Auggy

My tea experience tonight has been brought to you by takgoti and sophistre. Takgoti because she said this smelled like turkey and I’m morbidly curious about that and sophistre because her Ryokucha log made me think of my trip to the Daibutsu in Kamakura where I picked up my first yunomi, so that’s what I’m drinking this out of. A Chinese tea out of Japanese tea cup. I don’t get kicked out of the tea lovers club for this, right?

So, trying to find the turkey smell is first. I’m sniffing but I don’t really find it. Part of me is sad, part of me is thankful. Part of me goes – I can smell briney and buttery when I’m smelling from my nose not in the cup and I can see how that could translate to turkey… or roasted chicken. But this whole sniffing for turkey thing has lead to a lot more sniffing than I’d usually do so my mouth is watering a bit. Paying attention to this tea, it smells really nice. I’ve already mentioned a little salt and butter smell going on, but when I get closer there’s a pretty vegetal smell, too. Not like boiled vegetables but not raw either. Just sweet and green.

Okay, this is really enjoyable tea. There’s a little salt-like tingle on the tip of my tongue that I seem to get from most Chinese greens. Actually, I take that back – most Chinese greens give me a big salt taste. The fact that this is slight makes it enjoyable, not unpleasant. The taste is sweet and green and a little salty and maybe nutty. The tea is not delicate tasting but it’s not overpowering either. Hearty but soft maybe? Anyway, I like it.

I have a feeling if I had last night’s Dragonwell after this one instead of before, it wouldn’t have fared as well as it did. This one is yummy.

My mom gave me a couple of bags of this because apparently I need to relax. So I thought I’d try it out tonight as I can feel the stress building. It smells like sweet, mint and chamomile. I know sweet isn’t technically a smell but it is so work with me here.

I really don’t know what to think of the taste. It tastes like it has been sweetened with honey, but there is something in the tea that burns at the very back of my throat. Like the post-vomit kind of burning. And yeah, that’s fairly unpleasant. Really hope that goes away soon. As I start to swallow, if feels like the tea is going to be bitter, so I wince. But it isn’t bitter – instead I get the honey/chamomile flavor. Then the sweet as I hold the tea in my mouth. As I swallow I feel a hint of the freshness of mint. After I finish my swallow, I feel the post-vomit burn.

Okay, I’m really trying to ignore the burning feeling. And I’m either doing pretty good at ignoring or it’s fading a little as the tea cools a bit. It doesn’t feel exactly pleasant but it no longer feels like I just finished yurking. The tea taste isn’t that bad, but there’s this weird aftertaste on my tongue (which I can now feel since I’m not as distracted by the throat burning) which I believe is the stevia. I have actual no reason to believe it is the stevia though. It could be the skullcap, St. John’s wort or valerian root, all of which (like the stevia) I have never had before. But that sweet scent and mid-taste (which hits the center of my tongue – right where the aftertaste is) seems to be stevia-related so that’s what I’m going with.

And yet I’m still drinking this tea. I have no idea why. Why am I still drinking this tea? Apparently the sweetness – even with the burning and weird aftertastes and whatnot – is kind of enjoyable. Yay sweetness. But it’s really not worth the rest of this tea. Actually, even the sweet isn’t worth it if it is causing that weird feeling on my tongue. Like a thin metallic coat of paint.

Yeah, I’m not going to drink this tea anymore. I made it through two-thirds but no more. I offered the husband the last third of my tea. He was smarter than me. He took one sip, made a surprised/pleased face (I think when he had the chamomile and then sweet) and then that quickly changed to this… horrified/surprised look and he handed the cup back to me. His response, “I kind of want to vomit to get the taste out.”

I feel like I already have.

I just got a lovely box from teaplz full of some fun teas. I have no idea why I decided to start with this one – I suppose I’m feeling brave enough to give teaplz’s ‘Dragonhell’ a try!

The leaves… are not so pretty. Broken and sort of old and sad looking. Poor little leaves.

Pouring the tea into the cup, the smell is kind of nice. Nutty and not bitter. The taste is weird. The first sip I was thinking “Hey, that’s not so bad.” And then I finished the sip and there was this… weird taste just expanded in my mouth. Saltiness maybe? Or a nutty bitterness?

