Jag's Tea House

[FoxWriter]

b...but chamomile. my favorite DX

well, mint is my favorite, but i like chamomile a whole lot too.

i do love rooibos too, so i'll look into that one some more.


thank you Jag! ^^

[Oreo]

Just tried my first bit of dried lemon grass as an additive to my tea. *is in love*

[Jag]

Got some new fandom blends from Adagio teas.

I haven't tried Aziraphale's yet, but I have tried Crowley's.

Ingredients: black tea, lapsang souchong, natural caramel flavor & natural almond flavor

Teas: lapsang souchong, almond, caramel

Accented With: cherry, chocolate chips & red peppercorn

From the Creator: This tea contains a high level of caffeine | Steep at 212° for 3 minutes.

I drank this tea every day for about 5 days and I still don't know if I like it or not. It's very unique. I've never had a tea with any kind of peppercorns in it before. I know from using them in cooking that red peppercorns aren't like black peppercorns. They are more mild and even 'fruity', but it is still a peppercorn. It certainly looks beautiful in the blend and it does add a strange taste.

It tastes and smells very dark, but it has a slightly sweet flavor from the chocolate and cherries. As far as being a fandom tea, it certainly does embody Crowley. Dark, but a little sweet. It's perfect for him.

I have found that I prefer it with a little bit of almond milk in it.

[Oreo]

Those sound wonderful Jag. I want to go make some hawthorn tea now. It has a very peppery taste that I love.

[Jag]

Adagio is having a Leap Day sale of a tea they are calling "Brigadoon". It's only available today and is named after a tale of a Scottish village that only appears once a century for a day. I forgot they were selling it today, so I missed out on being able to get a tin. I did get two 3oz pouches though. It's blended with assam melody tea, keemun concerto tea, silver needle tea & blue cornflowers.

I also ordered 3oz of pu'erh dante tea. According to reviews, it smells like dirt and mud and tastes like licking a forest floor. Another said it smelled almost of rotting fish. Another said it smelled like a wet, muddy horse. Someone said it tasted like creamy salt water. So I'm excited to try it, cause I'm open to trying the weird shit now. ^^

[Oreo]

Thank you Jag. I was able to snag some. I had never heard of them before. I do have blue cornflower, but not the other ingredients. Looking forward to tasting this. Made it my treat for the month.

>_> Brigadoon was one of my favorite childhood movies.

[Jag]

Not going to lie. I've bought a lot of tea lately.

Blueberry White Tea
Peach White Tea
Strawberry White Tea
Eternal Spring White Tea
Brigadoon
Pu-erh Dante
Berry Creme Compote Herbal Tea
Lemon Meringue Green Tea
Irish Stout Black Tea
Elderberry Wine
Irish Breakfast
Scottish Breakfast
Blackberry Sage Oolong
Earl Grey Moonlight
Fear & Loathing in a Cornfield (Batman fandom tea)
Paladin (DnD based tea)

I've tried most of them. I'm really liking the Irish Breakfast with a little bit of oatmilk creamer and Brigadoon. I got a sample of Fear & Loathing in a Cornfield with my large order (one tea bag of it) and really liked it. So I ordered a sample tin of it and the Paladin. I got those two samples in the mail yesterday.

I plan on reviewing each of them at some point. >.<

I have a tea problem.



>.>

That's not all of them.

<.<

[Jag]

Pu-erh Dante

Tried a very new tea today. It's called Pu-erh Dante. It's extremely different from anything I've drank before.

Pu-erh is the type of tea, like green or black or white. Dante is like the blend, like green chamomile or black almond.

I've always known that white, green, black, and oolong teas were all made from the same plant. I was surprised to see that this form of tea is as well. The Camellia sinensis plant. The differene between those four is the the amount of time the plant is allowed to grow (white tea is made from young leaves) and the processing time (oolong is processed the longest). Pu-erh is another step in the process. It is fermented tea. I love fermented things. I like making my own pickles, sauerkraut, and all sorts of stuff that my German great grandmother taught me. Fermented tea sounds fantastic to me.

