I’ve been looking forward to this blend since the beginning of this advent calendar, and I’ve finally figured out how to follow these steeping instructions, and everything has paid off. I do miss some of the maltiness of blending it with Kenya tea, but this is good all by itself.

This would be better except that I steeped it too long, so some of the underlying tea flavor is too strong. It is the kind of chai I like (more pepper and ginger than cinnamon), so I’m going to have to be more careful the next time.

This was pretty good, but I think it would be better if I’d steeped it differently. I don’t get the “one bag per person” instructions and how it differs from “one bag per cup.”

Feel weird giving this full marks because it didn’t knock my socks off exactly, but it wasn’t “slightly too strong” in the way that I penalized yesterday’s Kenya blend for, so I guess if I’m going to have plain black tea one morning, I’d be happy with Darjeeling.

Not bad but not my favorite. I liked the recent blend of Kenya and Ceylon tea a lot, and now I’m wondering if what I really liked was the Ceylon. I’m guessing I’ll find out!

Chai sounds good, and coconut sounds good, but this combination doesn’t work for me. The coconut flavor is too strong, too tropical, and too artificial. Pretty disappointing.

One of the first non-herbal teas I tried was a Lady Grey, and I think that biased me toward that approach to Grey-like teas. I’ve had mixed experiences with Earl Greys (sorry, Jean-Luc), and I usually find myself wishing it was a Lady Grey instead.

This Earl Grey was pretty good, though! Not enough to get full marks from me (again, I found myself wishing for more citrus), but I was pleased by how it worked out.

I couldn’t articulate specifically why this breakfast blend (which mixes Ceylon and Kenyan leaves) impressed me more than the English Breakfast one, but it did! I could drink this one on a regular basis.

I was just posting this morning about how great this idea of teablogging is, but I’m going to immediately undercut that my questioning my ability to rate teas in the first place.

This is the most interesting and enjoyable blend I’ve had so far in the advent calendar, and for that, it gets a higher rating than anything I’ve tried so far. Yet, I think I’d also tire of it more quickly than most of the other blends I’ve tried, so in the long term (rather than as a first impression), I think it would rate lower. I could drink the vanilla chai every morning even if it was a bit disappointing, but I think I’d have to space the bergamot and jasmine flavors of this blend out or else I’d quickly get sick of it.

This one is fruity and floral, and maybe I steeped it wrong, because there’s the potential of something interesting in here, but it’s just not flavors I want in my tea this morning.

I don’t like floral flavors in my tea. This tea was better than I worried, but not as good as it smelled, and… I just don’t like floral flavors in my tea.

I was pretty excited for this one, and it wasn’t bad, but there wasn’t enough chai flavor and there definitely wasn’t enough vanilla. Maybe I steeped it wrong? Maybe I’m too tired this morning to appreciate it? I don’t know, but I’m tired of giving out “good but not great” ratings and was hoping this would really impress me.

I take my tea without milk or anything else—one of the big reasons I got into tea and not coffee was so I could just steep the tea and be done with things. That has an effect on my tea preferences, though, since I won’t ever have other flavors in the cup.

All of this to say that this is right at the edge of “too strong” for me. Breakfast teas are growing on me: They’re one of the reasons I’m excited about this advent calendar. I do like the malty taste, and alternating sips with spoonfuls of muesli was a good experience. It’s also a flavor I’m growing into, though, and I wonder if I would have liked it more if I’d steeped it differently (or had a single cup/bag instead of my usual two).

Okay, I’ve been thinking about setting up a “teablog” for a while, but this Advent, my sister-in-law are working our way through the same Whittard Tea Advent Calendar, so it’s time to actually set this up. My hope is that taking notes like this will get me to think harder about what I like (and don’t) in teas.

This puts me in the weird position of suddenly reviewing teas I’ve been drinking for months (even years), but what are you going to do? There are also going to be a flood of posts in December as I work on that “backlog” and also make my way through this Advent Calendar, and things might get less exciting in January, but I believe firmly in blogging for myself first, and this is what makes sense for me.