Disregard Flowers, Acquire Real /T/

Tea_Pain: A while back, Woot had a deal where you could buy a new /t/pot and 36 /t/'s (4 different green's and Earl Grey) for about $25, all from Primula. I was intrigued. This was one of the better deals I had seen on this /t/ bundle so I decided, why the hell not, and bought in. About a week later, the contents arrived at my door... that event happened about 6 weeks ago. Since then, only the pot had been used (most recently in our latest Bigelow post) and the flowering /t/ was left sitting in a large box, waiting to be unwrapped. Since there are few loose leaf /t/s we have around, Duke and I decided it was finally time to experience something just as feminine as pu erh: flowering /t/.

Experiment 1: The fuck is açaí?

Tea_Pain: Opened a packet of "Green Tea with Açaí" to the smell of- Duke, smell this.

DukeOEarl: (After sniffing the packet) Yes, please.

Tea_Pain: This /t/ smelled awesome out of the bag. We're talkin blueberries and really fake, but still pleasant, floral jasmine. So fake, in fact, that I got a minor nosebleed from the acidity of the smell of jasmine-like chemicals. The /t/ came out of the package looking similar to a woven acorn. Once planted in boiling water, we watched the /t/ unfurl itself, thus deflowering our flowering /t/ virginity.

DukeOEarl: MOAR /T/ PUNS! So why is it piss yellow, foggy, gross looking, and the environment for a tiny squid thing?

Tea_Pain: Because it's a green /t/ and-

DukeOEarl: -and therein lies your problem.  As you can tell this /t/ea turned into a fern.  Or a whole calamari.  And why does it smell like jasmine?  Isn't this supposed to be açaí?  Actually it also smells a bit like hairspray.  Yummy.  I love drinking /t/ea that smells a hair salon before bingo night.

So the taste was surprisingly more jasmine than açaí.  I'm not really sure what açaí actually tastes like.  After a while (like a minute cause we did not actually drink this piss for very long), a blueberry-like flavor presented.  Maybe that's açaí?  Idk whatever.

Tea_Pain: For smelling like it was made of straight sugar, this /t/ came out pretty honest. Still, you can only drink so much flower water before you turn full-hippie. Because we did not want to find an acid dealer, we decided to move on to the next /t/, hoping it would show some improvement over the foreign blueberry.

Experiment 2: I'mma get that bitch a pomegranate, bitches love pomegranates.

Tea_Pain: We opened the next packet, which was cleverly labeled "Green Tea with Pomegranate", to find a very similar smell...and look...was this actually the same /t/? Being from a brilliant university with a rich scientific background, we took it upon ourselves to do some science of our own. Our hypothesis: all of these /t/'s are probably the same. Yup, even Earl Grey. Every one of them probably tastes like hairspray and fake jasmine flowers and looks like watered down metamucil. Clearly, they are all the same, as far as I can tell...

DukeOEarl:...Nuh uh! The flowers are different! So that means the /t/'s are different.  This pomegranate /t/ea is going to taste totally different........(tea steeped)......Fuck this tastes the same.  Why doesn't pomegranate flavoring actually taste like anything?  Because I don't have ovaries, I am no expert on pomegranates, but I do know what actual pomegranates taste like.  I guarantee that this /t/ea tasted more like the jasmine-hairspray urine that we just poured down the sink than an actual pomegranate.

Tea_Pain: So it looks like orange piss....smells pretty fake... and it tastes like shitty jasmine. Yup, these last two /t/s are identical.

DukeOEarl: Funny story about this /t/ea when we were drink it.  So Tea_Pain takes a sip and just stares at the table. His face was blank. It was like a 80 year old man losing his job for forgetting to punch out for lunch on a random Wednesday: sullen disappointment.  Words still don't do it justice.  At this point we've decided a) that primula is channeling mystery berry from Pokemon and b) that our hypothesis stands true so far.

Experiment 3: Oh, this should end well...

DukeOEarl: Vanilla. Green. Tea. Oh man. Oh /T/sus. Oh man. Oh /T/sus.  Wait...this...this /t/ea smells like Cheez-Its.  What the...  Do want...  Wait... It doesn't taste like Cheez-Its.  Shit.  It's subtly creamy, unlike the other /t/eas, but it's piss yellow, jasmine-hairspray, calamari-breeding environment was exactly the same as the others.

