ashmanra

I have been feeling a little bit “off” for a couple of weeks now. I am pretty sure it is from too much holiday food combined with getting off of my exercise schedule during the holidays and now trying to put it all back together. After meals I feel especially strange, so I think my digestion needs some TLC.

I turn to puerh tonight to see if that will help. This is the my very last tuo cha from Teavivre, but I do have two kinds of their loose puerh left as well as the beeng Cha I got from Mandala in December. This was actually sent to me by AmyOh way back, but since it is puerh it has only been getting better!

I gave this a 30 second rinse, then a one minute steep. It is nice and dark. I immediately made another one minute steep and combine the two in my fair cup. It is still quite dark. The flavor is rich and the floral aspect muted. The taste is not fishy at all, and very horsey. I think of piles of leaves and mushrooms, nice and earthy.

I will probably go three more steeps on this tonight.

Edited to add: final steeps were so good. The tea seemed to get a thicker mouthfeel, that thing I call a cedar oil coating. It feels so smooth.

Mmmm, youngest and I wanted a pot of tea with geometry this morning. She said she was open to any lapsang, so I picked this one. This was a sample from Hesper June, who sent us a big care package of lots of kinds of Lapsang to try.

The dry tea had a rich smell of thick cut bacon, cooked to a turn, well done and crispy. The tea is smooth and sweet. I took no additions, daughter took hers with milk and sugar as usual, and we both enjoyed it!

Thank you, Hesper June!

I was searching for a good green tea to start my day and my eye lit on this sample from Nuvola. I have had three cups of it, had another today, and I would say I still have enough to make another two or three cups.

The liquor is a deep emerald green and it goes down smoothly. This is a very drinkable matcha! Thank you, Nuvola!

It was a beautiful day outside today, but this afternoon was very trying. (Family stuff.) I want to go to bed and relax and dream sweet dreams, so I am drinking some of hubby’s night night tea.

It is extremely sweet so I am sure it must be loaded with licorice root. There is a tiny minty hint and lots of flavor that I really can’t identify. I will say I find it extremely drinkable. Of course, it is a tisane, not actual tea. It is almost liquid candy. I added no sweetener.

I will try to update tomorrow to whether it just tasted good, or actually worked!

Nature’s Tea Leaf sent this free for review. It is hard to call it a sample – their portions are so generous!

GMathis is right. Touch these leaves and you will wish you had a pillow made of them. Soft, fluffy, fuzzy, downy. Also, not really easy to scoop in a teaspoon so I just reached in and grabbed a couple of pinches and put them in my eight ounce gong fu pot.

I knew this was likely too much leaf for such a small pot, but not by much, so I cut my steep time a bit. Quite a bit. I ended up with a soft and cozy cup.

There was a really sharp tang to the smell of the wet leaves, but it is no where present in the taste of the liquor.

Last time I drank this I got all oat and soft grain flavors. This time I can smell and taste a tiny, demure peek of fruitiness with the grain. I have had three steeps and plan to keep going with this one because steep three has the most fruity taste so far. I began with a one minute steep and have been increasing it about thirty seconds since. This is contrary to recommended steeping but as I said, I knew I put in more leaf than necessary and I am getting great results from it.

Two years ago, white tea was just hot water to me. I am thankful for the companies that let us try new things and expand our horizons and help us learn to appreciate all that is in tea.

Thank you, Nature’s Tea Leaf!

This was a free sample that was included with the order hubby had me place for Christmas! Thank you, Garret!

We had a busy day. I was up before six to take the foster puppy outside to piddle, in the rain, barefoot. Fortunately it has been rather warm here. Then school with youngest daughter and more rain piddles. Just after lunch hubby came home and we went to Raleigh to pick up a few things and drop something off at my eldest daughter’s apartment.

Now I am so tired I can hardly wait to go to bed! As my mother used to say, “No one will have to rock me to sleep tonight!”

But I really need a late night libation, something special to drink before nodding off. I poked through my sample basket and found this, and apparently I am the first to log it!

Middle daughter just ground some wheat and made chocolate chip cookies and of course I had to grab one or three to much on while I made this tea! Thus, my tasting of the tea may not be perfectly accurate since I began with cookie.

