ashmanra

This is part of the free sample sent by Nature’s Tea Leaf for review.

I could hardly wait to have this tea with our Chinese buffet takeout again tonight! This is a really excellent green tea. I almost put three teaspoons in my Beehouse pot, but then remembered how beautifully it resteeps and put just one teaspoon in my eight ounce pot instead. Since it only needs a one minute steep it really isn’t any trouble and saves leaf so I can have more later! I steeped it five times! We were still throwing it back, and I did it all over again. So…I guess we must have had at least sixty ounces between the two of us tonight!

This will probably be my next tea order. Nature’s Tea Leaf has sent some really awesome samples and they have even more I want to try! Thank you, NTL!

Last night was Writers’ Group meeting at my house! One of the men who comes is married to a Japanese woman. He has mentioned several times that she and her friends drink bitter tea and that he has tried it but just can’t drink it with her.

I showed him this matcha and he said, “Yep! Looks like it would be bitter!” So I went in the kitchen and whipped up a batch for everyone to try. He was so surprised when he tasted it and found no bitterness at all! Everyone seemed to like it, even though they are not hard core tea drinkers like us!

I served this as the final tea party selection today. I wanted it to be separated from the taste of the black currant jam for a bit so the flavors wouldn’t compete with each other.

I loved the aroma of this, and I must confess that after drinking it before bedtime, I dreamt about it most of the night. I woke up with the flavor on my mind and fought with myself about serving it today because I was afraid the sweet black currant jam would take the shine off the tea. No worries, it didn’t hurt a bit. I just served this last, well after we had the jam, and it was really good. My guest seemed to enjoy it a lot. Next up, I want to try it iced and sweetened!

I had this again at tea party today. We had made a loaf of homemade buttermilk bread from the flour we grind fresh for baking. I toasted several pieces and cut them small and we tested out some new fruit jams. I had purchased Black Currant jam just because I was unfamiliar with it and like the flavor in some of my teas. I had read that it is sort of the European equivalent to our grape-flavored everything! I also had a French Four Fruit jam for us to try.

The jams were delicious and the tea was perfect with it. It made a wonderful contrast with the sweetness and the smoke was mild and pleasant, almost dignified I might say!

Thank you to Hesper June for the sample!

Tea party today was a revisiting of several teas that I have been drinking this week already. My guest started out loving black tea but not caring much for any other kinds. Over time she has grown to like many oolong and green teas, but black tea is still her favorite. That is why her reaction to this tea was especially significant today.

We had started with a Lapsang to cut the sweetness of what we were eating. I poured this as our second tea, she absentmindedly took a sip, then stopped talking and sipped more more in surprise. “This is very good!” she exclaimed.

Yep. That’s exactly what it is. The unfurling pearls put on a lovely show and the tea is fantastic, steep after steep. This is a keeper.

Now, this is nice! I had this once before in a tea assortment sent from Ireland by my daughter’s boyfriend. I had forgotten how good it was! He came in person this time, asked for our daughter’s hand in marriage, and gave me lots of tea! LOL! To further seal the deal, he asked if we could play Scrabble, so it is almost as if hubby and I picked him ourselves.

A word about my feelings on Earl Grey – some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it strong, some like a hint. I like bergamot, I like Earl Grey, I loved the Earl Green that was sent to me by K S, but not every Earl is pleasant. Some taste like bathroom cleaner to me.

This one was a winner from the time the water hit the bag. The tea base is there, not swallowed up by the flavoring, the bergamot is there and doesn’t taste like chemicals, but the orange blossom is the crown on the head of this tea. It softens all edges, adds roundness and richness, a floral smoothness. The orange taste is clean and refreshing. Very nice! I wonder how it would tasted iced and sweetened?

Not long ago, Hesper June offered to send me a sample of this tea. She asked only a bit of Baker Street in return. But when my tea came, it was a WHOLE BOX of tea in the cutest little tins! There are all sorts of smoky teas in it!

Grace Rare Tea is one of the first fine loose teas I bought. I had never heard of the company but my youngest daughter is named Grace and she loved tea the most at the time, so I bought it on a lark for her. I have since purchased almost every tea they make because the quality is so high.

Looking at this tea, it is hard to believe that I am looking at a Lapsang. Sometimes, lesser teas get chosen for heavy flavoring, but not in the case of GRT. The base looks great, and the aroma isn’t plain smoke. There is more to it. There is a sweet and fruity aspect as well.

Sipping, the taste of the base holds up to my expectations. It is smooth and sweet, medium bodied. The smoke is a surprise, though. There was a strong smoke aroma to the dry leaf but it is much lighter in the cup. Wen you sip, it gets really interesting. The smoke is subtle and then it blooms from your throat to your mouth.

