Themed Traveling Tea boxes are becoming a favorite of mine – an unflavored themed one is even better!
This traveling tea box was put together by the Steepster Community and has traveled around the USA. As with other tea boxes, you put in tea in the amounts you have sampled, though they do start getting big as the longer the travel as the added new tea packages take up more space than the tea taken out. Traveling tea boxes are great for sampling new teas without having to buy a bunch, with the only cost of shipping and teas from your collection. If you want to get in on a traveling tea box – start getting active in online tea communities like Steepster or tea exchange on Reddit. If you want to check out other Traveling tea boxes I’ve been in, check it out here.
Let’s unbox the Unflavored Traveling Tea Box!
For this traveling tea box, I was also the last stop, so I had the best variety, but with the downfall of getting the crumbs or the most unwanted teas left over. This box had some extra help from Single Origin Tea, who contributed many interesting unflavored teas. The Tea Owls, as much as the love getting photos done, don’t like unpacking these big traveling tea boxes.
With the pecking order senority in place, they made the poor new Tea Owl do all the work.
More often you see traveling tea boxes with mostly tea in pouches (often double wrapped to stop smell contaimation). This one had a few teas in lightweight plastic containers – which were great, but a little awkward sized (are there square ones?)
In this unflavored Traveling Tea box – 70 teas! If you are wondering, how can there be 70 unflavored teas, teas do massively expand within white, green, black, oolong and pu’er families. This box had teas from China, India, Vietnam, and Japan. Teas that were processed differently will taste quite different from another tea of the same family – like black Assam, Darjeeling, Chinese blacks or heavy oxidized Taiwanese oolongs.
I sorted through and picked out stuff I want to try and put the rest of the box to the side.
Now this is the kind of tea I like to see – random tea that I’ll never be able to get! Oooh yeah a good, big leafy Mountain Oolong and taiping houkui from an unknown seller but from China? Sweet!
I have no idea what this tea is – all the reason to try it!
This box did have a few milk or floral scented teas, but it was only a few.
I let the Tea Owls pick a tea or two they want to try.
Now that’s a good choice, Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea is tasty black tea!
Our high ranking Intern Tea Owl has good tea tastes, selecting a couple pu’ers.
The formal-wear Tea Owl selected some interesting sounded blacks.
Inexperienced tea owl selected this oolong, thinking it was an Owl picked oolong.
The low point of the box – this tea. I don’t recommend it, folks, but I had to sample it for science.
I did discover a few really good teas. These 3 teas were very good!
Many teas in this box I have tried, such as teas from Mandala Teas and Teavivre. I did managed to sample 28 Teas from River Tea, Single Origin Tea, Nepali Tea Traders, Whispering Pines Tea Co, Yunnan Sourcing, Golden Moon and Thunderbolt Tea. With all the teas I drank, I added a few interesting goodies from my collection.
In the end, after over 2 weeks of sipping many teas, it was time to pack up. With that said, another dirty job for the Tea Owl on the bottom of the pecking order.
Hmm, she did a good job sorting the teas neatly in the box!
In the end, a good tea box – I got assam’d out! So much assam! I’d love to try a traveling tea box that has a more specific theme, like oolongs, however those are tricky to put together it seems.
