Auggy

The leaves smell yummy but I can’t place the smell. It’s good though. Sweet. Green. Brewing it smells like a sweet green, not white. The notes say a grassy highnote and a hazelnut finish. I totally get the grassy. Not sure about the hazelnut since pretty much my only exposure to that flavor is flavored coffees and teas which I can’t imagine the actual nut tasting like. There is a light-ish nutty taste at the end that I’m guessing is hazelnut? It doesn’t taste quite like the taste that I think is chestnut but has a similar-ish note. Anyway, it has little to no salty taste I get from Chinese greens so I’m liking this.

Using the last of this tea to ultimately see if I can rate this tea. Made a pot and sharing it with hubby so he can assist…

I love my kitties. A lot. And knowing that kitties aren’t made to digest grains, we get a food that is grain-free. It’s expensive and smells to high heaven but the kitties have been healthier and their fur softer so it’s worth it. Still smells though – like the fish and duck that are the main ingredients. Last night when DH was scooping out the fresh kibble, I had a realization. This tea smells like our kitties’ kibble. Which could explain why the cats seem so interested in it when I brew it.

Anyway, not going to hold that against it. Fishy initial taste/smell followed by a sweet hay taste. Oops, DH is apparently not a fan – 2 sips and I get to finish the rest of his cup. Oh well. More tea to judge with. Oddly enough, DH’s cup has a slight bitter shock right before I finish my swallow. I have no clue how that happened. Any ideas??

Will continue to update this as I go through more brews. So far, I’m liking this a lot more than the first time. I think this ultimately is an acquired taste that I could learn to get behind. (Though part of me keeps saying “You don’t have to learn to like GOOD things – no one needs to learn to like ice cream, right???”)

ETA: 2nd steep @ 3mins. I want to like this tea due to the beautiful color if for not other reason. I love the dark, dusky red it pours out as. Did a good rise/wipe out of DH’s cup and he’s not getting any more bitterness (thanks for the suggestion Angrboda!). Now sweet hay is the dominate taste… Can’t taste any fish but this brew seems even sweeter. I think I’m really starting to get behind this because it’s this is good. (DH’s comments – less fishy, smooth, fuller taste (compared to steep 1), a little earthy… Acceptable, not bad but he’s ultimately indifferent to it).

ETA2: Steep 3 @ 5mins. I think I’m ready to rate this tea now that I’ve gotten used to the flavor shift I had to get used to. It’s good – smooth, mild, has an interesting flavor and while not super-complex isn’t a one note wonder. I enjoy the sweetness of it. DH finds it a little bland (but then I brewed to my taste, not his so that’s not overly surprising) but does like the lack of ‘in your face-ness’. I would drink this again and will probably try other loose pu-ehrs for the times I’m in the mood for something more… savory. But ultimately I don’t think I’m going to start stockpiling pu-ehr cakes in my closet or anything. I’d have this more frequently than any herbal I’ve met so far but wouldn’t be sad if I never had it again. Probably.

Spent a good portion of this evening descaling the Zojirushi and I was too lazy to boil water the old fashioned way, so this is my first tea since the unknown type of genmaicha I had at the sushi bar at lunch. Since it’s so late and I’m tired, I didn’t want anything with caffeine, which, in my pantry, REALLY limits me. But I haven’t had this one in a while and it sounded good so I went for it.

Months of being forgotten about has not been detrimental to it. It’s still good. Sweet but musty/musky – very similar to a diluted honey in taste, though not as sweet. Doesn’t have the depth of a plum honey (which is usually the type of ‘honey’ taste I find in teas that say they taste of fruit and honey) but a more clover honey. Not overly complex in taste but really nice. I like it.

My first try at this one… I love the smell of it. It makes me crave Japanese food. Like, a lot. Smells so awesome.

Trying it straight first. The smell is milder than the dry leaves which makes me a little sad. But still smells good. Love the initial taste of the sesame. Really good. But then the tea tastes a little bitter after that. Maybe I steeped too long… Added a little bit of sugar (maybe 1/8tsp for my 7oz glass). Okay, that takes away from the bitterness but keeps a nice savory taste going. Much more sugar and I think the taste would be totally thrown off. Still a little hot thought so I gotta let it cool.

