Another day, another triple review!
We’ll begin with Mabel’s alt-tea, or rather, alt-tisane. I had been putting this one off, and actually meant to put it off even longer, so it would be the last tea I sampled, because I really didn’t expect to like this one at all. The issue, dear reader, was the raspberries.
Raspberries. My mother loves raspberries, but I have never been able to stand the things. I have never even seen pink dust, never mind licked a wooden shelf coated in a solid inch of the stuff, but all I can usually think of when I taste is raspberry is “I just licked a mouthful of pink dust.” This is not an experience I imagine as particularly pleasant. Maybe more pleasant than some other hypothetical colors of dust, but still not especially pleasant.
Another brew with those bits that looked like teeth! Wish I could figure out what those are, just out of curiosity.
Maybe this time they look a bit more like a cross between cut-off corn and very tiny cubes of apple?
Brewed up three minutes with the sand timer, very red color…and it…actually smells very nice. I don’t know exactly what I think it smells like, but it smells really, really nice….
…and it tastes very, very nice! Nothing like pink dust at all. Very, very nice. I am thoroughly enjoying this cup.
Could it be a fluke? I put it to the test and made a small pot of it. This time, I got to watch it brewing, and it was weird! At first, the liquid stayed completely clear…but then, red started slowly seeping out of the infuser basket. The immediate impression was of blood seeping into the water, which would make for an excellent Halloween brew. I take a risk and brew it for double the time I usually brew anything.
However, it seems I didn’t put quite enough of the mix in my basket, because the color is noticeably lighter than before. Oh, well. It still tasted really good. Weaker, but just as good.
Dang. Don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess, because I actually really, really like this! I’ve got one more episode left on the second disc of Flashpoint Season One, so I have thrown caution to the winds and put the rest of the sample tin in my infuser basket, resigned to probably buying more of this in the near future. Nice ruby color again after a lengthy infusion, which once again initially looked a lot like blood seeping into water, but that’s all right.
Again, a delicious accompaniment to a Highly Emotional TV Show, this time with my kitten Audrey curled up against my side and purring at top volume, as is our custom before bedtime. I am beginning to believe that either spearmint is a magical agent on par with the Philosopher’s Stone or that @sovonight is a wizard, because this is now two red fruit blends I have actually kinda wanted more of after I polished them off!
My other two reviews of the day are, I fear, less interesting, though one does include a Cute Anecdote about one of my cats. I started the day off with the Lapsangless Stan, dumped the rest of the sample into the infuser basket…and was back to only tasting rooibos and ginger. Still, made for something warm to sip on while crying my way through the first three episodes of season one. Once that pot was exhausted, I did the same with the Lapsangless Ford, which…I think I registered it as vaguely spicy and more interesting than my first pot, though I only got to drink about a cup and a half of that one - while I was busy crying through the first episode of disc 2, my little kitten Grace did something she has never done in her ten months of life, and decided to stick her nose in my tea! Normally she looks at it from a safe distance and then walks away, but apparently this one smelled intriguing enough that I looked up from the sofa to the ledge behind it to find her having a sip. So the rest of that cup had to be poured out. I couldn’t even really be mad, though - how, after all, does one stay mad at this little lady?
Or, if she looks too striking there (or can’t be seen at all there, since the picture started giving me an error message after I hit post) at this face:
Which, yes, is on the kitchen counter, which is, yes, somewhere she knows perfectly well that she’s not supposed to be. Ah, Grace-Face, you just knew that I secretly wanted to scrub down the countertop and replace the drying mat at midnight, didn’t you? An amazing insight, considering I myself would have expressed a total lack of interest in doing those things before you made them necessary, but I always did say you were a clever girl.
