1113 Tasting Notes
Today this is the tea that is being sipped for many hours while I am in my field placement. I’m not sure if this tea is suppose to have a smoked woodsy taste but it does. The dryness of this tea is acceptable because it has notes of wood that accompany it. I would enjoy the notes in this tea much more in something that was milder such as an oolong or green tea (though green tea with woodsy is a tricky combination). Overall it provides nice warm cups of good tasting tea.
So I have over 40 days in Tokyo left and I have a plan to try all the loose leaf teas that are in the dollar store. Yes, loose leaf tea in the dollar store… and they are locally grown teas. At first I expected the tea to be shredded up and be bitter, however my first tea that I am trying is quite good. I would say it is a step below sencha. The color is rather green and the taste alone is semi sweet and not bad at all, it could pass as a medium priced tea which I find rather odd after trying many different types of green teas. I may have got lucky with this one… I plan to experiment though. The only downer about this tea is the dryness to it (which can be altered by adding 2g of sugar per 8 ounces of tea).Still, 50g of loose leaf green tea from Japan at one dollar is a great deal for how it taste. This would be a great tea to cold brew too with its semi sweet taste.
I have always thought that, traveling internationally, it would be more fun to do the ordinary things—shop at a local dollar shop or the equivalent of a Walmart—than to OD on tourist attractions. Have fun!
I didn’t expect much… there are steamed teas as well which is going to be the next thing I try. I know that some are really low quality and I stay away from them because it’s easy to know which are staple teas. If I end up in China somewhere I’d be very tempted to buy old random teas that have sat around for awhile.
Sipping this away today and I’m not really tasting or experiencing anything that would define this tea as something ‘unique’- I understand that sometimes green teas are just green teas with variation of quality, but this tea is just eh in my opinion. Hopefully there is better news about the Mangnou sheng when I get to it.
My host family just put Big Hero 6 on last night so I grabbed a bag of tea and brewed it up without thinking about it.
I don’t enjoy black teas but I really didn’t think about what I was brewing (which was some sort of golden fuzz). This is a very smooth tasting tea and I really enjoyed it- enough so that I drank some more this morning. The leaf is very quality; easily identified by looking before and after brewing. I look forward to continuing my experimenting with temperature and grams of tea used as this is wonderful tea.
Brewed this quite a few times with a friend as my first sheng tea done correctly- meaning I didn’t steep this for almost three minutes.
I find this to be what I would classify as a wonderful aged tea with its interesting roasted vegetable taste. While this may be a fantastic tea with its presentation and smell, the taste is a little dry and the aged portion of it makes it not taste as clean as I would like. Though this is my first sheng I can tell by the quality of the leaf a I examine it that it was a fine specimen .
Opened this tea with a friend at college and decided I was going to throw it out… but she convinced me to brew it because of curiosity. I don’t even know what we were tasting… according to the ingredients it has plum and vanilla in it but this tasted like a berry that is created in a fire. Surprisingly it was a decent hot rooibos, but again it tasted like a fruit that is created in a fire and I wish I could explain it better than that.
I had no clue what this tea was but it sounded cool so I bought it. When I opened it up I was wondering what in the world I was looking at. This is holy basil tea from India known as a healing plant and is considered sacred to some. The taste of this tea is completely different than anything else so I cannot compare it to anything- however, just imagine what would happen if India chai met yerba mate and blended together… that’s what it would be closest to. Rather strong and out there taste overall. Fun to try if you get the chance to taste a holy basil you should take it to understand the unique taste.
