Don’t let the flowers fool you: this Earl Grey blend is POWERFUL. It’s packed to the gills with the Earl’s trademark bergamot, plus lavender and cornflowers. This blend packs a punch. DO NOT OVERSTEEP IT.
Tired? The smell itself is so strong that it will wake you up immediately. Cranky? The flavor will get your gears in motion. Dead on the inside? The caffeine will give you a shove.
This is like Earl Grey’s spunky hippie sister got into his tea stash and started messing around with it
“I picked these today,” she whispers, dropping a handful of blossoms into the mix. “These will make it pretty AND align his chakras. He’s so UPTIGHT sometimes.”
And then the Earl gets in there and he’s like “OH MY GOD, MOONBEAM, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
Then he sips it and says, with a sigh, “Oh. It’s pretty good.”
And goes back to bureaucracy or whatever it is Earls do all day. She’ll wander back into the fields, going on a walkabout, not to return until the winds and the moon usher her back to the castle. He never knows when she’ll drop by, but he’s secretly glad when she does. She keeps him on his toes.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Blue Hour Tea
Description
This is by far our most fragrant tea, just one sniff and you’ll feel like you’ve been transported to the beautiful streets of Paris! Our French No.7 blend uses a base of rich Earl Grey tea and has been mixed with a generous portion of lavender & cornflowers to create its wonderful floral aroma and flavour.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Canadian Breakfast from Blue Hour. . . .
Being Canadian, I was excited to try this tea! I wanted to know what ‘Canadian Breakfast’ blend would taste like.
The dry blend smelled sweet and nutty – a good start in my books! I was surprised when the wet leaves smelled mildly earthy. The golden yellow liquor was very smooth, with roasted notes and mild astringency.
Personally, if I were to steep this again, I would let it steep for 4 minutes rather than the 5-minute max. recommendation. That may tone down some of the astringency.
I admit, I always think of maple syrup as one of the foods that are quintessential to Canadian culture, so I was hoping for a sweeter tea. That being said, the tea lived up to the ‘breakfast’ part of its name and would be great at breakfast – a burst of boldness to wake you up in the morning!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Blue Hour
Description
This is our take on the classic English Breakfast tea. Canadian Breakfast is a delicious and full bodied blend of Indian, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Chinese black teas with a few Calendula flowers for colour. This breakfast blend has a balanced flavour and is excellent with milk but is also enjoyable without any additions. It makes a great tea for breakfast and also works well when paired with scones and finger sandwiches.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Genmaicha (Australia) from Blue Hour Tea. . . .
I steeped this at 190 degrees with 1stp tea and 1 cup water for about one minute. (The recommendation was 1-3 minutes, but after one minute it smelled super toasty even from across the room so I figured I’d better drink it before it got strong enough to knock me over.)
This tea does interestingly include a bit of matcha in the ingredients despite being a genmaicha, which is a great addition as far as I’m concerned. Also, I’ve never had a tea from Australia before (that I know of), so I was quite excited by this opportunity!
Once steeped, the tea was hazy and a bit cloudy, possibly from the dissolved matcha, and had a grassy but very light green color. Even in the fragrance I could definitely find the green-tea-flavor melding with the toasted-rice flavor. The liquid was a little thicker than expected, and as I took my first sip I found that it doesn’t taste quite as toasty as it smells. There was a bit more of the buttery, savory green tea flavor than I’d expected based on the fragrance, especially at the beginning of the sip. However, the overall flavor profile was nicely blended with most of the strength of the nutty, toasty flavor coming more at the end of the sip. This tea was smooth, not bitter at all, and it was somewhat astringent but not too astringent.
So the verdict altogether is that if you like genmaicha, you’ll like this tea, and if you like matcha-flavored cereal, you should try it with milk and sugar. In addition to being delicious it should also be really great for you (unless your doctor has told you not to drink caffeine, of course), since green tea and matcha both have plentiful health benefits. The only downside is that, although you can steep it multiple times, the second steeping isn’t quite the same because the match gets mostly used up in the first steeping.
I really enjoyed drinking this tea and would happily drink lots more of it if given the opportunity.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green Tea
Where to Buy: Blue Hour Tea
Description
Our Genmaicha is a combination of the fresh flavour of green tea with the undertones of roasted rice and the added richness of matcha tea. This premium Genmaicha is grown in the Acheron Valley in Victoria, Australia. There are only a handful of farms growing tea in Australia and this is one of our favourites.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Spicy Honey Chai from Blue Hour Tea. . .A Different Take on Chai. . .
Waaaaaay back in the day, I was a barista. Not the cool, hipster baristas we all know and love now, but the nerdy high schooler kind who like making weird drink concoctions when the cafe is slow. I’m sure you can imagine it.
Anyways! Even back then, before I knew how much my love of tea would grow, I wasn’t a coffee drinker either, and was constantly looking for a new warm concoction that I could sip will slinging drinks to our customers. Enter: chai. I instantly fell in love with the creamy, warming spices and found myself finding new ways to brew it on the daily.
Ever since then, even if my tea tastes have expanded, chai remains my first tea love. So when I dug this sample out of my stash, I was SUPER pumped to go back to my roots and give it a chai (see what I did there? ;))! First things first– the dry leaf is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Blue Hour adds honey to this blend so that the leaves harden together a bit, to unfurl when steeped. I brewed as they recommended, warming a small pot of coconut milk on the stove and tossing the leaves into steep as it warms up.
The result is a creamy, slightly-sweet-but-not-saccharine (from the help of the honey), ginger and pepper spiced cup of goodness. This chai perfect tows the line between hitting all the traditional notes I love in chai while being like nothing I’ve ever had before. It was delicious, and brought me right back to the good old barista days. I’d definitely drink this one again!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black Tea
Where to Buy: Blue Hour Tea
Description
Our Spicy Honey Chai is made using our unique blend of whole roasted spices, a Single Estate Assam black tea with a bit of heat from black pepper and ginger and it’s all finished off with a good portion of raw honey fromCoal Lake Honey Farm. This makes for a well balanced mug of chai, which is best when brewed in milk.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Sleep from Blue Hour Tea. . . . . .An Herbal Way to Get Some ZZZZ’s
Sleep. It’s something that I have been lacking as of late. In times like these I tend to gravitate towards calming and relaxing herbals and tisanes. Sleep from Blue Hour Tea has certainly helped me wind down at night before floating off into dreamland.
There are many herbals and tisanes that I don’t really care for the taste but still appreciate them for the ingredients that are in them because they are wellness tisanes and offer many positives due to these ingredients being from the earth. Lucky for me – not only do I see the positives in the ingredients in Sleep from Blue Hour Tea – I also had a very positive first sipping experience when it came to this tisane.
Sleep from Blue Hour Tea had a lovely floral, minty, clean, refreshing, calming, and well-rounded aroma but also had a delightful flavor, too! It was light, herbal, floral, and sweet on the taste buds, too! The mint was weaker than I tend to crave but worked really well here and lingered on to the after taste which is always a PLUS in my book.
This is a great cup to sip on at the end of the day. I enjoyed it very much, indeed!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Blue Hour Tea
Description
Our Sleep tea is a tisane, which contains no caffeine. It’s a delicate and relaxing blend of lemon grass, spearmint, chamomile and a variety of flower petals. This is one of our favourite blends and it’s the perfect tea to drink just before heading to bed or for winding down after a long day.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
