Angrboda

I may be pushing the limits with this one. I debated whether or not it belonged on the board or in one of my own posts, but eventually I decided that since it’s made of primarily real tea and it’s built pretty much like my other posts so here it is.

Once upon a time I was in a travelling teabox, the very same that inspired the one I’m organising here (note! Sign up for the Travelling Teabox by emailing address and steepster username to me at iarnvidia@gmail.com before dec 31st! Guidelines for participation can be found in this thread (http://steepster.com/discuss/102-travelling-teabox) on the board) and someone added these candies that I nabbed a couple of. Two red ginseng candies from Korea, containing sugar, maltose, red korean ginseng chunks, raw honey and peppermint, and two oolong tea candies from god knows where in Asia and containing oolong tea, maltose and sugar. (There were also a couple of maple candies which I’ve eaten long ago)

I’ve never had the guts to try either of these, but tonight I happened across them and I was feeling brave. It’s a sort of greenish dark grey colour and it smells vaguely of tea. It definitely does taste like a sweetened proper oolong tea, though. It’s like a dry cup of tea. It’s like…. sucking on the leaves after brewing. It tastes like the inside of the pot smells after a number of good steeps. I wish I could get my hands on more of these, because they’re really kinda yummy! One is definitely enough, but I could get addicted to these things.

(The ginseng ones didn’t actually have tea in them, smelled rather bad, and tasted worse… it was like sucking on a bit of dry toothpaste. The less said about those the better.)

Home again! At last! Visiting family is nice and all, but nothing really beats coming home and sitting down in your own furniture with your own door closed behind you and just… breathe… out.

And now I just needed some good honest solid invigorating proper tea. And then I make this mix of Adagio’s Chocolate and Adagio’s Raspberry in more or less equal measure. Yeah, I can’t really see any logic in the choice either, but there you are.

I could have sworn I had tried this mix before, but I couldn’t seem to find it in my logs. I must have been confusing it with something else.

It smells mostly of chocolate. Milk chocolate actually. I think the raspberry is sort of smoothing it out and adding sweetness, although it doesn’t actually smell like actual raspberries the way the dry leaves do.

While the smell is awesome, the taste is kind of watery. With that sort of smell I was expecting something more viscous like milk, so the first mouthful actually seemed kind of watery. It tastes quite nice but just not of chocolate. Or of raspberry, really. It’s like it’s sort of cancelling itself out.

I really can’t understand if I haven’t done this before, though!

Also backlog. Had the second bag of this yesterday while waiting for the rest of the guests to arrive. It was of course still very yummy, but somewhat overshadowed by the hope that it would be dinnertime soon because I was starving half to death at the time. It went really well with my mother’s brown biscuits and vanilla hoops, though.

I’ve saved the bag since it was only used once for one cup, so I’m trying out a resteep of it for breakfast this morning.

ETA: Resteep was successful. It could probably have handled one more, but I didn’t want to keep saving the bag. My mother already seemed to think it was slightly odd that I had saved it in the first place.

Goodmorning Steepsterites, and merry christmas to those of you who celebrate.

This year I got a tea-related present. A set of a mug, a small box of biscuits, a small tin with five teabags of green tea and a tea measuring spoon. I can’t wait until I get home on sunday so I can try it out. (If I can figure out what brand it’s supposed to be)

Anyway, this is a backlog from last night after the present opening was over. Over here in Denmark we are so backwards and impatient that we open our presents on the 24th in the evening. My parents have a sampler pack and one was just picked at random.

Nothing special really. Lipton’s lemony tasting Earl Grey with some jasmine, I think, thrown in. I can’t check, but it tasted like jasmine to me, so that’s what I think it was. Drinkable although somewhat perfumed.

Slightly backlogged. I had a pot of this while wrapping the last christmas gifts, getting tangled up in the stupid ribbon, hopefully not mislabeling anything and packing and re-packing my suitcase because it didn’t fit. Why did I buy such heavy and large gifts???

Great for an up-and-at-’em tea, though. I probably should have made it earlier, I might have got something done of my todo list…

All those chores I mentioned this morning? Yeah uh… um…. uh….

In other news, I’ve made me a pot of this aniseed tea that I had nearly forgotten I had. I tried to clean up the table in the kitchen where tins migrate to as I use them, and I got distracted. I tried, though. Isn’t that good enough?

It’s the closest thing I’ve got to the Black Satin from 52teas. Maybe I can make do with this when the Black Satin runs out. Maybe. It’s not as good.

