__Morgana__

Another Lupicia sample sachet pyramid that accompanied me to work. This time, I’m going to use half the water I used with the previous Lupicia-sachet-at-work attempts which came out weak. Yet again I forgot to bring a thermometer to work (I forgot my pedometer today as well) but the water out of the coffee maker spigot is seeming cooler today, so seems like a good time to try a green.

Smells very, very fruity in the sachet. Like the Lush flavor of 5 gum. I get pineapple/mango/citrus and a green scent from the tea underneath. The picture on this page has gorgeous colors, which I can’t see and I can’t blame their failure to appear on the pyramid. I don’t think I’d miss those colors through a slightly misty looking mesh bag. Either it was the luck of the draw in terms of what got deposited into my sachet, or they’ve changed the blend since that picture was taken.

I can already smell the difference less water makes in the aroma of the tea. It’s more concentrated than I got with previous Lupicia sachets. The green, chlorophylly, somewhat vegetal aroma of the tea dominates and the fruit fragrances are much more dilute after steeping.

The tea is sweet! Not bitter at all. Quite tasty. The fruit flavors taste stronger than they smelled, though they don’t obliterate the taste of the tea. I’d say this is a successful fruit flavored green tea, and I don’t say that lightly having tried quite a few which I thought didn’t succeed, some more spectacularly than others.

Still, I’m not wild about flavored green teas unless the flavoring is jasmine, or unless it’s a very well done mint. This is in the category of something I’d drink, happily, if it was given to me, but something I wouldn’t be likely to choose to buy.

Finishing up more of my “starter” tea bags and saying goodbye to this box.

My previous notes on this seem accurate even after drinking through a box of it. It’s a mild, tasty, inoffensive floral tea. Though I likely won’t buy this again, I enjoyed it enough to find myself motivated to try other white/osmanthus blends.

I do find it interesting that now as I’m closing out my original group of bagged teas, what I mostly have left are the whites. They seem the hardest to fit into the span of a day so they get drunk less frequently. Blacks are good for morning, oolongs and greens for afternoon, decafs and tisanes for evening.

Where should I fit the whites in? Late afternoon, early evening?

I tried this last night in my little gaiwan, but I think I need more practice before I start writing notes about teas I made using it. I’m not convinced I used the right amount of leaves, for starters. Plus, I meant to look up steeping times as I know for the little gaiwans they’re pretty short. I just sort of winged it.

Today I’m going for more formality. This is another sample, I believe from the first set rather than the second. This one had been segregated into my oolong box and it wasn’t until I decided to be systematic about my TeaFrog tastings that I went looking for all of my remaining samples and found this one.

The leaves look similar in color to the Upton Formosa in its oolong sampler. There are some things that look like stems among the leaves, and some of the leaves are small and mulch like, but others are larger and more distinctively curly. I couldn’t really tell what they smelled like in the sample packet (in previous notes I’ve mentioned I have run into some trouble as the packets seem to have taken on the smell of the strongest smelling sample that they were packaged with. Unfortunately for me, I had very strong smelling fruit tisanes in each of my sample orders and now I smell fruit in all the sample packets even if it isn’t there…)

The tea brews to a dark amber, and smells toasty with fruity notes. After tasting, the aroma became more defined and yes, I can get a peachy note. It’s not a strong, fruity taste like a flavored peach tea, but it is reminiscent of the nut of the peach.

Second steep, three minutes. A sweetness has come out on this steep that mingles with the toastiness.

Third steep, four minutes. Still nice, but I’m not seeing a tremendous development from the last steep to this.

This was a pleasant and tasty drink, but it didn’t blow me away. I think if I didn’t already have some of the Upton Formosa samples I might be tempted, but this one didn’t surpass those or the Golden Moon for me.

This is from the second group of TeaFrog samples. I discovered I actually still have a few more from the first sample group. I have my teas in boxes according to color (well, sort of… I sometimes find that I haven’t been very strict about the enforcement of this sorting mechanism) and I discovered I have a green and a couple of whites that I’d forgotten about. In any case, I think I like darjeeling, but I’m still pretty new to them. So I’m interested to try this one. Especially since it is Far Too Good For Ordinary People ;-).