As the tea cools a bit, there is a slight hint of sweetness and then that nutty bitterness that was showing up after the sip shows up in the middle of the sip. Though honestly, it tastes a bit better when I take larger sips. There’s a bit of sweetness to it. It’s more of a taunt though, not a substantial sweetness. Just a hint of “I could be better, see, but this is what you get.” Maybe a really low temp will make this one happy.

Overall, the tea isn’t horrible but it doesn’t have that much redeeming social value. It’s just sort of meh.

I had pretty much forgotten all about this one. But I’ve been moving some tins around and the short little tin I have this in finally poked out a bit, reminding me of its existence. I remember this being a nice if not overly special tea, which could be why I had forgotten about it.

But how did I forget about how pretty it was? Long, thin, dark leaves with shoots of golden laced throughout. The picture on the tea info doesn’t look as pretty as my leaves do, though perhaps because my leaves are in a brass colored tin and that really brings out the gold bits… Who cares for the reason why, though. It’s just so pretty.

Now that I’m drinking this, I’m not sure why I thought it was so unexceptional. It’s actually very busy taste-wise. Not stressfully busy – it just has a lot of lovely tastes mixing together. Earthy and sweet, it has a slightly heavier body than I remembered. Perhaps because I made two cups up whereas I think I’ve only done single cups in the past (the husband is working from home today and has a scratchy throat so I made him some tea)? There is a sweet taste that occurs right after I swallow but before I open my mouth after the swallow. It’s almost like the aftertaste of cane or maple syrup. The aftertaste of the tea, however, is very earthy and very tea-like. (Go figure).

There’s a lot going on with this tea. I’m surprised I’ve not really noticed that before. I’m thinking I actually made it a little stronger than I have in the past (more leaf) and that’s making the complexity more noticeable. Mostly, there’s a lot of different sweet flavors going on. Fruity sweet, sugary sweet, earthy sweet. It’s quite pretty.

But even with all those tastes going on, it’s not an aggressive tasting tea. It’s very pleasant and relaxing and mellow. I’m thinking it is the mellowness this evokes (vs. the wow factor other teas with this complexity might have) that what made me forget about this tea. And the husband likes it too – he managed to empty his cup before I did!

No vendor directions on brewing, but since this has green in it, I went with that. The leaf smells berry-ier than I anticipated. Berries over a campfire maybe? Which would probably smell a bit more like burning so maybe just eating berries next to a campfire. Sometimes the berry seems to dominate, sometimes the campfire. But even when the campfire dominates, it’s a sweet campfire because of the berry under-note. I can’t really pick out the vanilla but that’s probably because it is blending with the berry, giving it kind of a creamy berry smell instead of a tart berry smell.

Once brewed though, the tea seems to decide to let the lapsang souchong smell have center stage, but the berry scent is still a big supporting character. Though it does seem to also show of the… fake-ness of the berry. It also smells a little cough syrup-y. Almost. I think the vanilla creamy saves it from that.

Sipping is… odd. The flavor seems to rapidly seesaw between sweet smoky and sweet berry (thankfully no cough syrup memories are being evoked – in fact it tastes more natural than the tea smells). The flavors seem to work nicely together though. It’s weird but it works. There is distinct berry and distinct smoke but both are sweet and that sweetness ties them together.

The aftertaste in particular reminds me of something I can’t peg but that something makes me think that this would be a good iced tea. So perhaps it reminds me of some flavored bottled tea I’ve had? But without the artificial sweetners added because this yea is pretty sweet by itself. It actually tastes likes I’ve put a bit of sugar in it already.

Now here’s the one thing that keeps me from loving this tea. I’m just not a huge berry-flavoring fan. I love strawberries and blackberries, but after that I’m kind of eh. And this is more of a raspberry taste. However, the husband loves raspberries so I had him try some of this. He was able to pick out the berry and the lapsang souchong almost instantly. After a few more sips he said that he could see himself enjoying a big ole hot mug of this though he had a slight concern that the smoky would build and he doesn’t really like lapsang souchong (from my cup I didn’t notice any build up so I don’t think that would be a problem).

Anyway, he gave it a 4/5 stars to my 3/5 stars. But my rating drops that one star just because of the type of berry. As far as the slider rating goes, this one is tough. I like how the flavors work together and I really do think the balance is quite nice so it rates rather high on that. But personally, I’m not in love with the tea because of the type of berry and that’s all on me. But this is my rating scale so I’m going to rate it on the subjective, personal side of things instead of the objective side of things. Because that’s how I roll.