Okay, cool now. Oh… Niiiiiice. This tastes like it smells. Like something with a really awesome Japanese glaze on it. Like the glaze on osembe or something. Maybe the sauce on unagi sushi? Which is something I love so that’s a good thing.

I think this tea is going to be directly responsible for me going out to get some unadon today.

Urg. I’m running out of tea left and right! Last of this tea which is very saddening as it is super-yummy (this is a technical tea term). I busted out the gaiwan for this since that’ll make it last longer. Rich, sweet, a little thick (but not too much), no astringency… So good. Probably the best bit is the taste that fills my mouth the instant after I swallow. Which isn’t to say the rest of the tea doesn’t taste great, because it does. But that taste… ah!

This tin is so hard to open. I’ve already had to vacuum up little leaves off the floor. :(

DH says the dry leaf smells like Christmas. Well, I’ll see him his Christmas and raise him a pickle, combining to make a sort of pickle potpourri. If they, you know, made pickle potpourri…

But hey, I’m not judging. Yet.

The liquor smells more potpourri and less pickle. I smell something like cinnamon. No, more like Red Hots (or Hot Damn). I am insane. (Or not because I made DH try some and his first question was “Is this a cinnamon tea?”) But underneath the Red Hot, I smell cucumber. Ooookay. As it cools, I smell more cucumber, less Red Hot.

The taste is… kind of nifty. The main flavor is very cucumber. Juicy, musky, good cucumber. The Red Hot flavor is hanging out a little underneath the cucumber – pretty much a reverse of the smell – but it moves to the front as I hold it in my mouth.

Mentally, these tastes don’t seem to go but in actuality it works. It’s flavorful but not as overpowering as the smell would indicate so that’s good. Not sure if I want a Red Hot cucumber tea though so rating subject to change.

ETA: 2nd steep @ 7mins. The flavor isn’t as strong but pretty much all I can taste is diluted Red Hot. DH says this tea should be called Big Red. I concur.

Holy monkeys. This is a second steep from yesterday’s tea, iced. I made about 22oz and added about 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar. It’s a small amount but most likely totally unnecessary. This is sweet! Like, good sweet. Like almond cookie topped with sprinkled sugar sweet. Iced it gives more of a crispy cookie baked a few hours ago instead of a softer cookie fresh from the oven. But honestly, it’s a cookie so neither of those options are bad. Other than the extra sweetness, the rest of this tastes remarkably like the tea when hot. So yeah, two thumbs up.

Anybody have any idea what the tea base of this is? Adagio’s site doesn’t say but I know typically they use Ceylon, yes? But this tastes more like an Assam. Bake-y and a little malty. Or maybe I’m on crack. Either or.

Smell-wise, I get a lot of bake-y smell then followed with sweet potato – a not fully cooked sweet potato casserole maybe. DH got the bake-y, too, but he thought of some sort of rich biscotti.

Taste-wise, it’s a mix of sweet potato casserole, raw sweet potato and pumpkin pie for me. I could taste a faint marshmallow after the sip but had to look for it – only got it on the inhale after a large sip. The first was a bake-y taste that made me think of pie crust. Then the mid-taste which hit me as very much potato-y and alternated between cooked and raw (there was a sort of crispness to the smell that made me think raw). (DH is going with a predominately pumpkin pie taste).

So yeah, weird to have a tea taste like sweet potato but I kind of love it. Some of the notes (particularly the bake-y) reminded me of the much loved Thomas Sampson which is why I wonder if this has an Assam base. I do think I will love this tea.

My turn to try this oddity!

The dry leaves smell sweet. Not syrupy or anything, just sweet. Can’t really link that to artichoke… While brewing, it has a different smell… some of the tang is coming through. It makes my mouth water just a bit. Almost like very diluted bread and butter pickle juice.

