Angrboda

Okay, Steepsterites.

Yesterday I had the Clear Jade Orchid and I just keep steeping the same leaves throughout the day. Three cups all in all, the last one I had sort of mid-afternoon-ish and at that point I had to pee constantly. Large cups, these.

Today we’re having another oolong and this time it’s a real genuine chinese Tie Guan Yin. Yes I am aware that all Chinese tea is genuine Chinese tea, but as this came to the household via a chinese colleague of my boyfriend’s who brought it with her when she got to Denmark and then gave him, for some reason, a whole bag of the stuff. We don’t know why but my theory is that he must at some point (he has worked with her before, and then she was home in China for a few months and is now back to work there again.) have told her about me and my interest and that would be the reason why.

My gain, anyway.

This is packed in portion sized samples and it’s in those wrappers where all air has been sucked out of it before sealing. It only says ‘Tie Guan Yin China Tea’ on the wrapper, which is golden, and then it’s got some Chinese characters on it as well. Nothing wtih western letters giving a clue as to brand or similar. I have attempted to take a picture of the wrapper so that you can see, but as the kittens were ‘helping’ me operate the camera… I have included picture links at the bottom. If anybody can read the Chinese writing for me, I would appreciate it. One portion packet seems to go quite well in size with my small teapot, so that’s what we’re going with here. That tiny wrapper held a whole little handful of leaves. Amazing how little space things take up just by having the air sucked out of it.

I actually remembered to smell the leaves before putting them in the pot. They had a rich, thick smell. Sort of dark green and woodsy, which made me think of a forest environment. Deciduous, mostly. I know it’s really fields and plantations, but I rather like the idea that it might be tea growing among a bunch of other plants and trees, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a tiger or a firefox just around the corner…

After steeping it smells more toasty and woodsy, and the colour has changed. It’s more orange now than green. Strangely enough it’s the same orange as the colour of the tea in the cup so that leads me to think that perhaps this particular smell does not actually trigger synesthesia so much as my brain belives it does because it makes the association with what I can see in the cup. It does smell like that colour though, so who knows, really?

There is a strong floral note to the aroma as well. If I close my eyes I picture little white flowers, although I have no idea what sort of flowers they are. I don’t know plants. I think my brain is just inventing some random flowers really.

It has a very full flavour. Just a few sips and my whole mouth is filled with a strong aftertaste. Again it’s got a quite toasted note which I rather like. In spite of the leaves looking very green oolong it gives the flavour a more darkish oolong boost. I’m not really a fan of those very very green oolongs. To me, with those one might as well have gone for a green tea proper instead. I like it when an oolong actually tastes like oolong.

That means woodsy, slightly earthy and toasted flavours. It’s kind of grainy and nutty too. A bit like the ricey aspect of a genmaicha, really. If you picked a genmaicha apart and focused ONLY on the flavour that the popped rice in it imparts, that’s what I’m reminded of.

I’m very pleased with this and would rate it around 85 points. As I don’t know the brand, I’m not going to put an official rating on it though. Others might have other unknown TGY’s and it would just be a mess, I think.

Picture of the wrapper: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/sOYrqqoOej7KewgJg0Ppxjt0rtk7VScRcTAqR2hWR8Q?feat=directlink

I’m sorry to say that I thought I had already posted about this one, so when I used the last of the leaves this morning to make a cup for me and my better half, I was not paying too much attention to what I was drinking. This is particularly bad because this is one that Ssajami shared with me, and I’m not happy that I can’t write a proper post about it.

So since I can’t give a detailed review of it, I can at least say that there was nothing about it that surprised me. No unusual flavours that made it particularly good or ruined the LS experience.

It was just a nice, smoky tea which made for a very pleasant morning cup. Nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to LS’s but it seemed a good representation fo LS as a type. Very nice.

(I promise to pay more attention in the future)

(Note, this is not so much a post about the way this tea is to drink (awesomesauce) as it is a post about the thought processes it gave me this morning. Feel free to skip the following ramblings)

Om nom nom nom! I love this tea and I could probably buy it again.

Shang Tea gave me excellent customer service the one time I ordered from them and earlier still than that when I had a question. But it just strikes me as so backwards and impractical when I as an international customer have to contact them first by email and then email my order in. At least that’s how I did it the first time, I don’t know if it would still be that way but I have to assume it would. I know it’s silly if that’s how it works for international customers, but I still feeling like I’m imposing.

And not only that, but then I get to cross my fingers that Customs don’t decide to charge me for the package. I realise that they might as well do that on stuff shipped from China, but it has just never happened to me with any other mail than stuff coming from the US. I suspect they’re checking US packages more diligently because people are far more likely to do their internet shopping from the US than from China. Last time I got charged was a package from 52teas with all of three pouches in it. BAM! That tea was suddenly twice as expensive.

So all in all, I’ve got a few American tea shops that I can order from, but I always do it with my hopes up and my fingers crossed… I hope the 52teas Christmas box will make it through the eye of the needle. I’m trying again this year in spite of Danish Postal Service’s major cock-ups last year. And that’s cock-ups plural. Yes, they did the same idiotic thing twice with the same package. And lost one other package and misplaced another one too while they were at it.

