ashmanra

Once again this spring, Teavivre sent a box of amazing samples to try! Thank you, Teavivre!

I have held off on a detailed review of this tea because Huang Shan Mao Feng is one of my favorites, and here is one that purports to be “nonpareil”. I wanted to try it while I could focus on the tea alone, with no food distracting from the flavor.

With food is actually how we usually serve Huang San Mao Feng. The first time I ever tried it, I sipped it by itself and thought it was very mild and was not going to be a good choice with our meal, but I served it anyway and was surprised to discover that it went beautifully with the meal. The tea seemed to change to suit the situation.

With this batch, I put the leaves in my hand as the water heated and I breathed on the leaves again and again, checking them for the light, wafting aroma. At first there was very little, but gradually I began to smell fresh spring plants, and then….smoke. Not like Lapsang smoke, but more like a beloved grandpa was smoking some fine, cherry pipe tobacco and left the room ten minutes ago. So I guess a sweet tobacco aroma is what I was getting.

The liquor is pale. The aroma is soft, but it is mostly the ghost of the scent of buttered steamed veggies and a hint of nuttiness. I did not pick up on any astringency, and though briskness was mentioned I didn’t get that either. There was a mineral flavor that is crisp and clean to me, and I believe that is what makes this tea pair well with food.

When the tea is alone, the mineral flavor serves as the front of the sip and gives way to the mild, fresh vegetable taste and nuttiness. When paired with food, the mineral flavor sweeps away the taste of the food, cleansing your palate and allowing you to taste the gentle freshness of this tea even with the richly seasoned food that is sold here as “Asian food” at the buffets. So while I agree that this one is palate cleansing, to me it seems to accomplish that task through the mineral freshness rather than what I think of as astringency.

The leaves are so pretty after steeping that I had to eat one before drinking the second steep! They look Ike tiny string beans in the basket. There is a bite to the leaf even after two sweepings, and a briskness is definitely present in the leaf itself.

I am most of the way through steep number two. This still has nice flavor. The memory of the leaf I ate is still with me, adding a little kick to this as I sip. This is a mild tea, like my other well loved Huang Shan Mao Fengs, but they present mild versions of delightful flavors that are some of the most desirable flavors of green tea.

Mild, buttered steamed veggies, nutty, soft, the barest hint of astringency if you look for it, and delicious.

Thank you, Teavivre!

Good heavens, it looks like I haven’t logged this in almost a year! Well, the flavor of the tea has not suffered one bit! Also, it looks like I only logged it once, and I know I have had it more than that!

On one occasion, this got a little astringent on me, so today we steeped at 203F for 3 1/2 minutes. This was the second tea served at tea party, and since all three tied for how good they were, this one wins “most interesting” for today.

I made a couple of cheesecakes and some home made Magic Shell chocolate topping, and put strawberries on the cheesecake, then drizzled everything with the chocolate. That was served with Zhen Qu Super China Black from A Southern Season. This came next!

The reason this gets called most interesting today is because it managed to cut through all of that flavor, all that sweet richness, and assert its own flavors without being harsh. I tasted the strawberry, of course, but somehow the white wine flavor really shone through and took the stage. This was a great tea to finish the dessert plates and start the cookie plates!

Delicious!

Sad sipdown. I made the very last of my Moroccan Mint today, and this is just the season when I NEED it! I tried a lot of Moroccan Mint teas last year and did side by side comparisons, and I came to the conclusion that I love spearmint much more than peppermint. I will definitely be buying more of this. It is great hot and iced, sweetened or unsweetened. The mint is so cooling, and where I live it is consistently in the 90 to 100F range and sticky icky humid. I do have some plain gunpowder green, and I just started growing mint last year. Until I can get an order placed for more of this, I shall have to make my own, even though I don’t have a whole lot of mint yet.

As for Egyptian mint, I don’t know what that is. Off to google!

I have been drinking a lot of this tea, cold steeped and sweetened with homemade simple syrup. I am logging it today because I tried something a little different. Instead of plain simple syrup, I made a lavender infused syrup to sweeten this. (Lavender is also really good in Tulsi.)

The syrup tastes a lot like Chowan’s Lavender candies or Parma Violets. Added to the strawberry and lemon flavors of Lady Londonderry, it made a really foofy, girly glass of iced tea to go with lunch. I have been craving sodas because it is so hot outside, so I am using cold steeped tea to beat those cravings.

