Harney and Sons Earl Grey reminds me of Grease

It's officially summer time.  Yeah duh right?  Actually, that's not what I meant.  It's officially summer time because me drinking outside in the sun with someone else's girlfriend officially started today.  Whose girlfriend?  Tea_Pain's.  And he's at work.

Oh look and here's some tea.

Bar Refaeli let's Duke out of her basement and into her garage

What up y’all.  Your Duke is back.  Boy, the Cayman Islands are beautiful this time of year.  Actually they’re beautiful every time of year; I feel like rubbing it in.  But really, I was here.  I’ll be updating regularly until further notice.  It’s good to see Tea_Pain can actually write without constant help.  Maybe he can get a job as a tea reviewer for a newspaper or something if he keeps it up.  He deserves a cookie.

Anyway, we’re about the tea here (or /t/), so let’s get to it.  Frankly, I’ve missed tea since the only thing they have in the Cayman’s is coffee or English tea (see: Bear Grylls favorite tea).  Time to brew up a pot of some Twinings Earl Grey.

SPONSOR: The dragonwell dries up

Even though we got one in the mail a looooong time ago, we still have yet to review a Dragonwell /t/.  And, well...  Duke is said to be back in the very near future after being released from JFK's detention center.  Apparently he and about 90 other passengers were stranded on a plane and so he started a kid-fighting ring to help entertain the passengers.  Think this, but with 2 year olds and parents screaming at them like they were losing a game of tee-ball.  According to Queens PD, what Duke did was illegal and, while he continued to state both children were fighting in self-defense, he had to stick it out for a couple days in a county jail and pay a fine.

Back to the point I was getting at before: Duke isn't the biggest fan of green /t/.  So I thought, before he gets back, why not review one kind I've been trying to review for awhile?  As the last /t/ they thrust upon our blag, BTC gave us a solid hundo of their Dragonwell.  Dear caffeine receptors, I am going to destroy you the only way the Chinese know how.  Let us begin.

SPONSOR: Smack my peach up

Who was the first guy to put peaches in his /t/ and say "Fuckin A, Jeffrey, this tastes marginally better than when I didn't have peaches in it!"?  The same goes for ginger and apricots.  Who stuck a piece of fruit/root in their /t/ and thought it magically tasted better?  I can see lemons, but dryer fruits like the ones I threw out there just...don't jump out at me.  Maybe these people all came together one morning and collectively said "Fuck gin pong, I'm never playing that again. What could I throw in here to make black /t/ taste less like coffee?"  And, in a bit of drunken clairvoyance, they made a /t/-version of Wop and dranketh from their goblets.  I present to you today's version of said concoction:

/T/sus.  I didn't know I was gonna be steeping trail mix.  Those chunks in there? Yeah, those are apricots.  How can I tell? Because those fuckers were the bane of my existence whenever I was trying to get the GOOD pieces (see: M&M's and mango slices) out of trail mix.  There were also some fuzzy-ish solids in the bag, and rather than label those as "mold", I dubbed them as the supposed "peaches".  No real ginger to be seen, but upon opening the bag, I got a big whiff of overly-sugared peaches and, there it is, a slight spiciness.  As pungent as the smell may be, I actually liked it.  It's hard to really discern each individual smell, but I'll just say it smells extremely sweet.

SPONSOR: Boston > Michelle Bachmann

Duke called. Probably from a coconut as the reception was shit.  He said he has about a week until he's back from whatever Caribbean excursion he went on (something about voodoo and rainforests or some shit).  He told me how much coffee has been forced upon him by the locals. He actually told me about the times (yes, multiple) he got malaria from being so much of a man (manliness attracts female mosquitos. Yeah, I just accidentally some science all over you).  Luckily, he survived multiple Bar Rafaeli encounters and drank enough rum, thus allowing his man card to remain intact. Be excited. The man is pissed off at the world and this is one of his few outlets.

In the meantime, BTC lucks out as I don't hate life nearly as much as Duke does, and thus, I don't entirely take it out on them.  Though, being halfway through their /t/ samples, I'm a little surprised as to how well they're holding up. Normally we'd find out that half the /t/ tastes like mermaid vagina and have to berate the company into submission.  No dice yet... but I AM reviewing a /t/bag today. And shit, if nothing else, I know they're already the "special" kids on the playground when compared to looseleaf.

SPONSOR: /T/anorexia

Ok, men.  There comes a time in every man's life when he has to drink and type. Or drive. Or do something dangerous under the influence of alcohol to prove that he is worthy of owning testicles. So, being the intoxicated reviewer that I am, I need to drink something so this hangover doesn't affect my interning abilities in the morning.  Oh shit, BTC sent me a black /t/, best known for their hangover-destroying characteristics.
"Ceylon Symphony", ey?  "Bright and Lively...Wonderful...The", ey?  According to these descriptives, I am about to become the world's peppiest Battlestar Galactica character. The joy inside me simply cannot wait to explode out of my dimples. /T/sus, grab me a fricken mug and let's MAN UP.

Look at alllllll that dust.  And the /t/ has yet another descriptive word- "delicate".  A ceylon, delicate? Really? A delicate black /t/ is like saying, "Oh ya, Raper John fooled around with a poodle or two in his day and then sold them to the Thai restaurant when he was done with them. Cool guy."  My main point... it's just not that common.  Also, I hope that dust doesn't make its way into the /t/ or else I'm gonna be drinking soup.