So yeah, I’ll be on the lookout for some sort of alternative. To that end I was checking TeaSpring, as I thought they would probably be my most likely candidate of delivering something similar. No such luck, although I have made a note of a few others that caught my interest.

After that I inadvertantly wound up on Nothing But Tea’s website where I accidentally put something in the basket (seriously, I didn’t meant to initially), and then while I was at it anyway, I figured I might as well continue.

So I’ve just placed a rather substantial order that I was not even allowed to make yet (still have one tin and five samples to go). It just happened, I don’t know how! Instead I shall be saving my TeaSpring order for when the requirements of decupboarding have been met.

I think it’s something in the tea that inspired me to do that. I think it’s that thick honeyed sugary note that tastes like the top of a creme brulee that does it. I’ll do anything for a nommy dessert. Nearly.

In the meantime, suggestions for similar alternatives are appreciated. Don’t worry about whether or not the brand is available to me, I’ll figure that out myself. I know some brands that aren’t, but there are many I’ve never checked.

Good morning Steepsterites,

This fine Saturday we are starting out with a gift from Dinosara and it’s another one of those Russian Roulette Brewings. Steep first, look it up second. Consequently my intuition landed me in a spot of trouble as it made me pick a tea which isn’t really a breakfast-suitable tea at all. At least, I would have been more likely to have it in the afternoon.

I was rescued, however, by that fact that once I tasted it, it didn’t seem quite so anachronistic at all. For some reason a tea with fruit and almonds in it manages to work quite well with our ritual weekend pancakes with apple bits in.

The aroma is largely almonds, I think, and then the cranberry underneath that adding a non-descript mahogany coloured fruity aspect to it. Bear in mind though that this is an almond aroma. It does not in any way, shape or form resemble marzipan, for which I am grateful. (I love marzipan, as well as just about any other type of confectionary (nearly) that you can think off, but I rather doubt it would have worked in this particular instance.)

This is one of those tea that does that funny switcheroo thing as it cools down, too. Now that I’m halfway through the cup and it’s heading towards Lukewarm Lane, it’s the cranberries who’s doing the driving and the almonds relocated to the backseat. I quite like it when a flavoured tea does that. It’s like you get the best of both, even if one does wish it could do so while the tea was still slightly warmer.

And that’s just the aroma.

In the flavour (which is a muddly orange, I think because of the almonds) it’s rather more even. I can find almonds and cranberries with equal ease, but I can’t really find the tea base very easily. Can’t be that interesting then, can it?

It’s very smooth and extremely well flavoured. Slightly heavy and super suitable for autumn. Thank you hugely, Dinosara! This was awesome!

Dinosara shared this one with me, and it’s a blind steeping in the sense that I made it first and looked it up to see what was in it after. I’m living dangerously, me! Turns out it was a vanilla flavoured black. You know, I have a suspicion that the lovely Dinosara has been paying attention to my quest for the perfect vanilla black… I must say I whole heartedly approve of this. (It’s such a nommy quest too, because all the ones I’ve been trying have been really good, but just not quite there yet.)

It smells very sweet and vanilla-y. Almost ever so slightly too sweet, but not quite into cloying territory yet. It’s just right on the border of being a bit much. Additionally there is a note of something kind of honey-y and nutty or perhaps more sort of fudge-y or caramel-y. That all sounds very awesome, but somehow it’s just not quite my perfect vanilla black perfect aroma. It lacks a bit of roughness. A bit of that leather-y pod-feeling to it. This all smells too sweet and adorable, and I want my vanilla black to be a bit more of a villain, really.

The flavour is strongly vanilla, but not the honey-y sweet fudge-y flavour from the aroma. This is more in the way of the perfect vanilla black, although still not quite there yet. It has that bit of roughness to it, and it is one of those that taste like tea primarily and the flavouring secondarily and not the other way around. It just doesn’t have that pseudo-coconut-y not that I like in a vanilla black. If it had that, we would be well on our way towards perfection, but I have come to realise that this note is bloody hard to find.

Cake and tea. This is fodder for the writing mind. (Probably, to be honest, especially cake…)

This one was shared with me by Dinosara and an excellent choice for sharing it was too. Vanilla blacks have turned into something of an obsession for me. I am searching for the perfect vanilla flavoured black, seeing as I can’t apparently get the actually perfect vanilla black that Chi of Tea sold. That one was so awesome and just right in every way.

This one has bits of vanilla pod in it, which is a plus. I don’t care if they only impart very little actual flavour, they have a huge significance aesthetically. The perfect vanilla flavoured tea much have them, I think. It also, according to Upton’s information, has artificial flavouring. I’m less keen on that. The perfect vanilla black should be flavoured with real vanilla. Not an artificial approximation of vanilla.