It tastes… neat. Different. Softer than I expected. The first taste is hard to place. Vinegar? But not like straight vinegar and not as strong as the smell. It just has a similar note to it… a clean sort of tang. The ending taste is the most fresh artichoke-like taste I think. As I inhale after the sip there is a very fresh green almost floral taste. I would say this gives me a very pickled artichoke feel but pickled artichoke has always been very mouth puckering to me and this isn’t sour/tangy enough to do that. Just tangy enough to add interest.

Anyway, so far I’m intrigued. It’s a weird flavor to have in tea but I think it is done well. Not sure how in love with this tea I will be once the freak-factor is eliminated from it but I won’t have any problem going through the sampler tin.

I confess: I picked a little bit of this up from the store simply because the leaves were so interesting. Tightly rolled and so shiny! I haven’t had anything like it before.

It smells both grassy and honeyed, like it can’t decide if it wants to be a Japanese or Chinese green. Tastes quite a bit like sencha but with only a hint astringency and without the hint of turning bitter if I leave it in the cup for too long. As it cools, a more Chinese green taste comes out… I’m getting a honey taste that isn’t quite honey… I’m guessing the pinecone taste they mention? Don’t really get the orchid except for the fact that it is sweet and fresh tasting (not quite floral). I don’t get the briny taste I normally do when I drink Chinese greens. This is actually quite nice.

ETA: The second steep at 3:15 is crazy bitter/salty and the aftertaste is like I just swallowed a mouthful of ocean. I make a face each time I sip it. The rating gets dropped for not having a good second steep.

This was sitting in my fridge for a couple of days. Oops. Drinking the second steep iced. I can taste more of the purple flower and rose compared to when the tea hot. Might actually be better iced. Not that it does me any good to discover this now as is it discontinued. Boo.

Not sure how I feel about this tea. It wasn’t what I expected at all but then, I’m not a big candy cane girl so I wasn’t expecting much. But I was expecting some mint. Sadly, my lip gloss with a mint tingle has a more easily identifiable mint than this tea. The mint here is pretty much limited to a fresh mouth feeling after a sip – just a little tingle (again, even my lip gloss is stronger). But that fresh minty feeling is quickly covered by something… musty? Not like attic musty but like wild musk musty. It is the taste that makes a muscadine differ from a white grape. That’s not to say this tasted like grape or muscadine, of course. It’s just that was the musky/musty flavor I was getting. Almost like a vanilla flavor but not quite. Vanilla bean maybe? Cream? I’m not sure. But it made for a much darker, heartier flavor than I expected from something named after a candy.

Sweet, floral… More floral than when steeped at a lower temp (I usually do green oolongs at 195 or lower depending on my mood, but the Zojirushi was set to 208 and I didn’t want to wait so I just went with it). In place of the creamy taste that normally comes out at lower temp. brewing, I’m getting a sharper taste and some dryness at the end, but that works pretty nicely on my throat which is sore for some reason. Good stuff.

I was feeling brave so I picked up a little bit of this last night at the grocery store. I’m a bit nervous to drink it just because of the stories I’ve heard about nasty things turning up in a pu-ehr cake. But this is loose, so I should be good and need to just get over that. No fingernails or cigarette butts to be seen.

The dry leaves smell smoky. Okay, gonna brew it anyway and just not think about what I’m drinking. While brewing, I take a sniff. Mmm, fish. Wondering if my cats might like this. While it’s pouring out, it looks red. A very deep red, but totally red. Really gorgeous. Collected in the cup, however, it is just a very dark brown. Wish I had put this in my glass cup to see if the red shows when light goes through it. Still smells a little fishy and has really attracted the attention of one of my cats. Ah, he was just distracted by the napkin I had my raisin bread on, the tea is no longer interesting…

Okay, this tastes… odd. Very smooth – beautifully so. But a smooth fish taste. Not like a pier but more like a fresh fish with a sweet glaze cooked on a grill with mesquite chips in it. This is so weird. It’s smooth and sweet and I’m really loving the sip and then I get the tail fishy/woody taste. And that just seems very non tea like so it confuses me.

