Auggy

This smells kind of like coffee at a hotel that’s been sitting on the burner at the breakfast buffet since 6am… and it’s almost noon. So yeah, a strong coffee smell. But there’s also a wee bit of chocolate and a fair amount of woody rooibos that is balancing on that icky sour edge.

The flavor is very similar to tiramisu without the creamy and cake taste – so basically it is very coffee-like. It’s strong and bold and surprising but kinda nifty. The one concern is the post-swallow aftertaste that seems very woody (though thankfully not sour), but that decreases as continuous sipping causes the coffee and cocoa tastes to build. So good.

It’s not the best rooibos I’ve ever had but it’s pretty good. The flavoring covers up the rooibos well (versus working with it) so I find it very drinkable. Not sure if I’ll crave it but this one can go into the lineup when I need something decaf.

My little sample of this tea is gone and I’m sad. But at least I’ve ordered more! The flavor is so surprising coming from a black tea. Okay, coming from any tea because the only other tea I’ve tasted that is similar is Samovar’s Royal Garland. This is caramelized fruits and dark flowers. I gave the husband a few sips and he mentioned wanting a full cup so he could really figure out the flavors. Too bad – there is no more! A few minutes later he came in and asked if I had sweetened the tea because the aftertaste in his mouth tasted like raw sugar. Nope, that’d be the tea. So yummy.

I’m bumping the rating of this one up a bit because apparently I find this decently tasty when made in a big ole cup. Very pear-ish in a canned-but-not-as-sweet way. I only get hints of caramel but it adds a different sweetness to it that is nice. I get a bit of the sweetness from the rooibos but none of the wood. It doesn’t hold a candle to last night’s Coconut Custard from Teas Etc but, in the big cup, I’m finding it very drinkable.
^4.7g/12oz

It’s a smoky tea – yay! I’ve become so addicted to smoky teas so of course I wanted to try the “original Lapsong tea.” The smell is a little sweeter than my normal lapsang but it’s still pretty smoky. The taste is milder though. It reminds me of Andrews & Dunham’s Caravan – smooth and silky and rich and heavy and smoky (but not too smoky). There’s a dark, rich, almost cocoa-like feeling to it that makes it feel decadent. Not quite a taste, but a feel. (Can a smoky tea be a dessert tea? Probably not but this one give it a good try with the richness.) It is decently mellow as far as smokiness – the smoke is there but it blends so well that it’s not like inhaling a campfire with each sip of tea. It’s heavy and rich (and silky – did I say that already?) without being overpowering or tarry. There’s a very sweet little upswing at the end – maybe sugar or honey or something floral or fruity. I don’t know and honestly, I’m not trying too hard to figure it out because I’m just so busy enjoying it. This is seriously tasty stuff and I think it needs to have a home in my pantry.

I’m still on my breakfast blend kick so I picked up an ounce of this when I made my Teas Etc order. It has a nice bakey flavor to it that reminds me of Thomas Sampson but just a hint. It has a nice sweet malty flavor at the end. There’s a good weight to it but the texture is nicely smooth. It’s not the most distinctive Irish Breakfast but it is pretty tasty. Today I had it with a little sugar and half & half (because that’s how I roll) so I still need to try it straight to see how that turns out. But right now, while this wouldn’t be my IB of perfection, I could definitely see myself rebuying it.

So yeah, I totally caved on the Steepster Select the other day. And hello fast shipping – my order got here today! Honestly, it was non-rooibos-loving Doulton’s review of this not-tea that made it first catch my eye, then Steepster Select and the forces of boredom shopping pushed me over the edge.

I’m so glad it did. Look, I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a rooibos. My greatest rooibos-related hope is that I can drink it without making an “eew, icky” face. But this stuff? This is good. Well, as long as you like coconut, which I totally do. The rooibos flavor is barely a hint and even that hint backs off to a mere wisp of wood as the tea cools a tad. Instead, this tea tastes of delightful coconut, lightly toasted to give it a bit of a crisp texture. In fact, it reminds me of the bestest coconut tea in ever and ever, SerendipiTEA’s Burroughs’ Brew. I taste no custard but the coconut is so yummy I just don’t care.

