Guest Review: "Firefly" Fandom Tea Blends

Adagio Teas allows customers to create custom "fandom" blends to celebrate, well, pretty much anything.   Not surprisingly, several customers have created a series of blends celebrating the characters of Joss Whedon's beloved Sci-Fi Western Firefly.   +Kay White reviews for us some of the Firefly character blends created by Amy Zen.



Captain Mal blend
Blended with black tea, oolong tea, orange peels, rose hips inclusion loose, hibiscus inclusion loose, natural chocolate flavor, dark chocolate chips, cocoa nibs, natural almond flavor, natural orange flavor.
Teas: blood orange, chocolate chip, almond oolong.
Accented with orange peels, chocolate chips and cocoa nibs.

Mal smells like blood orange, black tea, and... stuff. I do get a hint of cocoa now and then, but this blend mainly has other things going on, some of which are hard to tease apart. He is fruity and floral and a bit almondy (without seeming nutty at all, if that may make sense), with a whiff of chocolate here and there. But Mal is not at all bitter, even though I let him steep for 4 minutes instead of 3. 

So, I like this. But I wonder if maybe a little less going on would have been better, because I feel like some flavors are just crowding others, making the blend indistinct without adding much to it. When you add too many colors, you just get brown no matter which colors are involved, and Mal is a browncoat.

Except for the orange. That's pretty clear.

When I'm able to test him with anything added, I'll add to this.


Mal is listed as high caffeine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Zoe blend
Masala chai and caramel, with extra cinnamon-ny goodness blended in. This blend is not for the faint of heart, but will definitely wake you up something fierce on cold mornings. Sweeten this tea with a bit of milk and sugar, and it's absolutely divine.

With nothing added, Zoe is still tasty. The caramel is like the chocolate in Garrus in that it seems to bridge other flavors and smooth them out, rather than trying to take over. There was a whole clove sitting in the tin that I included in this steeping, and I can certainly taste it and the cinnamon, but this is balanced. I get a little more bitterness from this than from Garrus, but it's still a comparison of small amounts. 


With almond milk and a little sugar, Zoe's caramel is filled out. The milk overwrites the trace bitterness; unfortunately I lose some of the spice taste as well. Still, a good cup.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

River Tam blend
Blended with black tea, green tea, rose petals, rose flavor, natural vanilla flavor, orange peels, natural bergamot flavor, blue cornflowers.
Teas: earl grey green, summer rose, vanilla.

In the tin, River smells like roses, with other flowers behind it that together remind me of a slightly spicy carnation oil. I try to grab my first scent impression before reading the notes -- the notes say roses, marigold and cornflower. After the flowers, I get its vanilla and a little bergamot accent.

It happens that I'm testing Alice from BPAL today, too, which is showing well its milk, honey, rose, carnation and bergamot. Alice and River go together wonderfully, being clearly not the same, but sharing qualities. I added a little white sugar to River since the creator mentions doing so, but a little cream (not almond milk) and honey would be my next choice to try, and would probably bring out even more in common.

A little sugar is good, though, and I inhale with every sip because the flowers are so warmly pretty. I get no bitterness at all. I'm drinking it hot, but this is one to try iced as well.


I'm probably going to get more of this, especially for when I'm wearing a rose fragrance. And/or wearing some shade of red, because really, that's where this goes, and it's lovely.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jayne Cobb blend
Blended with: black tea, lapsang souchong, natural caramel flavor, cocoa nibs inclusion loose, natural chocolate flavor, natural vanilla flavor, candy cane pieces, natural candy cane flavor, peppermint teas.
Teas: candy cane, lapsang souchong, tiger eye
Accents: cocoa nibs, apple pieces

Jayne smells like a campfire and starts out all acrid smoke. He's on the bitter side, but I may have let him steep too long while doing other things. I get a touch of green apple, and some mint in the aftertaste, but no other flavors in the plain hot-water cup. Once fully cooled, he is sweeter and mintier, and the bitterness is gone. He might also do well with some sweetness added to help bring the non-smoke flavors out.

I can't help thinking that if Adam Baldwin smelled like a campfire and nothing else, that would be ... just fine. Sorry, got lost for a second 
there.

("Sweet, sweet Jayne" -- Cowboy Junkies) 
Jayne as a cool tea with sugar turns into smoked apple candy canes. Woops. This is less than awesome.

Sorry, sweet Jayne!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inara blend
Blended with black tea, assam melody, cinnamon bark, ginger root, cardamom inclusion loose, natural spice flavor, dried coconut, lemon grass, orange peels, cloves inclusion loose, natural coconut flavor.
Teas: thai chai, assam melody, oriental spice.
Accented with rose hips, safflower and raspberry pieces.

