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Ok wow! I’ve been away from Steepster for a few years and things have… changed! Somehow I totally missed the news about the Adagio takeover? Would love to hear from folks who have been here throughout about how that has gone, if you are up for sharing.

Anyway, 2021 is finally over and hopefully this year will be just a smidge better for us all. In that spirit, I wanted to ring it in with a cheerful tea that I knew wouldn’t disappoint. This tea is really old now but it still delivers. I brewed exactly as directed, although I did add an extra teaspoon of leaf to compensate for the age. With a touch of brown sugar to bring out the flavor, it’s still perfection. The rose hits first, followed by cream mid-sip and ending on what I can only describe as somehow a bubbly note that really does evoke champagne. I even managed to get three good steeps out of it by steeping the third one for almost 20 minutes. All in all, a great tea to start the year with.

This smells delightfully like marzipan. It tastes like it too, along with notes of grass and umami. I get two solid steeps out of the tea. It reminds me of Della Terra’s Almond Biscotti blend, although that one had a cookie note absent here and this one has a grassiness absent there. The almond candy flavor is a dead ringer though.

This is probably one of my favorite DavidsTea blends even though it’s not particularly unique. It’s just extremely solid and tasty, especially if you drink it before it cools.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks so I decided to treat myself to a little shopping trip to Davidstea while I was in the neighborhood. I ended up getting the matcha miso soup tea for the coming cold nights, but this cardamom macchiato blend was one of the samples. Honestly it’s delicious and I would have bought some on the spot except that it has coffee and black tea in it, neither of which my stomach tolerates particularly well. But the creamy coffee flavor is dead on and the cardamom adds a gentle spiciness. I am a little skeptical of DT’s claim that this is a low-caffeine tea given the ingredients, but other than that I would totally recommend it.

Yay, it’s finally approaching cool enough temperatures to break out the fall teas. This is one of my favorites. It fills the room with the smell of maple syrup. Even without any additions, it brews up nice and sweet (presumably the sprinkles contribute to that sweetness so I don’t think of this as a sugar-free option). It’s mildly nutty too. This reminds me of a caffeine-free version of Butiki’s Maple Pecan Oolong, which was one of my all-time favorite fall teas.

What’s more amazing, that I still have any Butiki blends left or that this one still tastes great? Fluffy lemon cookie goodness. The flavor is light but not faint. I’m quite enjoying sipping on this while catching up on the Fosters.

Sipping on some Alishan Honey Black from Floating Leaves, courtesy of phi (thanks!). I wasn’t entirely sure how to prep this gong fu style and the internet was surprisingly unhelpful. The tightly rolled leaves and the fact that it’s a black tea made me decide on boiling water. I just went with my instincts on quantity of leaf and length of steep time. The first few steeps had the usual honey and bread notes you’d expect in a honey black tea. The latter steeps get pretty interesting with notes of dark bread, malt, sweet potato, and a hint of sweetness. Not sure how many steeps I got out of this; maybe 5 or 6 before it started to lose flavor and I’ll give it an overnight steep to get the last of the flavor out of it.

This was almost a depressing sipdown, but then I found a whole other bag! Yay! Lupicia sells these pyramid bags in comically small quantities so I’ve been rationing.

I love the way the dry leaf smells like fresh, sweet pineapple. You do have to be careful not to oversteep it – 3 minutes is the absolute max – but if you get the timing right you will be rewarded with a delightful cuppa. It smells like roasted chicory and sweet pineapple. The roasted notes are there in the brew, but the dominant flavor is delicately sweet pineapple (although the flavors completely flip if you oversteep and you end up with a heavily roasted brew with a touch of pineapple). It reminds me of Taiwanese pineapple, which might be projection but makes me happy.

Thanks to tea bento for the generous sample box. I made these green tea jasmine dragon pearls according to pacakage directions: gong fu style, 80-90c, rinse/1min/20s/50s/80s/140s/4min.

The first steep is a pretty standard jasmine green: floral and grassy. 20 seconds is too short for the second steep. It comes out tasty but too light. I did the third steep at 88c and that made the brew come out too tart. I went lower on the temp and brewed the fourth steep at 83c, but it came out bitter, as if the base was being oversteeped. I went way lower for the fifth steep and brewed at 75c, which was much better in that the brew was no longer bitter but the jasmine came out more perfumey than floral. The same problem happened in the sixth steep, with the jasmine taste becoming cloying.

Overall, I think this is a somewhat finicky tea that would benefit from fewer steeps at a lower temperature. I have enough left to try again so I can play around with it a bit.

How is this still good after so many years? The cream flavor has faded but the delicate rose scent and taste is there, along with an undercurrent of bubbly champagne. I’m on my third solid steep of this beauty and glad I still have a little left. Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfH4cjtlJoo/?taken-by=try.all.the.tea

Thanks to tea bento for the generous sample set. The dry leaf of this wild silver needle has a scent that is equal parts floral and hay. I steeped according to package directions: gong fu style, 80-85c, 4 steeps of 30s/15s/2min/5min. I didn’t try to get a fifth steep out of it.

The first steep was by far the best. It brews up very pale with a savory aroma of hay and sticky rice. The sticky rice note carries over into the flavor, which I really like.

Subsequent steeps also brew up pale but bring out an astringency in the leaf. The second steep is mildly astringent, with a dominant flavor of hay. The third steep had faint notes of cooked rice and hay. It was hard to make anything out past that initial astringency in the sip but the taste of bitter greens did linger after the sip. The fourth steep was the longest, which seemed to cut down on the astringency. The robust savory scent of that first steep returns. The astringency is still present but the underlying flavors are stronger than in the second or third steeps.

Overall, I think I would have preferred this tea brewed Western-style for relatively short steep times to bring out as much of the savory notes as possible while suppressing the astringency.