Michelle Butler Hallett

First use to make Long Life Oolong (oolong with peaches, apricots and almonds) from DavidsTea at medium strength.

I received the Breville for a birthday gift, and I am freakin delighted with it. One extremely important note: when you’re taking everything out of the box, DO NOT PUT THE CARAFE UNDER RUNNING WATER for a rinse and clean. The base has electronics in it.
The Breville demands a light wipe to clean it.

But I’ll happily put up with some diva behaviour. I have never tasted such exquisute oolong before. The constant temperature during steeping is an enormously good touch. And, of course, the water was at the best temp for oolong; with my kettle, I have to guess by how much steam is rising … not terribly accurate.

My one suggestion is to try oolong on the “weak” setting first. I did find the medium setting brought out a slight soapiness in the first few sips of the Long Life; I blame the dried fruit for that, though, not the Breville. I can’t wait to try a milk oolong in this today.

Everything worked beautifully — and silently.

And it’s shiny.

I’ve had a few of these wiothout the extra syrup — much nicer aftertaste — and with both soy and dairy milk. Soy complements matcha better. This is a really refreshing treat that6 I dont mind paying the remium price for, because I cannot (yet) make it at home.

Sweet but not cloying, grassy, creamy. LOVE.

1 TB for 450mL water, bare.

DavidsTea has jigged the formulation of Super Chocolate. I keep detecting a bit more green tea - lovely dark long leaves to look at- a little less fruitiness, and more creaminess from melting cocoa. I can no longer drink this one before going to bed, but I still knock it back throughtout the day. I swear, I can feel the antioxidants coursing through me. Still not a heavy chocolate tea, but definitely sweet enough to feel like a treat. Highly recommned.

1 pyramid for 250mL water, bare.

So Tea Forte winsthe tea sachet design award. I love the pyramids with the little leaf tag. I try not to think of how wasteful the pyramids, with all their packaging, are. I just got the Tea Forte Sanctuary box (white ginger pear, jasmine green, sencha, silk oolong) as a gift, and I intend to enjoy it.

A very good silk (aka milk) oolong. Not as toasty-creamy as the Quangzhou from DavidsTea, but still very, very nice. Greener and more vegetal — I think I stepped it too long — with a hint of bitterness. Yeah, just have steeped too long. But definitely a buttery silk oolong, and quite silky at that.

Pretty sure that’s full leaf in the pyramid. And dang, those pyramid infusers are handy.

Yeah, IE 9 doesn’t talk to the slider bars below. Hmph. So, 4 minute steep with 87 degree water (estimated), ratng of 88.

2 tsp (1 sample tin) for 250mL water, bare.

Reminds me of stale Halloween candy mixed with bubblegum, but this sweetness then gets undercut with a stab of hibiscus. Not for me.

1.5t tsp for 300mL water, bare.

Seriously velvety yum. The chocholate, raspberry and oasted mate are all intense, but they are also well-balanced. Refreshing. Still haven;t gotten up the nerve to try this in a gourd.

1 gently rounded TB for 450mL water, bare.

Sweetly sharp peaches and apricots and buttery oolong. The sliced almonds add to the creamy mouthfeel. Steeps at least 3 times, even with a 4-minute 1st steep. Hubby compares this one to cognac. Love love love …

1 gently rounded TB to 450mL water, bare.

I love Yunnan teas. The more I drink them, the more I go deeply mad for them. I used to avoid China black teas, but then I found good Keemun and good Yunnan. They share the good depth and body of the richer India teas like Assam, and the brightness of Darjeeling, but none of the astringency. Some Golden Monkeys get a bit malty, but the malty notes are often balanced with dark fruit notes.

I usually drink Black Needles and Golden Monkey from Stash. I had tried DavidsTea’s Black Needles but found them a bit flat. Their Wild Yunnan is quite a different story.

Hey, who can resist tea from ancient trees?

The ad copy is accurate on the tasting notes. I would add that the tea is a slight bit earthy — but a clean earthy, none of those dubious tastes you get in some pu-ehrs. A strong mineral undertone adds to the perceptions of “clean.” Lots of Yunnan pepperiness, too. Some honey notes, and something else relaxing — another reviewer calls it “hoppy.” I can agree with that. Very smooth.

An excellent tea. Highly recommend. Yay, Yunnans!

1 TB for 450mL water, bare.

About twenty-odd years ago, when I started university (in a different province, far from home), Second Cup was making a raspberry chocolate flavoured coffee. I drank a lot of that and felt like I could do anything.

Guess what the scent of DavidsTea Chocolate Rocket reminds me of?

So yeah, on scent alone, I’m smilin.

Then I sipped.

BAM! Very much as described in the ad copy. I geneally don’t care for roasted mate, but I am loving this blend. It’s quite intense brewed as a tisane and almost as dark as coffee. I’m not sure I could handle the flavours if I brewed this in a gourd, but it would be worth a try.

