Martha Jones

3500 Tasting notes. I figured Martha was a good one for that milestone, since she certainly walked a long long way. This was one of the few that in the sampler that i thought i would enjoy, and i was right. It’s good to know that in looking at the ingredients for each of the blends, i was pretty accurate in terms of how i figured i would enjoy the teas. There are a few there that changed order a little, but not much.

This one is an average blend that is on the sweet side, but not overly so. Just a pretty decent cup of caramel sort of black tea. Not too shabby!

I got the sampler for Christmas and still haven’t tried all of them. Martha was picked randomly and I’m happy I picked this tea! Mmmm I know the flavors are caramel, sesame, and the assam melody but the combination of caramel and sesame somehow create maple and chestnut flavors. The flavor is wonderful and makes for a great breakfast tea.

Bedtime drink late on tonight. We went out for my flatmate Sam’s birthday party and joint leaving party tonight, so I’m up pretty late and drinking tea (: taking heels off is the best feeling in the world.

This is a nice, soothing cup, but I have to say I’m not enjoying it as much as I usually do. For some reason it’s reminding me of liquorice – the black gummy kind, which I am not a fan of. Maybe I just got an odd proportion of bits in my spoonful? Added a touch of skimmed milk and the liquorice has toned down a lot, with the nice caramel note more pronounced on the finish.

Last night’s early evening cup, to accompany the Great British Bake-Off on TV. I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 4 minutes in boiling water. It brewed up pretty dark (darker than I was expecting given that this one seems to be pretty much 50/50 assam to rooibos), so I added a splash of milk.

To taste, I’m mostly getting the sweet maltiness of the Assam followed by the even sweeter creaminess of caramel. I know there’s supposed to be sesame in this one, and that’s one of the reasons why I was excited to try it. Sadly, I didn’t even get a whiff of sesame – I guess it was overpowered by the assam/caramel, which are pretty strong flavours in their own right, or maybe the milk drowned it out. Either that, or I need to shake my tin up a bit. I think next time I’ll maybe try it without milk (maybe a shorter brew time), and see if that changes things at all.

If it doesn’t, I won’t be too sad. I mean, it’s a pretty good caramel tea as it is at the moment, and I like caramel tea. It’s not the best one I’ve ever tried, but it’s rich and creamy and sweet, with a decent base, and not at all thin tasting. That in itself is all right with me.

Sipdown! 989. Another Dr. Who tea from Sil, so thanks! Today is ‘companion’ day, as I have three of those to drink.

My trainer cancelled our session this morning, and as I was starting to feel a bit under the weather last night (topped off by a very bad case of the angries), I ended up sleeping away most of the day today. Oops. On the plus side, I think I feel better, but I also think there’s still a sickness lurking. Sigh. Anyhow, I figured that drinking tea can only be a good thing (though I may need to get into some non-caffeinated teas a bit more later tonight), and I figured a few sipdowns would make me happy.

So! Onto this tea. Delicious sweet, raisiny aroma – reminds me of when you make sticky buns with raisins, and the sticky-caramelly raisins on the edge get a bit burnt to the pan, and you eat them anyways even though there’s a bit more burniness than you’d like. Yep. That’s exactly how it smells (no burniness; that only comes in the flavour with the raisins, not the aroma). Flavourwise, it’s like the raisins that do not get burnt, but just browned and caramelly and very YUM. I didn’t mention it, but I’m playing “guess the flavours!” again, if that wasn’t obvious. I find it very entertaining to do this with flavoured teas when I have no idea what the ingredients are. Anyhow. Looking at the ingredients (sesame, rooibos caramel), it looks like I was about right. I believe I’ve had Adagio’s Sesame before, and it was not good at all, but in a mix, I can see how it would provide those burny notes – I assume the assam is responsible for raisin, and the rooibos caramel, duh, the caramel. I actually forgot that there was rooibos in here, so it’s worth noting that it doesn’t really have much impact aside from the caramel, which is perfect IMO.

Overall, a pretty decent tea, but probably not quite decadent enough for me to want to grab any. I’d happily drink it again if the opportunity arose, though.

Another sipdown from this weekend.

I actually enjoyed this one!
I can clearly taste Adagio’s caramel flavouring in any tea of theirs that contains it, this was no exception. But luckily I do like it.

I’m not sure I was paying enough attention when I drank this last night to notice the sesame, I hadn’t read the description til now. I’m sure it added a bit of a unique toasty note.

I can’t really comment on whether or not this particular blend would be an accurate representation of Martha Jones, if she were a tea….but I’m starting to realize that though I think the whole idea of fandom teas is neat, I’d rather just drink good tea instead of spending money on a gimmick.

Thanks for letting me try this, Sil, it was a decent cup!

So I’m having this now because it was between Martha and Ten and Ten won for my morning tea, so Martha is for my night tea.
I’m not a fan of rooibos blends. I don’t like the taste of rooibos straight, but I can usually stand them mixed into a blend in small doses. This one was deceptive in that it looks like only a smidge of rooibos in the blend, but when I measured it out, it turned into mostly rooibos with a smidge of black tea leaves.
So strong caramel sort of scent to it, but not really any sort of other scent to indicate the sesame that’s supposed to be in the blend. Brewed the caramel smell is there but it doesn’t translate very strongly taste wise. It’s there, but not in the sense that would make me think ‘Caramel!’ on the sip. There’s a strange other taste that’s kinda…hard to describe. Kinda bitter? Sharp? Musky? I can’t really put my finger on it. And I’m not sure if it’s the rooibos or if this is the sesame coming up in the sip. It’s just strange and vaguely unpleasant to be honest. Also, the astringency on this blend has to be the worse out of all the other Doctor Who blends I’ve had from the set so far. Or at least, bad enough that I’ve actually noticed it.
I tried it with a bit of Truvia mixed in and while it takes some of the bitter edge off and turns the caramel into a sort of dark/toasted/burnt caramel sort of taste, it’s still an unpleasant enough blend that I don’t forsee me brewing this up again, not with other blends from the set that, even if they’re not my favorite, are still tasty.
Also, I’ve held off on giving this a rating since I’m not sure if it’s my dislike of rooibos that makes this blend so unpleasant, or if it’s the blend itself. XD

Thanks Sil for this one. I wonder if I overleafed it or oversteep it. It’s strong and a little bitter. That doesn’t sound like Martha. Martha is so kickass.

I wish she wasn’t so doe-eyed about the Doctor but I love that she became such a badass and moved on to live her own life instead of being in his shadow…

Glad I got to try this one. The caramel is a nice touch. Not my favourite fandom blend, but… they’re really hard to make good. I g ot something salty in the base too. Or maybe I’m just more attuned to some kind of salt taste because my oolong yesterday was also super salty. :O