On a whim today I added a pinch of peppermint to the pot. It’s both good and bad. I can’t actually decide if the peppermint taste doesn’t fit in at all, or if I think it’s really nice. I’m leaning towards a nice addition that doesn’t fit in. The aniseed and peppermint are sort of competing for attention on the tongue which brings about a pretty strange result.

Well, we’ve tried that. Next time I think I’ll leave out the peppermint. Strange idea to add it anyway.

Third steep of yesterdays leaves. It’s a mix of one part having tons of pre-christmas stuff to do, one part being lazy and one part wish to wring as much out of these leaves as I can.

First cup is a bit thin. It could have done with a ‘crutch’ or a slightly longer steep. The second cup will invariably get that, given my brewing method of leaving the leaves loose in the pot, so we’ll see if it makes a difference.

I would like to say that the tea had gained a sweet note, but to be honest I think that’s just the after-effects of the piece of chocolate I just ate…

Second cup with a significantly longer steep is better. It still has some of that baked flavour left, but I want to repeat the statement that it tastes like how bees look, because I’m picking up a small note of strong honey underneath.

Okay, that’s the morning tea. I’m going to get started on a to-do list and then my numerous chores.

A proper pot of tea now, another Jillian tea.

I suggested this one on my ‘wishlist’ for her not because I was wildly curious about it, but because Tie Kuan Yin (which this is) is my most favourite type of oolong ever. I more or less knew what I would get, but I just couldn’t pass it over without at least asking.

The leaves look a bit darker than I remember of this type of oolong, but then I remembered that when I’ve bought it from Teaspring in the past, I’ve always gone for the jade variety. So the leaf difference is pretty obvious then, isn’t it? They have a slightly smoky note to the smell. Not very much, just a little bit. Apart from that they smell fresh. Leafy. Planty. A living plant, not a dead leaf.

It brews up very light in colour and almost lime-green. I checked Jillians notes briefly and since she seems to have used a shorter steeping time than I normally would I thought it best to follow suit on the first time. There is plenty of aroma though. A lovely, leafy, almost floral smell that makes me think green thoughts. (Not green tea thoughts, just thoughts that are green. This is a very difficult concept to explain. Sometimes it’s just as if thoughts have colours.)

Mmmm yummy! I suddenly understand, I think, what you lot mean when you say something has a baked taste. That’s another one that I’ve seen a lot of people use, and I’ve never been able to put my head around it. I totally get it now, I think. There is a lot of it. It both makes me think of baked goods and it also makes me think of leaves and greenery, and I can’t decide which is more dominant. And bees. This tea tastes sort of like how bees look. Please don’t make me try to explain that.

Yes, it’s summerly and springly and still my favourite type oolong in the whole world.

O HAI THAR SNOWSTORM!

The very day I decide that it’s no longer necessary to check the weather situation before leaving for work, we get a snowstorm that I, obviously, didn’t know about. Lovely. Left 1½ hours earlier from work and it took twice as long as ususally to get home. Luckily I have tomorrow off, but I’m not really sure how easy it’ll be to get to my parents’ house on thursday… We’ll see. No amount of snow can get between me and a roasted duck without having to put up a fight!

I’m pooped now, so I’ve been spending an hour debating with myself if I was too lazy to make a proper pot or not. Eventually I decided on a compromise. I’ll bag it first, and then make a proper pot afterwards when I’ve got some energy back. (I hope!)

I just added this ancient little forgotten thing to my cupboard. I must have forgotten it when I added everything else. And hey, look! I did have something with oranges!

It’s a bit oversteeped because I nearly forgot about it, but the smell doesn’t reveal any damage. The colour is a kind of murky yellow, and I can sort of smell both orange and peppermint. Sort of, because they’re both very synthetic smelling smells.

Wow. Even oversteeped and with one bag in a relatively small cup, it still tastes kind of watery and thin. It’s totally drinkable, but it’s not something that I would ever recommend.

It’s kind of strange because when I take a sip, I either get the two (still synthetic) flavouring agents, OR I get a substandard green tea flavour. But never both at once. It’s a guessing game in a cup. I got peppermint on this sip. What will I get on the next sip. Hands up those who think substandard green tea!

Wotcher, watchers!

I have new followers, yay! This is due to my OCD-ish adding people left, right and center, but it still counts. Yes, I am actually this shallow.

I was in the mood for a citrusy tea. Didn’t have one. The closest I get is a net of oranges, and those are for work lunches. Well, I do have an Earl Grey thing, but that’s a different sort of mood. I figured that, while passion fruit isn’t a citrus fruit at all, this was the closest to that mood that I could get.

When I got the lid off I discover that the sample tin was nearly full! I can’t have used it more than twice. Tops. Why is that? I distinctly remember having liked it. But maybe ‘liking it’ and ‘being memorable’ just aren’t really the same thing at all.