In my morning fogged brain, it is always an adventure picking out teas. Mostly because my thought processes don’t work well so making any sort of decision is challenging work. This morning there were two factors that made me pick this: 1) My first thought was of Jackee Muntz but the husband is not a huge fan of Keemuns so I didn’t want to waste the caramel loveliness on him since he wouldn’t appreciate it and 2) Teaplz had this yesterday so we’ll call that the power of suggestion.

The smell of the leaves (both dry and wet) is just… wrong. Sour, bitter, strong… wrong. But the tea itself is fine. A bit too mild in fact. I normally have it with sugar to combat the sometimes tumbler-created-tea-bitterness but today went without and it was just fine.

In my view, this tea needs two things. 1) Better smelling leaves – because that turns me off so much that I just anticipate nastiness when I drink and I should never feel the need to brace myself before a first sip. And 2) More flavor. The tea taste is mild to the point of almost watery tasting, the rose taste is mild to the point of just general sweetness. Something needs to come to the forefront on this tea. Some flavor, any flavor, needs to take charge and say “I will flavor this tea!!!” But it doesn’t. Oh well.

Overall I’m not a huge fan of dark oolongs since they always remind me of cigar smoke but it’s in my sample basket so I’ll give it a shot!

This one so far is pretty typical of my experience with them. There is a sweet and somewhat smoky smell that makes think of cigar smoke. Not bad cigar smoke really. But cigar smoke. The taste is where this is different, though. It doesn’t taste like cigar smoke. Instead, it’s more of a fruity sweet. I can’t figure out what type of fruit but maybe peach? It’s not any of the things they list in the company’s tea notes – in fact I can’t pick up any of those. Yeah, even trying to pick those things out, I can’t find them. But it’s still good. Smooth, sweet and a little roast-y.

I wasn’t anticipating liking this very much but this is enjoyable. Probably a high 3/5 stars… not quite a 4 but it’s pretty close and might be bumped with subsequent steeps. We shall see.

ETA: The second steep turned out to be more cigar sweet even in taste so this one stays at a 3star. Minor adjustment to the rating made.

I just finished watching The Darjeeling Limited so I thought I’d pull this out to try. Not that the movie had anything to do with the tea, but eh.

This smells very sharply nutty. Taste-wise, there is a little sharpness and brightness but overall it is an unimpressive Darjeeling. S’not bad though. Maybe a good starter Darjeeling or something. It is inoffensive but is a good general representation of how Darjeelings are supposed to taste.

I actually bought a yuzu in preparation for this tea. After all, how can I comment on a flavored tea if I don’t know what the flavor is supposed to taste like? I ate my yuzu early this morning so thought today was a great time to try this one. I enjoyed the fruit so I hope to enjoy this tea. The tea doesn’t smell quite like fresh yuzu, but it is still noticeably yuzu. The brewed tea smells even less like yuzu – the initial smell is of fresh, vegetal sencha and there’s a little tingle of yuzu underneath.

The taste is intriguing. I didn’t get a noticeable yuzu flavor until I took a few sips one after the other. It seems like the yuzu taste builds but seems to come through the most in the aftertaste. But now I’m getting it some on the very tip of my tongue as I begin to sip. It’s a surprisingly good counterpoint to the sencha. I wouldn’t have thought the yuzu would go well with the sweet, buttery and vegetal taste of the sencha, but it does. It adds a subtle citrus sharpness that keeps the sencha from being too rich or thick.

I’m not quite sure how to rate this. I keep expecting this to taste rich and thick but each sip surprises me with a clean, refreshing citrus flavor. So I can’t quite figure out how high I want to rate this. Somewhere in between the two green smileys but not sure where… Though a big point it this teas favor is the aftertaste – sweet, citrus and buttery. Good stuff.

Made tea for the parents and thought this would be a novel cup. Having it so soon after the London Tea Room’s blend helps me really compare. The other is a better cup, so I’m adjusting ratings a bit.

This isn’t bad though. Heavy bodied, cardboard-y and Assam-like. It tastes a little murky – not the cleanest tasting cup but it is nicely aggressive in an Irish Breakfast sort of way but it… brightens up in taste as it cools but can also start to get a little astringent then, too.