Tea_Pain: Yeah, that was a weird flavor/smell combo. Never had a /t/ smell like saltines and taste like caramel. This is like one of those 1st grade experiments the science teacher was forced to teach you. OMG, I bit an onion and it tasted like an apple because I was smelling a goddamn apple! Let's just say I was able to effectively trade all of my shitty snacks at the lunch table for whatever I wanted as long as I gave the other kids something good to smell while they ate it. #Won-ing.

DukeOEarl: Initially, as we steeped this /t/, the flower asploded and sent little yellow shit floating throughout the pot.  It was trying to pollinate us.  This is how the puppet masters started taking over.  Anyway, Tea_Pain is right.  This "vanilla" tea tasted more like caramel, essentially the opposite of the Bigelow that we tried recently.  The Bigelow was also more palatable.  Bigelow actually wins at something today. Congrats.  NEXT.

Experiment 4: And now, a soliloquy...

Tea_Pain: Fuck everything about Primula's flowering "Jasmine Green Tea". I have a ton of past experience drinking jasmine /t/ and never before have I been insulted to drink something with the label. I understand what Primula is trying to get at with its flowers and jasmine-y scents so you think everything smells like 8 dozen roses. They want to appeal to the people who say, "That tea looks beautiful." I agree that /t/, in the right setting, can look finer than January Jones kneeling before you on a bear-skin rug. However, I think Duke and I both believe that /t/ should be respected foremost as a beverage suited for the taste of the consumer.

Let me walk you through my first two sips of this /t/:

-Sip #1: Really smells like jasmine. Like...overdone jasmine. These guys aren't playing hard to get. My thoughts went something along the lines of, "Ok, so you finally get to showcase jasmine explicitly. Good job Prim-" followed immediately by a hack from my throat and a "-/T/sus, the aftertaste!"

-Sip#2: Okay, maybe it was just a weird sip, let's try this again. I was wrong. This shit doesn't even deserve to be classified as garbage due to that aftertaste. That's right, the aftertaste of synthetic jasmine flavoring just demolishes any reason to drink this.

Fuck, I really wanted to like this, too.

DukeOEarl: I was too busy laughing at Tea_Pain's hairball-like coughing from the /t/ to make a comment. On to the black /t/, fucking finally.

Experiment 5: Duke outs an imposter.

DukeOEarl:  So you remember how I mentioned a hair salon earlier?  Well...this "Earl Grey" flower didn't smell at all like Earl Grey.  It smell exclusively like hair spray if you took a can and sprayed it right into your eyes.  It's much less like Earl Grey and much more like Aunt Beatrice's perm. Even much less cool than that. You can't even light it on fire. The only thing hairspray is good for is flamethrower fighting.  This tasted like I kirby'd that hair salon, pre-bingo night.

This was a particular disappointment for me.  I love Earl Grey.  It's why I'm the Duke.  Calling this abomination of Aqua Net and Lipton an Earl Grey is like referring to the Black Eyed Peas as musicians, Justin Beiber as male, Wiz Kalifa as a rapper, Alexander Ovechkin as a champion, Tom Cruise as a sane person, or red as blue.

Primula you're on the black list.

Control Group: This is the opposite of Captain Planet.

Tea_Pain: Like I said before, we're sciencing. Thus, we need controls to make our research seem legitimate. Because we already knew our negative control (hot water) tastes just fine, we knew our positive control should be tested: throw dem flowers in the pot.

DukeOEarl: After tasting this abomination we realized they're all the same fucking thing.  Like if someone said, "Hey Duke, I just brewed this for you. Taste it and tell me which of the previous 5 /t/s it was." Yeah, I could not possibly guess correctly even if all of the above was an answer.  Tea_Pain's face of sullen disappointment comes to mind.

There were no survivors. (That's the trashcan)

Results:

What: An "assortment" of Primula Flowering Tea's

How much: ~$20 through Woot
What kind: Green- acai, pomegranate, vanilla, and jasmine; Black- Earl Grey
Taste: Like hairspray and flowers.
Repeat Drinkability: 1/10 (If you drink this with a girl, she might want the wilted flower afterbirth to remind her of the worst date she's ever had.)
Manliness: 0.5/10 (Tops.)

Discussion: So what'd we learn today?

Tea_Pain: If anything positive can come from this, it's that we've mastered the art of brewing flavored /t/s. In fact, this video should help show everything you ever needed to know on how to brew it!