It’s good. I can taste a lot of passion fruit, but it’s a flavour that I think suits the tea, and it definitely works as a substitute when I would really rather have had something with orangey. Passion fruit just aren’t really one of my favourite fruits at all, though, which is the only reason I’m not rating this a bit higher.

In order to try and prevent myself from yumming up this whole entire big bag of licorice of the peculiar scandinavian kind containing ammonium chloride that the majority of you lot would likely find completely inedible, I have made me a pot of this tea. It’s probably much less likely of making me sick as I certainly would be if I ate all that licorice. Big bag! Also, I have realised that not drinking it because I don’t want to run out is stupid, because they I’m not getting any of it anyway.

Aaaaahhhh!!!

Yes, this is much better, both for my health, my teeth, and my appetite when dinnertime comes. :)

On a scale from Yum to YumYumYumYumYum, I’ll give it four Yums.

I’m still a freezing bugger, so I went to make some fresh tea and then I spotted this one on the table.

A warm sort of flavour. Perfect.

I remember liking it best with milk, but I don’t have any. I’ll have to do without.

I just realised when I poured that there were a couple of Yunnan Jig leaves still in the cup that I forgot to rinse out. Doesn’t seem to have made any difference though.

Added a bit of cane sugar to it. Not a lot, just a pinch. Maybe it’s the sugar or maybe it’s just because I really needed a warm flavour like this right now, but I’m feeling generous today so I’m upping the rating a bit.

I’m a lazy freezing bugger this morning, so we’re going to see how this holds up to a resteep. I’m not expecting miracles here, but if it doesn’t work then what have I actually wasted other than time and half a liter of water? Might as well give it a shot.

After I wrote mine yesterday, I’ve been looking through what other people have said about it. I’m glad I’m not the only one to pick up that honey note, because for me it’s really strong and I couldn’t immediately recall anybody having mentioned it before. One person said that it was also quite nice when sweetened with honey, so if the resteep works to my satisfaction, I will try that. Otherwise I have enough leaves left for one more pot, or most of one.

Being impatient, I’ve been sniffing at the pot. The smoke, or pepper, (because I really think it’s the same flavour that people recognise differently. For me it’s smoke. Not even remotely as strong as in Lapsang Souchong, but still smoke.) seems to be a little diminished but the honey is as strong as ever.

The colour looks the same too. Possibly a little darker, which sort of surprised me. It seems logical that resteeps should provide a gradully lighter colour.

It’s like an entirely different tea! I’m getting a strong honey note out of it and the smoke or pepper or whatever is almost entirely gone. It’s just there in the finish, giving the honey some sparkles. I can almost almost recognise it more as pepper than as smoke here. I don’t think it’s quite pepper but it’s more pepper at this point than it’s smoke. It’s got the same sort of prickling sensation on the tip of the tongue, whereas smoke, I think, is more prickly all over the mouth. Does this even make sense?

At any rate, yes, Yunnan Jig holds up nicely to a resteep.

Another Jillian tea!

The leaves are pretty! They’re golden yellow, large and twisted. The smell mildly smokey. Long ago I had a Golden Yunnan that I thought was rather smokey in flavour, but since then whenever I’ve mentioned that I have been met with disbelief, until I finally began to think I was remembering it wrong since I seemed to be the only person in the world ever to have thought it was smokey. I’m also picking up a note of honey, a really flavourful kind of honey so strong that when you eat it you almost have to cough.

That note goes quite well with the honey-golden colour of the brew. The aroma after steeping is the same kind of honey, but not so much on the smoke. It’s just to throw you off, really. You almost expect to get a mouthful of liquid honey and instead you get a prickly mouthful of smoke. I still agree with myself that it’s a very smoky tea. I am getting a small note of honey, but not nearly to the extent that I would have thought from the aroma.

I’m trying to find the peppery note that people have been talking about and so far I’m failing. I get some pricklyness, but that’s from the smoke I think. I can’t find any pepper.

Back in ancient prehistoric times when I last had a plain yunnan, I remember not liking it much. I believe my tastes have changed. I think it’s a type I’ll have to stock up on again next year. It’s not one that I think is OMG fantastic! But it’s a nice one to have in the cupboard.

Insteresting letter from Jillian in my letterbox today!