Anyway, the general consensus is that this is a good cup but nothing to write home about.

Backed off of the steep time just a little to hopefully make it a bit tastier for the husband and I think it worked out well for both of us. Still is a mix of cardboard-y Assam and bright-ish Darjeeling plus a little earthy but it lacks the bitterness of last time so I’m thinking 4mins is a good time. I also snuck a little sugar into the husband’s so I’m sure that helped but based on how my sugar-less one taste, he probably didn’t needed.

The dry leaves smell pretty boring with nary a hint of ginger until I stuck my nose deep into the bag.

Only 1.8g of leaf – look, it’s an ROT teabag! – so I’m using the whole thing. We’ll see how it goes. The leaf looks pretty dry and un-fresh so I’m not expecting angels to sing or anything.

Post-brewing the tea smells like a mix of powdered ginger and a little fresh ginger. Not 100% fresh ginger but there’s enough of a fresh smell that it makes me happy.

I’m… mixed on the taste. I like the ginger. It’s warm on my tongue and gives my mouth a lovely tingle after I swallow. It’s really not overpowering which I almost find disappointing. But I’m not so fond of the tea base. I’m getting a little hint of green bean water with it. Though as it cools, it becomes more floral and that melds with the ginger better.

I really wasn’t expecting a lot out of this, but the more I sip, the more I like it.

Attempting to replicate this morning’s caramel chew flavor and texture. I’m a bit nervous. I forgot exactly how much my cup holds so I might have used a bit too much leaf, but I’m hoping that won’t make much difference since it was just half a gram….

I’m getting the same silky, rich taste. And letting it cool just a little… and now I’m getting that burnt sugar taste on the tail… I’m excited. Letting it cool just a little more. Oooh, now that burnt sugar taste is melding to a smooth caramel. It’s not quite the sucking-on-a-caramel-chew from this morning but we are going in the right direction……. And there it is. Oh yeah. That beautiful heavy satin feeling on my tongue, the sweetness, the drips of caramel.

Three cheers for takgoti for figuring this one out. Lower temp and a chance to cool a bit makes this Keemun… beautiful. Even the husband can taste it and that’s huge!

Bumping the rating accordingly. Because really. It’s CARAMEL!

Work is delayed and possibly canceled today (we Texans just don’t know how to drive on ice) so I’m hanging out at home a bit hoping it will warm up just a hint (too many bridges on my drive). Since I was dreaming about this tea last night, I thought I’d have some this morning. Pouring it out of the pot, I can see why I like lapsang souchong – this has a very similar smoky smell (just without the meat) and I do love me some smoky Keemuns (or non-smoky, too… I’m pretty much an equal opportunity Keemun lover). The taste only has a tiny hint of the smoke though. Instead it’s silky and smooth and just lovely. The smoky becomes a subtle undertone at the very end, almost like very burnt sugar… a little bit of poke to your tongue to remind you that it is still there.

Logically I know that there is at least one other Keemun out there that I like more than this one. But it’s been a while since I’ve had that other Keemun and Jackee’s with me now. So in the immortal words of Stephen Stills, if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with. Yes sir.

ETA: Okay, this happened after I finished my log but it is VITAL, so I’m adding it in. I remember takgoti saying she found caramel in this – like heavy, heavy caramel. And I had never tasted it (not that I’d had this tea much) so I thought it was neat but maybe something specific to the way she read certain tastes… And then I hit the second half of my travel tumbler of this tea today. It started out with the poke-y taste turning into a burnt sugar taste. Like heavily burnt. I though “Ah ha! This is what takgoti was talking about.” And then about 2 sips later BAM. Caramel city. It was like sucking on a freakin’ caramel chew. Texture and everything. So silky, so rich and SO FREAKIN’ CARAMEL. It was, amazing. Like, stop doing everything and just roll the tea around in my mouth amazing. I have no idea what made it come up but I MUST FIND IT AGAIN! If I do, Jackee’s rating is going to go up. WAY up.

My logic in picking this tea is this: as soon as I got home from work, I fell asleep. While napping, I was dreamt about tea. Andrews and Dunham tea. Not this tea, though. Jackee Muntz. I woke up fully and decided to get some tea. I was going to get some Jackee, but this tea was sitting on the counter and therefore much easier to find than Jackee. So I made some.

