Awkward Soul

This tea is very very tart, so unless you can drink tart, be prepared to add sugar. I bought this tea to make iced.

Lots of cherry flavor with raspberry, blackberries and hibiscus notes. Iced, the cherry flavor stands out more than the other berryness going on. Both hot and cold, this tea has a tart dryness, despite sweetening. However, I found Pondi Cherry not flat at all!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/pondi-cherry-from-new-mexico-tea-company-tea-review/

I’m doing it again. My brain thinks I should blog review every new tea that passes through. The problem is, if I do that and get no new tea, I’m covered for the year and probably the samples will go bad. Sigh. Doesn’t help that Mandala Tea gives out great samples – I can tell there’s thought put into it and a nice size for a couple cups.

So, I’ve had a couple dragon pearl teas in my life. I’ve quite like the Adagio one. Mandala? What the, smells so good and blows my in stock brand outta the water! I caught my roommate sniffing this one a couple times.
Taste, even better! The jasmine is fantastic – not overly perfumely or chemically, with some sweetness. The tea base is buttery smooth. The adagio one’s perfume is edgy bitter and the base isn’t as good. Okay, I think when I restock my old jasmine pearls, I’m going to restock with this one (if I can even drink my old one again)!
enough sample left for one more cup!

Woot! I won this tea off the FoodNetwork blog! What really sucked was it came right before I left on vacation – so it was sitting on my table, unloved, until I got back. Well, Owly loved it, he nested in the massive amounts of tissue paper!

Overall, quite a high quality tea. Fresh green tea, big leaf with attractive orange chunks and petal curls. The flavor has a great balance of orange and grassy green tea with no tart or bitterness. The orange has a slight tang and candy flavor to it, so no sweetener needed. The green tea also had a silky texture to it.

Iced, not so great so far. It came out very grassy. I think I’ll need to play with this tea some more if I want a better iced tea, however it is a solid hot cup.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/la-fleur-d-oranger-from-le-palais-des-thes-tea-review/
+ vacation photos and new owl!

Backlog + Sipdown

Back from my vacation to Utah! Ate lots of food, hiked around Zion national park and went to the Brazilian Jiujitsu school there a couple times (to blow steam off from being stuck with my inlaw family!) Utah is HOT! like 105f / 41c oven dry hot. I thought SoCal was bad!

I took a bunch of tea with me, all friendly to boiling water. Lupicia has lots of boiling water teas, despite being greens, whites and oolongs. I had a number of good rounds of tea and finished off the bag. Very good floral with a plum flavor. The oolong seems too grassy for the combination, but resteeps toned it down.

Uggg, hopefully Oolong Owl blog stuff will resume tomorrow. I’m trying to get my crochet work in order and all post travel stuff done.

I’ve been due to have some pu’er for awhile now. I feel I need it – I’m going on a trip to Utah tomorrow to see some husband’s relatives and hopefully go beat up the jiujitsu school there. Well, try to lol!

Anyways, this toucha is not bad. It says 2007 on the label, and I find it not fishy at all. My first batch of steeps (after 2 rinses) were fairly light – bit of brisk earthy flavor with some floral that goes a little bitter and sweet at the end. The floral, hmmm.. tastes more like rose to me. After the 4th steeping, I’m getting the jasmine, though the tea is getting more and more bitter. This tuocha base is very black tea like. Later steepings, the bitterness goes up a bit and the floral takes over.

Cold steeped overnight! So I don’t have to be awake to make tea! This one is easier to drink if cold steeped, the grapefruit is slightly gentler. Still not awake yet, I’ll probably need to switch to something with more oomph to it.

Yum! Very tasty! I love the combination of the earthy black base, cinnamon, maple flavors with buttery pastry finish. With sweetener, the maple flavor pops more!

I like this blend more than Pancake breakfast!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/french-toast-black-tea-from-52-teas-tea-review/

Moonfired french toast?

Have a very large cup of this tea. I would of made a pot, but I was too lazy to go upstairs to find my tea pot.

Very savory smooth caramel for this round, with some candy sweet orange. Sipped away with breakfast and Animal Crossing. There was a sailor seagull passed out on the beach. Apparently, he was trying to sail to Canada.

Anyways, time to finish this massive cup and start my day!

Back loggin’

NEW ANIMAL CROSSING OMG!
Yeah, spent a few hours playing and made a pot of Coconut Grove to sip on. Very nice, I love the white tea base and the floral coconutty this.
Then, I had to quickly chug the rest of the tea, so I could make it to the brazilian jiujitsu event, Metamoris II, which was okay – annnnd back home and playing animal crossing!

MUUUHAAHAHAHHA!

I dragged my husband all over Torrance for tea blog related business. First was tracking down a certain tea item that I had a coupon for, to feature on the blog. But also, there is a Lupicia in that mall too. I didn’t get any teas from Lupicia, but I swiped a sample cup of iced tea. Once home, I needed a full tumbler full.

YUM DURIAN TEA! Though, once I’m done this tumbler, I’m going to have to baking soda scrub it and my gravity steeper to get all the durian essence out of it.

Uhhhhh Whoops! I left this to cold steep.. umm.. maybe 4 days ago? At least, a week at most. The tumbler got shuffled to the back of the fridge somehow and I completely forgot about it until today when I was wondering where my tumbler went.

Tastes somewhat okay, it’s not bitter but is kind of flat. I can pick out the nice floral and cherry, but no coconut.

I’ve been thinking about this tea for days. Every time I open my tin that has all my black Della Terra teas, I can smell this tea.