What it does tell me is that I enjoy this tea with food. The tiny pellets expanded magnificently into bright green leaves that filled the little pot. The liquor of the first few steeps carried a sharp, root vegetable scent, but the taste was not sharp. I find it somewhat mineral, which always tastes very fresh to me, lightly floral, and green. It is not astringent or drying.

I am now on steep four and it is smoother and sweeter than ever. The taste is now lingering long, warm and pleasant. There is a taste of delicate green vegetables more so now, but it is a very delicate green taste, not grassy, sour, or harsh. This was a very nice “night night” cup, and I have enough sample left to do this a couple more times!

Thank you again, Garret!

I am still drinking my sample of this. For tea time, which was delayed this week due to other commitments, I steeped one teaspoon of leaf in eight ounces of water three times, combining all in one pot. This has so much sweet floral flavor, but it is natural. The tea is not scented or blended with flowers.

Three cups down the hatch and every one of them had me tapping my toes trying to figure out when I can place another Harney order. Omnomnom!

This is a sample sent for review by Nuvola Tea. Thank you!

This is the fourth Ruby #18 I have tried, yet it always catches me off guard. It is called black tea because of the level of oxidation but when you steep it it is so light and golden.

If you need a tea for work or busy times, this one is a good bet because I don’t think it is possible to ruin it. Boiling water? No problem. Something a little less than boiling? That is okay, too. Forget you were steeping it? It probably doesn’t matter. This one doesn’t get bitter or astringent unless you leave it for a really long time, longer than I have managed to forget it. I have yet to ruin a cup.

And it resteeps, really well, in fact. This is a black tea made from a hybrid tea varietal and made in Taiwan where oolong teas prevail’ so you can treat this a lot like a oolong.

Everyone needs to try a Sun Moon Lake (Ruby 18) sometime.

Thank you, Nuvola Tea!

I was going to have a black tea this morning, but I noticed I had not opened this final tin of tea from Christmas.

The directions call for one tablespoon of leaf per eight ounces of water and a two to three minute steep. It always makes me a little sad when directions call for more than a teaspoon per six to eight ounces because that means I am going to run out of tea sooner!

This produced a pale liquor that was richly scented of garden peas with a bare hint of root vegetable – rutabaga, I would say, possibly turnip.

The taste was strong, and I considered it somewhat grassy and a bit sour, but good. I drank the whole pot so it couldn’t have been bad. It did create a slow rising sweet aftertaste that bubbles up way behind the sip.

For the second steep I used a lot more water. I kept the steep at two minutes. Ah! Now I found my tea happy place! Everyone likes different things, so other people may very love this at the suggested parameters. I prefer it this way. And this means my tin is going to last longer, bwahaha!

There is still plenty of flavor in this, and though I finished it about ten minutes ago I am still enjoying the sweet rising aftertaste. I think this would be excellent with food, as in a hearty meal or nice Asian dinner.

This is a sample I bought a long time ago. I held off trying it because I wanted to have a real gong fu set for my first taste. Well, I have had two such sets for a very long time, but this was lost in a drawer by the tea table. I hoped it would still be good.

Wow. If this is Ali Shan old, what was it like when it was fresh? I gave it a thirty second rinse because these leaves are so tightly balled up and ping! Like metal bb’s when you drop tem in the pot! Then a three minute steep followed.

The liquor is pale. The taste is just liquid flowers. Oh my gosh, this is so good. It is hard to believe that this is just tea, and it isn’t infused with this or that, or scented. Gardenias, maybe. Lilacs, perhaps. But definitely sweet and floral. No additions. This just went on my must buy list, replacing Wenshan Bao Zhong, and sitting right beside Old Fir Da Hong Pao.

Steep two is just as good. Today I have had two bowls of matcha, two matcha lattes, two cups of Sun Moon Lake, and now this. In spite of all the caffeine, I think the L theanine is lulling me to sleep…

Edited to add: the more I drink, the more I notice a creamy coating and a light buttery flavor, not strong. I will continue steeping these leaves tomorrow.

This is a free sample sent for review by Nuvola Tea. Thank you so much, Nuvola! This is fantastic! I had it three ways today.

