Carolyn

No notes yet.

It’s a brand new day, which is a great excuse to drink Dawn, my favorite tea.

The first steeping (10 seconds) didn’t taste like much. I detected a very slight spice taste but that was it. The second and third steepings (15 seconds) brewed up brandy colored and had fragrance notes of leather and horseradish root. It has the same sort of root taste (but not spicy). Fourth steep (25 seconds) is smoother but has the same flavor profile.

Still having stomach problems with cooked puerhs. I don’t have that problem with the raw puerhs. I am puzzled by this since everyone says that puerhs are good for the stomach and settle it down.

I don’t yet now how to rate this one. I will think on it.

This brews up into a beautiful golden liquid that smells sweet with notes of guava and honey. The taste is true to the smell. It is sweet and tasty with subtle notes of fruit.

Mmmm! Delicious! 52teas outdid themselves with this one. It really is like sipping a warm chocolate malt. Very comforting on such a cold day! Soon we will be out in 13 degree (!) weather for our run and I’ll be glad to have this warm bit of comfort in my tummy. I’ll probably need another when I return. For medicinal purposes, of course.

I’m upping the rating because I found myself craving this tea. Always a good sign with a tea.

Unlike other people who have tried this tea, I love dates. I eat a date just before nearly every workout. My special fancy party food includes dates stuffed with marzipan (which is a challenge to get stuffed and on the table for guests without having them disappear in the meanwhile.) So I expected to like this tea.

There is a slightly odd perfume-like fragrance from this tea. It doesn’t smell like dates. It doesn’t really taste like dates to me either. It has a strong bitterness with that odd perfume-like note. Hmmmm. I don’t really care for it.

I normally don’t like mint teas even though I love mint in candy. However this doesn’t taste like ordinary tea mint. This is more like eating a Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie and I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I need to dash out the door to travel to MIssippi. Next time I drink it I’ll be more exacting with the description. (There will definitely be a next time with this one.)

No notes yet.

I gently set the tea on the table to steep when my beloved looked up from his book (a rarity since he hardly ever notices me when he’s deep in a book), sniffed the air and said, “Chocolate tea?” It really does smell good, like good deep chocolate.

It tastes wonderful with a creamy, malted, chocolate, mocha taste and something slightly grassy. No bitterness. No astringency. No weird dusty taste. It’s a far cry from my yerba mate experiences of twenty years ago. (Those were the experiments that led me to swear never, ever, ever again to try yerba mate.) It’s quite nice. I can see using this as a base with ice and soy milk for a chocolate malt smoothie.

There is just the slightest tinge of bitterness to this tea. I suspect that I over-steeped it by a few seconds. Nonetheless it is still quite nice. It smells buttery and vegetal with just the slightest hint of flowers. My beloved says that it smells like a meadow and I can sense that as well. The taste is warm and calming with the same buttered vegetal promised by the fragrance.

I dressed in my favorite bellydance cover-up, a flowing velvet affair with beads and gold embroidery, turned on an episode of Firefly (Trash) with a tea scene with Inara and then rinsed and steeped the Imperial Concubine tea and served it alongside two pieces of rose Turkish delight.

The tea begins with a musky sweet aroma with notes of honey and apricot and has a light, smooth taste. The second steeping adds a very slight smoky note with an apricot fragrance and taste. The third and fourth steeping develop the sweet apricot and honey taste further. It is a nice tea.

I began with a steeping time of 45 seconds and increased it over the period of re-steeps ending with the fourth steep of 2 minutes.

A very similar tea to my favorites: The Simple Leaf’s Dawn and Golden Moon’s Sinharaja. The leaves look different, though. Where Dawn and Sinharaja have mono-colored leaves, these are variegated with shades of olive green, chocolate brown, yellow, and gold. The fragrance is redolent of cocoa, raisins, and sweet tea. The color of the liquor is reddish brown (and it actually darkened as it sat once I removed the leaves).

It has the same strong tea and cocoa taste I love but with a tad more astringency. It is a very good tea.