What really drew me to the tea was the comments on it. About how it smelled like mud and mushrooms and damp forest. Why wouldn't I want to drink that? I'm a magical bitch and I should be drinking hot mud.

I was not prepared for just how earthy it smelled. When I opened that bag, it was like shoving my face in the dirt. It was very strong.

I was also drawn to the fact that it can be a long brew tea. Some mornings I just don't have time to watch my tea and get the leaves out before leaving for work. It can sit in the water steeping for over 30 minutes without getting bitter. So I can toss it in my thermos, drive the 45 minute to work, strain it there, and be good to go. And since fermenting makes the flavor so strong, I can save the leaves and re-steep it later in the day for a second thermos full.

It's a very strong tea if you let it steep more than five minutes though. It's just like BAM. Kick you in the jaw, despite being a rather smooth flavor. I don't like coffee, but this doesn't come off like coffee the way some black teas can. It's so smooth and earthy. I love it.

I put some vanilla oatmilk in it this morning and it looked like red clay run off water. >.< It was still really good, but I put a little too much oatmilk so it watered it down a bit.

I'll take some pictures of it when I get some extra time.

[Jag]

With the order I just got yesterday and the order I placed this morning, I have (and have coming):

The Dragonheart Series (taste testing this for someone else before they put it up as a buy-able series...it's five tea samples)
Rooibos Pecan Turtle (thank you Daeva)
Fear & Loathing in a Cornfield (I really like this one, so I ordered a larger pouch this time)
Lavender Lemon
Dragon Fruit Dream
Foxtrot
Peppermint
Chamomile
Berry Blues
White Strawberry Basil (thank you Oreo)
Lemon Soleil
Assam Melody

Sadly, with work the way it's been, I haven't had the energy to sit down and write reviews. I have been drinking a lot of tea, just no energy to take pictures or write about it. I hope to get back to it soon. In the meantime, feel free to talk about any teas you've tried or recommendations you have!

[Oreo]

Boy was I surprised today. I was peeling a mandarin orange while boiling water for my tea. My head tilted and I thought I wonder if this would taste good in my Prince of Wales tea...that a certain someone gifted me for Christmas past.

OMG! It tastes so good! Then I wondered if there was any nutritional value in adding the peel to brewing tea.

Turns out there is...

[Azy]

I very much love tea.  I used to use bags, because that's what I grew up with.  And then I met a man who grew up with a dad who is very fussy about his tea.  The man grew up in England, and is of the opinion that American bagged tea is so wrong on so many levels.  After tasting loose leaf, I have to agree that it has a much better flavor.  Adagio tea is pretty good.  I've been getting their cold brew iced tea bags and keeping a batch in the fridge.  I only put in a little sugar to taste, which makes it so much better than what you buy from the store.  I also get those fill them yourself paper bags.  They make things much less messy because there's no ball to clean out, and no holes for rooibos to escape through.  On Adagio I believe you get 100 bags for $5, so not horribly expensive either.  I've seen other places charge more.   

Sipsby seems like a pretty good way to try samples of all different kinds.  I've found some really good ones.  Also some really bad ones.  But you can rate your teas. 

I think 52 teas is a good place to get uncommon flavors.  The downside to them is they are a small company so they make small limited batches of everything.  I've had sugar cookie, lemonberry whip, pumpkin cheesecake.  They even had lime jello, but I decided not to try that one.  When she did a Harry Potter theme one of them was Amorentia, which was a strawberry chai green tea.  Delicious.  A new flavor comes out every week.  A lot of the green teas seem more delicate, and need brewed at lower temperatures, so I got an electric kettle with temp control, and that worked out great.  They have small taster pouches, and they used to have large pouches of every flavor, but not as much anymore.   

August Uncommon is another good company if you like tea that is uncommon.  They had me at Psycho Candy, which is a pumpkin caramel rooibos that is a new favorite.  They also have 15 cup sample pouches, and a lot of them were really good.