It’s leaves are variegated in color, mostly various shades of brown upwards toward the paler tips, but there were a few bright green leaves that were somewhat surprising. I don’t know whether something is off with my smeller, but the last few samples from TeaFrog I have had difficulty smelling in the sample bag. The sample bags seem to have taken on a smell of their own. Perhaps they take on the smell of the most aromatic thing in the shipping box. Not sure. But everything smells a sort of berry-like fruity smell to me. I poured this one out into a dish to try to get a better sense, but in the dish I wasn’t getting much of anything. I think the subtleties of aroma were beyond me at that point since I had the fruity smell in my nose already.

The tea smells buttery and surprisingly green! They weren’t kidding about the golden infusion, either. The liquor isn’t dark and “tea colored” like that of some other darjeelings I’ve had. It’s a tawny gold, very pretty.

It took a fair amount of sipping for this to start tasting like a darjeeling to me. Even when I start to get some of the taste characteristics, it’s still pretty different. It isn’t as brisk and perky as some darjeelings. It’s mild, and it has a buttery taste and feel. It isn’t overly grapey and doesn’t have that characteristic darjeelingness that I believe is described as muscatel (though I have yet to determine whether I think is muscatel is in fact muscatel), except very slightly. To me, it’s reminiscent of an oolong.

It’s tasty and different, and, as it describes itself, mellow. I like it. I’m not sure exactly where it would fit in the scheme of things as far as my tea cabinet goes, but I’m happy to think on it.

I had some of this this morning on a relatively pure palate (ok, I did have the rest of the LIT Keemun first, but other than that…) and I am starting to understand it better.

It hit me when I went to dispose of the spent leaves. The aroma that came from them reminded me of something, and though I can’t be very specific about it, the thought came to me: it’s that French thing.

There’s a quality about the Dammann Freres, Mariage Freres, The O Dor and Kusmi teas I’ve tried that is similar, and that for lack of a better descriptor I think of as “that French thing.” There’s something elegant about the blends, something that gives an impression of haute… something, whether it’s couture, or cuisine, or whatever. It’s the same quality one finds in fine French food, fashion, perfume. It has a sense of timelessness and at the same time, it feels old world. It has, as Doulton would say, je ne sais quoi.

The whiff I got of the leaves approached that quality. Though I think it is more “neo” than the true French thing, I am bumping it points for capturing the essence of the French thing.

This was the second of my two Design a Tea samples. I was more adventurous with this one. Now that I look at the name I wonder what I was thinking. At the time, the flavors seemed like they’d go well with oolong. I quite liked the GM caramel oolong, but I haven’t really enjoyed any other flavored oolongs that much. Wonder how this one will do.

As with my other sample, I poured the tea out of the little bag it came in and weighed it. This one is 1.4g, so I’ll be making very small cups. If I’d thought about it I could have used this to break in my tiny gaiwan, but I’d already washed out a Finum filter and I poured this in there while it was still slightly damp. If I tried to pour it into the gaiwan now I’d lose a fair amount of the sample to stickage around the edges of the Finum filter. So no gaiwan this time.

The dry leaves look green and a little powdery, and smell like… hazelnut and mocha, but the hazelnut here isn’t the true nuttiness of Florence. It seems a little more of the Frangelico variety.

The liquor on the first steep is a light orange/tan, sort of a light caramel color, and cloudy. I can smell the nuts and mocha, and some butter.

The taste has a very heavy mocha note. An unsweetened coffee. Hazelnut, not so much. It’s kind of amazing that the tea manages to escape being bitter given the unsweetened coffee aspect. Perhaps it is the mediating effect of the oolong’s butteryness. Like my first Design a Tea attempt, this is ok but just ok. Perhaps slightly less ok than the first attempt because the hazelnut isn’t really present in the taste. There’s a generic nuttiness, but not more than I’d expect from a more oxidized oolong even without flavoring.

Second steep, three minutes. Um. Is this really an oolong? I am wondering. Because the resteep is really lame. All the flavors again, but a faded photograph of themselves. Hmmm. Really not hopeful for a third steep but I have to give it a shot at redeeming itself if it really is an oolong, because if it is, steep three should be among the best.

