Auggy

I’ve got some serious Steepstering to catch up on. Saturday night, I (through my own stupidity) broke my Zojirushi. Not awesome. At all. But with the combination of an understanding husband, an Amazon Prime free trial, five additional dollars for a next day shipping upgrade and, of course, the joy that is the internet, I am now the proud owner of a new Zojirushi (the CD-WBC40). Thank goodness. The kettle and I just weren’t getting along.

To celebrate the return of temperature-controlled water-dispensing to the household, I thought I’d give this one another go, this time with Shinobicha’s suggestion of just a tiny amount of water. I did 4.2g of tea to 4oz of water and gave it about 30s in my preheated Tokoname.

First off, I was surprised at how mild this was with so much leaf. And sweet! Not quite creamy like my first delightful taste of this, but still very enjoyable. Oddly, it made me think that if the Japanese made green tea gum (what am I talking about? I’m sure they do somewhere), this would probably be what it would taste like. Like a sweet mint gum but without the mint – just the sweetness and freshness.

I’m still not raising the rating any on this one though because 1) for a higher rating, I need easily-found buttercream and 2) as tasty as this is, there’s not a whole lot of depth to the flavor aside from sweetness and fresh green-ness. But still, this ratio is definitely worth repeating.

I didn’t notice that this was sweetened when I bought this but drinking it? OMG, do I notice. In fact, that’s all I notice. Cane sugar and ascorbic acid. HORRIBLE. This tastes like any typical bottled “tea” that you’d find at a gas station. Truly horrible. Two sips and I threw the rest away.

Wow, this is surprisingly tasty. No additives yet it is smooth and a little sweet. Very malty. I’m actually pretty impressed!

Ugh, tastes like there’s Nilgiri tea in it – raw and a bit rough. The tasting notes say no, so maybe the Ceylon is just… not so good. If I could ignore that raw note, this would probably be okay, but I can’t so it’s not.

It’s gentle, smooth, nutty, rich and tastes likes it’s been stirred with a nectar-covered spoon.

I like the versatility of this tea. At 3 minutes and it’s a smooth, sweet, medium bodied tea that is bold enough to be breakfast-worthy but nice enough to make me happy without additives (even in a travel tumbler, which is a bit of an achievement). Steeped for 5 minutes though, it turns into a stout, growly, super-chewy full-bodied breakfast blend that cries out for a little milk to smooth the edges. So on mornings like today when I want a kinder wake-up tea, I can reach for this one. But on days that I need something to slap me in the face and shake me awake? Yeah, this works well then, too.

I find this tea pretty groovy. It’s sweet and woodsy and comforting and refreshing… And for some reason I really like the sound the little pellets make as I toss them into my teapot. It’s so cheerful and tinkly. How do they make those little pellets, by the way? And why is it only ginseng teas that are pelleted?
^4.6g/9oz

So yeah, I’m dropping the rating on this one down a little bit. It’s just too picky. Sure, my first cup was amazing but I haven’t been able to repeat the brilliance and since then just gotten a very nice but not overly special cup. I know that there is delight hiding somewhere in there, it’s just hard to find. Hopefully I’ll be able to recreate it before I run out of this tea.
^{Tokoname pot, 5.1g/10oz, pour started at 25s. I’m thinking it doesn’t do well in larger quantities.}

My ginormous Samovar order came in today and I’m so happy I ordered a tin of this! It’s what the Rishi Tangerine Ginger should have been – gingery warm, citrusy bright, fresh, cuddly, sweet, tangy, a hint of woodsy – not tart or phlegm-inducing or something that brings to mind Thera-Flu. I think I could easily become addicted to this tea.

Based on the smell I was anticipating something tooth-numbingly sweet but this is actually quite mild. The Chinese sencha base tastes more like bancha, but it adds a nice woody touch to the flavor that, combined with the fruit flavoring, makes me think of biting on pomegranate seeds. It’s surprisingly nice. Thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for the share!