I can’t decide if this is fantastic or unpleasant. Seriously, can’t even begin to rate this yet.

ETA:
2nd steep has a very sweet, dry grass/straw tastes – no more fishy.
3rd steep still has a sweet grass taste with a little earthy taste but it doesn’t have the dryness from the previous steep. So far this steep is my favorite though I still don’t know if I like this tea. While the flavor profile is changing, the overall flavor strength hasn’t decreased. This could easily be a first steep.

Wow, I’ve had a lot of tea today! This is the last bit of a small bag I picked up from the bulk tea section at my grocery store. I had enough leaf to make 3 cups but was only making for me and DH. One cup of chai just won’t do it around here as chai is a social tea only to be made for groups no smaller than two, so instead of having 1 cup’s worth of leaf languishing about, I dumped it all in.

The orange flavoring is not as strong but what of it there is is much stronger/darker. Orange peel instead of orange fruit. Now, neither DH nor I drink coffee unless we have to and even then, we both put lot of sugar and milk in it. That being said, this stronger chai is very coffee-like. Darker, heavier taste with a more acidic bitterness as an aftertaste. Of course, the fact that I made it with sugar and half milk/half water also lends toward the coffee similarity. Our type of coffee. Sweet, creamy, dark and a little acidic.

Picked this up when I was at the grocery store today. I was expecting something light and thin tasting but I was surprised at how much flavor there was. There was a little sweetness to it but not a lot. It wasn’t what I expected from a white tea, but then I haven’t had much luck with whites in the past (I still associate them with water used to boil soybeans).

Different and surprising and not at all what I was expecting to get, but I liked it and would totally have it again.

Drinking some steeps (don’t know which ones but maybe 3 – 5?) from last night iced. Pretty mild until it warms up a bit. Tastes sort of like walnuts dipped in honey with a strong, sour nut taste at the end. Sour sounds so negative though. It’s more like a dark, very strong nut flavor that I remember getting from some of the nuts that I’d eat when my parents would always have a bowl of them out. Honestly, I didn’t like the nuts so much as I liked cracking the shells, but the rule quickly developed that if I cracked the shell, I had to eat the nut.

More interesting hot.

Sweet and nutty and a little salty. I’m really enjoying this tea. It’s got a lot of depth to the flavor. Lots of things going on in a sip, but not so much that I feel bludgeoned with contrasting tastes. It goes from an initial sweet grass/seaweed taste into a sweet/tart nutty then into a slight salty for the finish.

Last time DH only smelled the tea. This time, I made him his own cup. He gives it 4 out of 5 stars, which is pretty good for him… he usually gives everything a 3.

Last time I did an about 50/50 mix of this and a plain green oolong to try to get more oolong taste in this. I didn’t think it made that much of a difference so I made it straight today.

Now I know that the mix last time did make a difference. I think having more regular oolong in this gives the flavor more depth, makes it more interesting. It’s still tastes like a big bowl of sugary, citrusy kids’ cereal but it has a more solid base. So a more interesting sugary kids’ cereal.

Go Fruity Pebbles!

Okay, I was a bit nervous trying this. If it is supposed to be best iced, that usually means I will find it too fruity/tart/sweet/something hot and not enjoy it. But this was pretty good. I can’t really pick out the flavors all that well but they blend nicely to have an overall fruity taste. If pressed, I’d say the coconut can be tasted at the beginning and the pina colada gives it a fruity finish. Not sure where the lime plays in though maybe in the aftertaste I get a bit of that? I haven’t had lime tea by itself before so I don’t know the flavor well enough to pick it out. Anyway, the flavors go together nicely and the overall feeling is a bit tropical/fruity but no so much so that I forget I’m drinking tea (vs. and herbal) so I like it.

A little tarter/berrier than the other time I had it. I think because I used more leaf. I was nice and am sharing with DH and he commented on the blueberriness of this.

I’m sleepy so that’s all I’ve got.