I’m so glad I caved on the Steepster Select and followed Doulton’s example like a little sheep. Because this is good stuff. Totally will be buying this again.

I ♥ strawberries. But I haven’t had the best luck with whites – or at least not consistent luck. So I thought I’d try this as my free sample from my Teas Etc order because then I get to try something that sounds like it could be tasty but, based on my past luck, might not work out so well. In fact, I was kind of anticipating it not working out so well.

But no, I like it. The flavoring is light and blends well with the tea, creating a clean and refreshing taste. I get hints of fresh strawberries more than any of the other flavorings but the tea is stronger or at least equal to the strawberry summerness. It’s surprisingly nice. I could see myself picking up some of this. Though I doubt that it would be something I’d drink daily, I like it.
^4.9g/10oz

I’ve had the tea bag version of this but now I’m trying it loose. I don’t remember it being this roasty dark before. It’s like lightly roasted nectar. It’s not my normal green oolong but it has the floral notes so it is a bit of a dark oolong beginner tea. I don’t think it would actually be considered a darker oolong, more straddling the line, but my green-geared taste buds are reading it that way but still enjoying it and that’s all I really ask. I could totally enjoy something like this so I’m bumping up the rating.

Second Steep: 3 minutes. The roasty taste is softer now and there is a more straight floral/nectar taste to it. It’s not overly strong but still tasty, though the second steep lacks a bit of the depth the first one had. (And I feel obnoxious typing that. Can I be more of a tea snot?)
^5g/10oz

So, no less than three people at work have wrinkled their nose today at this lovely, smoky deliciousness of a tea. Rich, heavy and smoky, smoky, smoky. Ah. So tasty. They can wrinkle their noses all they like. I will reveal in the smoke.

For rooibos, this doesn’t taste too bad. The smell is mostly horrid – sour wood – but the taste is orangy, though this time less so than the first time I had it. I think I need to lengthen the steep time. But yeah, all in all not bad for a rooibos.

Changed the brewing parameters a touch and ended up with a pretty darn awesome cup. Still zero astringency or bitterness, it’s sweet but not as sweet as when brewed more gyokuro-like. Instead, there is a fresh, clean, almost lemony main flavor to this. Really quite delightful.

Sweetened asparagus and Froot Loops, that’s what this tea makes me think of. Okay, 95% of the time I was sipping, it just made me think of sweet asparagus – not really honeyed or floral asparagus, just asparagus with the natural sugar content turned way up – but every so often, I’d get a like Froot Loops. It wasn’t so much in the taste (though once or twice I ended up with a mild Froot Loop aftertaste) but it was definitely in the smell. It didn’t come out as I intentionally smelled the cup. Only as I was holding the cup in between sips would I get the Froot Loops smell wafting by. For a bit I actually thought it was something on my porch that smelled like that but eventually I figured it out.

As weird as it sounds, sweetened asparagus with super-mild Froot Loops works really well.
^3.9g/8oz

I’m having a lot of trouble describing this tea. It is so unlike any other black tea I’ve ever had. It’s sweet, but a dark sweet, like grilled and sugared fruits. It’s got a bit of raw sugar or almost caramel flavor to it too that makes it cuddly. There’s something that’s maybe like a sweet rye bread. Or not. It’s just so hard to peg the flavors! It brings to mind Samovar’s Royal Garland a bit as far as overall taste profile – darkly sweet but clean but also a bit cuddly and comfort-food-like. There’s no bite or astringency in the flavor – it’s very smooth if a bit light bodied. I really can’t be more specific about the flavors other to say that it is surprising and different but good. INSANELY good. Like I kind of want to buy twenty pounds of this tea RIGHT NOW just to roll around in and go “OMG, GOOD TEA.” And that’s perfectly normal, right?

