310 Tasting Notes
This is actually our 4th Tea of Christmas but I held off brewing this on that day & instead, saved the tea to cold brew.
This is FANTASTIC cold brewed. I enjoyed it served hot as well, but it’s a completely different tea when cold-brewed! It tastes like a pomegranate lemon-lime soda!
I don’t think Steepster likes me. It keeps acting up.
Anyway, this is the 7th Tea of Christmas and it is so YUMMY!
I was really happy with how well the reblend turned out – so beautifully blended. It tastes just like the name suggests, carrot cake pancakes – with a drizzle of maple syrup.
The 6th Tea of Christmas from our 12 Teas of Christmas Box. (We’re already half way through the countdown!)
The last few months, I have been on a bit of a maple craze (if that hasn’t been obvious with the teas that I’ve created thus far – with at least one more, maybe 2 to be announced) – plus the lindt lindor truffle that I included with the 12 Teas of Christmas as well as the subscription packages for November/December have been the limited edition maple truffle – suffice to say that I’ve been wanting everything maple over the last few months & I’m actually surprised that I didn’t make more maple-y teas. I’m not saying I didn’t want to make more – I just didn’t.
Anyway, this tea: I had originally planned to make the Maple Cheesecake Oolong tea but I didn’t have the right base available to me at the time of blending (the shipment was on back order) so I had to think quick & I decided that rather than making yet another maple cheesecake variation that I would make a different maple oolong altogether, so instead of going the cheesecake route, I added one of my favorite berries to work with: Blackberries.
I love how this one turned out. The blackberry notes are well pronounced, but not at the detriment of the maple. I like the way these two flavors work together. Usually, when I see a berry & maple combination, it’s blueberry & maple & to be honest, I had considered making this one a blueberry maple – but since I had just recently made a blueberry tea (BooBerry in October) – I went with blackberry. I’m not sorry because this is so good. It turned out better than I expected & I had high hopes.
This is our 5th Tea of Christmas! Every year for our holiday poll, quite a few banana teas are nominated and of those – several win enough votes to win their way into the box. However, I want to maintain a variety of tea flavors within the box (I probably could do a banana box with as many banana teas we have blended and how many of those have been requested as a reblend.) So I choose the one tea that received the most votes.
And that would be this tea.
I did tweak the recipe slightly this time around – and I added a teensy bit of Lapsang Souchong. I did this after the initial taste test and I realized that it kind of tasted a little “flat” – like it needed something. This may be because I’ve recently had some bananas foster (the dessert) and the deep caramelization that came from the flambe of the brown sugar was something that I wanted in this tea and I think that the addition of the Lapsang Souchong accomplished this.
It smells a lot smokier than it actually tastes – especially after some cool time – where the smoke melds together with the rum & caramel. I really like how these flavors fuse together in the sip so – as CrowKettle mentioned in her post – this tea definitely does benefit from some cool time.
The 3rd Tea of Christmas!
I realize I’m a little late to the party today – as on the east coast, it’s already time for the 4th Tea of Christmas – my last 24 hours have been a little weird & as a result, I haven’t had the time to sit back and enjoy a cuppa & write a post about it.
PS: I apologize if this ends up being a double post. Steepster was acting weird.
I am CRAZY for Earl Grey. I love bergamot. So, I’m often thinking of ways to bring a new Earl Grey blend to the 52Teas lineup & I’m always happy when the opportunity arrives to reblend one of my previous EG blends.
As I mentioned earlier in a comment on another post for this tea – my original blend had pastel blue & white snowflake sprinkles – while this blend has the rainbow sprinkles & a quick look into photo album tells me that I also did a version with green, red & white sprinkles for a previous holiday box. Ideally, I would have chosen either of those sprinkles for this blend, however, I had purchased these sprinkles a couple of months ago when I had planned on reblending it – however at the time of blending, my cold-pressed bergamot oil had not yet arrived and you can’t very well blend an EG tea without bergamot oil. So, I had to shelf that plan & since this blend did so well in the holiday poll, I decided to just reblend it for the 12 Teas of Christmas box – but I didn’t think it was necessary to buy a new batch of sprinkles since I seldom utilize sprinkles in my teas – but for a cupcake tea, I felt it necessary to add sprinkles. :)
So, that was probably more than you needed to know about why the rainbow sprinkles. Anyway, this tea: I love it. It’s Earl Grey, it’s vanilla, there’s a richness to it that is evocative of cake batter. YUMMY!