^{ETA: Drastically dropping the rating because something in this tea has made me violently nauseous. Oh dear.}

This tea is weird. It’s so close to perfect but it’s got two weird little things going on that just totally throw me off. The flavor has so much depth – it’s sweet and fruity and floral and rich. It’s got a sweetness similar to that of a milk oolong, floral hints like a great Ali Shan. Each sip makes me think, “AH! This is going to be perfect!” And then two things happen.

One, there’s this funky little end note and aftertaste that I can only describe as sour. It’s not an overly strong note and not totally unpleasant – a bit like sour apple candy flavor – but it just seems to clash with the rest of the notes in the tea so it keeps throwing me off. And two, the mouth feel is water-thin. This huge, rich, thick, decadent flavor… and this weak, thin mouthfeel that makes me think I underbrewed.

Neither point is enough to kill off my enjoyment of the tea, but it does leave me feeling rather confused while I sip.
^7.8g/13oz

I gave it a number of points equal to the sips I could manage.

It’s like drinking liquid Red Hots with a dash of overly sweet potpourri thrown in.

This is not pleasant and just the smell is making me nauseous.

I have to pretty much agree with TeaEqualsBliss on this one – it tastes a lot like… hot water. There’s a small bit of a lemongrass flavor but only to the level that an unsqueezed slice of lemon adds lemon flavoring to water. Sort of a blink and you’ll miss it type thing.

That being said, it’s not really a bad tea. Just a boring one.

And it’s another TeaEqualsBliss tea! Yay!

This one is smooth, mild, woody and a little fruity sweet. Peach is the closest fruit flavor I can associate it with but it’s a little milder and… more fibrous than a typical peach. It’s very typically ‘tea’ tasting with some added light, sweet notes (peach and maybe honey) and faint, woody notes.

Not my typical oolong but still a nice darker one and I like the fact that it doesn’t make me think of cigars. The rating totally reflects my personal tea tastes, not the quality of this one because it is quite nice.
^10g/20oz

Another share from TeaEqualsBliss – thank you!

The smell while brewing makes me think of barley. The pieces are tiny – BP I’m guessing stands for broken pekoe? – so I did a short steep time. I also added sugar and half & half out of habit. Oops. Oh well.

The taste is pretty surprising. Because the pieces are so small, I anticipated something with a bit of an edge, and maybe it does have it and the additives are hiding it, but it doesn’t seem like it at all. It’s odd though because the taste is both mild and bold. Thin, maybe? But flavorful? Something. And I can’t quite peg the taste – it doesn’t seem fruity or malty. It seems more grain-like. Whatever it is, it makes it fairly unique – and pretty tasty!

Trying this one straight today. The bergamot is very strong and has an interesting and not entirely unpleasant floral soapy thing going on. There is a twinge of bitter at the end that makes me think this is definitely better with milk and sugar. All in all, not something I’d probably have straight again but a decent Earl Grey.

Wow. This is MANGO TEA. Yes, it deserves all caps. Probably the most distinctively mango tea I’ve ever had. It’s smooth, sweet, has a very true-life mango flavor. You would think all these things would combine to give a delightful tea. And it does… Kinda.

See, I’ve got this thing against flavored oolongs and greens. It just makes me grumpy. Oh sure, sometimes it’s done right – I love the creamy coconut flavor of GM’s Coconut Pouchong – but that one is the exception for me, not the rule. This one is a bold mango flavor and it’s just too overwhelming for me.

However, if someone is looking for a good, mango-juice-lite type tea, this would totally be the winner. And since mango is the husband’s favorite fruit, I passed the rest of this cup (8oz) on to him. He was fairly delighted.

I’m giving a bump up to the rating of this one. I keep thinking, “Ah yes, a nice caramel tea.” But no, it’s not. It’s really a great caramel tea. The smell is fantastic – thick and silky and just guh. Like those candy commercials where they have caramel flowing into caramel-colored silk? Yeah, it smells like that.