(Unless by artificial flavouring they mean giving the tea a flavour which it does not have naturally, in which case it’s an entirely different crate of fish. I don’t consider this very likely though…)

The aroma is strong on the vanilla notes. A sweet caramel-y vanilla, hanging heavily over the surface of the tea itself. It smells right, I have to say. It smells like my memory of the aroma of the aforementioned Perfect But Unavailable vanilla black, except it lacks the note reminding me of coconut which in turn reminded me of a specific sort of licorice sweets. I don’t get that whole association chain here. Still, it’s close enough that I would say the prospects of finding the perfect vanilla tea is looking quite good at the moment.

The flavour does not hit you in the face with vanilla. It’s definitely there, but this is tea-flavoured tea which ALSO tastes like vanilla. Not just tea that tastes like vanilla, the end. That’s a mark in the positive column, as is the fact that while it is somewhat modest and doesn’t overpower the base, the vanilla is easily detectable.

It has a dry feeling to it, though. It’s not astringent as such, but it is a dry sort of flavour (also, it’s dark brown. Been a while since I had a synesthesia inducing tea, actually) and this then led me to actually look up taste-colour synesthesia, which didn’t seem to yield very many useful results. Maybe it’s not a very common type, and I’ve only got it in a mild form, I think, due to how it doesn’t always work. No matter what,
’¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨4yurjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjh (Luna helping me type there. I choose to share the antics of my cats rather than deleting them) it caused me to forget about the tea which is now lukewarm.

So anyway, it tastes dark brown, which is more the colour of black tea, seeing as vanilla on it’s own has more greyish sort of flavour. That dry flavour that caused that whole side-tracking thing with the synesthesia is not really something I think would be part of the perfect vanilla tea. It’s distracting, and for that I will say that this is not the perfect vanilla tea either, although a very good candidate indeed. If the dry note had not been quite so strong, it would have been a different matter entirely. Maybe also with a touch of that coconut-y note as well. Then it would have been worth at least ten more points.

It is November. NaNoWriMo is upon us. Well, it’s upon me anyway. (I am Angrboda there also if any of my other Steepsterites are NaNoing and would like a writing buddy)

So I’ve made me a cup of writing tea. Or cooking tea as it turned out, but still. This is one that ssajami shared with me and it’s a quite interesting tea. I encourage all to go and have a look at JK Tea Shop’s description of it (available here on Steepster), because I don’t think I can explain it in my own words. Basically it’s a white tea that isn’t a white tea. Go read it for yourself.

So consequently, I’m not at all sure what to expect from it. In my head I want to liken it to Bai Mu Dan for some reason. Probably only because it has ‘bai’ in the name, which is a rather flimsy reason for association, but such are the inner workings of the human brain. It doesn’t come out smelling anything at all like BMD, though. In fact, it has a rather strong note of honey. Rich, luxurious honey bought directly from the farmer and hasn’t spent three months on a supermarket shelf first. I can almost see the bee in my inner eye.

The flavour is twofold. There is a top note which strikes me as weak and watery and then there is a bottom note where all the flavour is. It feels unbelievably thick too. Like there’s something in it making it ever so slightly viscous. At first I found this a little unpleasant but actually it seems to enhance the flavour. The flavour seems more concentrated in each sip, as compared to just about most anything else ever to have come out of my teapot.

Given it’s thin and watery nature, there is no reason to dwell on the top-note. The lower note, the one with all the flavour in it, is a different matter. It’s one thing to say it holds the flavour and it feels like it’s concentrated, but what does it actually taste like? Well, dear readers. Good bloody question!

It tastes like tea. It actually tastes like a cheap bagged version of English Breakfast that I used to have. I think it was from Pickwick. A note of honey and an unmistakable flavour of default tea. Bear in mind, please, that I actually used to really rather like this EB it reminds me of. I really enjoyed that honey note in it and the way it tasted almost like there was a teensy bit of milk in it. It’s a bit woody in flavour as well and it tastes a bit toasted.

I can see why the comparison to white tea as the closest thing in type is still not quite satisfactory. It doesn’t taste anything at all like something I would suspect of being white. If anything it tastes more like an oolong on the darker end of the spectrum, which I find slightly bizarre all things considered.

What an interesting tea!

This is one that Dinosara shared with me in our recent trade. It was an amount that just fit the size of the pot that I use when sharing with the boyfriend, and as he tends to like ‘black and fruity’ it was also an obvious candidate for sharing.

So I did.

I can smell the mango in the aroma, but there’s something else in there as well which smells sort of spicy and … something! I know I know that smell, but I can’t for the life of me put my finger on what it is. I suspect it probably has something to do with the petals of something or other in the leaves. I asked the boyfriend and he suggested it smelled a bit like mulled wine, possibly cloves. That could be it, but I’m not sure.

That thing I can’t remember is in the flavour as well. Right at first for a brief moment, and then it sort of turns into a flavour of sunflower seeds and finally mango. The mango is most prominent on the aftertaste, but it’s a very authentic tasting mango. It makes me want to eat one.

It’s very nice, this, and it also earned the boyfriend seal of approval in spite of initially having inspired a bit of ‘meh’ in him when told what it was. Personally, though, I could have lived without the funky sunflower seed flavour…

Look at me with my posting! I’m sharp and kicking bottom. It’s 1pm and I’m steeping this as my fourth cup today. I shall be in a constant back and forth to the bladder unloading station for the rest of the day, I expect.