It was only when I went to log it that I realized I had never had it before. I’m not sure how I could have let those lovely leaves escape me for so long. Seriously, I love the leaves on this. The brown, gold and copper little squiggles. So pretty.

It smells like a cocoa-infested Darjeeling. It’s got the bright smell of a Darjeeling – the one that makes my mouth water but that can also come across as bitterness – but running under it there is another smell of fuzzy warmth. It’s quite lovely.

Taste-wise, it’s not quite as comforting as it’s smell but it is nice. There’s a hop-y taste that makes me think of beer but it’s not strong enough to turn me off (sorry, not a beer fan). It’s got an overall dark, fuzzy taste to it with highlights of an almost green rawness (related to the hops flavor, I think). Normally that rawness doesn’t work for me but here it mostly does, probably because of the other feelings/flavors this has going on. The edges are smooth with none of the sharpness that can come up in these types of teas but as it cools a menthol-esque bitterness starts to show up in my mouth after a sip and the fuzziness decreases a bit.

I’m not totally in love with this tea, but I do like it. I’ll probably try a lower temp next time to see what that does to the raw highlights and if that keeps the bitterness away once it starts to cool. If I can decrease these two things just a bit, my rating will go up.

This tea always surprises me by being more pleasant than I anticipate. Of course, I anticipate it being something like drinking Pledge so that might not be saying much.

Things I have learned with this tea: It is too light for milk. Sugar is optional. It doesn’t really get bitter. The dry leaf smells horrid. The tea itself tastes pretty good. It doesn’t scream lemon so much as softly whisper “I’m not just plain tea. Promise.” It’s too light in body for a happy-making morning tea but ultimately it works.

When brewing, this smells like my Tangerine Ginger, but it looks like a slightly more upstanding citizen. There’s a bit more… maybe sweetness? in the smell of this one, too. But while they are both citrus + ginger, I imagine that it is the difference in the other ingredients the two have that will be the deciding factor. It smells insanely comforting. The ginger is warm and cuddly. I like that.

And it does initially taste a lot like the Tangerine Orange. But it’s the ending note that makes all the difference. No tartness, just a smooth and warm continuation of the front tastes. But not in a single-note-all-the-way-through tastes. More in a mulled cider spice sort of way – the spices are all through the entire taste, running around, mingling and dancing on my tongue.

I love the orange and the ginger, but I loved that in the Tangerine Ginger. It’s the end of this that makes it so delightful. This is citrus love.

Didn’t know what I wanted on this grump-tastic day. This came in the mail so I figured, sure, why the heck not.

1.8g in this tea bag. ROT’s bag size doesn’t thrilled me. But whatever. It smells good though. Exactly like chocolate covered strawberries. But once it starts brewing, the sour wood smell of rooibos is apparent. Meh. Whatever, we’ll give it a go. Maybe the sourness will blend well with the tart, fresh strawberry smell which I hope translates to taste.

Okay, my 18-year old arthritic and not-so-steady-on-her-feet kitty just traversed a table, two chairs, and a chasm between a chair and the couch to get to me for love so at this point, this could be the worst tea ever and my day has gotten pretty awesome. That was quite a feat for her! (She had to go via such a route because she physically can’t jump up to the couch directly and her stairs up are up to the chair on the other side of the living room).

Well, the good news is, this tea is not horrible. Nowhere near as cool as my kitty, but then what really is? (Nothing. Just in case you were curious. Nothing is.) It tastes pretty sweet but there is a little tart, too. Sort of like fresh strawberries with a dash of strawberry jam. The chocolate comes in mostly on the aftertaste for me but it is distinctively chocolate.. I can taste some ick from the rooibos hiding underneath everything, but eh. It’s not that bad. A little like moldy wood but not as obvious as I feared based on the smell. Easy enough to acknowledge and then attempt to ignore.

I could almost see myself buying this. Of course when I imagine it, most of the scenarios I come up with end with me giving it to my mom and just having a cup every so often when I visit. But still, that’s a lot better than I was expecting. A lot. Hordes. I don’t totally trust it though. I almost feel that I like it so much because it wasn’t disgusting and I was expecting to be disgusted. This tea and GM’s White Licorice tie for the ‘Weird Tea I Thought I’d Hate But Ended Up Liking But Maybe I Just Like It Because I Didn’t Hate It’ tea award. I kind of want to own about 5 servings of this so I can give it a proper taste run.

