Auggy

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.

A TeaEqualsBliss rooibos! Sadly, it’s a bit too rooibos and tart and not enough berry for me. There is a nice hint of vanilla sweetness at the end but the tart front taste and rooibos-ness just doesn’t do it for me. Rooibos is just a tough one to make me not hate. But I enjoy trying them!

I’m not sure how I feel about this tea and the whole GABA thing, but this was included in the Tea from Taiwan samplers I got forever ago (yay for vacuum sealing!), so I’ll drink it. Well, maybe I’ll drink it. Cause this tea smells weird. Like honey-covered soybeans. Or boiled vegetables. It’s freakin’ weird. Especially since the dry leaf smelled buttery. But this? Not buttery. Weird.

Uhm, okay. So it kind of tastes like honey-covered soybeans too. Or maybe decaying leaves. That’s just not cool. The front of the sip has the honey so at the beginning of the sip I think, “Oh, that’s not bad, maybe I’m getting used to it.” Then the soybean comes in and I think, “Eew, maybe I should pour this out.”

Yeah. This one does not get a resteep.
^8g/16oz

I just got a good report at the dentist and now my teeth are all clean and shiny. So I’m gonna muss them up with some tea! Yay! This one is another one from TeaEqualsBliss – thank you!

The smell is hitting all sorts of notes that I’m familiar with but I can’t quite place. Mango maybe? And maybe Tan Yang? With a dash of something like wet ash? It smells sweet but also smoky. Not Lapsang or Bohea smoky though. Cigarette or cigar smoky.

The taste is pretty much like the smell but in reverse. Wet smoke/ask, some Tan Yang-esque tea, a dash of mango (or something fruity sweet). The cigar smoke taste backs off a bit when it cools, showing up consistently at the tail end, followed by a typical “tea” taste. This reminds me a ton of SpecialTea’s Formosa Fanciest Oolong, but thicker.

I would say that fans of darker oolongs would probably really enjoy this one because it has a very similar taste profile. It’s a good tea, just not entirely up my alley.

When I was at Ikea the other day, I couldn’t resist picking this up. First off, it’s rhubarb flavored. I’ve never had a rhubarb tea before (shoot, I’ve only had rhubarb itself maybe twice, both times in pie form) and I’m always up for something novel, even if it ends up icky. Second, it was cheap ($2.50 for 3.5oz!) so even if it was icky, I wasn’t going to feel bad about blowing a couple of bucks on it. Third, it’s tea and apparently I have a disease that makes me compulsively purchase tea whenever I see it for sale.

This tea is definitely more vanilla than it is rhubarb but it’s a pink-tinted vanilla. There’s vanilla but it has a noticeable hint of something else that just tastes lightly pink. (Or maybe that’s just me. Does anyone else ever taste colors? And I’m not talking about when you eat fingerpaints.) Eventually I figured out what the pink taste made me think of – lychee. Yeah, yeah, I know. This is rhubarb. But I still think this tastes like a lychee tea, though more on the lychee fruit end, not lychee flower end (no hint of rose). Of course, this could be because my only exposure to rhubarb has been in pie-form and, since I didn’t add half a cup of sugar to my mug this morning, I don’t really taste the similarities. Not that I’m much more versed in lychee – I think I’ve had lychee once but I have had a couple of different lychee teas and that has to count for something, right?

Ah, the joys of drinking furniture polish! Okay, I’m kidding. A little bit. But show me someone that doesn’t think of Pledge when smelling this and I’ll show you someone that needs to dust more.

I’ve never had Lemongrass straight before, but now thanks to TeaEqualsBliss’s generosity, I can! I thought today was a good day for it since I seem to be fighting off a cold or some other illness most likely related to getting caught in the rain yesterday. Herbals always throw me off since I measure my tea by weight but I’m never sure how much of non-tea leaf to use. A lot of times I’ll use the same .5g/1oz ratio I use for greens and oolongs but if I did that for this, I’d probably be using way too much lemongrass since this is some pretty light stuff. So I did a generous heaping teaspoon for my 10oz then rounded that amount up to an even 2g.

The smell definitely makes me think of Pledge (though perhaps you wouldn’t assume that I could make such an association, given how dusty my house is). But it smells like a tasty, sophisticated version of Pledge. Lemon-fresh without the chemical foam. The taste, thankfully, is not like Pledge. It’s darker and a little grassy with a bright citrus sparkle that makes it feel clean and refreshing and reminds me more of lemon rind than lemon juice. It’s sweet and thankfully not tart or astringent. Just really tasty. And it’s kind of making me feel like my sinuses have been given a light dusting.