Third steep, four minutes. Now all the flavorings are gone and if there’s an oolong flavor in there, it’s hard to detect because of the strength of the earlier flavors. If it’s there, it is paling by comparison.

This one was not meant to be. It wasn’t awful, but it was not meant to be.

Decided to try the last of this sample back to back with the LIT Keemun Black Tea Grade II.

Wow, glad I did this! Extremely interesting. They are very similar in some ways, very different in others.

There’s no initial sharpness with this one. The smokiness is different. I’d say the LIT has a little bit more, but the real difference isn’t in the amount so much as in the way the flavor works in the tea. In the H&S, it is more part and parcel of the tea itself if that makes sense. Whereas in the LIT, it seems a more separate flavor. I don’t really prefer one to the other, but I find the difference fascinating.

I think the LIT is a bit brisker. They have a similar flavor aspect that I’ll call the “woodiness” piece, but I’d say the H&S leans more toward fruity notes and the LIT more toward bready notes. Though they both have some of each.

I now understand part of my ambivalence on my earlier tasting of this. It had to do with how I was thinking about it. I was thinking about it compared to other things advertised as breakfast teas, most of which are breakfast blends of several teas, and are therefore somewhat fuller and (to use a word I have on my brain from an earlier use) stouter. In truth, for me anyway, English Breakfast is a little bit of a misnomer here. I’m drinking this in the afternoon and enjoying it quite a bit. I probably wouldn’t choose it as a breakfast tea. I’d most likely drink an Earl Grey or a blend. But (eureka) if I don’t have to pit this against other breakfast offerings, how I look at it changes entirely.

I can’t really say I strongly prefer this to the LIT. This has an edge, but they’re each charming in their own ways.

Now I really need to stop drinking black tea or I’ll never get to sleep tonight. ;-)

I’ve had this sample for a while now and I’m finding myself on a rather aggressive, unplanned plan to whittle down my samples. I’d like to reach an equilibrium where I have made enough determinations about what I like and what I can pass on from each company I’ve got samples from so I can start focusing on the nuances of the things that have made the initial cut.

Seems like that is still a long way off, though. I think it’s fair to say I’ve accomplished that goal with The NecessiTeas and am close to accomplishing it with TeaFrog. I’m probably there with Herbal Infusions and The Jade Teapot as well. Oh, and Golden Moon. But I’m a long way away with pretty much everyone else.

I’m looking forward to this, though, because I have yet to have a Life In Teacup experience that has been disappointing. And I have a lot of their stuff left to try.

I could smell smokiness when I opened up the packet. A gentle smokiness, not lapsang or even Russian smokiness. The leaves are dark for the most part, with some lighter brown ones.

The aroma of the steeped tea isn’t noticeably smoky. It does have a warm bread thing going on, though. Very nice. Comforting. There’s a bit of woodiness to it as well.

The taste is really interesting. V. complex. I can taste some smoke around the edges. I am actually visualizing pastrami, strange as it sounds — with that smoky outline/border around the meat. The tea, however, does not taste like pastrami. It has a little initial sharpness, but after the first few sips it is generally fairly smooth, with a sweetness in the tail. There’s that woodiness that was in the aroma, and the warm bread flavor too. The two together have a toasty quality to them. I’d almost say there’s some fruit in there as well. A little apricot maybe? Though it’s smooth and complex, it isn’t full bodied in how I think of that term, it seems more medium bodied to me. The mouth feel has a briskness that militates against a full bodied experience as well.

Another great experience from Life In Teacup. This will go on my shopping list for sure.

A while back after I read someone else’s note about a designed tea (can’t now remember whose), I decided to go design a couple of samples. This is one of them. I think if I had to do it over again I would have been much more adventurous in my choice of flavors. There are probably hundreds of versions of this Mounds combo available. I’ve even bought a few myself. Oh well.

It came in a cute little bag, which I suppose could have been used for steeping, but instead, I poured it out and weighed it. It came to 1.5g so I will be making about half a cup with it. The dry leaves are dark, and there was a fair amount of dust in the mix. They smelled exactly as would have been expected: like chocolate and coconut. The coconut is probably the slightly stronger fragrance of the two.