Happy New Year! Okay, okay. I’m a bit late on that but today is the first day I’ve had to work since 2010 began so the new year officially became… well, official to me today.

I’m feeling a bit conflicted today. There’s good and bad going on with life, but fortunately the bad isn’t all that bad. I mean, it’s insanely cold outside but at least it isn’t snowing. I was running late this morning but at least I wasn’t running absurdly late (though it was close). On the full-on plus side, my favoritest podcast ever is back after over a year of being off the air, so booyah. But on the bad-but-could-be-worse side, I’m almost out of this tea. But I’ve got enough for one, maybe two more cups after today. And that is sad (but at least I didn’t run out of it today).

I love this tea. It’s overwhelming taste/feel is that of bake-y delight. But I came to the realization today that it wasn’t just plain ole bake-y. It was stone-baked bake-y. It’s like the difference between a pizza and a stone-baked pizza. Except for, you know, the tomato sauce. And the cheese. And the crust. So basically it just… the bake-y bit. But a good quality, comforting bake-y bit that made me think warm and toasty thoughts. Not a frou-frou, delicate little cookie bake-y. Tough bake-y. A hearty bake-y. A manly bake-y. Don’t worry, that’s a good thing.

And a good tea. Mmm. Bake-y.

My last oolong wasn’t all that hot so I decided to try something I knew was good. I’m surprised I have as much of it left as I do. And when I say that, I mean I’m surprised I have more than one cup’s worth of leaves. I have two. Woo!

Okay, but now that I’ve brewed a cup up, I have the one cup left that I figured I did before. Confused yet? I kinda am.

Anyway, the flavor notes say light, sweet and rich with hints of mango, passion fruit and caramel. I’m with ‘em on the first bit. It’s light and sweet but it’s got a rich flavor to it. More like condensed cream than just sugar. Sweet but richly so. I’m a little iffier on the mango, passion fruit and caramel. What flavor is Juicy Fruit gum? Because that’s what this always makes me I think of. Wikipedia says that they probably use pineapple, peach and banana, so at least we’ve got the tropical fruit thing matching. I can see the caramel now though. I’m pretty sure that’s what give this tea the rich tone to the sweetness.

Anyway, I do love this tea. The Silk Oolong Anxi was a little better but I think it lacked what I’m now going to say is the caramel. So when I say ‘better’, it’s really a personal preference thing. I think when this tea was fresher it had a bit more body to it (or that might have been the Anxi) but all in all, it’s aged pretty well. I need to be better about remembering my greener teas so I don’t have to worry about how they age.

Well, one cup of this left for some unknown date in the future. Then, aside from samples, I will be left with only Citron Oolong for my oolong teas. Yikes. I need to order some oolong, stat!

In my attempt to be productive today, I put on a load of laundry… and made more tea. That counts as productivity, right? Especially since that removed one more sample from my pantry.

Let me preface this by saying: I’m picky about my green oolongs. Because I love them. A lot. And have had some really awesome ones. Because of that, I honestly wasn’t expecting that much from this one It’s not a cheap tea at $20 for a 4.5oz tin, but I’m in love with some that cost four times that so I really don’t think this will be a fair comparison. But it’s a green oolong so I can’t not compare.

The good news is, I wasn’t really disappointed by this one. I mean, I didn’t expect great things and I didn’t really get them. That’s not to say that is it a bad tea. It’s not. It was pretty good for what it is, actually. Has a nice light, floral scent to it – sweetly vegetal with a hint of creamy. The taste could be a little thicker – I used 3.5g/6oz so I know it isn’t my brewing that made the taste thing (or it shouldn’t have been) – but overall it’s pleasant. The aftertaste is somewhat heavy – not a light floral aftertaste or thick, chewy green flavor that I’ve had and loved in different oolongs, but rather somewhere in the awkward middle.

By far the best thing about this tea is the scent as it smells really wonderful. But for me the taste is just… lacking. I want fresher, richer and more vibrant tastes. I think if I had had this tea a year or so ago, I would rate it a lot higher but now I just want more out of my oolongs than this one can give me.