I know the rating I want to give this tea but I’m going to hold of for just a bit – I want to try a second steep first to make sure the insane goodness wasn’t a fluke. And why is Samovar out of this one now? Boo! How will I be able to buy my twenty pounds to roll around in?

ETA: Second steep @ 5 minutes. Nope, not a fluke. I just seriously think this is fantastic. It tastes like raw sugar and faint florals with an aftertaste of grilled fruit. I just love this. Though I will say, I made the husband try some and he said, “It is very good, but I just don’t see the fantastic.” That just means more for me!

And again ETA: Third steep at 8 minutes. Very bready and sweet though getting a tad light now. I tried to do a fourth steep at 20 minutes and while it was actually okay tasting, compared to the first three it was very much less than. But three steeps? I can deal with that!

This tea reminds me quite a bit of Rishi’s Jade Cloud but it is softer and silkier. It tastes vegetal green and a little salty, with a nice nutty aftertaste that, as the cup cools, threatens to overwhelm a bit as it combines with the salty to make a not-quite-bitterness. That taste is something that I could do with having less of so I think I will shorten the steep time the next time I have this since that helps tame Jade Cloud.

ETA: Second steep @ 3:00. The nutty bitterness has increased. That’s unpleasant. I feel that this tea still has potential though. We shall see.

It tastes like fake and overripe/almost rotten mango with a base of bitter, low quality green tea. If I felt like manning up, I could probably drink this cup, but I’d be making a face all the way through it so I’m gonna pass.

I figured something out while sipping on this tea: Mariage Freres and Kusmi have very similar tea styles. (Is this a big ole ‘duh’ to everyone but me?) Both have flavorings typically on the more subtle end and that flavor tends to hit most in the smell and then the endnote of each sip. But I think there are two main differences between them for me: Kusmi flavorings, while more subtle than a lot of flavored teas out there, do seem to be a bit stronger than most Mariage Freres teas. And the tea taste that hits towards the front of each sip (where the flavoring is tasted least) is milder and not as decadent feeling in Mariage Freres as they are in the Kusmi teas.

The smell of this tea is lovely – sweet and creamy with a little caramelized something to it. The tasting notes say crème brûlée and I’m not sure I would have gone there on my own, but yeah, I can see that, though there seems to be an additional note of candy-like sweetness in the smell that keeps me from saying “But of course it is!”. Perhaps it because I knew this tea was called “Easter”, but that sweet sugary smell/taste made me think a bit of Easter candies (in a good way). The taste is much milder with the flavors really only coming through in the end. They are quite nice but I think I would have liked it to be slightly more intense. Or for the tea taste to be richer as it felt just a hair thin and not quite as smooth as the tea taste in Troika yesterday. All in all a tasty tea but one that I want to just turn up the volume on just a hair.

ETA: For the second steep I really increased the time – 6 minutes – and added a tiny splash of half & half. Now I’m getting a nice level of flavor. It’s very sweet and Easter-candy-like with lots of vanilla. The tea flavor isn’t as silky as Kusmi seems to be but it doesn’t feel as thin as before. I’m adjusting my rating because I quite like this now. I just have to remember to go for the long steep time.

I brewed this for more like 9 minutes because I was enjoying watching it expand too much. It’s quite pretty. The taste is very sweet and delicately jasmine. It is a very mild tea that didn’t seem to be hurt by the fairly excessive brew time. I can’t say for sure that I would use any blooming tea as a normal, daily-type tea but if I ever wanted to serve tea at a special occasion, I think this one would be a great one to use – attractive and tasty.

I’m trying to learn my lesson about over-caffeinating on the weekends. After two 12oz steeps of Troika, I’m switching to something decaf for a bit so I don’t explode. I’m typically not a huge fan of mint (or rooibos, really). There is an edge to mint that feels raw to me, so for me to enjoy minty things the mint usually needs to be mixed with something to heavily tame it down to a bare fresh tingle.