This is by far the tastiest furniture polish I’ve ever had the pleasure to sip. Thanks TeaEqualsBliss!

ETA: The second steep (7:00) has more lemon flavor but also more grass flavor, making this almost like a very strongly flavored green tea.

Ah. The ingredients say that this contains sour cherry. That would explain it. I got this because it smelled a bit like Mariage Frères’ Sakura the Blanc. But as I continued to sniff it ended up smelling more like cherry LifeSaver. The scent mellows out a bit when it is brewed, once again reminding me of StB, but the tea looks like a mix of pink lemonade and fruit punch. I wish the taste matched up more to the smell but instead I get sour cherry. The sour part hits immediately and doesn’t let go. There’s some really pretty stuff going on behind the sour, stuff that reminds me a lot of StB, but it’s barely peaking out because the sour pretty much beats it to death. Couldn’t just be normal cherry, nooooo, had to be sour.

I’m seriously contemplating picking out all of the non-tea-ness from this mix and seeing if I can get the pretty taste without the sour. Because the sour is really not happening for me.
^10g/20oz

I was brave and got a cup of this while out running around with my mom. It’s not horrible. It’s got a decent green tea flavor to it but it’s a pretty dark and murky taste. But it more made me go, “Huh! This isn’t bad!” instead of “Wow! This is good!”

Another TeaEqualsBliss swap tea! This smells very Ti Kuan Yin-y. But the taste is fruitier. Unfortunately, I don’t think all of it is natural as there is a tiny hint of that plum spice flavor the Mellow Monk Top Leaf had. It’s fairly faint and I can pick up a brilliant, almost citrus taste hiding behind it. Sadly, the plum spice is a bit distracting so it’s hard to pick out what is the tea and what is the flavor it picked up from elsewhere. This tea has a lot of promise and I’d wager is really quite excellent, but because of the (thankfully faint) contamination, I’m going to leave it unrated.

Well, since today has officially been dubbed Unofficial Ceylon Day, I thought it time to pull this one out again. Typically, Ceylon just doesn’t do it for me but Teas Etc’s Ceylon has made me rethink my fairly anti-Ceylon view. So I thought it was time to revisit the only other Ceylon in my pantry. And the fact that it will lead to an additional decupboarding is just a bonus.

Yeah, still just not really feeling it. It doesn’t have the sweetness Teas Etc’s does, or the malty-esque notes. There’s a hint of fruity in it but it is overpowered by something that is akin to bitterness or tartness but is not quite there. A mild sourness perhaps? Maybe a nutty sourness? Something like that. Whatever it is it makes me think that this tea needs a little sugar and milk to taste properly balanced.

Hello Berry! This smells mouthwateringly berry-y. Like a bowl of fresh mixed berries. Berry teas have a tendency to be too tart for me, but this one isn’t at all. I assume that’s the ‘crème’ part but the taste is pretty smooth and creamy for something berry-flavored. The berry taste is definitely there but it’s more of a cooked berry dessert taste but without the dessert (it’s sweet but not dessert-sweet). I thought about adding a little sugar to make it more of a berry dessert with the dessert, but I drank the cup too quickly so I didn’t. I guess that means it’s pretty good! Thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for giving me the chance try this one!

Last time I had this with additives and it was surprisingly tasty so I thought I’d try it straight. Once again, it is surprisingly tasty! It’s a bit bolder than the typical Ceylon with some almost malty Assam notes, but nicely smooth and it has a very sweet, fruity finish. Really quite delightful. I’m bumping the rating up a point or two because this is one Ceylon I could definitely see having in my pantry on a regular basis.

This one is another sample from TeaEqualsBliss (which I keep typing as TeaEqualsBills – a subconscious adjustment perhaps?) The scent is a lot like Rishi’s Jade Cloud and there’s a lot of similarity in the taste, too. But this is smoother and has a much prettier taste. There’s something sort of expansive about the taste – it feels very full and relaxing. Chinese greens aren’t really my favorite type of tea but this one is very tasty!
^3.6g/7oz

The dry leaf smells so fantastic. I can’t quite place the smells but there is some brine, some grass, some sweet fruit. It’s intoxicating. It brews up a bright, vibrant green and the smell becomes more like buttered grass. I almost expected something like Yutaka Midori since the brewed smell is so similar but wow, it’s not. This is so buttery and creamy. The mouthfeel is deliciously silky, it’s quite fantastic. Then there’s a sharpish, fresh cut grass taste. Then there’s a fruity, almost honeydew rind aftertaste.

