose a few points in my book. The green base was nice; it was light and just a touch sweet and grassy. It definitely complimented the floral notes and pineapple well.

So overall I thought this was a nice tea and I certainly enjoyed it – but it’s nothing like what I expected and the name isn’t accurate at all so if you’re going to try it keep a very open mind and don’t expect the curry to come through too much, if at all.

This note is for “Compliments” brand Iced Tea;

Compliments is the Sobey’s “house brand” that the store carries (along with Sensations, Balance and Signal). I had a can of it last week during the Sobey’s Staff Easter dinner/lunch. And, as much as I want to be able to say good things about it because I work at Sobeys and we sell it I really just can’t…

If you’ve ever had Nestea or Brisk (like I’m sure many of us have) you know it’s not the best quality iced tea out there; it’s super sugary/sweet and doesn’t really taste a whole lot like tea to begin with. Well, this was exactly like that but with a watered down (but still very artificial/sugary) taste. Lower quality Brisk/Nestea, essentially.

The Staff dinner was nice though; they had tons of different platters of fruits and veggies and wraps and meats as well as a shit ton of Easter candy/treats. And I know it was all food from the store, but it still took the people who assembled it all for us quite a bit of time and work – so it was really, really appreciated (free lunch is never a bad thing). So that as many people as possible throughout the day (all the staff too; not just my department) could participate they made the meal and three different points throughout the day!