This tea is pretty much full on mint. I don’t really taste the rooibos except for maybe a hint at the end (and even then it is more of a not-mint undernote than a woody rooibos taste) and I can’t pick out the bergamot at all (which is a little disappointing). Except the mint doesn’t have that mint bite, that rawness, that I dislike in things that are so full on mint. If I have to guess, I’d say that the rooibos (and bergamot) add a little heaviness to the flavor of the mint that prevents it from seeming so thin and prevents that biting raw edge at the end.

I’m still not a huge fan of strongly mint things, but this is pretty good. I imagine that if I were the type to like drinking pure mint tisanes (or even predominately mint tisanes), I would find this very tasty. As it is, I do find it one of the best strong mint tisanes I’ve had.

Even Samovar says that this tea is sweet. Yeah, it is. It’s like a Kasugi peach gummy (http://amzn.to/d6o1Bh) but all grown up. It’s not as sweet and it has a bit more depth to it than the gummy, though – there is a gentle softness (I’m thinking from the jasmine and osthmanthus flowers) and a little tingle of crisp, tingly freshness (I’m thinking from the orange and tangerine). There’s a darker, more savory note of the white tea hiding underneath but the predominant flavor is fruity sweetness. The strong fruitiness of it makes me think a little of an herbal fruit tisane but, just as in the case of the peach gummy, grown up and toned down. Herbal teas usually make me think of Kool-Aid and while this still has a strong fruit flavor, it doesn’t even begin to skirt Kool-Aid territory.

I can taste the floral notes and the tea itself a bit more in the second steep (4 minutes) but it’s still sweet and fruity and clean. And peachy. This is definitely not a tea for those that dislike fruity teas. But personally, I am really enjoying having something so obviously fruity but not sickeningly sweet. I could definitely see myself buying a tin of this.

All day, I’ve been thinking about giving this tea another go. So I did. I did a shorter steep time and that really seems to have decreased the rooibos taste, which has given me the chance to check out the berry flavor closer. It doesn’t say this in the tasting notes, but this tastes like it has rose hips in it to me. I say that because Lupicia’s Rose Hip tea reminds me of spaghetti sauce and I’m getting a hint of that here – not full on spaghetti sauce but more like hints of canned tomatoes. (Of course, Lupicia’s Rose Hip tea also had hibiscus in it, so perhaps hibiscus makes me think of spaghetti sauce.) Anyway, when I sip this tea, I get a flash of berry followed by a quick dip into canned tomato and then lifted back up into dark berries again. As it cools, the dip into tomato becomes shallower to where it almost doesn’t happen. The rooibos wood is pretty much totally gone in this shorter steep which I oddly find I miss a bit. (Not much, mind you. It is still rooibos.)

That being said, I think I kind of like this. Even with the shorter steep time, the berry flavor is pretty strong so I do wish that could be mellowed out more, making the first steep more like the second. If a black tea tasted like this, I probably wouldn’t love it, but for a rooibos, this isn’t bad.

PS – I did the second steep at five minutes and it’s really quite lovely. No tomato, just mild and pleasant dark berries and a whiff of the lattice they are growing on.

De-cupboarding this one – yay! A confession: this tea? Two years old. Eep! But honestly, it’s mellowed out in that time to be a much smoother smoky tea. There’s an obvious sweetness that is like light honey. It’s honestly not a bad tea at all – I’d buy it again if I had no Keemuns and there was a world Keemun shortage with this as the only one available (whereas with Rishi Keemun I’ve had, I’d rather go without). It’s not the best but it certainly isn’t the worst. Especially after two years mellowing in my pantry.
(PS – Am I the only one that has a fear of typos when typing the word “pantry”? I’m always afraid I’ll end up talking about the tea’s place in my panty.)
(And speaking of typos, I initially submitted this log with the above line reading “tea’s play in my panty.” Oy.)

I might have to spend a little bit more time with this tea to properly peg it. The dry not-leaves and even the brewed tea smell like these (really tasty) fruit gummies I get at Costco. Oh, sure, they are called ‘fruit mini-bites’ but they are gummies. http://www.sunrypeusa.com/viewproduct_us.php?line=9&group=1 And that’s what this tea smells like. Which is pretty awesome.