Refreshing. Lives up to the hype. Not a delicate drink. I’ll report later on any mate buzz.

1 TB for 450mL water, bare.

My first milk oolong, this.

The scent drove me wild. Wow. Creme brulee, condensed milk, toasty cream — oh, my. Like the silky fur of healthy short-haired cat: more, more!

First infusion (4 minutes) is more vegetal than milky, but that haunting lactose is still there. Each sip is different, with nuances of leaf, butter, faint flowers, and sweet milk. I’ve read other Steepsterites’ notes that the 2nd infuson of this one is best. I look forward to it while meantime blissing out on the first infusion.

This oolong is a totally new experience for me. And hey, it just helped keep me from freaking out about my kids spilling red soda on beige carpet.

1 rounded TB for 450mL water, half a packet of stevia (equiv 2 tsp sugar)

It’s baaa-aaaack! DavidsTea has been tweaking the recipe a bit during this blend’s long absence, and they’ve re-classified it as one of their green tea blends versus a rooibos blend. That said, the amount of caffeine in the old blend could not have been very high; I regularly drank Super Chocolate before bed with no problems. The green tea that is in here is much more noticeable in appearance: long, dark and twisted.

The bright — sometimes fruity — taste remains as a dusting of cinnamon plays with the gentle green rooibos. I am seeing much more green tea in this than before. The cocoa bean pieces seen bigger. While this tisane hardly tastes like a cup of drinking chocolate, it does now taste a bit more of naked cocoa, and the mouth feel is creamier.

Much less of a fruity taste, I’m finding, more of a mellow, almost mediative blend of gentle cocoa, tea and rooibos. Yes, “gentle” is getting used a lot here. The tweaks to Super Chocolate are not major, but they are lovely. If anything, this unique and terribly healthy tisane (I credit Super Chocolate with a major reduction in the number of colds I got this past fall and winter) is better.

Long live Super Chocolate.

PS — I also used slightly cooler water than usual. Directions say to use 98C water; I suggest cooler than that, maybe 87 out of respect for the green, but not much cooler or the rooibos won’t develop.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

As with Stash’s decaf Earl Grey, much nicer when steeped with water just off the boil versus boiling. Treat this blend as a green, and it will serve up nicely spiced black tea without bitterness. I’d suggerst steepig no more than 4 minutes; after that, the cloves can take over and add a medicinal taste. This is a bagged and decaffed tea, so keep those limitations in mind.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

It’s a bagged tea. And a decaf bagged tea. So it has limits. I have found this one at once harsh and dull, and a bit thin in body.

But, the other night, quite by accident, I made it with water just off the boil, at much the same temp I’d make green tea with. I didn’t get to the kettle in time, and then got distracted, hence the cooler water. Guess what? It greatly improved this tea. Steeped in slightly cooler water, it comes out sweet rather than bitter, gentler, and almost creamy, with a touch of Keemunish smoke in the aftertaste. The bergamot balances quite nicely without smelling like either perfume or furniture polish. I really enjoyed it.

16oz, soy, no whipped cream.

Oh, yum. Oh, calories, Oh, not so bad calorie-wise without the whipped cream. Must ask if there’s sugar syrup in here and get it without next time — but mondo refreshing. I love matcha blended with soy milk, and this cold blend goes down nice and smoooooth. Sure, straight-up matcha is better, but got a milk-shakey type drink, this is great.

1 short (8 oz) with soy.

In. Love.

I like matcha with soy milk — like it a lot. I first tried the combo in the Matcha Monsoon smoothie from Booster Juice. In a nice warm latte, the combo’s even better. A bit sweet — does anyone know if I can get this baby unsweetened? The matcha itself is vegetal and creamy, too.

All in all, a bit heavy with the soy milk and sweetener. I’be be willing to try this with half skim, half 2% milk, or maybe even with all skim, to see if it’s a bit lighter that way. But when I’m willing to drink 150 calories, this is YUM.

4tsp for a 3-cup pot, bare.

Spring! Snow is nearly gone here, though we might get another dump yet. Even so, leaf buids swell and birds sing and freckles pop. Jasmine is all about spring to me — even the darker aspects to its scent (the indoles, I guess), because spring is beautiful but rarely tidy.
Jasmine also calms me, settling jumpy nerves, and makes me feel beautiful.

Even crappy jasmine green tea from a mall food court teriyaki stand can do that.

So when I get excellent jasmine green, like the Dragon Pearls from my local teashop, or some of this limited edition Jasmine Green from Damn Fine, I go to new rooms of heaven. This one even pleases the tea gods.

Jasmine green tea can also relive some of my arrhtitis pain. It’s no cure-all, and I;m not saying it will help anyone else, but it does help me.

This jasmine green, when treated nicely with the right remperature of water, gives no bitterness, no soapiness, and no dusty old perfume scent. I think it’s under-priced, but don’t tell the Damn Fine guys that. I tend to hoard my green teas, usually preferring black or rooibos, but I need to drink this one off before it goes stale … oh, woe is me (hahahahaha).

