I had so much fun with my advent calendar last year that I got two this year! As you can imagine, I wasn’t sure if I could handle two tea calendars (that’s a lot of caffeine, even on a workday) so I got a tea calendar and a hot chocolate one, with the reasoning that the tea calender is for the day and the hot chocolate is for the night.

While I’ve been posting about these on Instagram Stories, I also wanted to do a weekly roundup on my blog because it’s a lot easier to search here than on Instagram.

Both my advent calendars are from Yawn Brew and I got them through the kickstarter!

Tea Advent

I’ve basically realised that they alternate between a tea and a tisane! It’s pretty fun and I like the format.

Day 1: Vanilla Cinnamon – The dry leaves smelled like cinnamon and the wet leaves smelled like a cinnabun! It made me miss the Cinnabun stores in Japan. Although it packed a punch in terms of smell, the taste was surprisingly mild and I found myself enjoying this quite a bit.

Day 2: Choc Mint – Made a bit of a mess brewing this because the rooibos just flowed out of my little teapot. The chocolate is present mostly in the smell and the peppermint in the taste. As a peppermint fan, I enjoyed the strong minty taste, though I’ve realised I could do without the chocolate.

Day 3: Spiced Orange – The dry leaves smelled like orange but the brewed version reminded me of the M&S Mulled Wine tea for some reason. It’s basically a festive spiced tea with an orange note so if you like that, you’ll like this.

Day 4: Cranberry Apple – This smelled great but tasted fairly normal. More tart than sweet, with a strange woody note at the end.

Day 5: Candy Cane Popcorn – I was expecting some sort of genmaicha (because for some reason a lot of people like to refer to it as popcorn tea), but this was actually a little fruity. The caramel notes were more present in the smell and as an aftertaste.

Day 6: Strawberry Achoo – This was the worst tea of the week. I ended up getting very strong almond (almost artificial almond, if that makes sense) which tasted awful. There were no strawberry notes at all and I couldn’t finish this.

Day 7: Pumpkin Woopie – This was so much better than Strawberry Achoo, which probably made me a bit more enthusiastic about it in my initial Instagram Stories review. It’s mostly sweet with very very subtle spice notes.

Chocolate Advent

The chocolate advent was basically a mini trial and error test where I repeated tried (and failed) to make good hot chocolate. Thankfully the flavours repeat so I will have a chance to redeem myself as we draw closer to Christmas.

Day 1: Pumpkin Spice – I realised that there’s no milk in the house so I have to make this with hot water. Unfortunately, while I’m quite basic in many ways, I haven’t actually tried the pumpkin spice latte (or any other pumpkin spice food) and don’t have a good frame of reference. So this reminded me of the mulled wine tea (again).

Day 2: Salted Caramel – I managed to get milk but had no way to heat it up (living in a place with no microwave). I managed to use a combination of cold milk and hot water but the colour looks a bit light. That said, this tasted great. I didn’t really get the salted notes, which was a pity, but I LOVED the caramel notes with the tea. It wasn’t too sweet and made up for the lack of salt.

Day 3: Santa Spice – Living conditions were the same as before. This tasted like a milder version of the pumpkin spice hot chocolate and I find that I like this better.

Day 4: Dark – Pretty much a regular dark hot chocolate.

Day 5: Chilli Willy – This was a surprise but such a good one! It’s actually savoury (from the garlic, I think) which sounds odd but actually tasted pretty good. The spice level was very, very mild and that’s saying something because I have zero spice tolerance.

Day 6: Bah Humbug – I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a humbug (I believe they’re also a sweet?) but this tasted like the liquid version of Auntie Anne’s Chocolate Mint pretzel.

Day 7: Terry’s Mug – I assume this was inspired by Terry’s chocolate orange because it tasted like a chocolate orange from start to finish! Really enjoyed this and it’s probably the most accurately named hot chocolate for the week.

Pic of the Week