The taste was much more… exotic, however. Not as sweet and with a woody follow up (hello rooibos!). The rooibos in this isn’t bad though – it’s not sickeningly sweet like so many rooibos. This one just tastes of dry, clean, nicely sanded wood planks. Covered in berry preserves. There’s a tang that isn’t quite tartness but it really brings to mind the taste of dark berries. Boysenberries, blueberries, grapes, blackcurrants…

I was missing the sweetness from the smell though so I tried it with a little sugar. The woody rooibos pretty much disappeared but the berry flavor was much more… normal. Kind of dull, like any old herbal tea and I think the sugar accentuated the tartness a little. So I tried at second steep (7 minutes) with no sugar.

I think the second steep was my favorite. Still berry-y and a tiny, minuscule hint of wood, but it wasn’t as overpoweringly flavored as the first cup, which was so strong it made me thirsty for some good ole water. I’m going to have to revisit this tea before I can fully judge it, perhaps with a slightly shorter steep time on the first steep. Right now, though, I could see potentially picking some up to expand my painfully thin decaf tea selection.

Mate scares me. I’ve had a total of two sips of it in my life. Not a fan. But this is Samovar and they kind of make me like wacky things. So I will give it a shot.

It smells like dusty hay but without the sweetness of my grandparents’ old barn. There’s a little sweetness in there but it isn’t hay sweetness, it’s the anise. Which honestly made me think of peppermint on my first sniff, but I figured it out on my second. When the hot water hits the not-leaves, there is a whoosh that smells of dirt and sweet almost-mint . It makes me think of the smell pu-erh would give off if you set it on fire (but without quite so much lapsang souchong burning).

The liquid is… not so appetizing. Murky and kind of brackish-looking green. I am attempting to stare the tea down (instead of drinking it) but darn it, it hasn’t blinked yet. Totoro has nerves of steel. Okay, must buck up and drink.

Huh. It’s really not bad. Tastes very herbal and has a sweetness that reminds me of chamomile but the anise give it a little tingle/sting down my throat. There is hay and sweet and dry and tingly and a fresh, sweet, herbal-y aftertaste with a hint of anise feeling. It’s the love child resulting from a secret pu-erh and herbal tisane affair.

This is so different from my norm, I’m not sure what I think about this yet. Which could be good since I had to do that with Ryokucha and I’m fairly addicted to that now. I don’t think I will develop an addiction for this yerba mate, but then I wouldn’t have imagined it with Ryokucha either, so I suppose only time will tell. That and the crack Samovar adds.

Anyone know why this is called “Opium Hill” other than the whole is being grown where poppies used to grow? I mean, is it supposed to have any poppy-like notes? Because honestly, I have zero clue what a poppy note would taste like (unless something made me think of a lemon poppy seed muffin which, yeah, probably not).

Anyway, poppies or not, this is clean and sweet tasting. I’m reminded me of this really tasty TKY dark roast takgoti sent to me in a swap ages ago. (I need to figure out what that was because it was really tasty.) Anyway, I know this shouldn’t remind me of a heavily roasted TKY because this is a very green oolong. And it isn’t so much the roastiness but a similar sweet note that I can’t figure out how else to identify. All I know is that I like it. Lots.

2nd steep: 3 minutes. Wow. So sweet. I’m getting nectar and flowers and the note of sweet roasty from the first steep. Really tasty.

3rd steep: 4 minutes. A little mellower than the second steep but still sweet. Now I’m thinking of a dan cong and tropical fruits. Guava? Banana? Something. The taste flattens out a little as it cools but that just means I should drink it quickly. I’m a-okay with that.

4th steep: 6 minutes. I confess to eating a bit of pungent cheese in between steeps three and four so that could be affecting my taste buds but now I’m getting floral notes that make me think of nectar and lavender.
^3.1g/6oz