Angrboda

This is a Lexitus-tea that I got for Christmas. It’s one that I saw on AC Perch’s site and wanted to try and he remembered that, so yay him.

It’s a very interesting tea for me, this one. My first ever tea from the South American continent so I have little clue as to what to expect taste- and quality-wise. AC Perch’s say it’s similar in flavour to Japanese greens, but I have little experience with them, so it doesn’t help me much.

The leaves are large and very dark, so at first glance it looks like an average non-jade oolong. A fair amount of twigs in there too. The aroma of the dry leaves is fairly typical green. Not overwhelming in strength and sort of leafy sweet, a hint of nuttyness. Due to the leaf size it’s a bit difficult to scoop so I’ve fallen back on the same way I scoop my Pai Mu Tan. For one small pot with farm animals on it: Plenty.

AC Perch’s recommend a steeping time of six minutes, which I thought was rather a lot for a first go, so I’ve given it a little less, and since I can’t empty the whole pot into this cup in one go, I’ll get a second cup with a longer steeping time so I can compare there.

The colour is very light, and it’s one of those funky coloured once that makes you wonder if it might actually be mildly radioactive. A pale yellow greenish sort of glow-in-the-dark colour. You know those white stars? It’s nearly that colour. It has a very special smell too. There is an extremely sweet note to it that if I didn’t know any better, I’d think there was a lot of sugar in it. It’s kind of vanillaish, and maybe just a touch, the slightest little bit of something salty or seaweedish. It’s very very very little though, and the primary aroma note is the vanillaish sweetness.

It tastes nothing like it smells. There’s a typical green sort of nuttyness and not really any vanillaish sweetness. It’s got a good kick to the flavour, a bit more woody than grassy. It’s actually rather nice, but it’s not a tea that you can keep on discovering. What you see is what you get.

The second cup, which had a longer steeping time (longer, probably, than the recommended six minutes) is darker and much more yellow in colour. The aroma is pretty much the same, but strangely enough it’s not even remotely as strong as the aroma in the shorter steeped cup. The flavour has lost much of the nuttyness and gained quite a bit of astringency instead, and a sourish note too. I definitely liked the shorter steep better, but I feel that this bodes well for another couple of steeps.

ETA: Interesting. Second steep, although nearly forgotten and therefore severely oversteeped is actually still quite nice. It’s got a bit of a bite, but nothing like the second round of the first steep. Mostly it’s pretty smooth, I think.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! After the sadness of using the last of this yesterday, I have today been fortunate enough to leave work some 3½ hours early due to extreme boredom. By around noon we had received the grand total of ONE sample, so we drew lots on who got to leave early.

On the way home, I stopped in at my local shop in the intention of stocking up on this one. I have stocked up. BOY, have I stocked up!!! O.o Turns out I’m pretty much the only person who buys it, so they took it off the shelf to be discontinued. They had some half of a sales tin left of it in the back, and the guy made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He let me buy the lot and when that runs out, all I have to do is stop in and say, and he’ll order another lb for me the next time they order stuff home AND he promised he would try to get a little discount for me. Everybody say awesomesauce!!

Yeah, I just bought 1½ lbs of tea. Of just one blend. Tin has been filled, Great Big Bag of Tea has been safely stowed away in a suitable place.

And I am celebrating with a cup. Right now.

Rating is already in top, but if it hadn’t been, I’d have given it a notch upwards for awesome customer service.

I have armed myself with my laptop, my atlas and a large cup of this tea (using the very last of my leaves, sadness!).

Guess what I’m doing now.

OMG I just noticed this morning that Ricky’s no-icon-uploaded-icon isn’t actually, because it’s mirrored! Never realised that before.

I’m feeling a little more human today, so I’ve made a pot of one of the remaining Bethany-teas.

I’ve tried sniffing the leaves, but they didn’t really seem to have much in the way of a smell. Pouring a few out in my hand, all I could really smell was my skin. I’m fairly certain the leaves aren’t actually supposed to smell like me, so I’m assuming it’s actually me smelling like me.

My expectations based on other people’s posts about this are dangerously high, so I’m a little worried about that. It’s always better when it’s the other way around. Low expectations → pleasant surprise. I’m also dangerously impatient and tempted the start before it’s really done steeping, even though I know that this rarely gives a good result.