This is a difficult one to rate because I can’t help but compare it to the Yutaka Midori I just had. The YM is the epitome of the stereotypical sencha profile. This one though, is the buttercream-icing version of sencha. If I could only have one sencha in my pantry, I’d go for the YM since it’s so perfectly sencha. But the creaminess and mouthfeel of this tea just really blows me away.

^{3.1g/6oz/ Pour started at 30s, finished at 45s}

I’m excited to try something from The Mellow Monk. I’ve heard good things about their teas but never had any. Now, thanks to TeaEqualsBliss, I get to try my first one today!

The smell of the wet leaves and the liquid have a crazy warm cinnamon note to them. The taste is just as nuts. More so even. It tastes like a plum spice tea. A mild plum spice tea with a grassy undernote, but still a plum spice tea. It almost makes me think that I didn’t clean my teapot out enough before I brewed this, but I used my kyusu dedicated to sencha so I know that’s not it. Hmm. Maybe this tea absorbed the flavor of another tea because I can’t imagine any sencha actually tasting like that. But maybe I’m wrong and this is just one weird-ass sencha. Regardless, this is too weird and wrong for me to rate.
^3g/6oz

It’s been a while since I’ve had a Darjeeling and after having this tea (another Seattle souvenir from my lovely SIL), I have to wonder why. Pouring the tea, I got nice whiffs of honey, something that also comes through lightly when I sip. It’s fresh-tasting, smooth, a bit green like a new tree sprout. It’s got that bright sparkle that I associate with Darjeelings but, because of the tea itself or the short steep time and low temp, doesn’t approach the sharp bite that I also associate with Darjeelings. A very nice afternoon cuppa.

ETA: The second steep (at 2:30) is really quite brilliant. Smooth, faintly nutty, almost creamy. I’m bumping up the rating a couple of points.

Mmm. Can I tell you that after making up come Mate Chocolate for the husband to try, this smells simply delightful? Because it does. Like angelfood cake with some strawberries spread over it. Sadly, the taste doesn’t match up to the smell but it’s not the blend’s fault – it’s the Adagio flavored tea base. It’s too strong and not very smooth and just overtakes things. Sigh. This is why I always have Adagio flavored teas with sugar and creamer. Sadly, with additives, the tea base is made to take a step back, but it kind of mutes the lovely strawberry flavor. Now it tastes like vanilla cake with a hint of strawberry syrup decorating the icing. All in all, a tasty, fluffy tea that has the potential for awesome-ness but ends up as just good.

Today has been a bit of a crazy day. Before I left the house, I got a call saying that the church I worked for had been vandalized. The caller wasn’t able to give me details because the cops showed up so they had to get off the phone. With almost zero information, I ended up spending my entire drive in to work worrying about what happened and what was going to have to be done to get it fixed. Fortunately, once I got to work things it turned out that things weren’t as bad as they could have been (kids apparently decided to go mudding in the back yard of the church, their truck kicked up a rock and it hit a glass door, shattering it). But by the time that had been established, I had already finished this tea (another lovely goodie from TeaEqualsBliss – thanks girlie!) in a rather distracted state.

Because I was so distracted while drinking it, I can’t give a lot of detail about this tea beyond the fact that it was a good, relatively mild EG that fell slightly on the floral end of the EG spectrum (though not into perfume-y). It was nice – not overly special but eminently drinkable. Much better than the Taylors of Harrogate EG (which is my grocery store brand EG), so I wish my grocery store carried this for when I needed emergency Earl Grey.

I’m so excited to be trying this tea, another goodie from TeaEqualsBliss! It smells so awesome! Like a coconut macaroon covered in icing. So yeah, awesome. Brewed it’s like fresh macaroons. So yeah, still awesome.

The taste? Well, that’s pretty awesome, too. It tastes like the much loved Almond Cookie, but minus the cinnamon and plus a dash of coconut (so almond and bake-y plus coconut). I imagine this is pretty freakin’ tasty with some sugar and milk, too, but it totally doesn’t need it. It’s dessert in a cup already. Awesome dessert.