I’ve been trying to figure out what to try first and decided I was more interested in this. When I sent Jillian my ‘wishlist’ of things I’d like to try from her cupboard, this one mostly caught me by being pu-ehr, and I haven’t had any of that in ages, and a flavoured one at that, which I’ve never had. Little difficult for me to imagine flavoured pu-ehr, for some reason. But then, I initially felt the same way about green, white and oolong too and I can’t come up with a logical reason on why it shouldn’t be possible. Anyway, I didn’t pay attention to what else was in it at the time, so it’s not until now that I notice it has rooibos in it. That’s a bit worrisome, since I don’t really care much for that… Oh well, if you don’t try, you can’t win, so here we go!

It’s bagged and the bag smells like christmas biscuits! Do I have to drink it? Can’t I just sit here and sniff the bag? It seems almost a shame to get it wet. On the other hand, if I did just sit around, sniffing the bag, sooner or later I’d forget to pay attention and try to take a bite. Reflex, see.

Luckily, after steeping, it still smells like that. Chocolate and cinnamon are the dominant smells, and underneath it the earthiness of pu-ehr. It seems very dark in colour for a pu-ehr. I can’t really spot that reddish brown colour that it usually gets, but then that might be because the cup I’m using isn’t the best for looking at the colour.

The little satchel the bag was in says that the chocolate might sink to the bottom of the cup, so I’m giving it a little stir before tasting.

It tastes like sweets! Chocolatey and cinnamony like the blend I made yesterday (fate perhaps? Preparation for trying this?), but sweeter. I can pick up pretty much everything they say is in it, except possibly the nutmeg, but then I’m not really entirely certain which flavour I’m supposed to be looking for with that one. It’s not a spice I ever use for anything at all in my kitchen. And to my great relief, although I can defintiely find the rooibos, it’s only there to sort of add a little boost to the other flavours. If I hadn’t known it was there, I wouldn’t have noticed, but knowing that it is, I can tell what it does.

Great choice, me!

Wanted: A nice, plain black tea with some good substance to the flavour.
Has: A white Darjeeling with a delicate flavour and a flowery note.

How did this happen? Your guess is as good as mine.

Second steep of last night’s leaves of this.

I am not impressed. It’s much weaker now and watery. The last of the already very faded cactus flavour is completely gone and, weirdly, it has gained a note of something almost chamomile-ish instead.

I’m not quite done with it yet, though, so I’m making myself a new pot, using the last of the leaves I had.

Since I bought this one, the shop has moved twice and switched owners at least once, so it’s pretty ancient. Had the leaves been fresher, they might have held up to the resteep better. I’ve seen that they have a green cactus flower tea on their website now, which they’re calling an interesting newcomer, so now I’m not sure if this particular tea that I’ve got has been discontinued and brought back or if it’s a new but similar tea. Mine doesn’t say anything about flowers. Could be either.

The rate I’m cleaning up nearly empty tins these days, I’ll have to do some shopping before I send the travelling teabox out, or the first person on the list is in for a bit of a disappointment! O.o

I was asked once, “what does cactus taste like?” and I floundered wildly to come up with an answer. I still don’t know how to describe. I could recognise it instantly; it’s even one of those flavours that it’s easy to imagine when you don’t have it, but I don’t really know how to describe it.

It’s sort of sweet and sort of fruity but not like your ordinary sweet and fruity. It has that cool sensation that you also find in mint and it has a certain freshness to it so it doesn’t get cloying. And a touch of fennel(*) too.

My leaves of this are fairly old and have been standing forgotten in the cupboard for a long time, so I can’t really remember how much flavour it had to begin with but I think it must have faded some. There isn’t all that much of the added flavour left in it, except in the aroma, but the green tea it’s based on is coming out loud and clear. It doesn’t say what the base is, but I’m guessing it’s probably Sencha, since the vast majority of the green flavoured teas in that particular shop are based on Sencha. Or at least they were at the time I bought it.

It’s been ages and ages since I’ve had a pure Sencha (that I knew for sure was Sencha) so I can’t really judge it on flavour. Only an educated guess. Due to the nature of the cup, i can’t tell you about the colouring of the liquid and looking at it as it’s poured doesn’t really give a very accurate picture. It did look a tiny bit neon-green though. Just the slightest hint.

The taste is definitely different from my chinese and taiwanese greens too. It doesn’t taste as green, kind of. As in, it doesn’t taste like it’s not a green tea, it just doesn’t invoke the same images of things that are green while drinking it. Or something. Gosh, that sounds ridiculous, but I can’t figure out how else to explain it. It reminds me very strongly of Genmaicha, to the point where I have to remind myself that it isn’t actually Genmaicha. Does any of this sound Sencha-ish to those of you who have more experience with Sencha?