This one came to me from ssajami and I have high expectations of it. It’s a Keemun, how could I not? It smells exactly like one too. Grainy and sort of pseudo-smoky with a touch of something floral. And also quite sweet and caramel-y. This is a very good smell, this smell that I’m smelling! So rich and creamy and sweet, it reminds me a little of creme brulee, although not as much as the Clear Jade Orchid oolong from Shang Tea does. (That one is crazy creme brulee-y!)

Gosh, it’s very sweet in flavour as well! There was one note in there; I caught a whiff of it for a split-second just before swallowing and it was pure sugar. After just this one sip there’s a feeling of aftertaste expanding in the mouth like an explosion. It starts at the taste buds and then grows to encompass the entire mouth until it feels almost as if the cavity itself is really getting bigger.

Okay, that description was mildly icky, but I hope you get what I mean here. I do hope you have all had at some point in your life a tea with an aftertaste that does this. It’s so… strange and weird and good.

Anyway, back to the flavour. It’s a quite smooth tea with an almost milky feel and very sweet as well. Quite akin to caramel but not 100% there. Not yet. Like the flavour nuance just before caramel.

There isn’t much in the way of grain-y flavours, though. I’m sort of missing a bit of rye bread-y bite to it, and the absense of that gives the impression of a very mild tea. A bit shy. I should have liked it to have a little more oomph to it.

If it had had the grainy notes, I could have gone on and on about that and about the comparison to proper danish rye bread and how that differs from the stuff most of the rest of the world calls rye bread, and the pros and cons of same. As it isn’t really there, it’s rather difficult to say anything about it.

That sweetness, however, that is spectacular and it’s worth every single point here. Not a favourite Keemun for me at all, it’s far too well-behaved, but definitely not a bad one either.

Fare thee well, Cherries Jubilee.

Last cup. I nommed it. Om nom nom nom.

The sweet Dinosara sent me a swap package which I received on Monday. At first I was all excited and dithering about where to begin, but as I was feeling decidedly under the weather (what a great timing to receive care-mail!), attempting to choose between new teas and the very idea of posting about it in any sort of useful way turned out to be rather too much for my meagre brain capacity to handle. In the end I turned towards the tried, tested and true comfort teas (Kusmi’s Caramel and ditto Four Red Fruits, if you’re curious. Seperately, mind). Untill this morning.

I’m slowly recharging my batteries, but I’m still not the brightest bulb in box. Yesterday, for example, someone told me they were a ‘textbook asthmatic’ and my first thought was that she was allergic to textbooks. Yes. I know. Consequently choosing between new things is obviously still rather difficult, so I went for the sample of LS, because I know LS. I know what I like in an LS and I know what to expect from one. It seemed the simplest solution for the moment.

The sample pouch contained exactly precisely just about my preferred amount of leaf for a small pot. How excellent. I tried smelling the dry leaf in the pouch, but I couldn’t really get anything from it. There was a sweet note and no smoke at all, which I find somewhat confusing considering what we’re dealing with here. On the other hand, I’m not certain my nose is entirely trustworthy at the moment.

After steeping, it smells grainy and honeyed and with a touch of something that rather reminds me of lingonberry jam. Still no smoke, though. This doesn’t smell like a standard LS at all. Where is the smoke??? It’s missing; it’s not there! It is being advertised to me as smoky, and I wants it!

But then again, the trustworthyness of my nose is somewhat in question… I hope that’s why I can’t find the smoke. Although, you would think that smoke should be the one thing I could find…

squints at cup

One last chance to deliver some proper smokyness. Flavour. Okay, yes, the flavour has some trace amount of smoke, but not nearly strong enough that I think DeRen can really get away with saying it has ‘smoked aroma’ at all, be it ever so gentle. I believe there’s a distinct difference between ‘gentle’ and ‘barely there’.

The flavour that we have left reminds me mostly of a sort of mix between Bai Lin and Tan Yang. Something sort of inbetween those two. It’s quite grainy like the Bai Lin, but doesn’t have the orange-y note, and it’s quite fruity and cocoa-y like the Tan Yang, but without (infamously) the pseudo-smoke. It does however have that Fujian-ness about it that makes it so easy to recognise. Full and strong and very, very pleasant.

Yes, this has a ton of qualities that I really like. It’s a very good representative of my Number One Favourite tea producing area, indeed, but as I am being led to believe that it’s supposed to be smoky and it just isn’t delivering on that count, I’m going to have to dock some points.

Greetings all.

These days the boyfriend and I are watching a BBC series about China. We tend to do one episode per evening while eating (Dining table? What’s that? Ooooh, you mean the cat playground!) and the episode we watched yesterday was primarily about the Yunnan province. Although tea wasn’t mentioned more than briefly. Mostly it was about nature and a wee bit about anthropology as well. Quite an interesting series, actually. The first episode we watched was about how they grow tiny little rice fields terraced up and down mountains and with little walk-ways so narrow that it looked like if you lost your footing and fell, you would be lucky if you got out of it with only a broken leg. Amazing how adaptable the human species is! And how inventive. O.o

Anyway, inspired by that first mentioned episode, I thought I should drink some Yunnan tea today and it just so happens that I’ve got a sample of this one which the very kind Ssajami shared with me recently.

