Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Organic Guranse
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
Azzrian’s Custom Blend via Butiki Teas.
This blend was inspired by a beer I used to love drinking.
It was a lambic beer sweetened and flavored with peaches.
Thus we took an organic guranse and mixed in cascade hops, peaches, and peach flavoring.
All organic, all delicious!
Learn more about this tea from Steepster reviews here.
Request your own custom blend via email by clicking here. Just tell Stacy you would like to create your own custom blend and shoot her your general idea – she will get back to you to continue the communication!
Taster’s Review:
Peach HoppiTea Custom Blend from Butiki Teas is exactly what I wanted in my blend! This review is not only for this tea but also for Stacy of Butiki Teas and her amazing customer service when it comes to custom blending!
Stacy of Butiki Teas and I communicated via email for weeks developing my dream tea. I knew I wanted a tea modeled after my favorite Lambic brew. It was a peachy, sweet, and hoppy beer. What Stacy created not only brought back that exact flavor but she did so in a natural, organic way that makes this tea just BURST with ripe juicy flavors! Now I know many of us tea drinkers love to eat our tea! We pick out the pieces of fruit, nuts, herbs, etc from our steeped leaves and chew on them. Often times we end up spitting it out due to being either bitter, or chemical tasting, or whatever but when I pick out the big, sweet, juicy peaches from my spent leaves, they are so very very good! Just like I picked them from a tree in an orchard! This flavor is not only noticeable in the aroma of the cup but in every single sip! Big, ripe, juicy, natural, bursting with flavor peaches!
The hops, they are not bitter as many people think of bitter, they don’t make you pucker up like eating a sour candy. They are herbaceous, a tart sharp note on the middle back part of the tongue. Granted it is probably going to be a note that not everyone loves but even those who did not love that specific note have really enjoyed the blend and have made note of the freshness of the peaches. You can see other’s reviews on this tea on steepster which is linked above.
I could go on and on forever about my special custom blend and yes you can order it if it speaks to you but what I want to point out even more in this review is Stacy, her tea company, and the process of your own custom blend.
Now there are several companies that do the custom blend thing. Only a couple that do it in an interesting way. Most custom blends are made by selecting some elements from a drop down menu and thats it. Now not to knock those types of custom blends as I actually have made quite a few from various companies and have loved them! The difference here however is that Stacy will really work with you one on one over a period of time, until the exact idea of your blend is captured and you agree with the outcome!
From the moment I sent Stacy my request we were in communication about every element from the flavoring, the base tea to be used, and so on. Then on top of that Stacy sent me samples of different base teas to try to help me choose which one to use in my blend. Then she would send me samples of various stages of the blend itself! Sometimes more than one mixture using different bases with the peaches and hops or different flavoring components for me to consider. I think it took about a month from the time of inception to the finished product but what the outcome became is perfection!
There is a sweetness that was imperative in this blend yet the only sweetener in this tea are the peaches themselves! The hops are the exact species I had asked for, and the base works in perfect harmony.
I received my custom blend months ago and loved it then but what I am surprised at is now, months later, it is even better! Almost as if it needed to age to come to full maturity and show me everything it has to offer! Anytime you have a custom blend there is a period of time you should wait before drinking it all up as flavors do need to meld a little but I think by waiting even longer the peaches really were able to share their sweetness, meld together with the bitter hops, and thus bring forth everything desired in this blend.
The blend is all organic and also vegan! I quote Stacy of Butiki Teas: “Yep, gluten-free. It has gluten-free flavoring, gluten-free peach bits and hops. The facility is not gluten-free but we are careful not to cross contaminate.”
I would absolutely ask Stacy to make me a custom blend again in the future and I will always want this tea in my permanent stash!
Tamarind Pop from Butiki Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
This tea was originally custom blended for a customer but it was so unique that we decided to offer it to all of our customers. The base of this tea is an Organic Guranse which originates from the Guranse Estate in Nepal. Tamarind Pop is sweet with notes of caramel, raw cacao, vanilla, and tamarind and finishes with a slight astringency. Add a little brown crystal sugar for a completely different tasting tea. With a little sugar this tea tastes just like a tamarind soda. The tamarind taste is intense and melds with a rich caramel flavor.
