Awkward Soul

Gah, everywhere I look, there’s samples that I need to sip down!

Time to work on this one! Ah, I didn’t realize this one was a sheng. I read http://www.teavivre.com/info/pu-erh-tea-weight-loss/ that you drink a pu’er after a meal it helps with weightloss. I need all the help I can get, along with all this crazy freaking exercise I do. Hopefully I burn my energy at brazilian jiu jitsu tonight – I never go thursdays. Something about “MMA/boxing gloves punching while jiujitsu neutralizing attacks” seems too scary for me. But I have to go, or I’ll never get a belt promotion. My plan? Hyper Pu’er energy + rolling up into a ball + spazzing out into leg attacking. Yeah, MMA isn’t my future career…

Screw the large bags plus I bet it’s plastic like other “silk” bags. So far so good. I wish there was more interest to this pu’er – it seems like this one very tea noob friendly, so no fishy or thick taste. Just earthy. No creamy, floral, nuttyness going on.

Mmmm, my second gyokuro! This one was even better! My first gykuro was from Den’s Tea, but this one from Yunomi.us / Kurihara Tea was more balanced and buttery.

I followed these steeping instructions http://yunomi.us/4832/gyokuro-steeping-technique/ which was kind of annoying getting my water to 120F / 50C as my kettle only goes as low at 160F. However, the result was really good! My gyokuro was syrupy, buttery, creamy and spinachy! I got a handful of resteepings out of my tea too! The astringency was actually good too!

Uggg, I think I need to acquire more gyokuro (maybe one of the higher quality ones off Yunomi) but I know my cash flow will be pissed off!

Full Review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/gyokuro-standard-kurihara-tea-via-yunomi-us-tea-review/

Sip down! Hot Latte mode!

Mmm delicious banana milk again! Hmm what’s my cupboard count? Gahh 200 on the nose! A few more than that as I need to add a few teas to the database and have been too lazy to do so (or not lazy and just don’t want to see my count go up!)
I could be convinced to have this Monkey Fart tea again. I dislike the name though, as I don’t like monkeys – though I do like the humor of the tea name! Actually today in Brazilian Jiujitsu my sparring partner, who is more experienced than me, was being tricky and I was having difficulty sparring her has she glues herself to me. She said “I’m sorry, I’m like a little monkey” and I’m like “no, you are more like a koala bear, they are much cuter than monkeys!”

NOMNOMNOMMM!

I got this huge sugar chocolate crazy craving. Even more dangerous, a tub of Red Velvet Cake ic ecream in the freezer! That ice cream and Trader Joe’s cookie butter are EVIL! I took a spoon of ice cream and was like yum, but no more! But I was still crawling for sweets – Time to switch to tea!

Of course, I pull out some really desserty teas – this one won! I made it as a latte. I’m at the end of my bag (just 1 serving left!) so the tea is the smushed side, so it seems I got more graham flavor with a little chocolate.

Must hold out till dinner! Then brazilian jiujitsu and after that I’ll be safe from evil ice cream in the freezer!

Peach picnic! This green rooibos blend is really sweet – lots of sweet orange cutie flavor, with some peach and a hint of strawberry. Be weary of adding additional sugar as this tea is already sweet.

Peach Picnic shines when iced – the sweetness is just perfect, great fruity and citrus taste, along with being really refreshing. The green rooibos does well here adding a little grassy note, working well with the fruityness, but not too grassy in reminding you of grassy picnics.

Anyways, I’m going to use the rest of this tea iced!

Full review at Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/peach-picnic-from-the-persimmon-tree-tea-review/

Siiiiipdown yeah!

I’m trying to get through my adagio samples, phew! 2 more to go. I’ve been finding cold steeping overnight helps reduce the stash of older teas, plus great in the morning because sometimes I’m too tired to make tea. I then use this tea to wake up to make tea! Cold steeping for morning tea is gonna be great once summer hits!

Anyways, this is pretty good iced. It has this earthy sweetness that comes out, reminding me of like apricot mixed with some floral. The bonus here is no bitterness or astringency! Hot, there was some astringency.

Sip down!

This is an old sample. I can smell even from the dry leaf that this tea is gonna be flat. Actually, I recalled this tea was kinda flat to begin with. So I cold steeped it with a lemon slice, yah! Not too bad, the lemon did save it. I’m moreso happy that this tea is finished. I’m back over 200 teas after Monday’s flood of tea order that came in. Must sip down stuff!