While I was steeping it I found myself assailed by a strong caramel-y aroma. Especially while pouring my cup. It’s was unbelievable and for a moment I wondered if I had actually managed to pick something caramel flavoured instead of what I thought I had taken. But as the sample tin that this is in is a small pale grean Adagio sample tin and as the tin the Caramel is in is a large, brown Kusmi tin, I didn’t think this very likely. So apparently this tea just have a strong note of caramel in the aroma. That’s new to me. I’ve never noticed this sort of note in a Yunnan before.

So when I tasted it, I was expecting something with a slightly sticky flavour and absolutely dripping with caramel. But it wasn’t. Instead I got something that from sip one was more nutty than anything else. Walnuts in particular. I can just visualise them in my head as I’m drinking it. The note is so strong that this would be a poor base for something walnut flavoured, because it would just be impossible to tell a difference.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think it WAS flavoured!

How very pleasant to happen upon a Yunnan black that doesn’t taste like hay, but like walnuts. This is definitely preferable.

It’s not completely unusual though. It is in fact still very recognisable as a Yunnan due that unmistakable spicy, pepper-y, prickly note in it and it’s all smoooooooooth too.

Very nice tea this. Thanks for sharing, Ssajami.

ETA by the way of the unrelated kind! Finally have the real ring, a photograph of which can be seen here. http://pics.livejournal.com/iarnvidia/pic/0000121b

A while ago I posted about a Kenyan black from Harney&Sons that QuiltGuppy had been so kind as to share with me. That one was quite a hit in this household, and since then I have become interested in the African continent. Teas from Africa are still rather rare here though, especially non-Kenyans, so when the boss and I made our latest AC Perch’s order for work and I saw a Tanzania, I jumped at the chance. I’ve only ever had African tea from Kenya before.

Like the Kenya it’s quite strong and full-bodied. I got distracted while drinking it so instead of writing the post and paying attention to it, I was doing all sorts of other things, but I’ve had it a few times so I feel fairly confident in making this summary.

As mentioned, quite strong and full-bodied. It’s an excellent morning tea, as it really gives a fair kick. However, it’s not a very complicated tea to drink. It’s relatively uniformly tea-flavoured with not a lot of specific characteristics that I’ve been able to find so far. A pleasant strong black for times in need of extra strength and it would probably carry milk quite well, but also a fairly anonymous flavour profile.

The rather non-descript taste of it might actually be to its own advantage, because that means one can drink it when in need of something strong and powerful to get back on one’s feet, and still not being something one has to pay a lot of attention to enjoying while drinking when one really doesn’t possess sufficient energy to do so.

It gets lots of points on being interesting as well as a good cup. With a relatively high caffeine content, it’s an excelleng Gah-Caffeine-Me-NAO!-tea.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with this purchase although I did prefer that aforementioned Kenyan over this one.

GOSH! 500 followers! O.o Have I somehow actually managed to be interesting? HI, ALL! :D waves wildly

Have just flea treated the cats. Am therefore currently the World’s Evilest Evah! Obviously I had to pick a tea that reflected my cruelty. Uh, or something. (A fruit flavoured black just can’t in anyway be made to reflect evilness at all, can it?)

Okay, so it may not be all that evil, but on the other hand, I’ve managed to make it quite good and flavourful today. I took a leaf out of Kusmi’s book, really, because Kusmi bases their flavoured black teas on a Chinese black and recommend a lower than boiling steeping temperature. This one, I discovered when looking into it for Ssajami yesterday, is on a Keemun base and that made me wonder if, like Kusmi’s blends, it might benefit from a lower temperature than boiling.

And guess what. It DID! At least I think that’s the reason. This cup is all sweet and fruity, and with a pleasant berry-y aftertaste.

And this is where I look for previous rating and discover that I haven’t actually posted about it before. Better make it from the top then.

The leaves and the aroma of it is quite spot on the strawberry, but initially I found the flavour a little lacking in that department. I was expecting something with a little more emphasis on the strawberry, but in hindsight I suspect it’s the unusual base (Keemun) that is messing with my perception.

The lower temperature seems to have tamed the Keemun a bit and allowed more of the flavouring to come out so it feels more fruity this time around than it did before. Previously I would have given it maybe the high end of the 70s, but I’m going to give it a tad more based on this experience.

Still though. It’s not my perfect strawberry tea. I don’t think the base and the flavouring are really the best combination here, in spite of the fact that Keemun is a tea I normally rather enjoy. I should have liked to see this flavouring on a slightly less grainy tasting base. I think that would help a lot.