I confess I am a matcha newbie. Two years ago I don’t think I would have tried it. Now that my eldest daughter is drinking tea solely for health reasons I stay on the hunt for the best tasting, most antioxidant rich teas I can find so we can share them.

I opened this pouch this morning for a back to school boost, as my youngest daughter and I are hitting the books again homeschooling. Oh, this smells so sweet and delicious! There is a strong, fresh green aroma, like sweet, sweet veggies. MMM!

I sift about 1/2 tsp. into my bowl and whisk with 176F water. The taste is much like the aroma, only at the end of the sip there is a quick bitterness because I used too much matcha, but also, not a bad taste so much as the palate cleansing type of taste that is often tasted in green teas. I am easily able to finish this.

I make a second cup with a little less matcha powder since I am not really measuring my water. This time I add two pinches of sugar. This probably amounts to less than 1/8 tsp. of sugar. I whisk it up and drink. VOILA! No bitterness at all! Also, I taste no sugar or sugary sweetness, only natural sweetness from the matcha! This cup goes down fast fast so I decide to experiment some more!

I put about 1/8 tsp. sugar in a bowl, maybe less. I warm some milk and whisk. Ahhhhh! Warm milk is so soothing and always takes on a dark and dreamy flavor to me, almost earthy. Now it is combined with the fresh green taste of the matcha, and the sugar is completely hidden flavor wise so next time I may leave it out entirely.

Excellent tea, Nuvola! I have really enjoyed trying your matcha in all these ways today!

I am drinking a huge pot of this today! I made a steep in my small pot, poured it, and made another and this is still plenty strong, so hooray for all us resteepers!

The nice thing about this tea is that it is strong enough for morning but doesn’t make you feel like you need to do CPR on your tongue. I am awake, oh yes, but I am not traumatized.

And why did I make so much? To try out a new teapot! My doorbell rang just after eight this morning and I saw a FedEx truck. There on my doorstep was a huge box. Ike the puppy had sent me a tea service for six as a thank you gift for taking care of him while his master was in the hospital! Ike will be here again tomorrow to share my English muffin at breakfast, as he usually is, on Tuesdays. He may get jam on his piece tomorrow!

My bestie stopped by to have lunch with me today after shopping for all those goodies you need in order to send a child to college. Her son is leaving for the first time, having done his first two years here locally while living at home.

I made Philly Cheese Steaks with sautéed onions, mayo, lettuce, mozzarella, the usual stuff. It was gray and rainy so I wanted a stout-ish tea that would taste good with our food but would also appeal to everyone, since hubby was also eating and he is picky.

This is one of his favorites, and I must say that I like it very much as well. It needs no additions for me, though hubby adds milk and sugar, but that is true of pretty much all black tea for him. It is fruity and malty with no trace of dryness or astringency at all. It goes well with pretty much any food, whether meal or snack. Though it has a nice, bright flavor, it does not have the strong lemony flavor that some Ceylons have that can turn your tongue a bit. This and its decaf companion from the same store are shelf staples here.

I could have sworn I had logged this! I bet the other tasting note is floating around somewhere with missing accent marks on the name of the tea. This was a Christmas gift from my eldest daughter.

My bestie and I had this as a sort of dessert tea after lunch today. She hadn’t tried this one or Pleine Lune by Mariage Freres so I let her have a sniff of both and she chose this one. Pleine Lune has more bright citrus scent whereas this one has a low tone of vanilla and almond scents.

This is a lovely tea and not astringent. It needs no additions for me but is delicious just as it is. The flavor is primarily almond or marzipan. Very Christmas-y tasting tea and very nice as we had yet another gray and gloomy, wet day. All right, Christmas is over and I am ready for spring!

When I told my bestie we were going to have an unflavored white tea tonight, she cried, “NOOOOO! Won’t it just taste like hot water?” I said, “Well, I like it! I think you will, too.”

We had Royal Wedding first and she liked that, so she was primed and ready to try an unflavored white. And she liked it! Very much in fact! She was surprised at how much flavor it had, and this one indeed does have a lot of flavor. She was very pleased to find that she DOES like unflavored white tea and that it is flavorful, not just hot water!

