Jenn-cha

Steeping time: 7 3/4 minutes

I got so caught up in making my breakfast I totally lost track of time…and I can’t even say it was the kids this time! I really need to buy a timer. But for all that there isn’t NEARLY as much bitterness in this as I had expected from the over-steeping!

This is definitely a fruity tea, but having never tasted a passion fruit I hardly consider myself fit to judge whether this tastes like one or not.

Many thanks to Jillian for this :D

I can definitely tell this has an oolong base. The deep amber liquor has a woodsy, citrus flavor with a bit of a…ginger kick? There’s no ginger listed in the ingredients though. Interesting. And if I didn’t know this was supposed to be grapefruit I don’t think I would have been able to tell. Overall, a nice oolong with a bit of a surprise in store for those who don’t read tea reviews XD

1st infusion: 2 minutes, boiling water
Despite the reviews here I was still rather surprised at the lightness/delicateness of this for a black tea. The deep red liquor was lightly malty, woodsy, and a tad fruity.

2nd infusion: 2 1/2 minutes, boiling water
The color is only slightly lighter but the flavor is much lighter and the fruity note has vanished.

A nice tea but not something I can’t live without.

Backlogging

The bright yellow liquor has a delicate peach flavor, like the flavor of the flesh just under the skin, not the tarter, stronger flavor from next to the pit.

Backlogging

Third time’s the charm. I used less leaf and did a shorter steep time and what do you know, Earl Grey really can be drinkable! No offense meant to people who love Earl Grey tea, I’ve just never managed to find a good cup of it before (plus the amount of bergamot in the Twinnings bags makes me sneeze). The bergamot here, however, was pleasant, not overwhelming.

I think I am officially impressed. I’m not an Earl Grey convert by any stretch of the imagination but this variety at least I can manage.

No notes yet.

I have so much backlogging to do, but right now I’m just going to sit here and relax while enjoying this tea. It seems a bit smokier today but perhaps that is because I haven’t had the Bohea recently to compare smoke levels to.

Bumping this rating up a little.

When I need something that goes with anything I reach for this tea, just as I did this morning. The deep amber-red liquor has a medium-full body that tastes of tea. No, really. It tastes like regular, comforting, no strings attached, black TEA. No bells or whistles, no apologies. It is what it is and sometimes you just need a cup of something that won’t tease or hide behind itself.

Back-logging from this morning.

So, I stopped at the Bar Harbor Tea Co shop on my way home from work last night (huzzah! I don’t have to pay shipping for this stuff! Na na na-na na. Ahem…) with the intent of picking up a Bodum travel tea press. I got the press but figured I’d pick up a new tea while I was there. I had smelled this one during my last visit (to pick up a new tin of the chocolate chai) and had been amazed at how much like the native blueberries this smelled. So I snagged a small tin.

Now for those of you who have not spent time in Maine or the Maritime provinces of Canada, there are two kinds of blueberries. Most of you are likely familiar with the big, plump, bursting-with-juice blueberries commonly found in the grocery store. Those are called highbush blueberries. What we have here in Maine is called the lowbush blueberry. The plants grow right down flush with the ground, no taller than 15" and usually more like 5"-10", and the leaves and berries are smaller than those of the highbush berries. But what Maine blueberries lack in size they greatly make up for in flavor. No highbush berry can compare to the sweet/tart/juicy fruits of the lowbush blueberry that grows wild in the acidic soil of the region. Yes, wild. While there are indeed fields where these berries grow and are harvested they grew there naturally, with no human hand to plant them, no field equipment to water them.

It is of course the flavor of the native, lowbush wild blueberry that is used in this tea. The bright, red-amber liquor is redolent with the aroma and flavor of these berries, even more strongly in the aftertaste. And I would love to know what variety of black tea was used as a base for this as the steeped leaves are quite colorful. Large, though broken, and green, but with red-brown veins and stems.

And writing this has made me want another cup of this tea!

Back-logging from Sunday.

I over-steeped this. Never over-steep Earl Grey, it tastes horrendous. I’m going to hold off rating until I can give this another try with a 4 minute infusion. Who knows, with such a quality base tea it might actually get me to like Earl Grey…I suspect not though. I’ve smelled it countless times, drank it twice, and Earl Grey just does not seem to be my cup of tea.*

*Pun FULLY intended >:D

Back-logging from Monday.

1st infusion: 4 minutes
Color is a deep red-brown and it tastes very much like the unsweetened iced tea you get at restaurants…and that’s WITH a teaspoon of sugar. I think 4 minutes is too long for the 1st steep. Otherwise it tastes malty and woodsy.

2nd infusion: 2 3/4 minutes
The color is only slightly lighter but the taste is much better. Sweet, malty, woodsy. should have done the 1st steep at this amount of time.

3rd infusion: 3 minutes
Color is golden-brown. Flavor is malty, woodsy, and a bit peachy.

4th infusion: 4 minutes
Color is a dull brown, lighter than previous. The flavor is lighter as well, the woodsy tone has mellowed to something more like loam.

An online friend of mine went to India to visit her fiance’s parents and go dress shopping for her wedding and nisanlik. Half-jokingly I asked her to get me some Nilgiri tea while she was there and much to my surprise she did! It arrived yesterday after much anticipation on my part, so of course I had to have it with my breakfast this morning!

While putting the dry leaf into my tetsubin I caught a tantalizing whiff and moved the bag with the tea under my nose for a deeper sniff. Mmmmmm, chocolate!

I found myself humming “Do, a deer” while waiting for my tea to steep…probably because I was spreading home-made spiced peach blackberry jam on my toasted bagel. It certainly made the five minutes go by faster and soon it was time to remove the strainer with the leaves. The wet leaves were a muddy brown but the veins had a definite red-ish tint to them, unfortunately they no longer smelled like chocolate.