Gosh, Steepsterites! It feels like it’s been ages, eons and decades since I last inflicted my presence upon your unfortunate and super-humanly patient souls! There’s just been so much recently, you know? We were away over the weekend so I’m really in need of a bit of a breather. A 9yo birthday. Four children and fourteen adults in one lounge for a whole afternoon. Gosh! O.o (Nothing wrong with my family at all, mind. It’s just such a lot of people)

So I thought it was definitely time to sit down and get a proper post together and relax a bit before making my shopping list and getting some groceries in. This is one I got from Ssajami, and I was quite excited about it from the moment I took it out of the box. The description of it on the pouch sounds right up my alley!

The aroma has a quite strong note to it, which I think is a mixture of the honey and the flowers, although depending on what sort of flowers honey is made of it can have very different smells as well. I can’t really find the fruit very well in the aroma. Perhaps a tang of rhubarb, but primarily it’s honey. Thick and rich and viscous.

The flowers give it a rather strong floral flavour as well, which disappointed me a bit. I was looking for something rather more fruity and this is borderline verging on slight bitterness instead. I’m not sure what sort of black tea is at the base here, but I suspect that like most other flavoured teas where this is isn’t specified, it’s probably a Ceylon. I should have liked to have had it on a Chinese base instead, to put that astringency-going-on-bitterness out of the picture. Oh well.

That particular disappointment aside, it’s a quite nice tea. Once I know what to expect from it, I find the floralness less of a problem, and I have no problem locating fruity flavours underneath. Mainly straw- and blueberry, not so much rhubarb. I suspect the rhubarb here, being in itself rather astringent, is hiding in that nearly-bitter astringency of the black tea.

I did however make it with boiling water although Le Palais des Thes recommend slightly below boiling because I only discovered that when it was too late, and it did possibly get a bit of an extra long steep because I was too lazy to change the timer. I still have enough leaf to try again and we’ll see then if that makes a huge difference. I expect it will definitely eliminate some of that astringency there.

As it is, however, I’m quite pleased with what I got out of it this time too.

Om nom nom nom! I really am very much enjoying this blend! I wish I could remember who recommended it to me, because they ought to get a proper thanking.

Hi all.

First of all, I had a little accident buying Kusmi the other day, so if anybody out there is fond of cinnamon flavoured black, I have a proposition for you. I shall post this on the boards as well. (Basically, I just grabbed a brown tin that looked exactly like the caramel… It was not caramel.)

Secondly, this tea is from aforementioned ill-fated Kusmi purchase and this one was not a mistake. It’s one I’ve been wanting to try for ages. Actually ever since I had that fantastic vanilla Nilgiri that Chi of Tea had and I became really interested in finding my perfect vanilla tea. Well, my second favourite anyway, as I’m giving up hope of the Chi of Tea vanilla ever getting back in stock.

What I like in a vanilla flavoured black is clearly present vanilla, and preferably with some leather-y undernotes of something akin to coconut. And it must be SMOOooooooooth, with a captial SMOO. The Chi of Tea one had all of this. I have yet to find the same flavour profile, fulfilling all requirements elsewhere although I have found some very acceptable alternatives.

This one had the right sort of aroma of the dry leaf. Not super sweet and obviously vanilla-y to the point of near cloying syntheticness, but something more rough and wood-y and leather-y. After steeping the vanilla flavouring smells subdued and the Chinese base is coming very nicely through. It smells grain-y and I wonder if there is some Fujian black involved here. Since they don’t say anything about it other than ‘Chinese black’ I’m assuming they’re using some sort of standardised blend of several to ensure a consistent flavour. There’s just something about it that smells rather Fujian-y.

Full marks on aroma, then.

The vanilla flavouring is extremely subtle. I’m getting a whole lot of ‘black tea’ and only a smidgen of vanilla. The funny thing is, in the Caramel from Kusmi, this subtleness is something I really like, but here I’m finding it vaguely disappointing. I mean, I don’t want a vanilla flavoured tea to be only sweet, but I do want there to be some sweetness, and I really think this could have benefited from a tad more of that aspect.

It does have potential, though. This would be one of the few that I might bother experimenting more extensively with the parameters to see what happens. A full boil heat, for example, in spite of what Kusmi says, and shorter or longer steeping times and less and more leaf. I think the steeping time would be the best place to start. It tastes that way.

I’m giving it a relatively low score to start with, then we’ll see later on if it can redeem itself under different conditions.

First of all, thank you everybody who commented or liked yesterday’s post. I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it all yet, which as the boyf fiancé(!!! I shall have to learn to spell this word now) said, nothing has actually really changed, but everybody is suddenly very excited.

Second, is it really six days since I last went through the recent posts page??? O.o I forgot to pay attention to how many pages it actually went back, but it was many! Okay, granted, I could have just caught up with the dashboard instead of going through all posts, but these days somehow reading the dashboard instead of the all recent posts feels a bit like reading the summary instead of bothering with the whole novel. It’s cheating and I’m obsessive-compulsive. The problem here, I expect, is probably especially the latter. :p

Thirdly, the thing about catching up with recent posts, especially when there are many, is that it’s inspiring! It makes me want to drink tea, which isn’t a bad thing at all. It also makes me want to drink tea to post about, tea I’ve never had before, which makes it all rather more complicated, because I can’t write a post at the same time as catching up on other people’s posts. I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work. One or the other always ends up being neglected and I find myself with half a post and cup of cold tea which wasn’t supposed to be cold.

