Drinking a second steep from this weekend iced.
Yeah, not thrilling. At first I didn’t remember what tea it was. Sipping on it didn’t help. So I poured it into a glass so I could see it. Ah, it’s a black tea. That’s a bit surprising. Must be the sesame tea then.
No sugar but iced it only has a bit of bitter at the end that really mostly comes out as astringency/dryness. Oops, I say that but as it warms up that astringency is getting more and more bitter. So okay, iced even, this one needs a little sugar for me.
The big disappointment is that there is zero sesame flavor to it. I suppose all of the added flavor went away in the first steep so it looks like this tea won’t be a good resteeper. As a non-flavored tea, the 2nd steep isn’t bad (though again, needs a little sugar – or maybe a shorter steep time though I don’t recall what I did when I made this).
This doesn’t change my rating for this tea though. How a tea tastes in its natural habitat (hot) is what I tend to really care about when picking/judging teas. Icing later steeps is just a bonus. I am a bit curious how a fully-flavored first steep of this tea would taste iced but eh, I’m probably not going to find out. (Well, unless someone tells me – that’d be cool).