My bestie wants to expand her tea horizons and told me she wanted to find some green and white teas that she would enjoy. Her first green experiences were not so good, grocery store greens that just tasted like hot water and heartburn.

She tried Stash White Christmas and loved it, so when she came over tonight for tea I tried some others on her. She really loved this one, and I have a lot of it since I bought the bulk bag so I gave her a bunch to take home. She loves coconut, and she already liked Harney’s Wedding Tea. This is, I think, the same tea but with coconut added. She is a school teacher so she likes having sachets at work and uses loose leaf at home.

It is a hit! Yummy and creamy!

This is the very last of a sample sent for review by Teavivre. Thank you, Angel!

I wanted a good black tea after breakfast today and I wanted something that would go well with some Cinnamon Hazelnut Biscotti Babies that my bestie gave me in a Harney and Sons gift set for Christmas. I really wanted a Keemun but I am almost completely out of Keemuns (gasp!) and thought I would finish this sample.

Sitting here also makes me count my blessings. I am drinking tea that was a gift, eating biscotti that was a gift, and my pot is sitting on a warmer that was a gift, looking at a card by GMathis that was an unexpected surprise bearing a gift of great tea inside!

This is definitely good black tea. I went just over three minutes on steeping even though the directions recommend one to two minutes. They do say to steep longer if you like your tea stronger, I find that hong cha is typically drunk much lighter in Asia than westerners are accustomed to. Indeed, this wasn’t hurt a bit by the extra time, and could have gone longer.

It is everything I needed for it to be this morning. Smooth, fruity, sweetly honeyed. And it does pair nicely with my biscotti! It is mild for a breakfast tea, but I don’t use my breakfast tea that way usually anyway. I drink tea after breakfast.

A friend called this morning on her way to Raleigh and said she needed some Teavivre tea, and were they located in Raleigh? I told her no, they were in China, but if she needed tea I would order it for her. LOL! So now I need to make a decision on which Keemun to buy for my cupboard. This is the only Teavivre one I have had, so I will glance back at Missy and Dylan’s comparisons of all the Teavivre Keemuns and try to make a decision!

This is one of the samples sent to me by Bonnie that I really wanted to wait for a special time to make it, and that time is NOW! My daughter who used to hate all tea, then liked puerh, then white and green, has discovered that she likes chai! She is visiting today so we made this two ways.

First I just steeped it in water, like any black tea. We took it without additions and she liked it very much. I like it, too, and there are a lot of chai blends that really turn me off. This one, Harney and Sons Indian Spice, and Rabbit Hole Chai have been my favorites. For a bagged tea, the Holiday Spice by Stash isn’t bad.

Next I mixed a little water in milk and steeped it that way. I did sweeten it a little, but my daughter didn’t care for it as much. Once she added some additional sugar she liked it, though. Her favorite was and is definitely still the first version, steeped like a regular black tea.

Thank you, Bonnie!

I started out my friend tasting unflavored puerh because I think it is great by itself, and I wanted her to have a good idea of what it is like. I had made two steeps of this already today, and once we had a few steeps of unflavored puerh I resteeped this again.

We drank two steeps of this one in addition to the others we had, and she really liked it. She was very enthusiastic about it, and I am not terribly surprised because she is very adventurous food wise and tries a lot of neat and unusual recipes. So yay! Another person who will drink puerh with me!

Tonight was writers’s group at my house but we had fewer people than usual thanks to colds and work related issues. This meant more time for tea! My partner in culinary crime loves to experiment so I asked her if we had ever tried puerh together and she said no. I gave her a brief history of the drink, let her sniff this cake, and since she didn’t run in fear I started steeping.

Five steeps later, we have a convert. She really liked it. I steeped it for over a minute each time…one steep was quite a bit longer and every steep was good. I used about a teaspoon of leaf pried off the cake into my eight ounce pot and we used a fair cup. Very good, with a nice cedar oil mouthfeel this time!