I normally make my tea right before I leave for work, but this morning DH had to leave early, so I did it right after getting out of bed. Not the best plan since I was basically still asleep, just ambulatory.

The choice of this tea today was influenced by 2 things: 1) I didn’t have it yesterday and 2) it was on top of the front stack of tea. Yes, I have very demanding prerequisites for my tea first thing in the morning.

I did manage to put the right amount of leaf in (though it was a close thing – forgot I had to measure and just started spooning leaves into the pot – it took a bit for my brain to kick in this morning) and remembering that this tea tastes lighter than the dry leaves smell like it should, I added just a tiny bit of sugar and milk (though the thought process of ‘lighter = more or less milk?’ took quite a while).

So even though I was still asleep, I did manage to brew this tea without any big screw ups. Yet this tea is still very light. Or rather, the lemon flavor of it is. There’s a lemon scent to it (thankfully not like a cleaning product lemon but a lemonade lemon) but just a hint of the flavor, mostly at the tail. It’s a soft tea, not very bold. Sort of plain if not for the light lemon flavor which, since it is so light, really just adds a bit of a fresh taste to the tea. Not a lot of depth of flavor (though more dimension than some flavored teas – Adagio’s Blackberry, I’m looking at you).

I’m not in love with this tea but I do enjoy it. I think I would enjoy it more if the dry leaves smelled differently – it’s SO strong! The superlemon scent hits me as soon as I open the tin so I end up anticipating that scent to translate to flavor in the liquor. But it doesn’t. Which is probably a good thing but then the light flavor become almost confusing. Nice. But confusing.

Ugh, I love this tea. Love it. But it always throws me for a loop.

Red Blossom suggests brewing between 2-3 mins at 195. Since this is rolled, I do 2:30 instead of my more normal 2 mins for oolongs. But without fail, at the end of the 2:30 I look at it in my glass teapot and think, “This can’t possibly be ready.” The liquor is just so light! A pale yellow floating about in the tea pot. Sometimes I worry and let it go a bit longer because of this, but I always pour by 3 mins.

But then I pour it into my cup. It gets instantly darker. Perhaps it is just from pouring into a more concentrated size? But even though the color is stronger, it’s still light. A lovely yellow with tones of glowing green (almost like the rating bar on here).

But it’s light. Maybe I did something wrong this time and it won’t be as good. Maybe the leaf has finally gotten old and 1g:2oz water isn’t enough. I worry. Did I brew it long enough?

So I take a sniff. Mmm, it does smell lovely. Like a garden that has just been rained on. Not MY garden, mind, but a more exotic one. Something lush and jungle-like. Mmm.

I sip and flavor just explodes in my mouth. It’s so thick! How can something so light in color taste so thick and have such good mouth-feel? It seems just steps away from being able to be chewed. But at the same time, there is a lightness to it, a freshness – perhaps from the citrus notes? – that makes me feel that this tea would be perfect to sip in the middle of a steamy summer. But that thickness makes me think it would fit in during a frigid winter, too.

I can’t help but let my shoulders relax as I drink this. As I sip it, I can tell that yes, I’ve ignored it a bit too much and it’s gotten old. It’s so good I haven’t wanted to use it up so I’ve let it lose that phenomenal taste it had when new (yes, this tea used to be even better). But ultimately, I don’t care that it doesn’t have quite the depth it used to.

I love this tea.

(Ahem, and I just realized I wrote a book while drinking this. blushes Sorry about that!)

Lena’s logging of this one earlier today reminded me I hadn’t had it in a while. So I’m having some.

I’m getting a bit Darjeeling flavor from it – that muscatel-fruity, nutty taste – but a little smoother and lighter than the Darjeelings I’ve had in more recent memory. I’m pretty sure I got a Darjeeling read from it before but I’m not sure if it was this strong. Perhaps because I steeped it at a lower temp? (That’s what the zojirushi was set on, so I just went with it instead of waiting for it to reboil even though that really doesn’t take long).

Also, something smells like lavender chocolate (and it isn’t me) and it’s driving me nuts! I keep thinking it is this tea but it isn’t. Very odd.