Learn more about this tea here.
Read more about how the masterminding of this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Not too long ago, one of the regular visitors on Steepster had mentioned in the forums that she wanted a tamarind flavored tea. Well, Stacy from Butiki Teas read this and the rest is history (read the link for the story on how Tamarind Pop came to be a tea).
And you know, it’s things like this that makes Butiki Teas one of my favorite tea companies. I love that she is “one of us” – she’s a tea drinker who frequents the same haunts as other tea enthusiasts. I like it when a company can shed the “business” and relate to their customers as people, and deal with real people inquiries and requests. And I really like this tea that Stacy came up with for “one of us” – Tamarind Pop.
It is unique in that it is unlike any other tea I’ve yet to taste, and yet, there are similarities. The base of the tea is the Organic Guranse which I reviewed previously, and even if I had not known what the base was before tasting this tea, I would have likely recognized it, because the Guranse is very “front and center” with this tea. It tastes bolder here, though, perhaps the tamarind brings out the tea’s “inner strength”?
Stacy mentioned in her description of this tea (see the above description) that this tea is one tea served straight (with no additions) and another tea when served sweetened. So I tested it.
Unsweetened, this tea has a lovely tamarind flavor. It is sweet and a little sour, and a tart aftertaste. Not a pucker-y kind of tart, and not even that same kind of “berry” tart that I often mention … this is a mellow kind of tartness that sort of just lingers over the palate and encourages this tea drinker to keep sipping.
When sweetened with a spoonful of turbinado sugar, this tea becomes much more like a soda – but better, because it doesn’t have that sickly-syrupy-sticky kind of taste that you might experience with a commercial soda. This tastes more like one of those gourmet soft drinks made with cane sugar.
I confess that I’ve not tried tamarind soda … but I have had a ready-to-drink sparkling Yerba Maté and I really enjoyed that. But if this – what is in my cup at the moment – is what a tamarind soda tastes like, then I must purchase some during my next trip to the supermarket, because I’m liking this a whole lot! It even has a light, sparkling kind of taste that I’d expect to experience with a soda.
This tea is absolutely awesome. This may just be my favorite tea from Butiki Teas yet (and I’ve loved everything I’ve tried from them!) Seriously … you gotta try this!
Organic Guranse from Butiki Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
Our Organic Guranse tea originates from the Guranse Estate in Nepal and is graded FTGFOP-1 (Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, First Flush). This light and fragrant tea has notes of tobacco and wet mahogany with light peach notes that linger. Organic Guranse is lightly malty and perfect for afternoon or early evening enjoyment as it is not as strong as some of our other black teas.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The dry leaf of this tea is earthy and a little sweet, reminding me a bit of the pipe tobacco my dad once had when my stepmother was trying to get him to start smoking pipes. The brewed tea maintains much of this fragrance, although it is a slightly lighter scent than the dry leaf.
The flavor immediately reminded me of an Assam with its delicious malty tones, although I’m finding it to be a lighter bodied tea than a typical Assam, which I usually categorize as a full-bodied tea. I think I’d categorize this one as a medium bodied tea, or even a light-to-medium bodied tea. To put it another way, I would put this somewhere between a full-bodied Assam and a light-bodied Darjeeling.
Interestingly enough, this tea also has other characteristics that remind me of these two teas. The aforementioned rich malty tones that remind of an Assam while the woody, fruit tones remind me of a Darjeeling (but without the muscatel). There is a fair amount of astringency to this tea as well, which is common in these two teas. Here the astringency is crisp and tangy, and leaves the palate feeling clean and dry. The aftertaste is earthy and sweet.
I’m finding this to be a delightful, contemplative cup – just right for the afternoon. It’s also REALLY good as it cools – makes an awesome iced tea!