SPONSOR: Pyramid Scheme

I've always loved a good con: bachelors degrees from small liberal arts colleges, fake boobs, televangelists, etc. (though, when you get fucked by the fake boobs you actually enjoy it).  So when I looked into my huge box of samples and found a small sandwich bag full of /t/bags, I thought "Ok, this should make my mouth hate me today."  Oh hai, pyramid /t/bags.  Hopefully you're not as bad as the gimmick Lipton tried to pull a couple years back.  BTC better have their shit together on this one, nobody deserves to be associated with the L-word.

I opened up one of the /t/bags and was slapped by what seemed to be an angry black woman in church.  The smell was so pungent and so... good.  This smelled like the earthiest, sweetest Darjeeling I've ever witnessed.
Let's be honest, usually when I have this pungent of a /t/bag (see: anything Bigelow), it's a sign that the taste is artificial.  On top of that, the /t/ in the bag is usually worth about as much as the dirt I walk upon. Let's brew this bitch up.

SPONSOR: Boston's cherry just got pwnd

So, I took the advice of Rebecca Black and had so many "fun's" last night that I didn't wake up until 2 PM.  Success!  So what'd I do while I waited on Dart girl to get done with work?  I told my hangover to shut the fuck up and take it like a champ.  As I tried to piece together what happened between a dozen pulls of Kraken and making a 5 mile trek home on a bike, I went and got me a bag of /t/.  As is usual during my mid-hangover fluid binge, I wondered longingly, "What would late-80's hair band Warrant drink?"  Due to budget constraints and a jealous female, I cannot afford their answer. Instead, I had to settle for the similarly-named, less fake-titted /t/ from our sponsor, Sweet Cherry White.

Our /T/ guy is full of win.

Our /t/ guy got us another sponsor (obligatory "thaaaanks"), and uh, either he's really good at talking them up or the girl working PR and Marketing wants us really bad.  So I get home from work today and there's our /t/ guy sitting on the futon with a big ass box in front of him, grinning at me like he just screwed both of my sisters 5 minutes ago, and he points to the box.  I lifted that beast up and shook it around until I knew anything living inside was gone for good and I thought... it isn't /T/mas, why is there a box in my hands?  He tells me to open the damn thing and, sure enough, about 2 pounds of /t/ comes falling out.  I kinda felt like I was on the receiving end of an R. Kelly dream, only this was actually pleasant and less damp/illegal.

So, without further bullshit, I would like to welcome our newest sponsor, The Boston Tea Company.  Thanks for throwing your /t/ overboard and into our blag.  Also, thanks to you, the next time someone asks us how we sleep at night we can say, "We can't."  Reviews, you can has dem.

I, for one, welcome our local /t/ overlords.

Ok, Rishi, I get it.  You own Milwaukee.  If you were playing me in Riskopoly right now, I would be begging you for mercy as you clearly control everything but Mediterranean (which is way undervalued, in my opinion).  You also got to colonize the moon and get an extra 10 armies per turn because of that.  I GET IT.  So, rather than fight against you like my anti-establishment, Madisonian instincts are directing me to do, I will give you a shot as my /t/ overlord.  Who knows, I might go back to the mindset that you guys put out good shit on a regular basis.

Recently, Rishi has been talking up their Coconut Oolong as if it's the ugly girl with rich parents putting out dating ads on said daughter's behalf.  It's like they put on the sign stating "HEY, WE'RE RICH! TAKE OUR UGGO OUT FOR WALKS AND YOU CAN HAVE AN XBOX!"  Similar to that situation, ordering this /t/ started out pretty bittersweet.  First of all, I'm not a huge fan of coconut.  Due to it being summer, every drink with ice and a straw has fucking coconut in it, so I'm already agitated. And second, I was being served at a coffee shop, which are generally notorious for bad portions, scalding water, and TEA BAGS.  

It was my. fucking. day.

Disregard free time, acquire /t/

I got lost on a deserted island for about a month.  I fucking killed a polar bear. Life didn't make sense and every hour or so an Inception would tell me the episode I was in just ended. Also, John Locke is the human version of /T/sus.

But seriously, I just got the internet at my place this week (after waiting for about 3 weeks, thanks for that, AT&T) for the summer. So while Duke is getting ready to come back from his island vacation with Bar Rafaeli, I'll be updating ya'll on a few new samples we should be getting in... tomorrow.

Again, sorry for the mini-vacation we took. We'll be back to feeding the /t/ troll toll shortly. Absolutely no fucks will be given, as per usual.

Deuces,
Tea_Pain & DukeOEarl

Edward 40-Hands: Classy Edition

Bad about moving for an internship: Rishi, though great, has virtually taken over the entirety of the Milwaukee area leaving me with little-to-no variety outside of their own.

Good about moving for an internship: I finally have a /t/ CLOSET.

Because my /t/ closet was currently all reviewed, I decided to check out Trader Joe's to see if they had the mysterious and often sought-after Tejava. In Madison, I couldn't get off my ass to go down Monroe St. and buy a bottle because it was eternally winter.  Now, since I don't want to drink Rishi every...single...day, I figured I'd venture out and buy a bottle.  Luckily, the closest Trader Joe's had a few bottles in stock. I heard a lot about it from the interwebs when looking for newer /t/ brands and everybody raved.  I guess it's time to meet your maker.