If you don’t like lavender, you wouldn’t like this syrup at all. But if you can handle the floral taste, it is nice switch up for summer tea. I am really enjoying this one cold steeped. I wonder how a vanilla syrup would taste in it? Next experiment!

Other food experimenting is taking place today. I made home made ketchup, and for the first batch I decided to experiment and use malt vinegar in place of white vinegar, and added Penzey’s chili powder and made a few other little changes. It was really good with hamburger meat – more or less it was a sloppy joe. Next up will be actual plain ketchup.

It is taking me a while to get everything logged this week, but this was the first tea served at tea party on Wednesday. It was the Queen of the tea party, too. This is delicious stuff.

We made it western style. I think we used about fourteen pearls in a 22 ounce pot. I served it first because I felt that its rich, cocoa notes would cut the sweetness of the baked peaches and ice cream. This is not astringent nor is it in any way sour, but I have trouble describing the rough, tongue scraping quality of unsweetened cocoa that I get from this. It is a highly desirable trait to me in this tea, and I find it in some Keemuns as well. This type of tea has the body and taste to stand next to pretty much any food, and is especially good with sweet things to me. Some green teas cleanse the palate with an astringency that turns to sweetness after the sip, but this clears the palate without astringency. It is so…..present! I don’t think I could absentmindedly drink this tea. It became a cupboard staple from the first taste of the sample Teavivre sent.

My guest and I agreed that this was the best tea of the day.

This was one of the Wednesday tea party offerings that we served with our baked peaches and ice cream.

The liquor is pure gold in the cup, the gold of relics from a pharoah’s tomb. The tea has nice body and the aroma is sweet and almost heavy with the natural floral notes combined with the light osmanthus notes. (The only other osmanthus tea I have tried was an osmanthus puerh from purepuer.com. It was very good.)

It really seems to me as if this was a very floral oolong before it was scented. The scenting is light, and I think if it were served to me without me knowing what it was, I would’ve guessed that all of the floral aroma and taste here was natural to the oolong. So if you dislike floral scented teas like jasmines or rose teas, don’t be afraid of this one. It really is golden treasure.

I keep trying this tea, but I have come to the conclusion that it will never be a favorite even though it is very high quality. Chocolate tea used to be anathema to me, but I have found a few that are tasty.
I think it is likely that even the dessert for which this tea is named would not be a favorite for me. I read that the dessert has coffee in it, and I really don’t care for coffee.

Made by the usual parameters for black tea, this is too rough edged for me. There is a strong Keemun smoke, which I often like, paired with the rough scrape of unsweetened cocoa, another note I have sometimes enjoyed, particularly with sweets, but somehow it isn’t working for me in this tea. Cutting the steep time and slightly lowering the temperature, I get a cup of tea that I can drink and whose quality I can recognize, but it just isn’t something I really love. I plan to use the rest of this to make generous pots of tea my coffee loving friends, who I think will love it, and I will have my daughter’s fiancé try it as he loves chocolate teas and coffee, so the edginess may be right up his alley.

This was served at Wednesday’s tea party with oven-baked brown sugar and cinnamon peaches with homemade ice cream, and my guest liked it quite a bit, so I know that it is just me!

I under leafed this Hugo Tea offering a bit at lunch today but it was still really good with my Asian buffet leftovers. There is a noticeable freshness to the two greens I have by them, and they both pair very well with food. I find Steamed Cloud to be a bit milder than Pan Fired Pagoda.

The teas from Hugo Tea have been consistently good, and I like that they are organic. They are redesigning their packaging and it looks pretty sharp! I don’t work for them, and I have no agenda other than believing that this is young company shows a lot of promise and I hope they succeed!

Like Grace Rare Teas, they carry only a few teas but concentrate on quality. I wish them well.

I didn’t feel like eating tonight due to some imprudent snacking this afternoon, so while I made supper for hubby I made a matcha latte for myself. I mixed one tablespoon of raw sugar, one sifted teaspoon of matcha, and about 18 ounces of skim milk. It was decent and kept me from getting hungry, but it didn’t taste like cheesecake to me. The taste was somewhat generic with a slight perfume/chemical taste this time, so I may need to rethink my mix on this one. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. I need to figure out the perfect mix for this one because I have a TON of it!