Whoa, I didn’t think I’d get this review up today!

This is an unusual and fun tea. The fruityness is tasty (woot for freeze dried pineapple and strawberry!) and the marshmallow adds a fun level to this tea. It is slightly sweet on its own. The honeybush base was good, though a little watery, similar to other honeybush blends. To me, this really tasted like bubblegum, ambrosia salad (minus the coconut) and pink marshmallows.

Iced, this tea got even more interesting. The fun mix of “pineberry” and marshmallow reminded me of those crazy sausage tube popsicles. I guess a close tea to this would be DavidsTea’s Swampwater.. sort of.

Full review at my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/pineberry-honeybush-from-52-teas-tea-review/

I’m having some gaiwan runs with this tea while I can tomatoes.
Seems a little early to can them, but my grocery store had some really nice romas for 4 lbs for $1 so I bought a lot of them to make 3 quart jars worth – I should of got more, but I only have 3 jars! Everything went really smoothly and easier than I remember canning to be. Though, I enjoy using my gaiwan when I’m doing work in the kitchen, maybe the tea made it more relaxing?

This tea is much better running through a gaiwan! It came out sweeter! However, 4th steeping suddenly got too astringent!

Earth day! Customary to Earth Day for me, here is some metal music about Earth Day http://youtu.be/Uh8XAsS0vvU

I’ve been dragging around all day, just really tired. The weather has been hot, my allergies have been kicking in and making today kinda yuck.

YUM! This tea is super yummy! Laoshan black chocolate genmaicha is soooo dark chocolatey with some nutty, malty and roasty. It’s comfort food and luxury in a tea cup!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/laoshan-black-chocolate-genmaicha-from-verdant-tea-tea-review/ The green owl brought reinforcements this time

working on this sample, woot!

And it is way too hot to have hot tea today – I’m having this as an iced latte with honey! Pretty good, tastes like banana milk to me! I didn’t add much sweetener as I have dinner coming up, but this came out pretty sweet like candy. I see others say it tastes like “banana runts” however I think it tastes a little better, as I dislike banana runts! When I was a kid, I used them to throw at people, or fed them to my dad LOL!

EDIT: tea hating husband took a sip – he said it tastes “okay” ! Woooot progress!

Sip down! Yeah, on a roll! I got a number of mates samples kicking around, however this is the only one that is fruit, the rest are coffee like.

Annoyingly, its HOT again today! 78F/ 26c! WAHHH! So iced teas today! At least this tea is really good iced! I still like this one and may get more, but they don’t take paypal and I’m not keen into stepping into their store with pushy sales. Though maybe my roommate will wanna go and we’ll tag team those sales people!

The coolest tea travel mug around! Just make sure you screw the caps on tightly! I love using this tea tumbler for cold steeps and iced tea, but it also does well with hot green and white teas.

I got this travel tumbler from http://zentealife.com/

The bad? It advises not to use boiling water in the instructions. You wouldn’t want to use anything more than 200F anyways as the body also gets pretty hot. The filter is also on the small side and is a tight fit if you use whole leaf teas intended to make a full 16oz tumbler of tea.

I still love this tumbler though – no leaks and it looks really cool!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/t-free-hourglass-travel-tea-tumbler-tea-ware-review/

Sip down! In latte mode!

Gah, I only had a teaspoon left, my dad drank it all when he was visiting me! With my teaspoon of Chai Amazonia I only could make a small latte. Pretty good flavor for a chai, though i made it a little too sweet (maybe from the stevia in this blend?). I made snickerdoodles last night (with white chocolate chips!) and they go amazing with chai! YUM!

Yesss! I’m down to 199 teas! Nooo early next week it’ll probably go past 200 again when I get some teas in the mail.

I’ve been drinking a gyokuro for most of the afternoon for my blog. I made a huge mess! Water and leaves all over the place! It reminds me how back in art school I was always the one who’d get paint, pencil shavings and graphite all over myself. Things never change!

So, I was craving a good white after all that green tea, and I got time to squeeze another cup in before I cut off caffeine for the day, so how about one of my fav teas? Iced of course – it’s 30c here in Long Beach! WTFFFFFF! I know some of you Steepsters still haven’t seen spring yet!