This is definitely going to be added to the cupboard. Hesper sent so much that I don’t need to rush to Durham to buy it, though! Thank you, Hesper June!

Oh boy, I should have been in bed long ago, but I just don’t want to go – like a little kid fighting sleep, but I am not very sleepy.

What better way to pass the time than tea with Pinterest? I came home from work last week to discover that my bestie, the best bestie in the world, had left a gift for me…a card and two Lupicia teas! This is one of the surprise teas I got.

I wish I knew more about cassis. I really am not sure what it is. I saw one description here that mentioned black currant, another flavor that is relatively new to my palate. I can really see comparing this to black currant flavor. The blueberry flavor is there, too, and one of the berry flavors is really lingering but I can’t discern which it is!

I drank two small cups of this plain, and since several people mentioned that it would be good iced I added sugar to get a feel for how I would like it that way. I thought I didn’t add much, but it tasted super sweet to me. I bet this really would be amazing iced and sweetened for those who like sweet tea. I have come to love my hot tea with no sugar, but I can definitely still enjoy some good old Southern sweet tea! I have to say this is another win for Lupicia in my book.

Edited to add: duh! Just googled and I guess cassis IS black currant flavor, not just some thing like it.

This is a free sample provided for review by Nature’s Tea Leaf.

My daughter and her fiancé stopped by tonight and since I had not had lunch the past two days working at early voting, I was ready for something for my tummy! My middle and youngest daughters had made fresh home made bread, so we cut the loaf, got out some plain butter and Kerrygold Garlic and Herb Butter and made a pot of black tea.

The leaf is somewhat fine and wiry. I used below boiling water for just over two minutes. The result is a cup of black tea with strong cocoa notes, maltiness, and heft. I told the others it was toothsome! I drank this plain and it was smooth enough and hearty enough for me. Because this is a really characteristic Fujian black that I associate with breakfast I tried it almost with milk and sugar. I think I may like it best this way!

This is a good example of Fujian black tea, strong enough for breakfast, smooth enough for any time! Thank you for the opportunity to try it, NTL!

I believe this is the tea sample I received from Nature’s Tea Leaf, although my package says Buddha Hand Oolong.

I have never had a Buddha Hand oolong so I looked up several and found that some sites consider it to be just another name for Ti Guan Yin, and some referred to it as a Wuyi Rock Oolong. If anyone has more detailed information, I would love to know it!

The leaves are a mix of dark green and light green, very pretty to look at, hard and tightly curled, and very consistent in size. I almost did a rinse but decided to keep a close eye on the tea instead and make a decision based on how it was shaping up. The leaves began to unfurl very well, so I left it and drank the first steep with no rinse.

The liquor is a fairly strong golden yellow color, not pale. The aroma is sweet and that rock mineral quality is present, though not as strong as in a monkey picked oolong. There is also another elusive aroma that is so hard for me to describe that I find in Ti Kuan Yins – perhaps slightly vanilla? It really is an aroma that for me is so distinct and so particular to oolongs that I don’t know how to describe it otherwise!

The second steep is an even more golden yellow and seems to have greater clarity of color than the first. This was a nice tea start to my morning! I only wish I had time to drink more, but I must go work at early voting. My evening cups will be desperately needed!

Oh, and I got the big news I was waiting for last night! The phone call came just after midnight. My daughter’s Irish boyfriend, the one you guys said was a keeper because he brings me tea, proposed on Myrtle Beach at midnight, and she said yes! He had asked last Sunday for our permission to propose, so I knew it was coming! :)

I think this is one of the few Teavivre teas I have ordered that I bought “blind” rather than having already had a sample first.

I really shouldn’t be up, but I am hoping to stay up late enough to get some big news and I have had a brutal day working at early voting. I needed a soul soother tea and picked this one.

This is so light and creamy that it reminds me of drinking white tea. It is smooth, never sour, never bitter. The more I drink the more I want to keep drinking, which is good because I had no lunch today and couldn’t even go get water for the longest time. I am so glad I bought this one.

Tomorrow, I am taking a bottle of matcha water to stay hydrated and keep my energy up, because tonight I am seriously flagging.

Hubby and I are having this free sample from Nature’s Tea Leaf as our meditative evening tea. I made two steeps and will probably go for more tomorrow with these leaves, but I don’t want too much caffeine tonight!

The steeped liquid is pale. The aroma is soft but not weak. The taste is of soft grain, oats, with a smooth creaminess. I have had white tea that just got lost in the cup and was more or less like drinking a cup of hot water. You won’t have that issue with this tea. Soft, smooth, but with creaminess and body. This did just what I wanted it to do this evening.