Excellent jasmine green. A really good balance. LOVE.

1 pyramid bag for 250mL water.

Smells great — peaches, peach fuzz, a bit of mango.

Tastes bitter and soapy. Boiling water, just-off-the-boil water, cooler water — doesn’t seem to matter. Mineral bitter and soapy, at that.

1.5tsp for 400mL water (approximately — tea was made for me)

Had a meeting at a trendy coffee shop this morning. They also sell loose teas. The teas are properly stored in aritight canisters. Many coffee shops proudly display their loose tea in cavernous jars — pretty to look at, but damaging to the teas, as both air and light gnaw at them.

I don’t know where Hava Java got this sencha, but it was the best I’ve ever tasted. A vegetal note in the aroma, then full-on sweet green CREAMINESS. Not a drop of astringency. No brine. No lawn-clippings. The water was also not quite boiling, which helped. But seriously: creamy green tea! Like a matcha and soy milk latte. Heaven.

Can anyone recommend a sencha to me that sounds like the one I just described?

1 bag for 250mL water, bare,

Strange, to me.

All lemon, at first — an earthy lemon, as the ad copy promises, but also a slightly medicinal lemon, with a muted China green aftertate. No mate taste at all, though you can smell it a bit in the vegetal earthiness. The initial scent put me off, but now that the lemon-wrestler has dissipated, the liquor is delicate and refreshing. It’s like the lemon scent has been pent-up and just explodes when hot water hit the leaves.

One confusion bit: the foil packet says to steep 4-6 minutes, while the little tag on the end of the string says steep 2-3 minutes. I steeped mine for 5 and am quite happy, but the continuity error in the packaging irks me.

The lemon taste and scent comes and goes as you continue to sip.

This would be great to drink while staring into a fire.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

(backlogging)

I am totally spoilt. Loose leaf forever.

This bagged Gen Mai Cha is a competent version, but it’s lacking something … body, nuance … I feel like I’m being very hard on Numi lately. I used to think much more highly of their bagged teas. Have they gone downhill, or have I gotten pickier?

Pleasant green tea that will get bitter if the water’s too hot. Nice enough toasty rice. But there’s no oomph to this, nothing to make me choose Numi’s Gen Mai Cha over anyone else’s.

1 bag for 250mL, bare.

Watching tea or tisane steep in my dear old clear glass mug is great pleasure for me. Red rooibos is especially pretty to watch.

The initial scent of Numi’s Red Mellow Bush is that nuttiness some red rooibos has — and sunshine. I mean that exceptionally clean scent of sunshine — laundry dried on a clothesline, conifers in summer, sparkling rocks … that sunshine. No mint and no wood. The taste is a little dull, but i think that’s due to the relatively stingy teabag portion and not the leaves themselves. Rooibos needs a good 5 minutes to start developing its flavour, in my experience. I rarely take my rooibos leaves out of the cup before finishing the tisane.

Like Numi’s Bushmen’s Brew Honeybush, this is very competent. It’s a red rooibos I wouldn’t hesitate to give a first-time sipper. A good example of good rooibos.

T

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Ehrrr … I am not kindly disposed to this one. It will have hibiscus — ugh. And adding flavbouring to Darjeeling is risky, at best. Darjeeling is so wonderful on its own — and can be hard to get, so why wreck the limited supply with flavours?

But I digress. I might even be wrong.

Steeping the bag in a clear glass mug … um, yeah, it looks like it’s bleeding, not steeping. Damn you, hibiscus!

Decent muscatel scent, though a slightly earthy one.

If you want to give a vampire tea party, this is the tea to make. Quite striking — and bloody, really — against glass. I would imagine it would be so agasint white china, too.

First sip: all hibiscus.

Second sip: 90% hibiscus, 10% stale tea.

Berries? Where?

Like I said, I was prejudiced against this blend from the start, as I strongly dislike hisbiscus. It’s a bully!

Third sip: 60 hibiscus, 30 getting-bitter tea, 10 sharp mystery dirt.

Steep time: 2:30. I imagine the tea will develop and battle the hibiscus, but the tea’s already bitter. (Darjeeling, bitter? WTH?) Must go water a plant.

If you don’t mind hibiscus, maybe try this one at a very short steep. It shoudl yield you a cup of hibiscus water with a faint black tea infusion.

Not for me.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

(Backlogging)

I like honeybush. This is a bag of honeybush. Therefore it was quite good. What makes it good is that it’s honeybush. It’s like chamomile and peppermint that way, pretty standard across the brands, provided the leaves are treated nicely.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Spicy scent when I opened the bag morphed into full-on GINGERBREAD once the water hit the leaves. (MKust be the clove and allspice.) Seriously. It needed a good long steep to taste of anything, but the aroma was lovely. The ginger and cardamom lend the blend some good heat. I don’t really taste much red rooibos, but at least the rooibos is neither woody nor minty. Good. Better than I expected.