Steeping brings out the coconut even more, and I have to say that this combo is smelling extremely good. It really does smell like a Mounds tastes. Yum.

In taste, the tea is just ok. It’s a little harsh at the back of the throat, and though the tea has a nice, chewy mouth feel that goes with the candy bar theme, it doesn’t have the depth of flavor I was expecting from the aroma. It’s chewy in texture but it’s thin in flavor at the same time. I can’t taste the tea under the flavorings, which probably explains part of this. I feel a little like I’m drinking a too dilute hot chocolate with coconut flavor.

Fortunately I don’t have much of an interest in tea blending as if this is any indication, I should leave it to the experts.

Another of the second set of TeaFrog samples. It’s taken me until the afternoon to be able to have a cup of decent caffeine as I had to run to the last T-ball game of the season this morning and then had to go grocery shopping. Oh, and I need to brag for a second. My kindergartener is now a first grader! Last day of school was last Thursday. He had a stellar report card. (I’m still a little weirded out by the fact that you’re expected to be able to read, write and do math in kindergarten these days.) They don’t get letter grades, but the highest is a + and he straight plusses in the “academic” subjects. Of course, then there were the behavior grades…

I am not able to get a strong smell from the dry leaves even if I stick my nose down in the sample packet. What I smell is a sort of fruitiness which I’m not sure is the tea. I actually think what I’m smelling is the plastic of the packet itself. But I don’t know for sure. Brewed, though, it does have a rich, somewhat sweet, somewhat biscuity aroma.

In taste, the word “stout” comes to mind. It isn’t the strongest breakfast blend I’ve had, but it is strong, and hearty. Though I’m drinking it alone, I do think it would be good with a big, meaty breakfast. Certainly with eggs. There’s something about the flavor and the body that feels like it would cut through bacon grease and neutralize the saltiness of cured meats. It’s got some astringency to it, and though there’s a suggestion of bitterness around the edges, it isn’t truly bitter. I’m thinking 3:30 though instead of 4 minutes steeping time.

From the second set of TeaFrog samples. It has cornflowers! Two in a row with the cornflowers and caffeine today.

This smells very creamy in the packet. I can also smell the bergamot. Just for curiosity’s sake, I smelled this one next to the Upton Earl Grey Creme Vanilla. There is a difference, and it’s pretty much consistent with the names. The Teafrog’s cream smell is sweeter and creamier. The Upton’s is creamy, but it also has a vanilla contribution to the fragrance separate from the cream. It’s got a concentrated, beany vanilla note to it. Which is interesting because looking back on my note on that one, I found it creamier than the other vanilla flavored teas I’d had recently. So by comparison to vanilla, it was creamy. And the TeaFrog, by comparison to vanilla cream, is still creamier. If you’re still getting my drift, you need to go have a cocktail right now.

The tea’s aroma is also very creamy. It’s not a cream soda or ice cream creamy so much as, I’d say, almost a whipped cream creamy. There’s a small amount of citrus sniffable in the cup.

Flavor wise, it’s very similar to how it smells. It’s strong on the cream, not strong on the tea, not strong on the bergamot, though both the tea and the bergamot are present. The not strong on the bergamot is exactly how it describes itself.

Points for being a self-aware tea.

I prefer the more vanilla-y cream of the Upton, but this would be a tasty alternative if I find myself just needing the comfort of cream. It’s fitting that one of my other TeaFrog favorites so far is the Chocolate and Cream.

Though I have never purchased tea based on the label (see Steepster book club H2G2 thread week 1), I must confess that I bought this one based solely on the name.

After the first two hints in my Gabriel Knight game, I started to worry that perhaps I was too obscure in choosing that game’s name as the answer to my mystery. Back in the day when GK2 was being played, the universe of computer gamers was significantly smaller than it is now and it’s not like GK2 was a household name. I worried that four clues wouldn’t be enough and I’d have to find some way to provide an additional hint.

So I thought about some of the major elements of the game that were less obvious than the main character’s last name, but though I consider myself something of a power googler, I couldn’t find a tea with the word “Grace” in it. Or “Wagner” or “madonna” or “Gabriel” (or even “angel”) or any of the other things I tried. That’s when I gave up and plugged in “Knight.” And this is what I got.