This was a surprise in the mail from the talented GMathis! First of all, it came in this amazing card!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24998856@N06/8342846753/

Second, I really do like puerh. This is a funny thing because I dislike coffee, yet when I have a guest who says they really don’t like tea but love coffee, I serve them puerh and they love it! I was told puerh was an acquired taste, and while the smell of the first fishy Tuocha I bought scared me, I liked the taste from the get-go. Then when I found better quality puerh, I was eager to get to know more.
I like unflavored puerh just fine, but most of the flavored ones I have tried have been good.

This one is more exciting because I have loved everything I have tried from Nature’s Tea Leaf.

I steeped this in boiling water for about two minutes. I don’t mind my puerhs being inky black so that was a short steep for me! But the smell….ah, the smell. Even in the card, it smelled so good and juicy. Last night, I kept it beside me and sniffed and sniffed.

I am not a fan of weird cherry flavor. I don’t care for Cherry Coke. I don’t like rooibos because it tastes like cherry cough syrup to me. I love good cherry flavor and lay in a stash of cherry lollipops at Valentine’s.

This tastes like my Black Cherry Matcha! Well, the cherry part does anyway! And the puerh is a beautiful grounding for it and they have blended it just right. I could have sworn I even got a little natural chocolate-y flavor in the base. There is no fishiness at all – this is an nice earthy puerh. Good golly, this is tasty! I made 16 ounces and swilled it down in no time! This has great balance. If you are afraid of puerh, you should try this first!

This is great puerh and is the first real rival for position with Lupicia’s Chocolate Strawberry Puerh. I will be serving this tonight for Writers’s Group. (We really should name ourselves. Maybe it should have something to do with tea!)

I have been trying to whittle down my stash but every time I try a NTL tea I think, “Well, this has to go on the list for my first order.” Same for this one – it is definitely on the list and is probably also going to be the birthday gift for my puerh loving friend.

This was a free sample included in my Christmas order from Mandala Tea. Thank you, Garret!

It is tea party day! We didn’t have a tea party last week since it was the day after Christmas, and I wanted today to keep the holiday festivity vibe going! My middle daughter made a pan of brownies with freshly ground whole wheat, which makes really yummy fudge brownies, and we served it with homemade vanilla ice cream.

I also served Bonne Maman Fig Preserves. Ysaurella said she liked it best with goat cheese but I have none at this time so I served it with my warm homemade cheese spread that has a bit of onion in it.

I told youngest I would make this pot personally because I couldn’t believe we were going to get enough strength in a black tea in just one minute, but at one minute the color was nice and dark and the aroma was strong, so I did pull the basket.

I think this was the favorite tea of my guest today. She said it left behind a creamy feeling and had the most enduring aftertaste of our teas today. There is something rather unique about the aroma and flavor of this one that I couldn’t quite pin down and I hope someone more experienced will be able to describe accurately. This is fruity without being sharp, not a Darjeeling type of fruitiness but rather a baked fruit that has been mellowed and sweetened by the heat of baking.

It paired nicely with our food. We drank it without additions and it was sweet and smooth.
I look forward to trying further steeps of this!

I saved my leaves yesterday because I suspected that this one was a good resteeper. I was right! The second pot is still going strong and makes me wonder if this might even go three steeps western style.

The brew is light/medium orange and the flavor is roasted walnut with some sweet notes. Very nice!

Thank you, Nuvola Tea, for letting me try this!

This tea intrigues me most out of the new samples sent by Nuvola Tea for review.

I have never heard of a black oolong. I read their description that it is black tea made from oolong tea but I am still a bit in the dark. Is it black tea produced from a varietal that is normally used for oolong? Were the leaves first subjected to the processing for oolong tea, then for black tea?

I decided to go middle of the road with this one, using 194F water and giving it a little less than four minutes to steep.

The aroma is very fruity, the tea a medium orange color. The taste is a bit befuddling, but good. It mixes the flavor of a light black tea having fruity notes with the flavor of a dark roasted oolong. The sides of the tongue really sense that roasted oolong aspect. There is a nice sweet aftertaste.

I decided to see how it goes with food – snack, actually, and specifically pumpkin roll. I am pleased to say it went well, and now I notice that there is a smoky bottom to this tea, the roasted aspect becoming more obvious when pitted against the sweetness of my dessert. Nice pairing! Thank you, Nuvola Tea, for the opportunity to taste this!