Either I am spoiled by Teavivre’s Jasmine Teas or this hasn’t aged well. I tried cold steeping it and there wasn’t much jasmine to it, and the green base was a bit astringent. Ah well, at least I hve some other jasmines to enjoy!

My son, my godson, and my son’s girlfriend all came to stay for the weekend, and my son asked if he could grill and invite a friend he knew from church. The friend asked to bring several family members and it ended up being a really fun day with some really nice folks.

Hubby does not eat cow because he doesn’t like the texture of beef, so I was pretty happy that my son was grilling portobello mushrooms to serve like burgers. They were delicious!

While we were waiting for the food to be ready, I started talking to the two young ladies, who turned out to be very curious about TEA! Yay! We talked and talked and talked about tea, and when they said they were adventurous and had never heard of puerh, I decided we had time for a gong fu session with this lovely tea.

The first steeps were inky black, because I like my puerh strong! I did not rinse and we started with one minute steeps or perhaps a little longer. They said they could detect the aroma of mushrooms, and had a lot of fun experiencing the changes in color and taste of the tea. We got seven good steeps before the color and flavor had weakened too much to enjoy.

I have invited them back since they were interested in lots of different types of tea. I hope they will take me up on the offer!

I received this tea first in two separate swaps and liked it a lot. I liked it so much that I ordered a pound, but then I couldn’t recreate the magic of the first cups. It was a little astringent. I was disappointed and really wondering what the heck I was going to do with a whole pound of it.

Yesterday I got the bright idea to cold brew it. I made a bottle of simple syrup in preparation for drinking it today and left it in the fridge for over 24 hours. The results is absolutely delicious, summery, floral+fruity iced tea. It is as clear as can be. The strawberry flavor is wonderful, and the lemon flavor is a lemon candy flavor, not the sour lemon taste you often get in iced tea. That stuff curdles my tongue!

Hubby drank it and said it was good but he liked Razzleberry from 52Teas better. Well, it would be awfully hard to beat Razzleberry. I told him this was waaaaaay cheaper and he said, “Now you’re talking!” Fortunately for him, I have several packs of Razzleberry left, and hope to get some more for this summer.

In the meantime, I can enjoy my cheap stuff with abandon! I like it!

I believe this is the right tea. Mine came as a sample tea sachet with a Dammann Freres order. I have had it for quite a while so it is quite possible that the quality has suffered.

First, I confess that my initial experiences with Darjeeling as a tea newbie were not good and it was all my fault. I didn’t know better and made them just like any black tea. After I learned a bit and made them as they should be, I liked them a bit more, especially one or two special ones. I preferred Chinese black teas over Darjeelings and gave up on most Indian tea altogether, except for a few blends.

I feel that this makes me unqualified to judge this tea, but I can state my opinion of it. It is smooth enough to drink without additions. There is definitely some fruity astringency, but not enough to make me to see it. I even did a second steep, because I still have some cubes of Dubliner cheese left and wanted tea!

I expect that a Darjeeling lover would have to great things to say about this tea, but this is not something that appeals to me. It was fun to give it a try! One of my favorite Darjeelings is a very earthy one from Luis Tea that my daughter bought in Budapest. The real Darjeeling enthusiast probably wouldn’t even like it because it is so different!

This is a free sample from Teavivre. Thank you, Teavivre!

The last time I had this tea, it was at bedtime and shared with hubby. This time, I made it as our HUGE pot to accompany Asian buffet takeout. I steeped the leaves in a 22 ounce pot using two of the sample packs, then resteeped and poured all together in my biggest tetsubin.

I tasted a sip from each steeping. The first was much as I remembered it – light, clean, and fresh. It was so light I was afraid I had under leafed. The second steep was left a little longer and was definitely stronger, much stronger than the first steep.

The two steeps combined made an excellent accompaniment to our meal. I had some rather “heavy” and seasoned foods: dumplings with that sauce, lo mein, mushrooms, etc. So as mild as this tea can be, I was shocked when I first picked up my cup to sip. The tea that had seemed so mild had so much flavor and was so cleansing to the palate! It was quite a shocker, and I enjoyed using it between courses to get ready for the next dish. It was not astringent or sour, though. Very good tea!