In the can there’s a very strong bergamot scent. Eyewateringly strong. Despite its strength, it actually doesn’t smell bad. It’s a little on the perfumey side, but it smells pretty fresh. Let’s see how my stomach feels about it. (Did I mention there were cornflowers in this? I lervs me some cornflowers. I guess that’s what makes it the blue knight special).

The tea smells quite good. The bergamot has mellowed significantly, but is still enough to be an identifiable component of the aroma. The underlying tea smells malty and sweet. Though the teas aren’t identified, I’m thinking Ceylon and Yunnan?

Whoa. Maybe some Assam, too? This does taste strong, as Atacdad mentioned. I’m definitely getting the bergamot, but it is more citrusy and tarter than what I’m used to. Thankfully, though, it doesn’t have that clunky perfumy thing that tortures my tummy. The tea isn’t bitter. It has some sweetness to it, particularly in the aftertaste. But it isn’t smooth. It’s got some bite to it. On every other swallow it’s letting my uvula know it means business.

I’ve never seriously considered milk in Earl Grey, but this may be the one that makes me try it.

Still, it’s not bad. I’ll make my way through the tin and see whether it grows on me. I probably wouldn’t order it again unless I needed the name for another game, though.

I can’t believe I didn’t realize this sample was decaf until I came here to write a note about it. I must have known it a couple of months ago when I placed the order, but the packet doesn’t say decaf so I’d totally forgotten.

The fact that it is decaf is really good news. I’ve been looking for some good decafs to have on hand when my bagged starter stash runs out (which is looking like it will be pretty soon) for those times when I feel like having tea instead of a tisane.

In the packet, the leaves smell uber peachy. It’s a nice smell. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it fresh smelling, but it isn’t overly candified, it isn’t medicinified, and it doesn’t resemble cleaning solution. All of this is good.

The tea smells extremely peachy too, though the tea comes through as well. I’m liking this decaf! It’s not entirely without that “something is missing and it can’t be just caffeine” thing, but it is so much better tasting that the only other black decaf I’ve had. The peach flavor is sweet and strong without being overpowering, and the tea, though it isn’t a strong taste at all, isn’t bad. It’s fairly mild with some astringency.

I’m going to have to get some of this to start out my new black decaf category. Though I don’t think decaf will ever taste as good as the real thing, this one is pretty good.

This rating is not a comparison to caffeinated teas. It’s where I think this belongs on a decaf scale.

And now… I REALLY NEED SOME CAFFEINE!

After drinking my way through a box of this, I’m going to have to reduce the rating. In my first note I mentioned I could taste the tea because I’d been primed by drinking another Numi white immediately before. Having now experienced this tea a number of different ways (on a tabula rasa palate, after various types of other teas besides white, etc.) I can say that I have a fair amount of trouble tasting the tea in this unless I have the taste of white tea already on my tongue from another source.

This blend is really about the spices, and in my view they overpower the tea and that makes this blend uninteresting to me. If I didn’t care about tasting the tea I’m sure I could find an herbal version of this general flavor profile (or make my own as my mom did for my dad when he had a cold).

This sample is from the era I will call B.B.G.B.M., or before black/green blends moratorium.

In the sample packet it has an intense, fruit smell. I thought it was pineapple until I read the ingredients again. Now I’m fairly sure it’s guava. There’s a high sweet note that I’m thinking is the strawberry, and an undercurrent of hibiscus. I’m not smelling coconut, or much tea, for that matter.

The tea’s liquor is that sort of in between color that these sorts of blends tend toward. Not a deep black tea color, not a light green tea color, but somewhere between the two.

The aroma is primarily guava and strawberry, though I can smell black tea through it.

It’s actually surprisingly tasty, and I’d probably drink it again if I was offered it. But in truth, I drink guava flavored juice maybe once every year or three and I don’t think this tea, nice as it is, is enough to turn me into a regular guava consumer. That’s the primary flavor as well, though I can also taste strawberry, hibiscus, and a mixed black/green tea taste that is hard to explain. It’s fresh green but toasty, paradoxical as it sounds. It gets points for being well done and unusual, though.