With nothing added, Inara is a spicy black tea that leans toward oranges and something almost like rose (rose hips?) in the aftertaste. 

Vanilla almond milk (no sweetening) overwrites some of Inara's spice, but the impression is basically a soothing chai. Ginger and coconut notes still come through for me, with the rest as a background. It's a tiny bit peppery.


This is a fine blend, but out of the spicy chai-type teas sampled so far, I think I prefer Garrus and Zoe.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Serenitea
Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Love makes Serenity a home, and love also so happens to make her a tasty cup of tea, with mint, hazelnut, and slightly smoky gunpowder.

Spearmint, gunpowder, black tea, natural hazelnut flavor.

As with the previous tastings, I've sampled this twice so far: first plain and then with unsweetened vanilla almond milk.

In the plain test, I didn't know what to think of this for the first few sips. Mostly, I thought "dirty water." It didn't quite rate as "hot leaf juice." Then, suddenly my taste buds cleared and the mint, smoke and nut locked arm in arm and walked in together.

This is tasty. The elements seem balanced -- maybe more balanced than I like best in a mint tea? I feel like I want it to either be more minty, or a little floral, but I don't know how well the latter would work with the hazelnut.

I really like the steam aroma of Serenitea when it's been steeped in hot almond milk instead of water: a creamy and smoky mint. The hazelnut is also there as a woody presence; it intrigues before it stands out. I've smelled fig playing a role like this in a couple perfume oils I like a lot, like The Apothecary. However, when I sip the almond milk version, the hazelnut stands out a lot. The almond brings it forward. I didn't have this happen with the hazelnut in Garrus, so maybe this is a fluke cup, or maybe it's not, but there it is. For me, it's a little overpowering. This brew is perhaps better plain.

Other reviewers for this blend mention Moroccan mint. I like Numi's Moroccan mint, which doesn't list gunpowder in its ingredients, but I guess "Moroccan mint" is supposed to be mint and gunpowder? So say a couple sites on the Internets. It might be correct anyway. ;-)

Tea tasting: Alys's Red Bear Blend

Three of my favorite flavors in the world are vanilla, almond and raspberry.  So, when I discovered that Adagio offered the opportunity blend my own teas, the very first blend I decided to make combined these three flavors:  Red Bear Blend, named after some of my heraldry in the Society for Creative Anachronism.

The first taste test of Red Bear Blend happened Sunday and I can report that it was a success, although not entirely what I had intended.   The almond and the vanilla (plus some Assam for body) combine superbly, creating a rich, rounded vanilla flavor more complex than the normal straight up Adagio vanilla.  The raspberry pieces in the blend didn't assert themselves, however.  There was only a faint hint of raspberry in the after taste.

The tea holds up well for serving as iced tea.  When cold, the vanilla takes over almost completely, leaving the almond only as an aftertaste and pretty much eliminating the raspberry entirely.

I had hoped for a combination that integrated all three flavors, but the vanilla and almond work together so very very well that I can't give this tea a bad rating at all.  "Author intent" aside, it's an excellent brew.

Custom Blends at Adagio: Alys's Tea Party collection

Adagio, one of my favorite tea websites, allows you to create custom tea blends, combining up to three of their standard teas and up to two "inclusions" such as fruit pieces or chocolate chips.

I've started an Alys's Tea Party collection (called a "fandom" by Adagio) featuring teas inspired by SCAdians and other random things as they strike me.  These teas are available for sale to public, including sample tins for $5.00.  Right now, the artwork on the tins is all personal photographs of mine or public domain images.  My Mom is in the process of designing a watercolor "wrapper" to identify all the teas in party.

If you're a regular (or even occasional) reader of the blog and would like a custom blend added to Alys's Tea Party, let me know.  Suggestions for blends are welcome, even if you don't  necessarily want one named after you.

In which Alys finds a way to make rooibos even more vile-tasting.

Sunday was a day of tea-tasting and experimentation, including one epic failure.

Because I cannot make myself like the smell and flavor of rooibos, so matter how hard I try, I got someone else to try Tea Forte's Apricot Amaretto rooibos tisane.   My taster, the redoubtable +Lynda Brooks, approved of it generally, although she noted a certain resemblance to the flavor of Fisherman's Friend Cough Drops.

Our key mistake was thinking that an Amaretto-flavored rooibos brew might improve with the addition of almond milk.  Amaretto is almondy, right?  From thoughts like that are great mistakes made.

If there is anything more vile than straight up rooibos, it would be rooibos with almond milk.   The almond milk did nothing to detract from the Robitussin-like smell of the brew.  On tasting, there was no almond flavor, just a cloying, repulsive, creamy and slightly nutty slime.  Even worse, adding almond milk managed to make the flavor sort of sticky and hard to get off of my tongue.   Edven Lynda, who had not objected to the Apricot Amaretto straight up, found that the addition of the milk made it nearly undrinkable.