.(*) Fennel, btw, might be an interesting flavour in a green or white tea, come to think of it…

With a twist today. I substituted one quarter of the leaves with Adagio’s cinnamon black. It turned out to be a very nice combination. I’m glad I didn’t add more cinnamon than I did because I think that would have overpowered the chocolate.

Well. I say chococlate, but really it’s more cocoa than it’s chocolate, I think.

As mentioned, though, a nice combination, which seems pretty nicely balanced between the two flavours if I do say so myself. I think a little bit of milk would have suited it too, smoothing it out a bit, but I didn’t have any so someone else will have to test that for me.

Weirdly, it’s also a combination that works tolerably well with this I-need-to-use-these-leeks-for-something-soon-improvisation-surprise-soup that I’m having for dinner.

I’ve napped, so I don’t know if it’s still snowing or snowing again either way, it sure is adding up out there. Good thing about naps though is that you get warm! Finally.

This is just another one for the sake of variation, and I’m still lazy so I’m still bagging it. On top of that it’s pretty oversteeped because I forgot about it. Apart from it going somewhat lukewarm, it hasn’t been damaged though. The cardboard flavour is fully intact

Still snowing. Still bagging it.

I can’t get warm. Brrrrrrrr! Just trying for a bit of variety here. Seeing as I log everything in my OCDness, you can probably expect a load of quick bag-logs like this while I’m trying to make my body temperature normal again. I’m already cuddling up under my duvet in the sofa.

This one always surprises me a bit when I taste it. How melon-like it is. How dry a sort of flavour it is. How clear a picture I get in my head of melons when I taste it. Hopefully it can also warm me up.

I don’t actually like this much. I’m not a very big fan of cinnamon in tea and I don’t really care all that much for raisins, but it’s a bag so it’s quick and it seemed the ‘warmest’ choice I had in those criteria.

I’ve been outside, giving my ruler some fresh air. Turns out my 30cm estimate was pretty accurate. And it’s STILL snowing. Great big flakes now. Yes, I whimped out when faced with snow and train delays again. I love the snow and I love getting a day off, but I kind of hate getting the day off because of this. It always comes with a side of guilt. Maybe the train would have come if I had just waited five more minutes before giving up. Other countries have way more snow than us regularly and they get by. Is 30 cm really that much? And so on and so forth. I know I’d be faced with O.o looks if I’d shown up at work, but still! (I did actually manage that once. 45 minutes late and nobody said, “Hi, good to see you arrive safely!” or even “About time you showed up!” All I got was " You’re here?!!! What are you, NUTS???" Nice to know they care.)

It’s pretty much just synthetic cinnamon that lacks any sort of sweetness and sour apples. I can’t find any raisins at all. Given the fact that as mentioned I don’t care much for raisins most of the time, I can’t really make myself see this as an all that bad thing.

The tea itself is… peeks into cup … are we ABSOLUTELY sure there IS any tea in this? checks box They claim there is. I’ll give them the benefit of doubt.

All that said, it IS a mass-production tea in relatively cheap bags, so of course it’s a different quality than what I’m otherwise used to. I’m rating it seen in that light and disregarding most of my other things instead of trying to compare them, because they’re worlds apart.

I needed a plain tea after all those flavoured once earlier today. I made this one somewhat stronger than I normally do in the hopes that it might give the flavour, and particularly the aftertaste a bit more punch.

It didn’t really work.

All I got out of it was a whole lot of astringency and that kind of hay-like, flowery, prickly sort of flavour that you get when something is severely oversteeped or too strong.

This also spares me trying out that uber-long steeping, or stewing rather, of oolongs. I sincerely doubt it would be something I would like.

And another gone and another gone, another one bites the dust. This time Adagio’s vanilla that got the last act of mercy. I didn’t even have a full teaspoon left of this. Nearly but not quite, so I decided to mix it with the caramel from Luka, my local shop, which is a mix I know to be awesome. Since I usually do it half and half and couldn’t do that this time, I tried adding little vanilla sugar to the mix. I tell you, it feels utterly weird to stand there and stir a teapot!

I have no clue how that last additive will influence the flavour. I figure the worst that can happen is it’s a little sweeter than usual. I need to try the vanilla tea from my local shop and see if it’s better than Adagio’s. I liked Adagio’s to begin with but have found myself using it primarily to mix into other stuff.

Probably shouldn’t have added the vanilla sugar. It’s quite vanilla heavy now and the caramel is a bit overpowered. Now whether this is because I used too much vanilla sugar or if it was because adding just doesn’t work, I can’t really know.

It’s still delicious, though.

For those of you who own Adagio’s vanilla and find it a bit lacking in the vanilla department, perhaps a little bit of vanilla sugar can bring it out a bit more?