365 Days of Tea - Day 40: Steeped Tea's Earl Grey De La Creme.

 This is my last tea from Steeped Tea, at least for now. They do carry a lot of great products so in the future, I would love to order from them. Also horray! 40 days since I started. :)

Earl Grey De La Creme. Its a black tea as you can tell.  Earl grey tea is a special kind of tea that is always a black tea with oil of bergamot as a flavoring. A bergamot is a type of citrus fruit, similar to an orange.

It looks quite pretty. You can clearly see the black tea leaves, and the wonderful cornflowers.

Its pretty dark.

It has a really deep scent. At first it carries a flowery scent, which comes from the corn flowers, but as that slowly fades away you collect a hint of citrus. Its nice, delicate yet complex. It isn't too prefumey either.

It doesn't taste as roasted as I would have expected. Though it does carry some interesting depth. Its not very flowery, but does carry a tiny hint of it. It actually tastes mildly creamy, though, it isn't thick. It also has a very delicate citrusy flavor, much like an orange and lemon mixture. I'm just glad that it isn't remotely as flower as that trash I had before.

This is finally something really good from Steeped Tea. It carried depth, and also quite delicate. It speaks with high class, but my one complaint is "natural flavors". I'd like to know whats in it. Keep in mind that I do review loose leaf teas at a higher standard then I review tea bags.

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365 Days of Tea - Day 36: Steeped Tea's Organic Strawberry Fields.

So I should be getting more tea in the mail next week - which is great! I'm going to compose a list of things I'm going to spend paypal donation money on. Though I haven't received any financial donations, I'm still going to create the list so others have a concept of what I'm spending it on. I'm not looking to make money off this blog - I only want to use money to improve this blog.

I am doing Steeped Tea's Organic Strawberry Fields, which I completely forgot to get a base photo of, but its right in that image - somewhere. 

As you can see, we have some green tea leaves, as well as some papaya pieces. Although I don't directly see any strawberry pieces, Its very leafy, but it doesn't appear to be whole leaves, it looks like leaf pieces. Which is actually why tea bags have such a bad rep, they often use pieces instead of whole leaf.  Whole leaf usually offers a fully bodies tea, but in some cases that isn't such a big deal. There is also good tea bag teas, too.

Yep - I totally put my loose leaf brewer into a smaller cup. I do what I want.  I brewed it for 2 minutes, as stated in the packaging.

Upon farther inspection of the tea leaves after they've opened, and been steeped. I discovered that they are more whole leafy then I originally suspected. So that is some pretty good news there. It's quite green, too. Now for the taste!

The scent of strawberry very lightly tickles your nose, with some papaya slowly following behind. While inhaling you can also smell an overall "leafyness" which is proven to be from the tea leaves. It isn't too perfumery or artificial. Its comes off as a very clean scent, I don't feel like I just sniffed carpet cleaner, so thats good.

To my surprise, the strawberry flavor is really in the back seat here. You can kind of tell that they leaves were out as full-bodied as they could have been, the green tea flavor itself isn't quite as strong as I would have liked. It does retain some earthiness, though. The strawberry flavor rather lingers in the background, but this is how I'd prefer it. As you sip the tea, at first you just taste the green tea leaves, then towards the back of your mouth you kind of get a hint of strawberry, and a hint of sugar. Might sound strange, but I can tell that the dried papaya had sugar on it. Its a very very faint taste, but its too artificial tasting to be from the actual fruit. You probably won't even notice it.

So far my experiences with Steeped Tea hasn't been fantastic, but I think its getting better. I sort of get the feeling that they care more about the amount of tea vs how good the tea is. I'm not saying Steeped Tea is a bad company, I'm just saying that so far they don't really stand out. That being said though, this was still a pretty decent tea and I'd drink it again.

Can be found @ http://www.amazingteaparty.com/

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365 Days of Tea - Day 29: Steeped Tea's Peaches & Cream.

So I recently got some samples from something called Steeped Tea. Which works similarly to how an avon works. Sorta like you can't directly buy from the company but you can buy from direct sellers. (I'm assuming they make some sort of percentage.) My US contact is Beth Ann Wilson and my Canadian contact is Christina Jean Pierre. Christina is actually the one who reached out to me and got me in contact with Beth who then sent me the tea samples. There is some export/import laws that we didn't want to mess around with.

The package also came with a catalog but I didn't feel that it was important to get an image of it. She also wrote me a cute letter introducing me to herself, the company and a little bit about tea brewing. She recommends that I brew it in one of the "tea sacs" she also sent me. I can however, brew it without, but for these teas I will DO AS DIRECTED.

These are the four teas she sent me, which are as follows:

• Peaches & Cream (A white tea).
• Earl Grey de la Creme.
• Organic Strawberry Fields (A green tea).
• Nettle Green Mountain.

This is the Peaches & Cream.

According to the ingredients list it contains the following:

Pai mu tan white tea, mango pieces, papaya pieces, pineapple pieces, lily blossom, natural flavors.

You can see a lot of that in the image, a papaya pieces is very visible. What kind of bothers me though, is that it does not actual contain peaches. Pai Mu Tan white tea is a white tea from China, and made from shoots and young leaves. So the tea part should be rather good at the very least.

It smells very peachy. Actually it smells exactly like you think anything peaches and cream would smell. Like those little candy peach rings you used to get as a kid. Although, the scent is decent, it feels very artificial.

 It tastes like a pretty decent white tea. That being said I feel like a lot of the other flavors might be a bit lost here. Although the peach scent makes it almost seem like there is a peach flavor as well, but this isn't true. To me, its a bit strange, it contains a lot of generally strong fruits, but none of them really shine. Sure there are some fruity under tones, but they are rather muted.

Now I don't feel like this is in anyway a bad tea, I just feel like, with all that's going on, it should have a better flavor profile to offer. What DOES bother me though, is "natural flavor". Natural flavor, is somewhat tricky, because all it really means is that the flavor came from a plant or animal. (According to the FDA.) That being said, I have no idea what's really going into my body. I smell peaches, but there isn't any peaches listed, and that bothers me.

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