After the squamous horror of the tisane with milk, none of us were inclined to drink any more of the tea, even without milk.  I'm really going to have to hire myself a full-time rooibos reviewer.

Tea tasting: Tea Forte's Lychee Coconut

Tea Forte can be counted on for some interesting flavor combinations, and its Lychee Coconut White tea is no exception.  The aroma is almost entirely coconut with just a background hint of something sweet.  It puts me in mind of a coconut limeade drink at Cafe Pesto in Hilo, Hawaii.  There's less coconut in the flavor, however.

The predominant flavor is of white tea, with the sweetness of the lychee coming out after the initial taste.  The coconut makes the lychee's sweetness rounder and gentler, creating a smooth ending.  The two flavors mesh extraordinarily well.  This is a bright, slightly sweet tea that feels like summer.

Adagio's Fujian Baroque Black

Adagio describes its Fujian Baroque black tea thusly:  "Fujian Baroque is a black tea from the Fujian province of China. Its general attributes are similar to the Golden Monkey, but the leaf is finer and the aroma even more pronounced. The exquisite tapestry of naturally sweet cocoa notes, fruitiness and glimmers of spice are unmatched by any other tea. Softly sweet and velvety, with leafy autumn notes and soft, mineral aftertaste. Fujian Baroque can be brewed light or strong; the taste will remain smooth with very delicate astringency."

I can't give a much better description than this one.  I'm not tasting cocoa notes, but otherwise this description is spot on.  I do get both a slight fruitiness and slight spiciness among the initial flavors.  The mouth feel of the tea is smooth and welcoming.  I really like what Adagio calls the "mineral aftertaste" -- it has a great palate-cleansing quality.

This is a black tea that rewards a knowledgeable and patient drinker.  I would never befoul it with regular white sugar, both both honey and a high quality amber sugar (more on that another day) work nicely with the natural flavors of the tea.

You can get 15 tea bags of Fujian Baroque for only $9.00, or a sample for $2.00, and I highly recommend it as a proper indulgence for black tea lovers.

Bottled iced tea: Republic of Tea's Passion Fruit Green

How about that!  Another unsweetened bottled iced tea that also happens to taste like actual tea.  Republic of Tea has a line of iced tea bottled in glass bottles that is a cut above the usual swill on the market.  Today I tried their Passion Fruit Green (unsweetened) bottled iced tea and found it quite nice.  It's very light on the fruit flavor, with only some hints of sweetness laying over its essential green-ness.    The green tea leans towards the fruity end of greens too, but it is perfectly palatable for someone who does not like sweet tea.  

At $3.00 a bottle, however, I don't know if this is going to be a regular purchase.  I own both tea and ice, and I can make just as good a fruity green iced tea at home.

Tea tasting: Adagio's Ceylon Sonata

"Ceylon" tea refers to tea that is grown in the mountains of Sri Lanka.  Adagio's Ceylon Sonata is a simple, basic medium-bodied black tea.  Nothing too fancy or complicated. Ceylons are supposed to have inherent citrus notes, but haven't noticed any.   I made a mistake with the proportions with the last batch I made and brewed it far too strong, which may have killed off any delicacy of flavor.  However, even brewed to "take the paint off your car" levels, it didn't have the intense bitterness of a lesser quality black.  

This is a fine "utility tea" for the necessary morning caffeine, or a good starter tea for weaning someone off of Lipton or Tetley.  It handles sweeteners and icing well.  And milk, I suppose, if that's your thing.

Bottled iced tea: Teas' Teas

Teas' Tea is producing some very nice unsweetened bottle tea that tastes like tea, not like chemicals that miraculously simulate tea.

In particular, I quite like their Golden Oolong.   It has caffeine and no sugar, which always makes me happy.  It tastes exactly like a good oolong should, slightly smoky with honey tones.

The Green and White tea blend is also unsweetened, with that necessary slight touch of bitterness that says "tea."  I like it less than the Golden Oolong, but not substantially less.  It's just not quite as interesting as the smokey-honey flavor of the oolong.

Tea tasting: David's Tea's Main Squeeze

Yerba mate is an herb related to holly that is used to make a brew that tastes like green tea.  It's supposed to be energizing without being caffeinated.

On Saturday, I sampled David's Teas' Main Squeeze, a yerba mate tea with flavors of orange, papaya and pineapple.  This brew tastes more or less like a tropical green tea, although slightly sweet, probably because it uses candied papaya and pineapple made with cane sugar as part of the tisane.  A little honey emphasized both the sweetness and the fruitiness.  The tea iced up well without losing the fruit flavors.  There was none of the bitterness that can sometimes be associated with yerba mate brews.