Thank you, Nature’s Tea Leaf, for the samples!

Oh wow. Oh wow oh wow oh wow.

Due to a wedding rehearsal dinner last night, Chinese buffet take out got bumped to tonight after the wedding. I was soooo ready for it. I needed to pick a tea to go with it and wanted to choose from the selection Nature’s Tea Leaf sent me for review.

I picked up this package and thought it would be a good choice, thinking It was jasmine. Then I noticed it didn’t say jasmine anywhere on it. What? I didn’t know there was such a thing as dragon pearl tea that WASN’T jasmine! Intrigued, I stood by my choice.

I used one nice full teaspoon of leaves in my eight ounce gong fu pot. The directions said to steep for one minute. I kept checking it because I didn’t see how that could be enough time for the pearls to begin to unfurl and give good flavor. I poured it up at the one minute mark anyway. Then did a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth!

The liquor starts out pale, not a golden yellow but almost a peachy pale yellow. Subsequent steeps were a little darker. ALL steeps were really truly delicious!

This is….maybe similar to a DragonWell? But nutty nutty nutty. I have never had roasted chestnuts but if this is really what they taste like, I want some! Hubby whooped up on it, matching me cup for cup. He thought it was good, too! We got forty ounces of tea from one teaspoon of pearls.

This is PERFECT with food. I think I am in love with a new green. Smooth, but palate clearing. Hearty without bitterness or astringency. Assertive enough to go with food and really complement the meal.

Thank you, Nature’s Tea Leaf! This is superb!

It felt a little chilly this morning when hubby and I went out to pick up a few things for a home improvement project. When I came home I saw that it is actually in the low sixties, but hey. Everything is relative.

The cool temp made me want a plain black tea with my breakfast when we got home. I picked this one mostly because I don’t want it to get old and stale and I haven’t had it in a long time.

It was a great tea to choose because it is doing everything I wanted it to do. I can drink this one plain because it is such a mild Irish Breakfast. It does still taste with milk and sugar if you want to add it. It probably wouldn’t satisfy someone who likes a nice, strong Assam to kick them in the tuckus in the mornings, but it is a great strength for me.

Spicy, but not too spicy, even for a wimp like me. The green base is nice and smooth. This is an excellent and enjoyable green, and Gurman’s has been a pleasure to deal with.

Oh my, I am so full of tea tonight. We made four steeps of this tonight. Delicious and chocolate-y as always. I think we tried four different teas tonight. Oof.

My first unflavored matcha ever arrived today! I bought this because of the rave reviews I have seen here, and it did not let me down.

The tin has a screw on lid, and when it arrives it also has a metal pull tab lid inside. They care about preserving the freshness, and respect their product! That is a good start.

I opened it and sniffed the matcha powder. Buttery, fresh sweet vegetables! I heated some water and got out my whisk. Now I can’t wait to get a real bamboo one. I still got a good froth with my metal kitchen whisk, but what amazed me was the color of this tea. It was the brightest emerald green I have ever seen.

My daughter and I both drank it, and this was so smooth, creamy, and buttery. You feel so healthy drinking it because it is plain how high quality it is, and how pure. My daughter sighed and told me that she is going to go broke with this new found matcha habit. I have a feeling she will be placing her own order before long. This was a fantastic introduction to unflavored matcha! There was nothing that could be considered bitter or astringent about this.

My daughter loves this matcha so much that even though we had a steak dinner and birthday cake, she wanted me to make a latte for her and for her boyfriend. I told her that this matcha was even in her birthday cake! Here it is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24998856@N06/8101584295/

She loved the cake and the lattes. I did make a substitution in the cake recipe. It called for Cool Whip in the cream cheese frosting but I thought marshmallow cream would be better in its place. It turns out it was a good call. The pecans really do a lot for this cake, too, which makes me wonder about how this matcha would taste mixed with a nut flavored matcha or even a marshmallow one, if there is one!

My daughter’s boyfriend is visiting from Ireland, and he brought presents of TEA! There are so many kinds of Twinings tea that we don’t have here in our town and possibly not even in the US. This one is new to me.

Opening the outer pouch I give it a good sniff and I am met with the scent of tea, followed by a nice peppery rose aroma. That is a good start, as I have had rose tea that knocked me over and took my lunch money, and destroyed the taste of the tea in the process.

The tea brews up as a medium dark brew, not as dark as Orange Bliss was the other day. The sip is smooth and gentle. There is no need to tame this with milk unless you just enjoy adding it. Ad it is sweet enough for me without sugar, but I bet it is very good with sugar, too, as the rose flavor is naturally sweet and would probably grow more so.