I cheated a little bit with this one, but it was totally worth it. I wanted…..NEEDED….tea this morning. Lots and lots of stress – nuff said. I wanted a black or oolong tea and this sample caught my eye. I can not believe I have had it for three years! When I poured the leaves into the pot it looked a little shy of how much I needed so I added quite literally just a few hard little pellets of Zealong Aromatic.

The result was excellent. This may have suffered a bit for aging, I don’t know, but I do know that having a good cuppa shifted a few burdens and lightened the load.

The liquor was very light, but the flavor had lots of body and heft, and there was a floral sweetness running alongside the dark roasted oolong, possibly from the addition of that tiny amount of ZA.

This review is actually a review of a method of making matcha lattes rather than the matcha itself. Maybe I should move it to a heading of “cocktail shaker” under tea equipment and paraphernalia!

When Red Leaf matcha lattes became all the rage on here, I bought a TON of matcha. I experimented with all sorts of ways to make it and finally settled on using an Aerolatte to whisk it all together. It struggles a little with thick honey but if you add just a touch of warm water or milk to “melt” the honey, it is easy. The problem is that I like my matcha lattes to be cold cold COLD!

I had read about people making lattes in a cocktail shaker, so I tried a Williams Sonoma Working Glass with rubber lid. Yes, I ended up with matcha latte all over me. In my hair, even.

Today I saw a cocktail shaker at an estate sale for five bucks and it appeared to have never been used! It even had a bottle opener and matching cheese knife inside, still wrapped in plastic. I decided I could give it a go as a latte maker and wouldn’t mind too much if it failed at that price. Besides, I needed a new bottle opener for the outside fridge where we keep our glass bottled sodas!

I sifted my matcha into the shaker. For those who participated in the blind study, it was sample five from Red Leaf from waaaaay back when we tested green, white, and black matcha. I added a tablespoon of honey, some milk, and some ice cubes. I put the lid on and shook it over the sink…..just in case.

No leaks! Yay! I poured it into my glass and a lovely froth topped my latte. I peered in the shaker and I could see tons more froth that I could have scooped into my glass, keeping or discarding the ice, but my glass was full so I didn’t. The honey seems to have blended fairly well, but I think it would have even more so if I had warmed it. Shaking it with the ice would have chilled it again and I would have gotten the icy cold temp I like.

I am going to try this next with raw cane sugar instead of honey. I have already had two lattes though, so I may wait a while!

Overall, I am really pleased with this method and tickled that I found a cocktail shaker so cheap, since I had been loathe to pay full retail for one.

I have had something niggling at me for days – sinuses angry, scratchy throat, irritated eyes. Today I feel like I have been hit by a small bus. Just a small one, mind you. Or maybe a van.

My daughter had an 8:15 orthodontist appointment, then we had the “big” grocery shopping to do, ironing, school, and cooking some of those groceries. About midday I told middle daughter that I needed tea and cream puffs. Yes, this is doing very nicely, and will probably be followed by a quick nap before I start teaching.

Queen Catherine is my go-to “I don’t feel good” tea. I am down to enough leaf for about two more pots of this, and I started with a pound. Not the first pound of it I have ever bought, either. We are completely out of Vanilla Black and nearly out of Vanilla Comoro by H&S as well, so an order is….well, in order.

Allergies are still abusing me, but the tea is lifting my spirits and the cream puffs didn’t hurt one bit.

I love Golden Monkey, but I just have not been able to develop a love for this blend of GM and Assam. My youngest daughter likes it pretty well, but she mostly drinks lapsangs so this tin continues to sit around. I am really trying to reduce my cupboard before ordering any more tea, so I decided to try this iced. It got very cloudy because of the Assam so I will probably add baking soda to clear it. I greatly prefer this one iced and lightly sweetened, and happily that will also use up the tin much more quickly! I think the next batch will be the sipdown on this one. Hooray!

Overall, a decent glass of iced tea to go with baked spaghetti for supper.

This is a matcha flavor I bought to mix with another flavor and never imagined I would like it on its own. I don’t hate peanut butter. I like it well enough, particularly with certain things. For instance, vegetable soup MUST have a peanut butter sandwich with it. I grew up heating pancake syrup and mixing the hot syrup in a bowl with a spoonful of peanut butter to “sop” on Sunday nights when we didn’t have dessert with our Sunday dinner leftovers. I love Reese’s peanut butter cups so much that I think my son is pretty much constructed of them due to the number I consumed while nursing him.