I had to go off on a variety of errands, which seemed like a good excuse to try out my marvelous new JoeMo tea travel mug that I got through one of the Steepster Select offers (via TeaFrog) and this cold-brewed iced tea from Den’s Tea. I’m so glad I did! All I had to do was place the little pyramid silk tea bag in the tea holder of the mug (which works for loose tea as well), pour in cold water and wait. Den’s Tea suggests an hour, but I was impatient and was sipping wonderful mango flavored iced tea in 45 minutes. The mug is a revelation. It is sturdy, cleverly designed, has a lift out tea strainer, and a mechanism that makes drinking out of the mug a great deal more pleasurable than most travel mugs. I highly recommend it. Here is the link: http://teafrog.com/teas/joemo-xl-tea-travel-mug.html

On to the tea! I was surprised. It was tasty, well-flavored, non-bitter and basically delicious. I didn’t think that cold-brewing would work that well, but it did. The tea has a creamy mango sencha flavor that went well with my errands. Also highly recommended.

Delightful oolong with a nice honeyed flavor and notes of apricot.

This is a tea that is better as it cools a bit. Initially I could taste no fruits at all but as it cooled I began to get a pleasant banana and slight cherry sweetness toward the end of each sip. The tea used as a base is very strong, slightly astringent and slightly bitter. I recommend steeping it for less than 4 minutes. It is an ok tea. I can see myself drinking it again. I prefer 52teas’ Coconut Cream Pie, which seems to have more flavor.

OK, I thought I’d just top off my caffeination before heading out (while waiting for my beloved to slowly ready himself) and try this new tea at the same time. It’s not for me. I couldn’t finish it. The spices are too strong and hurt my throat and the ginger smell is too strong for me to enjoy the fragrance of the tea.

I’ve put it in my “Give to a Good Home” box.

Mixed this with hot chocolate “mix” (actually ground up dark chocolate bars is our hot chocolate mix), Vanilla Soy Milk, and Soyatoo Cream then frothed in our hot chocolate maker for a delicious frothy beverage with lots of chocolatey and matcha goodness. It’s a great start to a new year. Now off to our run!

I’m continuing with my tea drinking instead of food to prepare myself for an evening of riotous pleasure. Chai Agni is perfect since it is decaf, which means that I won’t be up all night if I have it late. I wish I could find more decaf teas (not rooibos or honeybush) that tasted as good. It is, of course, delicious and warming with its lovely peppers, spices, and chocolate notes.

My plan for today is eating very little so that I can feast tonight. This tea just arrived and I’ve dragooned it into my plot to keep me low calorie during the day while satisfying my hungry inner child. (Thanks for such great timing 52 Teas.)

The tea looks amazing with giant pieces of coconut strewn through the tea. I absolutely adore coconut and would happily live on it if that didn’t mean that I would gain tons of weight. But coconut tea? Just what the diet doctor ordered I think.

The tea’s fragrance wafts upward with a light floral note combined with coconut, vanilla and the classic tea scent. It steeps into a reddish brown liquor that has a sweet dark taste with a coconut aftertaste. It’s reasonably good and definitely what I need today to stay on my meager calorie allotment until tonight’s bacchanal.

This is the last few leaves in this sampler. It has a delightful jasmine scent and flavor, like being surrounded by flowers.

It’s an extraordinarily pretty tea shot through with ribbons of yellow, red, and blue petals. The tea smells sweet like berries. The liquor is reddish like good brandy (but not as dark as brandy). The taste is like sweet black tea flavored lightly with strawberries.

This is the most expensive tea I’ve ever bought and came in such a tiny amount (only enough for one cup) that I’ve been reluctant to try it in the course of my normal days. Today is the day I break open this excessively expensive packet of tea and see what the fuss is about.

The dry leaves are very similar to my favorite Upton tea, Bohea Select, which is not surprising since this is Bohea Select’s bigger and more elaborately hyped sister tea. The smell is similar to keemuns I’ve tasted with that slightly book-dry, slightly caramel smell. Upton says that there is a floral note there as well and I can barely smell it. As the tea develops in the cup it takes on greater sweetness. It brews into a paler color than my Bohea, but that just may be because I normally use a lot more tea than I received in this sample.

The taste is complex with the same keemun-like book dry and caramel notes as well as as a sweetness. There is no bitterness or astringency. It is a very enjoyable tea with a great deal of complexity that would be fun to explore. But is it worth $988 a pound to me? Probably not.

This is such an amazing tea with a panoply of fragrances and flavors as well as a wonderful sweetness. This is the last bit of the sample takgoti sent me and I’m so grateful to have it to help me get through today. It brings joy and sweetness.

The flavor is lovely with notes of resin, mango, and flowers. I need to order this tea.

The leaves are beautiful with black and gold interspersed. The tea itself is black as coffee but smells like resin and what I have come to identify as the elusive malty fragrance and something else. It tastes marvelous with notes of caramel, cocoa, malt, and sweet tea. It is what I need this morning before my run.