The rose flavor is very well balanced here, strong enough to taste without hunting for it, but not overpowering or perfume-y. Twinings is a very consistent tea company that really doesn’t disappoint.

I can’t believe I haven’t updated that I ordered this and have it in my cupboard! We have been drinking it a lot, but I guess I just didn’t get around to logging it.

This was the final tea of tea party yesterday. I think my guest was a little out off by the smokey aroma since she isn’t used to Lapsang. As soon as she sipped, she seemed very surprised and pleased. Though this tea has a strong, smokey aroma, the taste is sweet and smooth and the smoke really makes you think of being cozy by a crackling fire while cold rain pours outside of your window. My youngest daughter is going to finish this tin pretty quickly.

The first thing I served at tea party was a warm latte made with this matcha. Warm skim milk+1/2 teaspoon matcha+one teaspoon sugar. Froth with immersion blender. Topped with a little swirl of whipped cream, since tea party is a special occasion.

I liked it very much, just as before. My guest wasn’t wild about it because she doesn’t add sugar to ANYTHING and so far she has only liked coffee lattes. She said she liked it but didn’t love it.

I put almost a teaspoon of this matcha into my daughter’s birthday cake. I am eager to see if we can tell it made a difference. I will post a link to the cake and a note about how the flavoring went when we cut the cake!

Backlogging tea party day: Yesterday was tea party day and this was our first regular tea. It was also the very last of this tea. I had received this in a swap with Paul M. Tracy a long while back and had hoarded it because it was so amazing. The company went out of business so I hoarded even harder. The lesson here is….don’t. Don’t save it, just drink it. This has lost some of its beauty to that robber called time.

It was a good tea yesterday, but when it was fresh and young it was an amazing one.

I have no memory of where I got this teabag. There are only two places I can think of – the most likely being that one of my students brought this to me from her trip to Disney long ago. The other possibility is that daughter’s BF sent it from Ireland, but I don’t think so. This has been hiding somewhere but turned up yesterday in all the turmoil.

You see, dear hubby who can do ANYTHING! ANYTHING I TELL YOU! is moving our washer and dryer for greater convenience for me. But as happens, it was discovered that the wall where the washer used to be was wet from seepage and the sheetrock had to be replaced. This resulted in two extra trips to the hardware store and lots of extra time for poor hubby and the water had to stay shut off periodically so he could run new water lunes and I couldn’t have tea and since we were pulling things out we found tons of things, including this tea. Phew!

(Oddly, I also found a three page “handy hints” email that my late mom printed up for me over a decade ago, and I saw the identical list on Pinterest today. Weird.)

Now this teabag is probably no spring chicken, but I am horrified at how much tea I have now that I had to move it all around so I am drinking up such things as I can. I steeped it for three minutes in just less than boiling water. Wow, this is dark!

But you know what? The tea really tastes like hearty tea blend and the orange flavor is really authentic, including the juicy orange aroma plus that slight bitter smell you get from the white membrane. This really tastes like I just squeezed an orange over my cup. Since the base is a little stronger than I usually drink, I added a wee bit of sugar and had a nice cuppa. I also got rid of one teabag without guilt. Now I only have about twenty teas to go…

Well, once again I am perplexed. But this is fun! The man at the Chinese buffet gave me tea, so last week I took him some Mengku Palace Puerh from Teavivre. I photocopied the label which has Chinese and English on it. He looked at it for a moment and then said, “Oh, puerh! This is the tea to drink when you want to lose weight!” I told him it is also very tasty.

Well, he insisted on sharing his tea with me again. I could not understand what he was calling this tea but there is a remote chance he was saying Dong Ding. I will try to find out soon! Here is a pic of the wrapper and leaves. If anyone can read the Chinese, please let me know what it says!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24998856@N06/8092641514/

The tea came in a little foil pouch like Teavivre’s Tie Kuan Yin. Inside the pouch the tea was also enclosed in a little poly baggie. The leaves were a mix of dark green and black. They were tightly rolled. I guessed it must be an oolong and prepared it accordingly. The little pouch made a few leaves that didn’t even cover the bottom of my tiny gong fu pot.

I did a fifteen second rinse and then steeped for three minutes. I am no further along in knowing just what I am drinking. It is a dark oolong for sure. There is a “rock” or mineral taste, but also wisps of fruit flickering through my senses. At first, there was a somewhat sour taste, such as you find in the “palate clearing” teas. I steeped this tea five times, and by the third steep my tea pot was full to bustin’ with leaves. Seriously, I don’t know when I have seen leaves swell so incredibly. That is probably a clue as to what kind of tea this is.

I am trying to pick what tea I will take next time I go. Perhaps a Huang Shan Mao Feng.