Every year my frustration with Tea Advent Calendars grows. There are none with my tastes and every vendor I talk to says they don’t want to do it. Realistically, it is hard to come up with 24 teas, make attractive packaging, and make it affordable. That is why Advent Calendars are done by bigger tea companies.
As a tea blogger, I get a lot of tea sent to me by companies and yet another Tea Advent Calendar arrived.
I reached for the Day 1 tea on December 1st, and to my disappointment, it was a measly 3 grams of trail mix tea. For this type of tea, I’d want 5-8 grams so 3 grams doesn’t feel worth my time to locate small teacups to brew up. Hoot this.
Tea Advent Calendar, Will it Gongfu?
I opened all the tea advent days on Dec 2 and dumped all the tea into a bowl. 24 tea blends is now a single tea blend. There is just about every type of tea in here – black, oolong, white, green, ripe puer, rooibos, and herbals.
Wow, this tea looks legit and actually quite pretty. You can see different pieces of fruit, a rainbow of flower petals and herbs.
Rest assured, the smell of my Advent tea blend is cursed. A lot of these teas had Christmas themes, so all teas with mint, fruit, chocolate, nuts, floral, baked goods, orange, and chais. Combined, the smell is nauseating chai mint bubblegum. The scent of the blend is so strong, my entire kitchen reeks of my Advent tea.
In order to get the best sampling of this 24 tea blend, I unfortunately will need to use more leaf. That said, I went with a 150ml gaiwan using 10g of tea.
I used boiling water and no rinse. Most of the added flavoring comes out in the first steep that dumping a rinse is dumping flavor. Steeped up, the leaves smell of blueberries, cherry cough syrup, and lemongrass.
First Infusion: The first sip is just an overload of different flavors that are all very sweet – lots of creamy walnuts, tart blueberry, and cherry, rose, pepper, hazelnut, orange rinds, chocolate, caramel cream, and a finish of sweet yet bitter medicinal minty toothpaste which does not go with the other flavors. Some of these flavors work together, but that mint doesn’t tie them together.
Second and Third Infusion: Interesting, the Advent tea blend is changing. Right away, all the added flavoring is gone and going weak quickly. I am left with a hibiscus tart, tannic, brisk, walnut, and again finishing with a strange bitter mint flavor. A creamy candied walnut and coconut flavor still hold on.
Fourth and Fifth Infusion: My Advent tea blend finishes incredibly astringent, tannic, and sour. It’s mostly hibiscus and over brewed bad black and green tea stew.
The leaf is a lot of chopped tea and herbs. My Advent tea blend made a huge mess, but nothing new for Will it Gongfu.
Western style
I went with 7 grams of leaf in a 12oz/ 350ml mug, 200F/ 93C, steeped for 2.5 minutes. The scent of the Advent tea blend is of sour pear and spice.
My Advent tea blend tastes of walnut, pear, tart hibiscus, cloves, blueberries, sour apple, and bubble gum with the revenge of that sweet nasty toothpaste finish. The aftertaste is toothpaste and a clinging astringency in the back of the throat. Somehow the blend is very watery tasting despite the heavy leaf for western style. The mint nut sour fruit just doesn’t go together at all.
Tea Advent Calendar blend… Will it Gongfu?
Yes? I found gongfu style was actually more drinkable. Both taste bad, but gongfu had that wild first infusion that was more of a brain melter. Western style pushed the mint stronger, which decidedly is the worst flavor in this tea as it clashes hard with the sour fruity notes. If you keep drinking the gongfu, you’ll get less mint. Regarding drinkability, a whole Tea Advent Calendar blend is unforgettable yet the taste of it I want to scrub from my mind.
Now to deep clean all my teaware as they all now smell of sour bubblegum mint.
If you are new, check out the rest of my Will it Gongfu? series.
(tea provided for review… not the review they had in mind I bet)
