Tea Things

Some apple rooibos tea in my cute new tea cup! I painted it myself for my birthday recently. It’s salmon themed. Immediately after this I chipped the plate in the sink doing dishes. Such is life…

I still drink tea! Much shorter reviews to catch up. January 28, Wild Maine Blueberry Fruit Tea: This is delicious, fruity and a little tart. Very pretty color, hard to mess up the steep. I sat it in my cup all day at work and just kept refilling with water, still good! Though it eventually gets overwhelmingly fruity after like six hours.

February 20, Strawberry Milk Tea: I’ve had it before and it’s my favorite. New barista this time and they did great.

February 27, New England Maple: Smells so good! Tastes like wood tea (complimentary) and I really enjoyed it. Very warming. I did spill a couple times getting my action shot, but I think it was worth it. The teapot part of this lovely set holds more than a cup anyway, so it’s fine.

February 28, Caffeine Free Turmeric Chai: Very yellow! I love the color. The flavor is…an experience. Good, but also tastes like empty nothingness 90% of the time. Not bad, just not WOW.

March 5, Cherry Blossom Matcha Latte: Tried the new seasonal drink at my coffee shop, amazing! It’s a matcha latte with vanilla syrup and topped with cherry cold foam. I love cherry, though the foam is a bit too sweet by itself, so I shook the cup a little to get the latte and the foam in one sip. Will order again for sure.

Day 15: Green tea with pomegranate, strawberry, and raspberry. I steeped about 8 ounces of water, heated to about 175 degrees Fahrenheit, for 2 minutes. My first impression is that it's a little bitter, on the sweet side, lightly fruity, and a little watery. Light and watery seems to be the best thing Twinings can be. For all my distaste for Twinings though, this was actually pretty good. I wouldn't buy it, but I'd drink it again if someone gave it to me.

Another mark in this tea's favor, I actually finished the cup. I wasn't able to finish day 1 because it tasted so bad, or day 2 because it got so bitter so quickly. I drank it with a coconut almond cookie, and enjoyed that. It got fruitier the longer it sat, instead of bitterer. A welcome change from the previous teas.

Tumblr wouldn't take my PNGs, so I had to export my photos as a JPEG to upload them. Which only took a minute or two, but I'm a bit irked I had to do it at all.

I'm doing the tea advent calendar again this year, though a bit less structured, I think. I'm still going to include temperatures and steeping times, but the rest might be a bit more freeform? I'm trying to be more flexible as a person. Anyways, I forgot all about December 1st and missed it, so I'm reviewing Day 1 and Day 2 together. For all the photos, Wild Berries is on the left and Gingerbread Joy is on the right.

I tried Wild Berries first since it was the tea for Day 1. I steeped it at about 175 degrees Fahrenheit for 3 minutes. I chose the cooler temperature because I've had bad experience with teas that use licorice root before. Yogi Egyptian Licorice tea has burned me (emotionally) as many times as there are bags in a box. I did have someone else make it and let me try it once, and it was delicious, so I am the problem.

Moving on, the tea spelled very strongly. Fruity and sour, like candy, with an artificial tinge to it. It is a warm deep pink color. It has a light, watery flavor, probably due to the low temperature and short steeping time. I'm thankful or my decision though, because this tea tastes very sweet and cheap, like bad fruit gummies. It has a cloying quality that lingers on the tongue for far too long. I'm definitely not a fan, but I've had worse tea before.

As an aside, I've had bad experiences with Twinings before. Last year in July I thought I had run out of Yamamotoyama's Oolong tea (a perfect Oolong tea if ever there was one) and decided to buy Twinings Oolong to hold me over until I could go to a store that sold Yamamotoyama. Long story short, I found the Yamamotoyama tea bags in the cabinet and decided to do a side-by-side comparison. Truly a harrowing experience. The Twinings was sweet (!?!?), light yellow in color, and watery. I'll die on this hill, but Oolong should absolutely never be sweet right out the tea bag. When I was younger, before I got into teas, I drank it with multiple sugar packets because my palate hadn't accepted bitter flavors yet, but to come out the bag like that? Criminal. In contrast, beautiful and perfect (only slightly biased) Yamamotoyama was a beautiful amber color, with a neutral smell and pleasant earthy taste.

The Day 2 tea was Gingerbread Joy. I steeped it at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 3 minutes. It smelled amazing, exactly like a gingerbread cookie. It was light and slightly watery for my first taste, but remarkably similar to an actual gingerbread cookie (though I haven't eaten one in years, so that's just from what I can remember). Unfortunately, the second sip was a complete turnaround. In just a couple minutes it had grown bitter and unpleasant, overpowering the delicate ginger taste. I think it's the case that the tea leaves are low quality.

