QuiltGuppy

I received this tea in a swap with Ottawa Tea… thanks!

It smelled like cinnamon in the bag, sweet and spicy at the same time. 195/3 min (plus another minute afterward because it was too weak)

The scent and flavor remind me a lot of Forever Nuts, however, in order to achieve that, I used nearly double the amount of tea than I normally do. I’ve found that some of Teavana’s teas just have so much stuff in them that the tea to stuff ratio is seriously off and requires adjustment. This tea is no exception.

Hot, it tastes of apples and cinnamon, but as it cools, it takes on more of a nutty sweetness, like an apple crumble or apple cobbler. It’s quite good, but I don’t think the cost it would take to produce a pot of this (with needing to double the tea amount) would be worth it in the long run.

No notes yet.

This was my wake up tea. I love the sample size packaging of the Canton Tea Company. It makes it so convenient with using the Breville. Enough for a cup at home and a travel mug.

I forgot to make notes about the dry leaf scent; however, nothing remarkable either way stands out. (I set this one up the evening before I drank it… and it was a long night for my sleepless toddler.) 195/3 min.

It smells floral. I can pick up on that as I come close to the teapot. The taste confirms the floral notes. I’m not certain, but I’m picking up an aftertaste of plastic. I’ve had this happen to me before with certain floral teas. This one is a delicate oolong, so I guess I’m not surprised. Still, it’s a nice tea. I like the slightly sweet finish.

Continuing on my quest to find all the wonderful milk oolongs that are hiding out there…

Today’s Milk Oolong was from The NecessiTeas. It’s scent isn’t quite as strong as other milk oolongs, however, the characteristics are there. This is a milk-infused oolong, which I like because I’d be ever so happy to have a tea that can be reproduced instead of relying on serendipity to provide me with a brilliant milk oolong producing weather event somewhere in Asia. It smells buttery, nutty and somewhat like popcorn.

195/3.5 minutes – For a milk-infused oolong, this is pretty good! It’s not as intense as some of the others I’ve tried, but it’s still really nice. It’s a medium oolong, nutty, buttery, and fairly rich. I think a bit of additional time would make it much more solid. The second steep is pretty good, too. The milkiness hasn’t faded too much and the popcorn taste that I’ve come to love is also present. I did increase the time by 1.5 minutes over the first steep, though.

The dry tea has virtually no scent. I had to put some in my hand and literally touch my nose to it to detect anything. Even then, the scent is unremarkable.

195/1 min 45 sec. I tried to steep very lightly with this tea, but it ended up being too light and watery, so I dropped the basket back in for another thirty seconds.

It’s very, very floral. In fact, I think it’s the overdone floral that ruins the tea. The oolong itself doesn’t have time to properly steep before the floral scenting grows bitter in the cup. It’s a barely okay tea, but certainly not one I’d choose again as I like to taste the tea much more strongly than I’m able to produce with this one before it becomes too bitter.

No notes yet.

This is an interesting oolong. I’m not great with matching the names, so I didn’t realize this was also called the Red Robe, which I do like. It’s nice. The liquor is a beautiful reddish brown and the tea is robust. It’s definitely a roasted tea, nutty tasting, quite strong for an oolong. It has a sweetness to it that’s hard to pinpoint. 195/3 min.

Yesterday I was reading through a thread from some time ago that was about famous tea drinkers. Captain Jean-Luc Picard came up as one. “Earl Grey, hot.” I loved Star Trek: Next Generation. So, in my J.L.P. mood, I selected this Earl Grey to begin my day.

The scent when dry is very bergamot filled. It’s a strong, fresh scent. 195/2 min. Aroma’s still there, so I sip and find that it’s very present in the flavor as well. The Darjeeling, however, is throwing me off a bit. It’s drying. So, I take another sip, expecting refreshment and it still leaves me with a sense of drinking paper. It’s quite drying. I think I would have preferred this as a non-morning wake up tea. Perhaps as an afternoon tea with something to munch. The taste is quite pleasant, fresh, brisk, slightly sweet, but the drying sensation wasn’t what I was expecting.

This was a very interesting oolong. It smells like a floral, vanilla green tea when dry. (Vanilla ?!?) I read that there was a coconut flavor to it as well, but I didn’t really pick up too much on that, at least not in the dry scent.

195/3 min. Now, I’m picking up on a bit more of the coconut, but now it smells like a perfumed coconut. Unfortunately, that’s also the taste that I’m finding as I drink it. It doesn’t taste like a scented tea, but more like a perfumed tea. It’s a strange combination of flavors and scents. Not terrible by any means, but I wasn’t expecting this coconut, or what comes out to be a morphed caramel flavor mixed with a floral perfume. The oolong is nice, though, and kind of grounds it as well.

What a lovely tea to smell! Opening the bag has rarely been such a pleasant experience. The pineapple and mango simply waft out and I’m completely caught up in it. I could make a sachet out of this…

195/3 min. The delicious aroma persists, thankfully. The tea’s flavor, however fruity, is also slightly sour and tart. I think that’s possibly the kombucha. It’s still really nice. I think I should have concentrated on getting more oolong into the teapot as the fruit tends to rise to the top of the bag during shipping.

Another tea from my Canton Tea sampler. I really enjoy Dan Cong tea, and especially love oolong. This one was no exception.

These tea leaves are very dark. They smell roasted. 195/3 min. Whoa. I can smell the roasted leaves quite clearly from across the room. It’s quite fragrant, actually. The liquor is dark, a medium-dark brown. The taste is lovely. It’s quite intense for an oolong. Very roasted, to match the scent. I’m not picking up that much fruitiness, but there is definitely a sweetness to it that I can’t quite put my finger on. It lingers for quite some time after taking a sip.

No notes yet.