Yeah, totally gonna have to order some of this. In case you haven’t guessed, it’s pretty awesome. Thanks TeaEqualsBliss!

My mom picked up a couple of ounces of this one when she was in Minneapolis for the GIG (Gluten Intolerance Group) Conference earlier this month and when I was visiting the parents last weekend she let me swipe some of it.

I think the smell of it is pretty nifty – sweet, citrusy, fresh… it actually smells like a fizzy fruit flavored drink, carbonated ‘tingle’ and everything. Once brewed, the carbonated fruit beverage smell is joined by a more herbal-y smell that makes me think of chamomile and grass (neither of which are in this tea so I’m guessing it’s the verbena).

Taste-wise, it’s more in line with the chamomile/grass smell, not the fruit fizzy smell, but there’s a fruit fizzy aftertaste which is nifty. It’s fairly obvious there is mint in this, but it’s tamed down nicely by the other stuff going on. There’s also a nice (but again not overpowering) lemon flavor to this – more of an herbal-y lemon instead of fruit or candy lemon. There’s a gentle warmness that I’m guessing is the ginger, but like all of the other flavors, it’s nicely muted. And every so often I get a bit of a woody taste that is very mild but makes me associate this tea with autumn.

There’s a lot going on in this tea – sweet, tingly, herbal-y, fruity, minty, citrus-y – but no single flavor dominates. Instead they just all sort of mesh together in a mild but sweet and fairly enjoyable way. It takes a lot for me to like a full on herbal blend, but this stuff is pretty good. I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to buy it but I might steal some more from my mom.

I was doing so great about finish off some of my tea samples and decupboarding but then TeaEqualsBliss just had to send a stuffed envelope full of goodies! Okay, so my cupboard doesn’t look near as slim now, but I’m totally not complaining!

With lots of nifty things to choose from, for some reason I decided this one spoke to me. It just seems so odd! Mate scares me on a good day but to blend it with so much other stuff? I’m scared but also intrigued.

The dry leaves smell horrible. Like chocolate and death. Okay, not quite that bad. Maybe like chocolate-flavored medicine? I can’t really peg what that weird note is but it is something that makes me think of the doctor’s office and other funny-smelling-but-sterile locations. Yeah, scared is winning right now!

Ah ha! I think I just realized what that smell is when I was sniffing the brewed tea! Alcohol! It smells like what a scotch with chocolate notes would smell like. And now that I’ve made that connection, scotch is all I smell when I sniff this. The husband is a big single malt fan and while I detest the taste of the stuff, I find the different flavors and smells interesting. Right now I feel like I’m about to down a hot cup of scotch.

OMG! This is horrible! Hahaha! I’m cracking up but this is really not good! OMG! It’s like drinking watered down whisky or a hot toddy! AHHHH! I keep sipping it to see if I will get anything else but I seriously feel like I’m drinking booze at work! Dude, even the aftertaste has a bit of the whooshy, dragon breath feeling to it that strong alcohol does! OMG, THIS IS SCOTCH TEA! And I detest scotch! HA! OMG!!!!!!!!

We interrupt this log for commentator crack up.

Whew, okay, better now. Seriously, this tea is not my friend. Like, at all. HORRIBLE! Hah! But honestly, the experience of it has been a total blast, which is where most of the points in the rating come from. So HUGE thanks to TeaEqualsBliss for this delightfully horrible experience! Whee!

Huh. I think I might like this. It strikes a note somewhere between munching on a lemon tree branch and lemon candy, like one of those old-fashioned candy sticks. There might be slight hints of Pledge, but really, the sweetness keeps it away from that too much. And as the tea cools just a tad, the lemon tree branch is going away and I’m getting lots more lemon candy. It’s really nice. I could totally see myself buying some of this.
^~2.3g/7oz

Sadly, I am decupboarding this one today. This tea (and Troika) will definitely be repurchased once I am allowed to buy tea again. I really enjoy the rich feel of this tea – the feel of it plus the fruity, creamy, caramel-y sweetness just makes this tea a treat to drink.

The jasmine magnolia oolong just wasn’t what I was looking for so I gave it to the husband (who enjoys jasmine teas more than I do) and decided to bust open this sample. Mmm, good choice. This is buttery and has notes that remind me of a milk oolong – that sweet, creamy, almost fruity taste (that I sometimes read as Juicy Fruit gum). As it cools, there’s even a faint kettle corn like tastes. I would totally buy this one.
^5.1g/10oz