Super yummy! Love the watermelon flavor, so fantastic! Back to working on blog stuff!

Yeah, sample sipdown!

This time, as a latte! Hmmm.. I really think this tea would be better as a black instead of the mix of black and green. The latte came out a little weak, despite using double the leaves.

Having this iced!

Argggg! I made a nice big tea tumbler of Agua di Jamaica iced, set it on my desk in front of me, then forgot about it when I was knitting. I’m trying to design a market bag knitting pattern and having some issues with cast on stuff.

So, my drink got kinda watery from the melted ice once I realized there’s a nice cold tea in front of me. Really nice berry flavor with a citrus aftertaste! Yum!

Cold Steeped! Darn it, I thought this could be a sipdown, but I got another serving left! BOOOO!

This is much better cold steeped as the astringency is gone. It’s kinda buttery, lots of sharp veg flavor with a little nutty. Ehhh, stale though probably because this tea is kinda old.

YES Sip down! 205 teas now! ARGGGGAHAHHHHH!

I had a very angry bunny this morning. I guess my bathroom trip at 5am got him angry. Benson, “Hey, let me out of cage! 5am is rabbit hours!” Which I didn’t do, and went back to bed.
When I got up, his chew box was flipped over, the litter box was kicked around, and he tore big wads of paper from his litter box and stuffed it inside his food bowl until it was bursting. EWWWW!
I let him out, and he proceeded to nose my legs right where I got mat burned last night at brazilian jiujitsu, which hurt! So I gave him a carrot to stop. The carrot offering appeared to please the bunny for now.

Ugg. I found the last of the Perfect Pear, and steeped the leaves earlier than what I liked, as I wanted tea now to escape the bunny headache. Overall, not bad. Still wish there was more to this than pear. Pear Crumble? ooooh

Freaky, I thought I tea logged this?

Anyways, I got a sample of this from Kasumi no Chajin, yay ty!
First time, I cold steeped it. Very very good! I saved the rest of the sample for a hot round, which did not happen. The last of my sample is me drinking it as another cold steep.
So good! I love the floral in this tea – its like jasmine but much better as it is also sweet and light. Why isn’t there more magnolia teas? The oolong is so crisp and refreshing and the cold steep works very well!
Gah, I should of tried this hot! Oh well, I might just have to order some myself!

Wow, this puerh is really different! There’s no fishyness! It’s not pitch black and strong for the first few steeps – even following the recommended steeping of boiling water for 4 minutes! Butiki’s japanese puerh has some good barley, nutty, brown rice syrup, and coffee. What I found interesting was there was a slight dryness in the first few cups, but it went away with further infusions.
And this tea can resteep very well!

Full review on my blog, the Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/organic-japanese-puerh-from-butiki-teas-tea-review/

I decided to cold steep this Iron Buddha Oolong.

A few hours in, I sampled the cold steep and it taste kinda seaweedy. I got distracted with weight lifting and crocheting stuff. Could hours later, I’m finally having this cold steep. IBO has this strong veg bite to it while going towards a slight bitter taste. I’m getting a lemongrass taste which is really refreshing. Actually, this kind of tastes like the skin of a roasted green pepper!

hmmm, I think I like this cold steeped more, but maybe I’ll go lighter on the leaves next time.

Another sleepy morning. Brazilian Jiu jitsu was really tiring last night. And sweaty! UGG! In BJJ we wear thick gis, which absorb the sweat (ew) – when we do no gi (so just workout top and shorts) the sweat is everywhere. So, my last sparring partner’s clothes felt all over like a wet towel. EWWW! After that, it was shower, crawl into bed. Wake up, crawl out of bed for breakfast and tea.

Mmm, earl grey creme? This came out really good and is waking me up. Love the creamyness and that nice wave of bergamont! My cup cooled as I went for tiger balm and petting my bunny Benson – EGH is still creamy and yummy!

Sip down, yeah! Gahh, I need to get under 200 teas!

Made this iced! The mango here came out a little different, mixing strongly with the rose. The peach is a great refreshing aftertaste, working well iced. Actually, this is better iced, the refreshingness is pretty good!

Gotta get ready for brazilian jiu jitsu. Bleh, no gi tonight, so overly sweaty class!