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Another one from Auggy. It’s actually too late in the evening to be drinking tea. I ought to be considering going to bed so I can get out of it in the morning, but I was standing in the shower feeling the craving for pu-erh.

At first I considered some of the orange pu-erh that Wombatgirl sent me and which I’ve been partial to lately (I seriously need to get some more of the one NBT has the next time order, which won’t be long), but then I thought I’d rather give this one a try.

I’ve only had sticky rice once in my life. It was in the spring when the boyfriend and I were visiting friends in Paris. It was an asian restaurant (can’t remember exactly which country. Vietnam possibly?) and it was served inside an actual bamboo stick. Very tasty flavour added to the rice, although, it was a little difficult to get out of the stick.

Then I saw this one show up on my dashboard. I just couldn’t imagine that flavour in tea. Tea and rice were just completely non-combinable in my head, so I was moderately curious about it. I can’t remember ever actually having said this, but lucky for me Auggy can hear my thoughts. Or something.

I have three touchas and they certainly smell like rice. Take a bag of rice, throw in a spoonful of pu-erh leaves, shake well and inhale. That’s exactly what this smells like, both dry and steeped. I’m partial to the steeped aroma over the dry one though, as the steam makes it a rounder aroma which fills up the nose better.

The flavour is very rice-y and only moderately pu-erh. Rice is evidently a very dominant flavour and it kind of feels more like drinking a soup rather than drinking tea. If I had this around dinner time I suspect I’d have to remind myself that it isn’t actually food.

The pu-erh comes out a little more as it cools down to a comfortable drinking temperature, but it’s still not something that screams, “I’M A PU-ERH! HEAR ME ROAR!” It’s actually a very mild-mannered pu-erh. Maybe a little too mild. I don’t really feel like I’m drinking pu-erh and therefore it’s not really what I was looking for when I decided to try it. I could however find it one I’d like to come back to again and again for other reasons. Even if the flavour isn’t particularly complex, it’s still very nice and very interesting.

A smaller thing, is touchas in general. Can’t work out what I think about them. I like how practical it is, just unwrap one and add water. On the other hand with a toucha I don’t actually know how much leaf I’m using. I used one toucha to my small pot containing about half a liter of water, but had it been loose leaf, I think maybe I would have used a little more leaf.

And now to work out how many points I want to give it while trying not to be influenced by the fact that I can see how many points Auggy gave it behind the update window… Yes, I think I’ll score it like this.