Brighton Rock

Bird & Blend advent, day 1

I finished yesterday with two cups of this brewed separately. The first bag had a noticeably higher number of peppercorns, and this showed in the taste. While the first was a powerful mint with a subtle peppery note underneath and a touch of sweetness, the second was really only a slightly sweet mint.

oh wow that colour is slightly offputting. I appreciate it’s meant to be a deep blue (like the red-white-blue of Brighton rock) and I can kind of see that when looking at the spoon, but looking into my ceramic mug it straight up looks black. We’ve all had black tea before, but that’s more dark brown, and deep black is a weird colour for a drink! I’m tempted to add milk just to see what the colour will do… but I won’t (for now).

Most of the smell and flavour is mint. It’s quite nice like that, with the herbal mint upfront and then a kick of the fresh candy-like mint at the end of the sip. I feel this tea was quite sweet on it’s own, so my usual amount of sugar has oversweetened it… I like this, not the oversweetening but the mint. I don’t pick up on the pepper or any other ingredient, but it’s a solid minty mint-tea.

This tea bag sample was provided by Bird & Blend. Thank you!

First of all, that green-blue colour is fantastic.

Secondly, my throat is sore so a peppermint heavy blend with spirulina makes me exceptionally happy right now. I also like how Bird & Blend tells us the blend is 44% Chinese oolong and 30% peppermint (not that you can really taste oolong but living in a country where our food labels aren’t super transparent, I respect this so much. Don’t change Bird & Blend).

The profile is peppermint, cream, peppercorn (which enhances the mint mostly), and slightly vegetal skewing floral note– possibly from either the pea flowers and/or oolong.

Rating: 78 – mint is life right now. You never appreciate mint more than when your throat feels like sandpaper. This also gets a couple points for being fun and novel.

First tea today.

Really nice flavour; soft floral oolong, a little bit of a creamy component, and medium bodied mint. However, the mouthfeel was very thin and I thought that, for a blend that has so much actual mint included in it, that there was a lack of either cooling/menthol feeling or crispness…

Another from the Bird & Blend Tea Advent Calendar.

I wasn’t sure if I would like this one or not. Oolongs can be a little too grassy for me. This one brewed up green. I mean, emerald green shading on forest green. I don’t remember ever having such a green tea before.

When it was hot I didn’t enjoy it very much, But as it cooled, the mint came out and I found myself liking it quite a bit. I re-steeped and it was pretty good then too. I probably would never have tried this. The Moroccan Mint green teas are not favorites. But this one wqs good.

Delicious! I ordered the 10-pack sampler from Bird and Blend; this was the one that caught my eye on the website so I had to try it first. You can see a couple pictures of my first brew-up here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwHs2jxHTf3/ I brewed three cups from about 2 teaspoons of leaves. The first was very bright, very clean, almost like having a peppermint candy; the flavors stayed like that through the subsequent brews, just softening a little per brew until the third when it was more like a soft mint tea with much less of a caffeine kick. This was just me brewing in a tea basket at my desk, though, so who knows what it would be like if I had used a gaiwan or something similar.

Oh man, I’m especially very happy I get to sample so many of Bird&Blend’s teas that I haven’t tried yet, ESPECIALLY the store blends they created! THANKS SO MUCH, Cameron B! So B&B created a blend for each of their stores. Brighton ROCK is a candy that to us Americans would probably be like a fancy candy cane with a tiny picture in the middle. I hadn’t heard of Brighton Rock before Cameron’s note for this tea. This is one of the most appealing to the eye shop blends of the seven, with the peppercorns and blue pea flowers on the green colored base, with even some cutesy star sprinkles. To be honest, this blend sounded a little odd with the addition of peppermint. But I can attest that I love the result. I didn’t see too much oolong in my sample, it looked like the majority was mint leaves. Even though I didn’t see too many pea flowers, the mug turned a blue green that looked like the ocean, which is fitting for a Brighton tea! The peppermint is fresh and tasty which is most of the flavor here, though I think the peppercorns and sprinkles give the peppermint a creamier/sweeter element. The mint is as brisk as an ocean breeze, when you’re standing on the end of that giant Brighton pier.
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for a full mug // 16 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 3minute steep

To be honest, I find this one quite boring.

It’s simply a plain generic green oolong with peppermint leaf and flavor added. I tend to prefer spearmint to peppermint anyway, so it’s bound to not be my favorite. There are pretty peppercorns and sprinkles as well as butterfly pea flower, but they don’t contribute any flavor here.

Also, it’s a couple of years old so the mint has degraded in flavor a bit, as it is wont to do. It gets a little bit of that wet rag flavor. Meh!

304/365

Another of B&B’s Store Blends collection, this time for (obviously!) Brighton. It features an oolong base, with peppermint, butterfly pea flower, and pastel star sprinkles!

Thanks to the butterfly pea, and perhaps also the peppermint, is brews up a delightful shade of teal. It’s super pretty, and I feel like that’s something I don’t often say that about tea once it’s made. Taste-wise, it’s a nicely mineral green oolong with mild peppermint overtones and a hint of creaminess. It reminds me a little of B&B’s Peppermint Cream, although the mint is less dominant in Brighton Rock. There’s a background sweetness, which I think is at least partly thanks to the sprinkles, and a touch of funk from the butterfly pea flower. Butterfly Pea isn’t a flavour I really enjoy, although I can see why it’s included here from a purely aesthetic point of view. Rock is generally brightly coloured, after all!

The overall flavour is vaguely reminiscent of rock, but it really needs to be sweeter if that’s what it’s aiming to replicate. Some sugar might help with that, which I’ll bear in mind for my next cup. I think it probably also needs a bit more mint, although it could just be that my bag isn’t very evenly distributed.

I really like this one, even though it’s not quite able to live up to its name. I’m not a huge fan of strong mint teas, so it’s a blend that definitely appeals to my personal tastes, and there’s enough suggestion of rock to keep me happy. I’m enjoying seeing a more experimental side to B&B – the store blends definitely feel more out there, and they definitely use ingredients I’ve never seen in B&B blends before. Long may it continue!