But if a tea tastes like dirty socks I’m not going to fall in love with it, silky rich smell or not. Thankfully, no dirty socks here. On the first sip of this tea I’m always reminded of Lupicia’s English Caramel because this is surprisingly unsweet. Unlike English Caramel, however, it thankfully goes nowhere near bittersweet. Instead, it’s silky (but not too heavy) straight caramel chew that somehow manages to be candy but not be sugary-sweet.

Then the sip ends and that’s where the sweet seems to really hit me – it expands in my mouth and suddenly I feel like I’ve been sucking on caramel-flavored nectar. When I had finished with my 12oz I actually felt like it had coated my mouth with a post-caramel-chew flavor/feeling.

It’s just an all around delightful tea, thus the rating bump. I think it’s a grand feat for a tea to manage such smooth, silky dessert-tea-ness, especially without sugar or milk. I’m already dreading the day I run out.

The weather is overcast, humid and rainy for the second week in a row and I’m getting grouchy about it. So grouchy, in fact, that I am too grumpy to really make tea. My tea consumption had been drastically reduced because of this and I’ve felt the lack. I’m still grumpy and grouchy and sulking about the weather but decide that I needed tea, even if I didn’t really want to make it. So I put some water into my 10oz cup, dropped a dragon ball in, meandered into the living room and flipped on History Channel and answered some emails.

The first few sips were like hot water sprinkled with a bit of cocoa powder but I had only let the ball soak for a maybe couple of minutes, not nearly long enough. The water was too hot still anyway, so I let it cool a bit more. By the time it was easy sipping temperature, I ended up with a lovely cup of tea. The last two or three sips (I emptied the cup because I was too lazy to refill) were perhaps a bit on the tannic side but still quite pleasant.

I’m not a big one for imprecise brewing methods but this tea makes it so easy and rewarding that I’m probably going to be doing it more while the weather is so icky.

Nice and sweet lemony, though the ascorbic acid oddly adds a sour taste to it (instead of blending with the lemongrass flavor like I anticipated). Definitely would like this better fresh (vs. bottled) for that reason but all in all, quite tasty for a bottled tea.

As a general rule, I don’t find genmaicha all that impressive. Dunno why, it just doesn’t hit all the right buttons with me. The exception to this is Samovar’s Ryokucha, which yeah, I kind of adore (and am out of right now, which is really horrible). So I wasn’t expecting to get into this gemaicha. But apparently I was wrong. This is actually very tasty and makes me think of my much loved Ryokucha, particularly because it has a similarly milky flavor. This one is a little thinner feeling (no matcha in this one) and perhaps has a bit more toasted rice flavor but it is still remarkably smooth and the flavors mesh really delightfully. Quite a nummy cup! Thanks TeaEqualsBliss!
^5.2g/10oz

I’m getting an interestingly delicious peppery taste with this today. The milky/creamy taste is still there so it ends up a bit like peppered milk – which doesn’t sound good but, if this tea is any indication, certainly tastes awesome.

Thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for sharing this discontinued lovely with me! It’s probably the one rose tea I can really get behind… mostly because of the candied aspect to it. So tasty and it makes such a happy dessert tea for me.

Mmm. Smells bready and chewy and I just wanna gnaw on it a little bit. Even though this is a Chinese tea, it smells like a super-tasty Assam. Then, once it is fully brewed, a bold and rich Tiger-like Yunnan. And the taste? It somehow manages to be both! Chewy and nom-worth Assam on the front, smooth and sweet Yunnan on the back – it’s like the mullet of teas! If this had a little smoke and cocoa thrown into the mix, it’s be the slightly less developed twinsie of the fantastic Tan Yang Te Ji from TeaSpring. This one falls short of that high standard but it’s still a pretty darn good tea. Thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for this tasty number!

Okay, must add that as it cools, it’s getting insanely thick feeling with a strong fig-like note of sweetness. It almost makes me think I’m sipping on syrup. In a good but crazy-rich way.