In other words, I now get to compose a post based on some quickly taken down keywords. It will therefore likely be short and to the point and not very interesting. (‘To the point’ she says, having just written all of the above…)

I was given this tea by ssajami in our recent exchange (return package should be in transit) and as it was a shared pot I used the whole thing in one go. Very suitable amount of leaf for that too, as it turned out. I wasn’t sure about that at first, I thought I might have used too much, but otherwise it would have been a ridiculously small amount to save.

The aroma was extremely sweet. I thought it was very caramel-y with only a very small bit of that hay thing I normally associate Yunnans with.

Flavour-wise it was the same thing. Very sweet, very caramel-y and with no hint of either pseudo-smoke, pepper or spicy hay to be found, except a very small amount of the latter buried deep deep underneath all that caramel.

As the cup cooled a bit and the flavour developed some more, it was completely opposite. At that point the spicy hay that I’m more familiar with dominated the flavour, and it was the caramel buried deep underneath.

The weird thing was, though, that at the very bottom of the cup when it had cooled even more, the flavour turned itself upside down again, once more resembling the first impression.

Tempted to quote commercials and say, ‘because first impressions last’ here, but I shan’t.

All in all a very nice cup that I was pleased to get to sample.

This would be the first cup of the return of an old favourite recently returned to my collection backlog.

And actually, slightly unfair to the tea because it’s a really good tea, today it’s just a decoy cup.

See, something interesting happened to me this afternoon, involving me getting proposed to.

If you can guess what I answered, you win a cookie.

♥

(Edit: Oh my goshy-wosh, this is still every bit as excellent as I remembered!)

It would appear I forgot to add this one to my cupboard when I received it a few days ago. This has been corrected. I did a swap with Ssajami recently. Well, actually, I’m still in one, as I’m currently in the planning stage of the return package. Should have it done by the end of the day.

This is the first of the teas I received that I’ve tried, and I can’t remember if I’ve ever had a Nepal before. I think I maybe have once or twice but I can’t remember anything about what it was like or what I thought of it, so it’s still a brand new experience for me.

The leaves looked quite Darjeeling-y, actually, in how they were not all black but had several lighter coloured and almost green leaves in there.The aroma is quite sweet and floral, with some slightly salty and grassy undertones that reminds me of Dragonwell.

Gosh, the flavour is very Darjeeling-like. Spicy and prickly and floral, with tons of grassyness underneath. My history with Darjeeling has been quite rocky. Initially, when I had my first ever First Flush, I found it all sorts of awesome. Just couldn’t get enough. Then one day the scales tipped and I just couldn’t have all that spicy pricklyness. It was too much. Presently I’m slowly inching my way back towards toleration. I don’t think I’ll ever go all the way into loving it again, but I can definitely tolerate it a lot better than I could just last year. It works best for me when it’s in a blend, really.

This, however, is not Darjeeling, but it tastes very similar. That prickly spicyness I mentioned, it leaves an almost bitter sensation on the tongue, and it’s just not something I can handle anymore. Perhaps I’m too used to the super-smooth chinese blacks which you really have to mistreat horribly to get this sort of stingy bitterness out of.

That is not to say that it’s unbearably bitter, mind. It really is very little and for people who like Darjeeling and similar teas, it would probably be experienced as something quite pleasant. I’m just not one of those people.

Maybe I’m being unfair in the heavy comparison to Darjeeling, but really this tastes so similar to me that it’s impossible not to, and it’s also impossible to ignore my Darj. bias.

I think the next time I have this, I shall have to mess around with steeping times a bit. I don’t think this one was ideal. (Yes, I did remember to not use boiling water)

Yesterday, we went to the zoo. When we got there, we went into their restaurant and had some cake and hot beverages of choice. They had an offer for coffee and cake, but uncharacteristically I chose to have tea instead. Primarily, because I saw they sold Kusmi as their tea, rather than the average mediocre super-market tea brand. Even more uncharacteristically, I chose one which wasn’t even tea.

I’m not sure what made me go for this, but as I looked at their selection it was just the one that was standing out to me the most.

It was actually quite pleasant. It was a bit subdued in flavour, but I put that down to the rather non-optimal brewing conditions, and also the fact that I probably could have let it steep for longer than I did. Just… I was thirsty.

I’m not normally much of a big mint-fan, but this one was minty without tasting like a mouthful of toothpaste. It was not a minty tisane as much as it was a tisane with a fresh touch of mint to it.

I’m not very familiar with verbena, though. I’ve had it a few times before, but have no memory of what I thought of it. In this blend I couldn’t quite pick it out as an individual flavour, but it seemed to support that minty touch quite well, giving an overall flavour of something quite impossible to pin down but still very nice.

I was really quite pleased with my choice and I might choose it again if having tea out somewhere where they offer this brand. I probably wouldn’t buy it for myself though, because I can’t quite see myself drinking it at home very much.