I tried the Davids Tea winter earl grey, and it was delicious. I've made it a few times now, and it's good plain or with a dash of milk. I steeped a cup of hot water at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit for about 7 minutes. I like to put the leaves into a strainer when the bag looks plastic-y. The tea leaves are mostly whole and appear to be good quality, so they could probably be re-steeped, though I haven't tried that yet. I tend to drink my regular teas, earl greys and herbal peppermint, more slowly; it's often too late in the day for more caffeine by the time I'm done. Curse this caffeine sensitivity of mine.

It tastes smooth and creamy, with floral undertones. It smells faintly fruity with currents of vanilla and a strong black tea base. I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes a basic Earl Grey; it elevates it nicely while still maintaining the delicate flavors.

Not about tea, but a fun beverage nonetheless! I can never find decaf espresso beans in grocery stores or most cafés I go to, so when I saw this bag I had to get it. Luckily it has great depth of flavor and, unlike Starbucks espresso beans, doesn't taste burnt.

It forms a really nice crema when I pulled a shot. I don't know all the settings because I use my mom's machine, but she uses grind size 18 and has a custom double shot option. I've tried it a few different ways over the last few weeks I've had it, and it is delicious in all of them (though I only took pictures of the hot lattes).

The top left picture is of my maple soy latte. That is just some maple syrup, 10 ounces of soy milk, a double shot of espresso, and a sprinkle of pumpkin spice seasoning. It was a bit bland, but would have been too sweet with more maple syrup. I think it would probably work better as a cold drink.

The top right drink is, if I remember correctly, a ginger slap latte made with soy milk. The bottom photo is a ginger slap latte made with Lactaid whole milk. Both drinks also use 10 ounces of milk. A delicious drink made better by the lack of anxiety. Also in the bottom photo are some King Arthur's gluten-free protein pancakes. The trick with those is that they absolutely need one banana per batch, or three for the whole bag. If you forget it, like I somehow did a different time, they will be sad, dry, and you can taste the protein.

I've had many delicious americanos and an iced ginger slap latte that aren't pictured. The ginger slap latte used the recipe from Little Joy coffee shop, which were available online. I can't find it from a cursory search, so I'll attach my pdf of it. It does have my notes for budget and taste (cardamom is my mortal enemy) modifications, but you can still read the recipe through it. Also, for the iced drink I used about half the syrup as I do in hot drinks.

Wild huckleberry tea! The tea bags say they’re some sort of silk mesh, which is interesting. I got this as part of a birthday gift (also included was a cute single serve teapot/tea cup set and a pretty purple mug that will probably pop-up eventually).

I initially steeped this at about 205 degrees Fahrenheit for what I intended to be five minutes, but I got lost on my way to retrieve a package and it ended up being closer to ten. This was horribly oversteeped and bitter but still tart enough to be drinkable.

My second attempt is the one pictured above, steeped around 195 degrees Fahrenheit for about three minutes. It smells tart and sweet, and it tastes milder and sweeter than my last cup. It’s still a bit bitter, so that may just be a characteristic of the huckleberries. It’s definitely more drinkable, but not something I’d reach for over peppermint or decaf earl grey.

Today I'm trying the Thai Tea. It tastes great; it's very sweet with caramel notes. The tea is nice and smooth. I definitely enjoy and recommend it. Surprisingly, I think I like it slightly less than the matcha. It's a little weightier, whereas the matcha was a bit lighter due to the grassiness. I already talked about how I feel about the tapioca pearls, so I won't rehash that.

My first milk tea of June. A Sanrio themed box of canned boba milk teas from Costco. I'm going to start with the matcha because I like to begin with the one I'm least likely to enjoy.

I put this in the fridge overnight so it could chill and shook it well before opening. The tea is a light green color, and it tastes better than expected. I don't normally like matcha, but this tastes pretty good. The sugar doesn't hurt there. It's nice and smooth, mostly light tea flavor with a milky aftertaste.

I wasn't getting any pearls so I used a boba straw from my local milk tea place (I really need to buy a reusable one instead of just grabbing extras when I visit). Like most, if not all, canned boba teas, the tapioca pearls are weird and solid, more like a thick jelly bubble than chewy tapioca pearls. I usually just buy canned milk teas without pearls for this reason, but the Sanrio characters were too cute to resist.

This is my pretty, but sadly not very tasty, attempt at a fruit flavored milk tea. I used a decaf earl grey as the base tea; it was steeped at just below boiling for around 15 minutes. I then added about 3 Tbs of dry milk powder (no fat), a splash of heavy cream (to add the fat back), and a few spoonfuls of apricot jam. I also added a little bit of molasses since the jam was reduced sugar. I blended it all together, then poured it over ice. I also saved some on the side warm.

Over ice it had a slightly grainy texture, indicating I didn't fully dissolve all the milk powder. It was also watered down by the ice. The apricot flavor was barely noticeable, and it was just overall an uncomfortable experience. I have had worse before, at an actual milk tea shop, so I don't feel too bad about it.