Right, it’s ready now. Cocoa notes, check! And I’ve only poured the first cup. Fruity notes, check! They’re loud too. It smells a bit like when I was little and my mother made homemade jam from the blackcurrant bush we had in the garden.

What a surprising flavour! It’s very fruity in flavour. I’m surprised that this is supposed to be a plain tea. It definitely tastes like there’s been some sort of addition to it. I’ve checked the other teas that Bethany sent me, and I don’t think it sounds like any of those have rubbed off.

First there’s a little bit of a peppery sort of note, just a hint, and then there’s the tart fruity flavour. I can’t pick up the cocoa in the flavour, only in the aroma. Or maybe there is a small hint of it on the finish, but I’m not finding that on every sip, so I’m a little in doubt as to whether or not it’s something that I’m convincing myself that I can find because I really want to find it.

It’s good, but my enormously high expectations haven’t really been fulfilled. I could have lived with the fruit note not being quite this strong.

(Are we sure there isn’t any flavouring in this?)

ETA: I’ve pushed the rating down again as I’ve been drinking. This fruityness is getting a bit… much.

I got green tea for christmas from my little cousin and I got three kinds of tea from Lexitus also (and a cd and a book. I gave him tea and a cd. We gave each other nearly the same things.) I also have some Bethany-teas that I haven’t tried yet.

But I’ve gone for this one because I’m too tired what with being social and having trampled around in the forest for two hours to be able to taste anything properly and that would be a shame with any of the new ones. I’m not currently in any sort of position to do them justice. So, something familiar and uncomplicated. This is the one I’ve logged the most times, so it seems a good choice. The fact that it’s one of my all-time favourites, doesn’t hurt either.

Also, Takgoti and Teaplz both had it recently (although a different brand) and both mentioned a note of walnuts. It was one of those things that just clicked for me when I read it. Of course there’s a walnut note. I just have to check you know? And confirm it in my head.

Yup, there it is. And it’s loud too! I can’t believe I never thought to connect it with walnuts before, it seems so obvious now.

Should also go well with Midsomer Murders which starts in five minutes or so. Whether it’ll suit the ice cream flavour that I got (Chunky Monkey) is a different matter. Well, it has walnut bits in it, so maybe it’ll be awesome in combination with the tea.

Happy New Year Steepsterites.

We’re at about 9.31pm now around here and my dad just called to wish us happy new year. Well. I say us. Mostly they seemed to want to talk to Lexitus. Right. I can see I’m no longer interesting. huffs

Anyway, we’ve just made tea. A brand new addition to my hmm larger than I thought collection. AC Perch’s claim the queen actually drinks this.

It’s got a reddish sort of colour, bit like a dark honey, and the aroma is very Earl Grey-ish. I can’t seem to find any of the Gunpowder there.

The flavour is also mostly Earl Grey-ish, but it’s got some sort of flowery more leafy kind of note to it which I’m assuming must be the Gunpowder. Somewhat astringent too which makes me wonder if it might have been better with a shorter steeping time.

Okay, so tidy-ness plans for New Year’s? Not gonna happen. But Lexitus should be used to the level of chaos that constitutes as ‘tidy’ around here, so he’ll just have to deal with it. I’ve only had that foul dentisty christmas tea so far today and I want something proper.

So I’m jumping into the last of my Jillian-teas. I can’t remember where or what the situation was, but Jillian said something somewhere at one point about what actually went into a russian caravan blend and it made me think that if you took a russian caravan and stuffed a measure of green tea in it, you would get something similar to my dearly beloved Gunpowder blend (which, again, has nothing to do with the green tea known as Gunpowder), so now I’m probably going to have a few difficulties with not imagining this containing an unknown green tea and comparing. Did any of this make sense?

It’s a golden colour, much lighter than I had expected. I was expecting something reddish. The aroma is dominated by Lapsang Souchong and the smokiness. It’s not as prickly as a plain Lapsang, but I still can’t really find anything else in the aroma. Maybe the best way to describe it is that it smells a bit like a Lapsang Souchong with milk in it as opposed to a Lapsang straight up.