Points given not on a general scale of nom-ness, but in comparison to my usual attitude towards herbals.

(Of course then when we came home, my next stop turned out to be at the emergency vet’s with Luna for re-stitching. Stupid cat. She’s home now, with new stitches and wearing a green bodystocking which makes her look frightfully silly. Hopefully this will be enough for her to have a chance to heal up properly.)

Danish tax people are on to my activities. 196 kr in customs fees they demanded in ransom for my 52teas order. The contents of which cost 50 kr LESS than that, shipping included. Greedy greedy customs!

Anyway, this tea came out just after I had decided that I wanted to try some great cherry blacks. This is not a black, though, and it has other things than cherries going on, obviously, but still. Uncanny.

I was sceptical at first because of the brandy. I’ve mentioned before at length my dislike of alcohol in general, but having read some posts about it, it seems like the brandy shouldn’t be too strong. My curiosity returned and I plucked up the courage to buy some for myself and check it out. Somehow I don’t think I’d have managed to get peace of mind until I had tried it.

It smells quite cherry-y, but also of something else which I can only describe as borderline bubblegum. Synesthesia input says dark purple-y red.

Flavour is very much cherries as well, and also quite nutty, which I think is the white tea shining through. Also a touch of vanilla to all the fruit but not really enough to make much of a spectacle of itself. It’s a bit like onions in a spaghetti sauce. It doesn’t taste like onions at all, but if you leave them out, you’ll get a boring sauce. The vanilla is like that here. If it was left out, the flavour would be paler. Or maybe still very nice, but just different.

The brandy is excellent in its absence. I admit I don’t know what brandy really tastes like other than ‘alcoholic’ and since I dislike the alcoholic flavour and feeling of spirits, it’s impossible for me to get past it. So I’m not about to find out what it tastes like just to see if I can find it here. For me, the fact that I can’t find it, is a great big plus.

I’m glad I was brave and gave this a try, it was really well worth it. Whether it was also worth the extra customs expense… yeah, why not? Doesn’t mean I won’t whine about it though.

I need something with a bit of kapow and sizzle this morning. So I’m not sure why I chose this one, which I stated earlier could definitely have benefited from having a little more of kapow and sizzle in it. Maybe because it’s new?

Dramatic evening was dramatic, as Luna is a very naughty patient indeed and have lost all but one out of four or five stitches. So it’s back to the vet we go today and see about getting her patched up. I suspect the Cone of Shame is in her near future.

Hence the need for something sturdy.

I have guilt squared! Just dropped the kitties off at the animal hospital for spaying, ear tatooing and vaccination. Luna was looking at me as I left, betrayal painted across her little face. Will be picking them up again between 2 and 3 o’clock this afternoon and we’ll see if they hate me horribly then. In the meantime I must have something to soothe my frazzled nerves.

This is the last of the three I ordered from J&J, the three in my cupboard from them that I have left to try are the three free samples they included. I’m not sure why I bought this one, actually, given my reservations towards the Grey family. I think it’s some sort of thing where that’s a kind of tea that I have decided that I would like to like, so I can’t quite get myself to completely ignore it. The straight up Earl Greys are not the problem. It’s the variations that attract me. This one, I think, had me at ‘Girlie’.

Now the aroma of the leaves does indeed very much resemble the description by J&J, as ‘a boudoir in a cup’. I can easily pick out the bergamot, and lemon is not hard to find either, given the huge chunks of dried lemon in the leaves. And not just lemon peel as has been seen before by other companies. This is the first time I’ve actually seen actual dried lemon pieces in tea leaves. Peel and fruit bits and all!

Secondly there is vanilla and rosebuds, giving the aroma a sweet and floral aspect respectively. These two are what actually provides the majority of the girlie quality for me. It doesn’t smell quite pink, but we’re definitely in the lightly purple area here.

All in all, the aroma is quite pleasant, if a bit heady.

The flavour is very smooth and citrus-y. The vanilla is giving it all a creamy sort of feel to it and the bergamot is not too strong. It’s very clearly present, but it’s not overwhelming and it seems quite fresh and crispy. I think it’s the lemon that’s giving it that lift. It seems to me that I have a tendency to enjoy the Grey family more in general if there is either smoke or lemon involved. Perhaps one of these days I should try to make myself a classic EG with a slice of lemon in the cup.

I’m not sure what the rosebuds do here. I can definitely find some floral notes in the tea, but that might as well just be bergamot top notes. I can’t tell one kind of floral from another, so I can’t be certain of this at all. I choose to believe it comes from the rosebuds in this case.

This is a tea with a whole lot of stuff going on in it. Bergamot AND lemon AND vanilla AND floral rosebuds. It’s a very busy cup, which I find somewhat confusing to drink. It’s hard to get a proper grasp on the flavour as a whole, I think.

On the other hand, if it didn’t have so much going on in it, I’m not sure I would have cared for it much. A lot of these things are things I normally wouldn’t care much for but here are evening each other out in a pleasant way.

I think I will rather enjoy this tin. I’m not sure I’ll buy more of it after it’s gone though.