The bright, amber-gold liquor didn’t have any chocolate notes either but that was all right, it still tasted lovely. A buttery mouth-feel, it tasted malty with notes of raisins and figs. 12oz was gone much too fast!

The liquor is a lovely amber color. The flavor of this actually reminds me of an oolong. It’s sweet, malty, woodsy, but with a very…unique vegetal note. Not quite spinach but close. Almost as if someone mixed an oolong with chrysanthemum flowers.

Backlogging from last night.

I originally tried drinking this “Chinese style” with the leaves in the tea cup. After battling floating leaves through most of one cup and hardly being able to taste anything except the leaves that kept creeping into my mouth I decided that the Chinese must be either crazy or very skilled & dumped the leaves into my green tetsubin, adding a bit more since the pot is obviously larger than my cup.

Ah, much better. The pale pale gold liquor was vegetal, nutty, and (with a tiny bit of sugar) had a buttery, almost silken, mouth-feel. You know how it feels to drape a heavy silk brocade over your arm and hand and then you turn your arm this way and that to feel how it drapes and swishes, pretending that you are wearing a formal kimono with long, flowing sleeves? Yeah, it was kinda like that.

Having this again this morning. I think I like this tea so much partly because of how different it is from everything else in my cupboard.

Backlogging from this morning.

The first thing I noticed upon opening this tin was that the leaves were much smaller,(broken?) than that of the Bohea. The liquor, like that of the Bohea, is amber-gold but not as lively a color and with less gold. The flavor, unlike the color, was much lighter. The smoke and fruit notes much subtler. Due to this I actually managed to detect a coco note in my final, cooled cup :D

This is a very nice tea, but I think I still like the Bohea better. I never thought I’d say that about something that has as much of a smokey note as it does.

Morning! Time to try one of my new black teas! I got two with very similar flavor profiles so I decided to try this one first just because “Bohea” is fun to say.

The smell of the dry leaves was very smokey which made me a little nervous since the last smokey tea I had was rather like drinking a campfire. But at my first sip of this bright, amber-gold liquor I was, if not in love then in like, and very much intrigued. It was sweet and fruity and the smoke was a nicely subtle compliment to the other flavors. It was a very…thought provoking flavor combination.

At a couple points I thought I detected the coco note in either the aroma or liquor flavor but it was even more subtle than the smokiness and I cannot be certain that that was what I was actually detecting.

I think, after another pot or two of this I could very definitely be more than just in like. Perhaps even in love.

Backlogging from last night.

So I finally got a chance to sit down with my box of teas from The Tao of Tea last night. Being evening I decided not to dive into the blacks quite yet and so I chose this. I ended up oversteeping it…by a lot. 14 minutes to be precise. There was surprisingly little bitterness however. The pale gold liquor tasted just like biting into an orange. Granted it was more like a just-ripe orange that might have benefited from staying on the branch just a bit longer but it was definitely juicy, recognizable orange.

My Tao of tea order came in yesterday while I was at work and between the busy evening and waking up later this morning I wasn’t able to devote the time for a full review, making me very sad. So I decided to perk up my mood with an old favorite. I swear, I collect Stash chais. There are very few chai/spiced teas of theirs that I haven’t bought. This one is strongly cardamom and cinnamon like the rest but the white tea base gives it a lighter feel? flavor? I’m not quite sure how to describe it. But it makes it a great tea for a morning with just a bit of a chill.

I love the color of this tea liquor. It is a gorgeous deep red that mellows to a spicy-orange with milk. The dominant flavors are the lemongrass and pepper. I did oversteep this a bit but the resulting mild bitterness was smoothed out when I added honey instead of my usual sugar.

No notes yet.

There was actually enough of this sample to use in my 12oz tetsubin pot! I still had to dump it into a filter though. Note: padded envelopes are marvelous things and not all that expensive either. The added cost is worth it’s weight in first impressions and customer satisfaction. Powdered tea, unless you ordered matcha, is not generally what a customer wants in their samples.

Anyway, back to the tea.

When I first poured the water into the pot there was a nice aroma of rose. By the time it had been steeping for 5 minutes it smelled like spinach, bitter spinach. I didn’t realize something could smell bitter. The color of the liquid was a dull olive-yellow. Thinking it couldn’t possibly be as odd as it smelled I took a small sip…

OMG what IS THAT!? D:

VERY bitter/acrid with a background of rancid greens. Like spinach that has been left to sit in the fridge for months upon months until the smell became so overwhelming that someone had to clean the fridge out before the stuff started it’s own eco-system. I was only able to make out the rancid greens flavor on the second sip though. Yes, I took a second sip. In the interests of a full review. If this had all the proven medical qualities of cold medicine I might drink a full cup, but only because I absolutely detest cold medicine and this stuff doesn’t linger on the palate.

I am impressed, this really does taste like rootbeer! Not getting the “float” part of this but I am perfectly ok with that. I’ll just sit here with my rootbeer-flavored drink and my chocolate cake covered with confectioner’s sugar and Cherry Dr Pepper flavored syrup and recover from my disaster-filled afternoon. Soda flavors abound and there’s not a co2 bubble anywhere in sight!

Bumping the rating up a bit after having this again with breakfast. I had cinnamon sugar and syrup soaked French toast this morning and this did a great job of cutting through the sugar overload in my mouth, cleansing my palate, and keeping my breakfast from overwhelming my sweet tooth. I really should cut back on my sugar intake since there’s a history of diabetes in my family but damn it’s so goooooood.