When I see names like “Masala Chai II” I always wonder what happened to Masala Chai I. Masala Chai is dead, long live Masala Chai? Just to be sure I double checked the TeaFrog site and couldn’t find Masala Chai I.

TeaFrog gives nice big samples. This one is big enough to make a couple of cups worth on the stovetop. Using TeaFrog Assam Banaspaty as the extra black tea since the mix contains Assam to begin with.

In the packet I smell mostly cinnamon, and then coriander, and then an anise/fennel licorice scent. In addition to cinnamon, cardamom and pepper, this has some pretty interesting ingredients that haven’t been in other chais I’ve tried. I also noticed that ginger isn’t listed, and I think it’s been in all the other chais I’ve had thus far.

True to its description, this is a mellow chai. The cardamom, cinnamon and coriander seem to me to be acting as an ensemble rather than calling attention to themselves individually, which is, I think, a good thing. There’s an interesting, cooling feeling on the tongue after sipping. I’m wondering if this is the anise or fennel? Other than that effect, the anise and fennel is detectable but extremely gentle. There’s no strong licorice flavor, which in my view is a good thing. I’m not tasting the pepper. There’s no kick at the end.

I can’t comment on the authenticity having never been to India. This is a tasty chai, but I think I prefer a little more spice, even in my mellower chais. Though I didn’t taste them back to back, this seems to me less spicy than the TeaGschwendner Indian Chai which was pretty far down on the spicy continuum already.

Since I have Teas Etc. on the brain today I thought I’d try something else of theirs.

In the tin, this tea has a deep, strong, currant smell. It’s a lot like raisins, or pre-raisins (i.e. grapes). It has a slight sharpness to it that reminds me of red wine. There are whole currants in here, about the size of blueberries and looking far less shrivelled than I think of when I think of currants. Cool. And it has those blue cornflowers that I love looking at so much.

The aroma is also very curranty. It does remind me of some sort of baked goods. I wouldn’t have picked hot cross buns, but I might have said currant scones. Yum.

This is a sneaky little tea. At first it didn’t really taste all that remarkable. But the more I drank, the more I liked it. It’s interesting. It has a thicker mouth feel than most black teas, and the flavor of the currants is nicely balanced with the flavor of the tea. It’s almost like drinking a red wine without having to worry about getting tipsy. I’m for that, especially during a workday! It’s very comforting while hot. As it cools, the flavor becomes more raisiny/grapey, still quite nice but not as comforting. I think it would lose it’s charm iced, but I’m not much of an iced tea maven.

I’m glad I ordered this with my last Teas Etc. order. I’ll likely keep this one around for when I feel like a glass of wine but without the alcohol. ;-)

Though I continue to protest that I can’t add tea swaps to my already horrendous schedule, that I’m trying to simplify my life rather than complicate it more, etc., Rabs prevailed upon me to accept her generous offer of a sample of this. The sample came in a lovely heat sealed ziplock, gold on one side and clear on the other, with a charming label indicating the name of the tea, the company, and steeping temperature and time, in a quaint old-timey font that looks like what my old Smith Corona used to produce. Really well done, looks more professional in its packaging than some samples I’ve received from companies!

I didn’t know until now that this was another of those mixed green and black teas that tend to drive me nuts. But fortunately I don’t have to guess at the steeping time and temp because Rabs has taken the guess work out for me.

This is a visually pretty tea, a lot of rose petals adding color to the mix. In the packet it smells really flowery and I totally get the adjective “frou-frou” to describe this. The mixture of rose and jasmine is a really nice one, with the components of each scent blending together to create some third scent with aspects of both but something unto itself as well. There’s a green tea aromatic aura more than an actual smell. I’m made aware of the green tea’s presence but it’s not obvious. And there is a black tea strength around the edges. I don’t get Earl Grey but I’ve discovered sometimes it comes out in the steeping even if I can’t smell it in the dry leaves. Really, this smell is mostly flowers.

My first attempt at making this, in the Breville, didn’t come out right. I am gradually learning that the measuring spoon provided with the Breville is not at all to be trusted with mixtures that include things other than relatively small tea leaves. Even though I clearly made it weaker than it ought to be, it had a really lovely jasmine/rose aroma and a pleasant, mild taste. There’s even a hint of Earl Grey.