Nope, it’s definitely nothing like my gunpowder blend (which has nothing to do with Gunpowder as in the green tea). This seems thinner and weaker for one thing. It doesn’t have the same kick in the backside. I’m picking up some strong Darjeeling notes in the flavour and the Lapsang seems only barely there. I’m only getting the smokey prickly sensation in the very beginning of the sip and after that it’s just Darjeeling.

It’s been a good while since I’ve last had a russian caravan, but this tastes nothing like I remember it. It’s good, yes. But it’s not really what I was looking for.

ETA: The second cup, somewhat harder steeped, now THAT’S what I’m looking for. It’s much more pronounced on the smoke and the Keemun is coming into play too instead of just being dominated by the grassy Darjeeling.

Note to self. Oversteep on purpose in future.

I’m bagging it this morning on purpose so that I can get my chores done instead of hanging around on Steepster all day, writing novel-length reviews.

In the season spirit I found this ancient bag of christmas tea which I figured I’d be able to drink without the urge to elaborate on to the usual extreme.

No clue what’s in it, but being a christmas tea I think we can all make some educated guesses. I find that it smells like cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and dentist. No, really. That smell when you walk into a dentist’s clinic. There’s something orange-y underneath also, I think.

It kind of tastes like dentist too. You know that stuff they use when they polish the teeth? Imagine that cinnamon-flavoured. I think, though, that if the bags hadn’t been as old as they are, the dentist-y flavour would have been different, hopefully not present at all. I’ll finish my cup because I need it, but I can’t rate it higher than this.

I made a second steep of this after having had a pot of it earlier today, and I stuck it in the fridge. It’s chilled now, and it’s just right!

Another Bethany tea. I remember picking this one for my wishlist for her, because I have never had tea from the Nilgiri region before. I have no clue what to expect, but I’m expecting something akin to Ceylon, since that’s relatively close.

It’s got a nice golden colour and a very grassy aroma, almost like a newly mowed lawn. A spicier than that, though. Underneath it I’m picking up a sweet note, almost caramel-like, and all in all, it’s reminding me more of Darjeeling than it does of Ceylon. Or both maybe. Like a middle thing between Darjeeling and Ceylon. I’m not really sure, I change my mind every time I sniff it.

It’s very vegetal in flavour and very sweet in an almost sour-like way. Like citrus-fruit, without actually having even a hint of a citrus flavour. It tastes kind of green the same way that a Darjeeling can taste green and it definitely doesn’t remind me of Ceylon in flavour at all. It’s almost like… like it’s not quite ripe yet.

I’m not sure it’s something I would seek out as a type all that eagerly again, but it’s definitely drinkable.

I found a swap package from Bethany in my letterbox yesterday when I came home from work. I’ve spent the time since at war with myself over which one to try first. Eventually I resorted to Ippy-Dippy and landed on this.

Quite fitting actually since I was wanting something orange-y recently and didn’t really have any.

I forgot to take a look at the dry leaves before brewing, so you’ll have to do with out. After steeping, though, they smell sweetly floral. Like jasmine and just a touch of sweetness from the orange. The tea itself smells pretty much the same way, just stronger and sweeter. It kind of reminds me of orange chocolate. It’s got a nice clear and deep amber colour in the cup.

The taste is like sweet oranges. Almost orange juice-y but with the floral notes of the jasmine just underneath. I like how the jasmine is understated in this one. I’m still holding on to that orange chocolate impression too. I swear I haven’t added any sweetening agent to the cup, but it tastes like there’s something there. Don’t know what it is, but it’s not sugar. I’m leaning sort of towards almonds, which I actually think would fit an orange quite nicely.

If I taste really carefully I can pick up the tea itself underneath too. Sort of nutty and with that special sort of flavour that puts me in mind of an oolong. I like this, but I made a large pot and I’m not entirely certain I’ll like the last cup as much as I liked the first one.

And the best of it all, guess what! I just discovered that Mighty Leaf has a swedish website too that ships to ALL of Scandinavia! I expect it’s probably somewhat smaller than the american site, like the two sites that Adagio has, one for America and one for Europe, but still. For the freaking win! WOOT! I shall decipher the swedish and have a closer look at that later.

ETA: I’ve realised what the sweet stuff in it is. It’s vanilla. And lots of it too. I think I could have lived without the vanilla. At least in this quantity.

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.