Michelle Butler Hallett

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.

1 scant TB for 450mL water, bare.

I’ve written about tasting notes many times before, so I’ll keep my comments brief today and just note that this Keemun, along with a few crackers, can quickly settle my upset stomach.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

I love the floral scent, which is hard to define. Almost a spicy floral — I guess that’s the osmanthus. The taste is a bit different. A fairly subtle but not boring white tea. Delicate. Slight touch of apricots on the aftertaste. Very pleasant.

1 TB for 450mL water, bare.

Cool enough water and a 5-minute steep bring out excellent nuances, without soapiness or bitterness. This oolong demands good treatment, better than I can generally give it with my basic kettle. (Oh, for a Breville!) But once I get the water right, this is a very fine, very refreshing gentle ooling. Not too buttery, and not too vegetal. The magnolia scent beckons but doe not batter. Mmmm.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare. Numi recommends cooling the water a bit after boiling — good. It makes me cringe when white and green tea packaging exhorts the use boiling water. Yeesh, way to ruin white and green tea for first-timers. But I digress.

For a white tea, this one gives off a slighlty leathery atringenct scent that I normally expect from a first flush Darjeeling. Or is that part of the rose I’m catching?

The rose is gentle aqnd very soothing. I feel like keeping still within a comfortable chair. The different scents encourage mindfulness and rest, and that is very good.

A four-minute steep gives a pale brass-cloured liquor and a really different rose scent. Not powders and perfumes at all, but instead very classic, even a bit sharp. The astringency reminds me of the Body’s Shop’s Tea Rose perfume oil (which I love but gave up wearing because wasps and bees like it, too; guess which insects I have a phobia of), though the tea for sure does not smell as rosy as that perfume.

Really good. Especialy for a bagged white. I’d love to try this one loose.

I really like samplers. Ya like some, ya don’t like some, but it’s a great way to meet new tea.

1 bag for 450mL water, bare.

Trying the teabag in my larger travel mug this morning.

It does best in 250mL / 8oz / 1 cup, I think. Here at 450mL, there’s almost no body, and the pepperiness gets diluted. (When buying tea at a cafeteri or coffee shop, I almosy always get a small, unless they offer a second teabag for the large. Teabags are stingy.) The scents remain: pepper, minerals, honey, malt, and smoke, but the taste is definitely watered down. Weh.

That’s it. I’m making a proper pot of Black Needles later.

All in all, a really good bagged Yunnan. Just don’t expect miracles from it. And don’t try steeping 1 single bag in a great big mug.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Awww, come on.

It’s a blend of Assam, Keemun, Ceylon and Darjeeling. All I can taste is mediocre Ceylon — even after leaving the bag in extra time after tasting it at 5 min. No body, just tea-flavoured water. It’s not bitter or astringent, and, given its lack of body, quite easy to drink, but I certainly would not go out of my way for this one again.

I used to really like this one, before I got serious about good whole leaf.

Wondering how these boxes ended up in the retail graveyard that is Winners … The tea’s not stale. Best before date is Nov 2013. Interestingly, the Morning Rise foil was impossible to open without scissors; maybe this lot of bags didn’t get nicked.

I expect I’ll binge later on the Chinese Breakfast in the second box, then continue to take my chances with the others. Hey, Numi’s Aged Earl Grey and Monkey King Jasmine are good.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Where’s the tea?

A pleasant vanilla taste, not perfumey, not fake, with creamy finish that reminds me of unsweetend soy milk.

But where’s the freakin TEA? I’ve kept the bag in the cup long past the recommended 5-minute max.

Vanilla-flavoured hot water. I kid you not. Grand if you want vanilla-flavoured hot water, which is soothing in and of itself, but I wanted tea. I won’t bother with this one again.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Got frustrated with the writing today and took a trip to a nearby mall, ending up in Winners, where I found some forlorn and battered boxes of Numi teabags. I bought the two boxes of “Numi’s Assortment,” mostly to get a few old faves in there; I adore Numi’s Aged Earl Grey and Monkey King Jasmine. A few others in there I really want to try, too.

To my surprise: one bag per box of Numi’s Chinese Breakfast Yunnan Black Tea. Oooh, a new China black tea to try.

Very good. Especially for a bagged tea. Bit of malt, faint bits of honey and smoke, and a nice pepper bite. Mineral finish. (I guess that’s what the Numi ad copy called “spring water” in the finish.) Refreshing. I love Yunnan black tea, and I really wish Numi was easier to find in NL. I will try to re-steep the bag, but my hopes aren’t high.

1 TB for 450mL water.

Silly me. I tried drinking this beautiful oolong while preparing supper. The multi-tasking dstracted me from the oolong, and the cooking smells overpowered the oolong. Note to self: drink oolong while sitting down. Meditate a bit. Sip some more.

I really enjoy this ti kuan yin. A bit bakey, a mineral on the 2nd infusion. Clean. (Two minutes 1st, 4 minutes 2nd.)

(Backlogging from last night.)

1 TB for 450mL water, 1 packet stevia (equiv. 2 tsp white sugar)

This excellent flavoured red rooibos does not need, to my taste, the sweetening I carelessly added last night. Like all rooibos, it needs a goodly long steep before th eflavour develops. The vanilla is subtle and plays nicely with the red rooibos. The leaves are not minty or woody. Soothing and energizing all at once. A lovely evening tisane.