Second try: Stronger, more flavorful, as expected. Very nice flavor. Nice enough that I want to spend more time with it as I ended up having to get on a phone call for work and didn’t get to savor my second try as much as I would have liked. I’m not sure I’m getting as much Earl Grey as I’d like even now, but that’s what experimentation is for — and besides, there are some teas styled as Earl Greys that don’t taste like them and that I like just fine.

Believe it or not, this one is enough to make me break with my decision not to order black/green mixes.

Rating is provisional for now. I can see it going up with more experience, though.

Cue Rabs: You can’t a have-a the Mango. slap (There, I did it for you this time. ;-))

This is my first taste of a more recent TeaFrog sample purchase (which accompanied a full order of the Chocolate and Cream and the Assam Banaspaty… yum!)

I was expecting to smell mango when I opened the sample packet but I smelled something that was more like chocolate, or maybe vanilla. You know how those notes can actually be reminiscent of each other depending on concentration. At first I thought I’d picked up the wrong packet by mistake, then it dawned on me that was the yogurt I was smelling. Duh.

Now that I think about it I’m not even really sure what moved me to get this one as I am not a yogurt fan in the least. It has that sour milk, baby puke thing going on for me. Curiosity, I guess.

Having just come off of another fruit tisane experience where I didn’t use enough fruit the first time, I’m using the whole sample packet in my steep. It’s a chunky fruit mix in a palette of browns, burgundies, tans. My second of the evening.

I think I probably was right to use the full packet because the liquor is that deep red color you get from hibiscus in blends, but only if you use enough of the mix. It smells fruity and creamy. I can smell the hibiscus, too.

And it tastes pretty much as it smells, with one small modification. There is more fruit and less cream in the flavor than in the aroma. I’m not tasting mango so much as a generic fruit flavor that seems to have a lot of apple and a lot of strawberry to it. There’s a slight tartness, which I am guessing is from the rose hips.

I don’t know for sure, but I think increasing the yogurt/cream aspect so that it is more of the balance could really make a positive difference in how I perceive this tisane. I wanted it to taste more like it smelled. I can taste the yogurt (as cream and sweet, not sour milk) particularly in the aftertaste and it’s a good combination of flavors, but the fruit and herbs overpower it to some extent and relegate it to showing up primarily in the aftertaste. The idea of a creamy, fruit tisane is very appealing to me, but this one doesn’t lean far enough toward the cream for me. I wonder whether if the mango taste had been more prevalent the cream would have tasted as though it was more present as well. It seems to me it might have, as I got the sense the yogurt was spending most of its creaminess taming the tarter aspects of the flavor.

A tremendous dried peach fragrance wafted out of the sample packet as soon as I opened it. The mix is another chunky dried fruit trail-mixy sort, but it looks more like trail mix than some of the others I’ve had because it’s all neutral colors: tans, browns, burgundies, off whites.

It yields a really interesting colored liquor. The first time I tried it, I don’t think I used enough fruit and it made a dark peach, red melon sort of color that was gorgeous and gave off a light peach fragrance. The second time, I doubled the fruit to water ratio and got a dark red, hibiscus inspired color, just as gorgeous in its own way.

This isn’t unique among fruit mixes in that I find that I had to use a lot more of the fruit to achieve the flavor I was hoping for than one might expect to based on spoon measurements or even weights. The first time, I used two cups worth of fruit for two cups of tea, and it was tasty but a little watery and though I could taste the sweetness lurking, it was a little tart because the lurking sweetness was diluted. I pretty much doubled the weight one would expect to use for one cup the second time and got a much less watery, much more flavorful drink. It’s a sweet, peachy flavor with an earthy hibiscus base, but fortunately the presence of rose hips and hibiscus don’t render it puckeringly tart or bitter.

This is tasty, but I think the real thumb on the scale as to whether I’d order more will be if the boyfriend likes it. He’s a huge peach fan (he just had peach ice cream for dessert tonight) whereas I am a more moderate fan except in those occasional instances where the peach is ripe, juicy, and has a superconcentrated flavor.