This oolong is interspersed with shreds of white coconut, lending it a very nutty scent, which, combined with the buttery scent of the milk oolong makes for a very fragrant introduction.

195/3 min. The scent is wonderful. The coconut is not overdone, nor is it sickeningly sweet. It’s quite perfect, actually. The milk oolong is delightful, buttery, nutty, but with a fruitiness as well. It reminds me so much of thepuritea’s oolong, just a bit stronger on the coconut notes. I’m so glad to have chosen it as my Royal Wedding watching tea.

This is the most amazing osmanthus oolong I’ve ever experienced. It is incredibly smooth without any bitterness even if I don’t steep it exactly to my usual parameters. The osmanthus flowers do not over-perfume or overpower the nice, milk oolong base. Okay, it may not intentionally be a milk oolong base, but in my book it is. I get all of the nutty, buttery flavors of a beautiful milk oolong. This tea is an extraordinary surprise as it’s not even listed as one of their premium teas.
195/3 min.

This tea has a very light scent when dry. I can barely make out the notes of butter that I associate with a good Milk Oolong.

195/3 min. – Now that it is brewed, I still can barely smell or taste the characteristic nutty and buttery flavors of Milk Oolong. It is there, but it is very light, as is the oolong. There’s also a slight taste of cinnamon. This tea is what I would consider a delicate, or a light Milk Oolong. It’s not what I had hoped for in terms of strength, but it’s certainly not bad, either.

I tried this as my afternoon tea. It smelled promising, of fruit and green tea, but upon steeping (165/1.5 min… too short, so I dropped it down for another 1.5 min) the flavor just never developed. All I could really taste was the tart apple. No mango. The green tea was very weak. I wasn’t impressed with this one.

This tea is amazing! I love toasty, rich green teas and this one just blows me away.

First, it smells of toasty goodness and fresh, woodsy green tea. There are small, toasted brown rice kernels scattered throughout and some of them have popped into what looks like tiny popcorn. Very few of these make their way into my cup. I eat them. They are delicious. In fact, I have been known to eat all parts of this tea.

165/1.5 min. The aroma is wonderful. I consider everything about this tea to be a comfort. It smells of toast, and California rolls, and popcorn and campfires all rolled into one. The taste is lovely. It has a roasted green flavor, kind of nutty, kind of woody. It is extraordinary.

It’s early morning and I’m enjoying the peace that only comes with two sleeping children and a quiet house. So, naturally, I wanted a tea that would complement my zen moment and I went for Lemon Ginger. I hadn’t tried this tea before, but was hoping it would suit the moment. Out of the bag, the dry leaf smells very slightly lemony. I can’t pick up much more. (Must be the toast I just made…)

165/1.5 min. I can now smell the ginger as well. After letting it cool just a moment, I take a sip and any remaining stress melts away. This tea is so good! The ginger stands out the most for me, but it’s subtle, too. Not that overpowering, poke-your-tongue ginger taste, but just the flavor of it. Lemon is there as well, but thankfully, it’s very muted. Many a good tea has been overtaken by too much lemon. Because it is so well-balanced, I can also taste the green tea with a hint of grassiness. It’s a beautiful mix and a wonderful addition to my peaceful time alone, snuggled on the couch, waiting for the day to begin.

I received this tea as a sample from Life in Teacup. I hadn’t tried it before and was looking forward to something nice and fresh this afternoon, so I picked this one out of the box.

This is a really nice, delicate yet solid green tea. It has a vegetal taste, but also a natural sweetness to it that’s really pleasing. I was surprised. I was concerned that it would be too vegetal tasting, but it’s not.

My first issue with this tea company was that instead of listing the contents as tea (as required for customs as this arrived from Malaysia), they listed that I had purchased several different types of incense.

This tea smells like perfume, and for good reason; it tastes like it, too. The details say that this oolong has yellow osmanthus buds in it as well, but there were none in the tea I received. 195/3 min. Ooh. I can smell the floral perfume from here. When I taste it, it is so perfumed that it actually pricks my tongue. I cannot taste the oolong tea at all. The scent of the tea has permeated all of my senses. At least I can no longer smell the pancakes I burned this morning.

The dry tea scent is creamy and fresh. The dark green oolong is rolled into balls.

195/3 min. The scent of this tea is now floral. It is a light golden color. The flavor is divine! It’s floral and rich. I don’t detect the creaminess that I could smell when it was dry, but it has a very clean, natural taste. As the tea cools, the floral notes are much more pronounced. The oolong is really good, too. It’s not roasted, but just adds a calm base to the tea, grounding it. All in all, a great drinking experience.

I received this tea as a little sample with my DavidsTea order… twice. So, I figured it was a message, and who am I to stand in the way of destiny?

It’s an herbal/fruit tea, so technically, there is no tea at all. It is, however, one of my favorites so far. (Well, definitely behind Forever Nuts, which reigns supreme as the top herbal tea in this household.) The first thing I noticed was all of the chunks of fruit and berries that go into this. When it begins steeping, the cup almost instantly turns purple-pink. I let it go for five minutes and wish I had stopped it a bit sooner. It’s a very pretty purplish color right now, but it’s also quite tart. The fruit mix is wonderful! I think there’s a tad too much hibiscus, but other than that, the fruit meshes really well together. It’s definitely citrusy. It’s a perfect pick-me-up for after work, but before bedtime.

The leaves of this tea were very broken up and dusty. They are very dark, nearly black. I think perhaps my packet had been crushed. I treated it the same nonetheless. It smells toasty at first when dry. 195/3 min.

The taste has morphed from a toasty promise into a rich, roasted flavor. There is a slight sweetness to it that is slightly syrupy, along the lines of cane sugar or raisin. It’s a very nice, dark and full-bodied oolong. Very much like a sweeter roasted Dong Ding.

No notes yet.