Sooo good! Had a small pot of this tea with some caramel waffle cookies, and they paired amazing together!
The yellow cakey flavor with pineapple is super yummy!

Only a couple days till Animal Crossing for the Nintendo 3DS!

Wow, this tea is yummy! It is the first rhubarb tea I’ve had that isn’t tart crazy hibiscus flavor!

Rhubarb + Custard is very creamy – like drinking piles of milky custard ontop of cooked smushy rhubarb. That custard taste is just dreamy and amazingly vegan as well!

I’m not into red rooibos and found the rooibos flavor fairly masked, only peaking as a little aftertaste with the stevia, once the thick creamy aftertaste is gone.

Very tasty! I’d reorder this again!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/rhubarb-custard-from-bluebird-tea-co-tea-review/
annoyingly, I couldn’t find the amigurumi bird penguin thing I used on the last Bluebird Tea Co review. I need to make more owls, but these days I’ve been fighting knee injury and annoying headaches (shhh and Nintendo 3DS playing)

I share a bit of this tea with my roommate, who’s health has been not so great and had chemo this morning. The nurses have been telling him to drink more tea too! I’ve been giving him some of my older teas, and trying to plan an order too.

See my previous notes / blog entry for review of this tea – he steeped it for like 30 minutes because that’s how he rolls! My roommate was very impressed with the flavor and “it has the perfect amount of lavender”.

Sipdown!

I made this iced, with slices of lemon, frozen strawberries and I threw in some chia seeds for texture. Very very tasty, strawberry tangy tastic!

Not sure if I’ll get more of this tea, but I will be doing another Steep City order, but I’m just so piled up with teas at the moment.

I was very excited for the new Persimmon Tree teas to come out (and try!) and Butterscotch looked the coolest of the new line up!

The white tea base is nice, adding lightness to the butterscotch buttery smokey flavor. The tea has a nice, savory end with a bit of spice. Sweetened, Butterscotch becomes more like liquid candy!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/butterscotch-from-the-persimmon-tree-tea-review/

Tea weapon?

Very lovely sheng!

The flavor just gets better and better each infusion, peaking around 6 to 9th infusion. Great notes of cherry, sweet apricot, mineral and a little smoke. Later infusions I really enjoyed as there was a fantastic unami savory thing going on!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/2012-autumn-yiwu-sheng-puer-from-misty-peak-teas-tea-review/

Are pu’er picks safe for owls?

Now this is how you start a morning! With this tea!

Obviously not how my husband is starting his morning. He got breakfast in bed, he took a bite, and slowly flopped over asleep. Ugggg.

Solid tea! Always love the marshmallow/orange/chocolate combo! I prefer the shorter steep time to keep the marshmallow in check.

More OOLONG!

My computer is on the second floor of my house and my tea set up is in the downstairs kitchen. I refuse to go up and down the stairs on this stupid brazilian jiujitsu injured knee – so today’s oolong tea is a not a gaiwan super reinfusion type.

Peach oolong from Della Terra. Okay. Okay hot – moreso a bit of peachyness to compliment the base. However, this tea iced is very good! I like this more than a black peach tea iced. The peach comes out very well and the savory green and floral oolong base snuggle well with the peach.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/peach-oolong-from-della-terra-teas-tea-review/

Yes! Nothing like waking up to realize I jacked my knee somehow yesterday in jiujitsu. Must of been when I was tossing that large purple belt guy around. Felt fine yesterday, sort of. Oh whatever, always something injured on me! I’m gonna ice/heat my leg and play fire emblem!

I was craving caramel so bad this morning too! Must of been that Mandala Milk oolong from yesterday! This tea came out okay, little more mix of cream cheese than usual, but good. Nice wakeup tea treat!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! /spiraling out of control

SIP DOWN! Love this tea – the floral and fruity is super yummy, with a cute orange red appearance too! Best iced tea! I’m getting a little cherry like flavor with the tea leave dredges.

Crap crap, that means I should do another SteepCity order, and it will not be a small order too. I have so much tea that I haven’t even tried yet, kind of scary. I remember the old days of “yay new tea, try it right now!” to now “not enough time to try all these teas. You Mr. Oolong I will try next Tuesday and Pu’er 2012 on Monday” Yeahhhh.

(come on guys, I’m the only one with tasting notes for this tea, give em some love!)

Oolong Week at Oolong Owl!

Mandala’s Milk Oolong? A M A Z I N G

The smell of this tea is like caramel candy! Taste? thick caramel, buttery peas, vanilla buttercream and the perfect sweetness. In later infusions, there is some sunny floral and fresh grassy notes. In the final infusions, mango notes. Love it!

The leaves expand to crazy huge sizes too! Impressive quality tea!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl, http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/milk-oolong-tea-from-mandala-tea-tea-review/

Owl Photobomb Crew?

NOOOOOO!

My husband is trapped waiting for his parents at the airport so no brazilian jiujitsu workout tonight.

I just made a lovely batch of red bean buns – I ate 2, and 10 more are just sitting there, calling to me. EAT ALL THE CARBS! Sad is no jiujitsu, so no burning off all those tasty buns.

I’m having some iced earl of lemon with honey. Very light grassy base, yet nice tangy lemon. Please forget about the buns. Then when husband gets home, he’ll eat all the sweets. Curse his “eat everything in sight and lose weight” metabolism!

Always a favorite! Oolong and Pu’er? Yeah!
But yeah, I purely love this as it tastes like a childhood favorite tea, but spiked with ginger and citrus. My MIL loves this tea too, and this isn’t the type of tea she usually likes!

Anyways, chilling out, sipping some The Skinny, doing laundry and hopefully working on amigurumi blog stuff.