My second at-work tea bag experiment of the day. This one also came as a sample with a Kusmi order.

In the bag, the tea smells pretty yummy. I can smell the caramel, but it isn’t overwhelming, and there is also a fruit smell, so that the main impression is of caramel apple, or caramel dipped berries.

The tea smells delightful. I can smell the vanilla as well as the caramel as well as the fruit.

The taste is smooth, and really interesting. There’s a lot going on, but it manages not to be confusingly busy. The flavors blend nicely. In fact, it’s not so easy to pick out individual flavors once you’ve progressed to the tasting point. Though if I concentrate, I get all the same things I smelled. I got vanilla, then caramel, then fruit. The aftertaste is a mild, sweet tea with berries.

I have a tin of this in loose leaf form, and I expect it can only taste better. Something to look forward to!

Today’s at-work sample tea bag experiment.

The Kusmi bag is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s fabric (looks like some variation of muslin?) and looks like a gauze square that was folded over some tea leaves and sewed up on three sides, then had a length of braided thread attached to it with a tag at the end.

They weren’t kidding about the flowers. The fragrance of the bag is terrifically floral, overlayed over some citrus. It’s a very deep floral, a musky floral, a perfumy floral. Doesn’t smell a lot like Earl Grey, but perhaps it will after steeping.

I don’t know how hot my water was because I forgot to bring my thermometer to work yet again, but it seemed hotter than yesterday for some reason. The aroma is very similar to the smell of the dry leaves, but more open, with some tea shining through. Still not getting an Earl Grey feel, though.

It brewed up nicely, certainly strong enough compared to my Lupicia bag experiments of yesterday. It has a very solid, sweet, black tea taste, with a sweet floral accent. The more I sip it, the more Earl Grey I get.

I like it, but it is heavy and hearty, like a heavy perfume or a hearty stew, and the sort of thing I’m likely to drink occasionally rather than frequently. Fortunately I’ll have an opportunity to get to know it better as I have a small tin of the loose leaf at home.

The ordering of my first run of TeaFrog samples coincided with a pretty stressful period at work, so I added this to the samples order. Of course, then I didn’t get to it until things were much less stressful. But so it goes.

The mixture of herbs in this one is pretty eclectic, and I’m sure I haven’t knowingly had a tisane with any of these ingredients except lemongrass before. I took St. John’s Wort in capsule form for a while a long time ago, but never had it in a drink. Makes me wonder what this is going to taste like. I fear it will be unbearably medicinal.

The smell of the herbs, though, is pleasing enough. It’s savory and sweet at the same time, which is interesting. Herbal mixtures don’t usually come down on the sweet side for me unless they contain fruit or mint, but neither is present here to explain the sweet note to the fragrance.

It makes a light yellow liquor that smells mostly of lemon, but has a savory (thyme? sage?) aroma underneath. And it tastes…. not bad! Not medicinal, mostly a very light lemon flavor with some cooking spice flavor around the sides. Not as strongly savory as either verbena or the Sleep Tight from TeaGschwendner. In fact, there are some sweet, non-lemon flavors that pop every now and then on the tongue.

In general, this is a class of tisane that I’m finding I’m not strongly attracted to flavor wise. I like the idea of them, how they sound in theory. But in practice I’m almost always left scratching my head and wondering why I didn’t have something with a chamomile base instead if I want to be calmed or made sleepy. As these go, though, this one gets points for being reasonably tasty and non-medicinal.

Another sample pyramid bag from Lupicia, consumed at work under less than optimal conditions.

I forgot to give the bag a sniff before I added water, but afterward it’s a sweet green tea with toasty rice smell. I would have thought since my water here appears to be on the not too hot side, that would have brought out more flavor in a green than my previous attempt, a black (English Caramel). Not sure that really happened, though, even though I am pretty sure I left the bag in for at least 2 minutes. On the other hand, I steeped for longer than I usually steep greens and there was no bitterness.

It’s a nice genmaicha, but I’m not sure it’s an improvement over the Numi bagged genmaicha. The flavor isn’t as strong as the Numi’s is, either as far as the tea goes or as far as the rice goes, and I generally prefer my teas (even green ones) fairly strong.