I want more tea but I’ve totally over-caffeinated myself today. Like to an absurd level. Enough tea this morning to make my hands shake, this weird coffee-tea oddity, then drinking chocolate… I need tea but I need something with no caffeine or sugar more. So I chugged some water (which I was apparently craving) and then dug this lovely out little monster out to finish off.

Mmm, puffed wheat. So good. Sweet but no sugar to make me (more) hyper. No caffeine. Just lovely, sweet, wheat-y flavor. Mmm. And now it is gone. And I must order more. So many tea companies, so little pantry room.

I debated adding this or not but ultimately decided to because while I feel this isn’t really a tea beverage, I think the intent is for it to be a tea beverage. So I will log it.

Why don’t I consider this a tea beverage? Because it has coffee in it and the dominant taste is that of coffee. This tastes like something that you’d buy in the grocery store next to the Starbucks bottled Frappuccinos. Or actually order from Starbucks itself. Why do I think this was intended as a tea beverage? Because it’s from a company with ‘Cha’ in the name and they specify that they use Yunnan Gold black tea.

But does this taste like tea? No. I mean, I’m probably picking up hints of the tea and I’m sure it contributes to the taste, but I don’t drink this and think, mmm, tea. This is coffee. Actually, it tastes a lot like a diluted chocolate covered espresso bean. I think the chocolate comes from the Yunnan (cocoa notes perhaps) and the obviously large amount of sugar this has. Because this has a lot of sugar. It’s listed second on the ingredient list after water. And 16oz of this has 72 calories, which is the same as almost 5 teaspoons of sugar. Five. In 16oz. So yes, this is sweet.

That sweetness is probably what saves it for me and makes this enjoyable. I like chocolate covered espresso beans and this is like drinking them. So my big conundrum – how do I rate this? Do I rate it just on overall taste? Because it was good, I’d have it again (mostly because I do love me some sugar). Or do I rate this as a tea? Because expecting a tea and getting this? Yeah, that wasn’t so pleasant. As a non-tea bottle drink, this is probably a 73. But expecting a sip of tea-like beverage? This is probably a 23. So I’ll give it a rating with the average of those two.

So I didn’t exactly have a metric ton’s worth of luck the last time I made this puppy up so I thought I’d give it another go and use the hubby as a guinea pig to see if his tastes agreed with the tea more than mine. I also decided to brew this like a regular black even though there’s obviously other goodies in there. I could say it was something like I was experimenting to see what flavors I wanted to pull out of the tea, but in all honestly, the Zojirushi was set on 208, so I just used that. Apparently when I get lots of sleep, my mind is even groggier than when I get very little sleep.

This cup is actually more successful. But that’s only been on sips 2+. Sip one, things hit me why I wasn’t a big fan. Good brisk start to the sip, watery bland finish. That’s what did it for me the other time I had this – the taste at the end of the sip. It tastes raw and weak and thin. So I got that this time, made a face, then put the cup down for a bit while I checked out the flurry of activity that happened on here while I was asleep.

Letting it sit seems to have been beneficial in some ways since the raw, thin flavor is now gone from the sip but now there is a hint of bitterness right at the tail. It’s not unpleasant though, so I’m cool with it (others might not like it though). Fortunately, I’m drinking this out of my new 15oz mug so I can let the tea sit for a while without it getting cold. Which means to me, I’m only going to enjoy this tea in large quantities, when I can let it sit long enough to make that end taste transition but still remain a bit hot.

Still not a favorite tea or something that I’ll have to get in the future but definitely a more successful steep for me this time around. Gave the rating a nudge upwards as a thank you. The husband is quite enjoying his cup, though, saying it reminds him of a good morning coffee that he would actually like (neither of us are big coffee fans). He even went so far as to ask if it had Darjeeling and Keemun in it. I’d probably guess so and that helped me with that bitter flavor I get at the end – Darjeeling. Not sure what the raw, green flavor at the end previously was though, but now that I’ve let my mug cool a little too much while discussing Calibre sorting with the husband, I seem to be getting a little of that rawness back.

The husband also stated that he was a bit torn on this tea because it is awesome but borders on being a touch bitter at some times. He even went so far as to give it a low 5/5 stars. Which for him is huge. So yeah, apparently I’m the freak that doesn’t enjoy this tea.

Oh well.