Even with all that, I am not the big peanut butter lover in the house. My husband and daughter eat vast amounts of the stuff. So I didn’t expect to care very much about this flavor in its own. I am finding that I like it much more than I expected.

I got the robust flavor level and in this flavor that works for me. In some of the flavors it is too much and there is a perfume vibe, but not this one. I sifted one teaspoon of matcha into a 20 ounce glass, added a tablespoon of raw sugar, and whisked in milk with my Aerolatte. The result is a creamy and smooth tasting latte with a definite flavor of peanut butter, but somehow the creaminess is the main thing happening. You don’t feel like your tongue is going to stick to the roof of your mouth!

If you love peanut butter, this really is a must try. I don’t think they sell it anymore, though. I believe it was replaced with peanut butter pie flavor, which I have not tried.

This was a surprise tea included in a box from JacquelineM, who has introduced me to some of my favorite teas!

The aroma of this black tea has deep notes of toasted bread and unsweetened cocoa. The flavor reminds me of a lighter Emperor’s Red but is less chocolate-y, and it also brings to mind a light version of Fengqing Black Dragon Pearls from Teavivre.

This is a classic Chinese black tea and one that would be good to have on hand for mornings or afternoon tea. Though sharing some traits with a breakfast Keemun, I feel it is gentler than some.
It is easy to drink without milk or sugar, but I suspect it would take both very well if you were so inclined.

Thank you, JacquelineM! :)

We had a giant tetsubin full of two steeps of this with our Asian buffet takeout tonight. It was very nice and a great complement to the food. We made 22 ounces with three teaspoons and then resteeped, adding that to the pot as well. I think the directions call for one tablespoon per eight ounces but I have found it strong enough with less leaf. Combining the two steeps gave us a nice green tea with good, deep color (for a green) and enough flavor to hold up to the food, which makes it a great buy as well.

I am really glad this is organic. The news regarding pesticides on Celestial Seasonings teas and the newer report about lead in green tea leaves (but not in the tea itself) has me looking at my cupboard a little more closely. Almost all of my tea is from Harney and Sons or Teavivre, with four Hugo organics and a smattering of other teas. Almost all are loose leaf, and I try to buy high grown teas when I can as there is supposed to be less pollution there. I am thankful for Garret finding us high grown, pristine puerhs, too. It would really be a bummer to drink tea for our health and then find out it is making us sick!

Does anyone know how this new info on lead relates to matcha? Are the matcha leaves tested for lead since we consume the whole leaf?

Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t have this listed in my cupboard! I bought all I could last summer because we loved it, and I am happy to see it is in stock right now. Hooray!

This is good the first day, and knee quivering delicious the second. I make two steeps so I get a gallon out of each pack. Delicious and totally worth it. It is cheaper than soda and better for me, so I don’t mind that it costs a little more. Hubby and a guest today really enjoyed it.

Here where I live the weather gets really hot and sticky and buggy pretty early in the summer. Spring is really the best season for me! But today was beautiful! The sun was shining yet the slightly cool breeze kept the temperature just about perfect. It was enough to make me pine for a nice pot of black tea after I went out to tend the chickens.

This is a sipdown of my sample from Nature’s Tea Leaf. I have to thank them for their generosity as their samples are large and leave you plenty of leaf for experimentation. A number of their teas are on my list to order as soon as I get my cupboard down a bit. I am still at about 175 and my small bags and samples are not included in that, so I am trying not to order anything right now. When I do, their Dragon Pearl green tea (non-jasmine) and their Fujian Black tea will be some of the first teas I order.

This is a wonderful example of Yunnan Golden Bud tea. It is sweet and has the nice sweet potato flavor, is smooth enough not to need milk or sugar, and resteeps well.

On a side note, has anyone heard from Bonnie? She hasn’t posted here or on her blog for over a month.

I think I drank this every day while we were on vacation! Smelling the dry leaves is such a treat that you really must just do that for a while before you make this tea. The berry aroma is so fresh and natural.

I really prefer this tea made by green tea parameters. I tried it using hotter water and a slightly longer steep and it was good but my favorite way is 176F for three minutes. The black tea in the base beefs it up just a little bit without the green getting bitter. This is soooo good. Another big hit from Nina’s, I will be serving this for tea time Wednesday and I can’t wait to see how my guest likes it.