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I got this tea from Marshall’s when I was buying a totebag and it was a bargain. I’ve never seen this in any stores, so I don’t know where it is normally sold. It has a nice mango-y flavor with a bit of saffron. Golden yellow color. It’s not too easy to taste green tea in this blend, Not too bad for a paper teabag but I was hoping for a stronger flavor. I might try two teabags next time.

It’s been quite a while since I had this tea and I thought I’d steep some up this morning. It just occurred to me that it might be nice to have another little yixing for gong fu preparation of red tea (I have a bigger pot for this purpose). Maybe someday!

So I just steeped this one for one minute and it’s a nice contrast to all the yunnans I’ve been drinking lately. Definitely has a fruity taste with notes of orange and cherry. Reminiscent of a cognac or bourbon but without the booze, of course. Nice and smooth, no need for additions of any kind. Delicious. The red tea sampler for jing tea shop was very nice, I would definitely like to buy more teas from them someday.

So I’m glad the Giants won the World Series, but am equally glad that baseball season is over after the fans trashed our city last night, boo. I have a job interview on Friday now at the same time as a million people are streaming into town for the parade. I am tempted to try and re-schedule the interview but would that make me look bad? It’s just another thing to have to worry about. :-/

Tea of the afternoon. I’ve had this one for a while so it’s good that I’m finally able to finish it off. This is a nice shu blend, the ginger and galangal mix well with the elderberry, though today I am wishing it was a bit stronger on the berry. The orange is definitely a nice touch. this blend appears on the “archived” selection of Verdant’s site so it looks like this won’t be available again. I enjoyed trying it even though pu’erh nuggets are not really my favorite when it comes to shu.

I found this matcha at the Bi-Rite supermarket in San Francisco. Usually I get my matcha in Japantown, but I figured I would give this a whirl. The price was reasonable – approximately $18.99 for 3 oz.

I would say this is much more a food grade matcha than a ceremonial matcha, which is fine because I mostly will use it in smoothies and lattes. I did want to try it plain at least once, however. It isn’t bad plain, it has a strong seaweed and grassy flavor. I should really get some ceremonial grade matcha for drinking plain.

My favorite part of matcha is just the preparation, here’s my matcha bowl which was whipped with the standard type chasen:

http://instagram.com/p/uvtZ9PILeq/

Thanks to boychik for this sample. I ended up steeping it for 3 minutes at 205 f and that was definitely overkill because I got really intense tobacco notes that made it difficult for me to drink this without milk. I also noticed spicy pepper-y notes and a bit of the sweet potato type of flavor that seems characteristic of yunnans.

I tried a 2nd steep for 90 seconds and now it seems like it doesn’t have enough flavor… it could be I steeped all the flavor out of it at the 3 minute mark. :) Anyway the 2nd steep isn’t bad but I’m still getting tobacco notes with some caramel. Tobacco isn’t really my favorite flavor in tea.

this doesn’t seem to be my favorite yunnan to date but it isn’t terrible. If I had more tea I feel like I could hit a sweet spot with the brewing parameters. I wish I had more to play around with but probably not worth placing an order.

Decided to break this out today as the after lunch tea. I definitely recommend keeping the steeps short with this one, like 30 seconds or less because it doesn’t really need that much.

Shu is the perfect after lunch tea in my opinion. I wrote a fairly extensive tasting note on this a while back so I won’t repeat the whole thing. Notes of pipe tobacco, earth and a fruity essence. I love this little cake, it’s so cute.

Afternoon tea…
This tea is true to the name, if you want something with minty and chocolate notes it fits the bill. Of course it tastes more like peppermint bark when you add actual sugar, but even without the sugar it’s pretty good. Definitely nice for this time of year as the days are growing shorter and the holidays are growing closer…

Nothing earth shattering but I got a free teabag of this green tulsi tea (I drank an entire tin of the loose leaf version a while back).

I am about to have a panic attack because I have a phone interview coming up soon and I just have too many things to do today! Usually tulsi helps to calm me down. This has a nice, sweet vegetal flavor mixed with the herby/mintiness of the tulsi and is definitely my favorite tea from Organic India.

Gah, I was just in the middle of typing a tasting note for this and I accidentally closed the window I was writing in. Don’t you just hate that??

Anyway this is a really nice yunnan from Teance. First steep was at 205 F for 1 minute in the yixing. Tea liquor smells like brown sugar and I am getting notes of malt, sweet potato, pepper and brown sugar. A very smooth and sweet infusion and delicious. The 2nd steep I decided to go for 2 minutes. It is definitely darker and peppery notes are becoming more prominent, but it also has yummy brown sugary, bready notes like a delicious pastry. I am definitely not disappointed with this but yunnans are probably my favorite black tea at the moment.