Our 2nd Tea of Christmas
I have been looking forward to this cup. This is the first tea that was complete & packaged up as I worked on the 12 Teas of Christmas box – so it was the first tea that I tested. So it’s been a while since I last tasted it! I really enjoyed it – but since I have been tasting a lot of teas over the last 3 months while working on the 12 Teas of Christmas as well as the regular monthly teas, I haven’t had a lot of time to just sit back and brew a cup of tea that wasn’t part of a taste test – you know? So it’s been nice to be able to sit back (at least for a couple of minutes) and enjoy the teas I made for this box.
I really enjoy the way the flavor of the cream cheese (vegan, of course!) plays with the smooth, nutty flavor of the chestnut. It’s a really pleasant cuppa!
The 1st Tea of Christmas!
A blend of black teas, raisins, oranges & my own special recipe of essence to create a taste that evokes thoughts of tea time with scones! I just brewed up a pot & my s/o informed me that it is in the top 5 of all time teas that he’s tried from me (and I’ve served him quite a few cups of tea since I started the 52Teas thing more than 7 years ago!)
It’s really tasty – and it’s lovely to revisit these teas. I think the 12 Teas of Christmas box is one of my favorite things about the holidays!
Have a great day!
That sounds lovely!
Smells delicious!
YAY the 52Teas advent is here!
I can’t believe it’s been seven yeaars!
@Nattie – it’s hard for me to believe too! I didn’t do the 12 Teas of Christmas that first year, because I was struggling to get caught up with all of my Kickstarter rewards, so I instead introduced a 5 tea holiday collection instead. My original plan was to bring that collection back every year, however, I decided to go back to the 12 Teas of Christmas and I’m glad I did because I really enjoy putting it together every year. I start looking forward to it around April or May!
I’m glad you decided to go with the 12 days of Christmas too, not that I have been able to order any tea recently but I always look forward to reading about the teas each year and I can’t wait until I can order it again myself! Hopefully next year will be the year I get my cupboard under enough control to start placing new orders again. (:
That’s a lot of forwrad planning!!
I’m sipping this at the moment – it was one of the reblends from August’s “reblend” month. I cold-brewed it overnight & it’s my first time trying it cold-brewed. I have made it iced by hot brewing & then chilling it, but it’s even better cold-brewed! So yum!
I am logging this one as July’s scavenger hunt prompt “an african tea” because as just about everyone is probably aware, Honeybush is native to & grown in South Africa.
I just added this tea to the website & it has quickly become one of my favorites. I love it. Lots of berry flavor with that unmistakable note of bergamot, I love how well the berry notes & the bergamot mingle on the palate. So sweet but with just enough of that distinctively tart, slightly perfume-y note of bergamot. Really delightful.
And I claim this tea as my “Tea with a Creative Blend of Ingredients” from May’s scavenger hunt. (Yes, May.) Because I’ve not seen another tea with bergamot, blueberries, blackberries, allspice & nutmeg before. :)
I cold-brewed this tea overnight last night & I am loving it. I’m going to post this as a “melon tea” from August’s Scavenger Hunt.
I reblended this for July. I’ll be totally honest with you, after I blended this – I considered blending something else & tossing the batch because I used freeze-dried watermelon for this & while I have used both freeze-dried watermelon as well as dehydrated/air-dried watermelon in my watermelon blends in the past, but this particular batch of freeze-dried watermelon turned out to be so sticky. I’m not sure if it’s because of the combination of freeze-dried watermelon & freeze-dried raspberries, or if it just happened because this batch of watermelon is just stickier than previous batches of freeze-dried watermelon. I don’t know. I just know that it turned out sticky.
But then I tried it & it is SO GOOD. So very good! So very, very good! And it’s even better cold-brewed. I cold-brewed this for 12 hours and it is just so amazingly good. LOTS of watermelon flavor. The raspberry plays well with the watermelon. A nice contrast in flavor profiles.
Also, if you go to this tea’s profile here on Steepster, the “buy now” button will lead you to an Adagio tea. This is better than anything Adagio has ever crafted – so if you want this tea, I still have a couple of taster pouches of it left, so please, instead, visit my website. :)
I know it must be so frustrating that Adagio does this.
@Shae – it is. It’s very frustrating. It’s also – it hurts. I am one person. I own 52teas together with my daughter. We aren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination & we don’t make a whole lot doing this thing. In fact, if I were doing this for profit, I would have thrown in the towel a couple of years ago. I do what I do because I love tea. It’s my passion. I’ve spent a good portion of my life dedicated to it in one way or another and to have a much larger, profitable company like Adagio come in and sponge off my tiny little company hurts, tbh. When an entry level employee at Adagio is paid more by the company than I make at this thing (I don’t even have to know what their pay rate is to know that they’re making more than I do) – to have them also potentially profiting off of my work – hurts.
