Enjoying Tea

TTB Tea 9: I saw that the other reviews were not so great for this one, but I still wanted to give it a try. One of the reviews mentioned a fishy taste, so I decided to go with a ten second rinse beforehand. On the first sip, I mostly got an earthy puerh flavor. The more I sipped, the more I could taste the other flavors come in. The puerh definitely dominates here, so if you’re not a fan of that flavor, definitely avoid this one!

Delightfully smooth, smoky tea

As I drink this cup of firewood, it is about 5 degrees outside with a negative wind chill. That may be weighing in on my opinion here but I have never had a tea quite like this (it is my first Russian Caravan, that being said)

Smells like smoke. In the good way that a tasty cheese might bring to your senses.

Tastes about the same. Actually, this is about the equivalent of smoking a cigar/ette in tea form (don’t think ashes, think nice rootsy tobacco)

There is a very subtle black tea undercurrent but the smoke is at the forefront. If you are trying to stay warm or just want a unique take on tea try this one.

Long term opinion – not a tea I would return to, but a nice diversion.

This is earthy, but… more like dirt. The caramel toffee flavor is delicate but pleasant. The aftertaste, on the other hand, is less than pleasant. I think this might be what people mean when they complain of pu’erh tasting fishy. I was going to play around with multiple steepings. I couldn’t even finish the first one. Thankfully, I only picked up a little bit of this during BrewTEAlly Sweet’s stash sale. This is a sipdown.

This was the first matcha i’ve try. I received it in a give set that my aunt gave me and i had no idea what to do with it. But once i figured it out i felt in love.

I got this in a mystery swap with, err….Shelley_Lorraine I think? I’m not completely sure, but this wasn’t really something I would’ve swapped for on my own and she’s the only one I did a mystery box swap with. Lol.
Tea #1 for the night since I’d like to try to get through some of this pile of tea that I have yet to try before considering buying new tea. Not that it’ll stop me from buying, or considering buying, more tea, but I can tell myself this in the hope I’d one day believe it. XD
The dry tea smells nicely of caramel, with an almost dusty quality. The wet leaves have an unpleasant musky/earthy smell to them. The brew itself was very dark, looked more like coffee than tea though thankfully didn’t smell like it. It did have a pleasant caramel smell, which was nice. The taste was also nicely caramel/toffee, though it was very light. There was a vaguely spicy taste on the back of the sip and it had a weird earthy mouthfeel/aftertaste to it. Maybe that’s the puerh, but it was very strange. Very mild astringency.
Strangely enough, this is the only tea I’ve had so far that adding sugar to it actually made it worse (to me at least). It became very musky and undrinkable. And before y’all get out the tar and feathers for putting sugar in a puerh, I try all my teas with sugar after I’ve tried the first half of the cup plain. So no violence please. Lol!
Overall, I wasn’t that impressed with this. It wasn’t something I’d have bought to begin with, but it was certainly something that I’m glad I tried.

Mmmm…. yes, a good way to wake up this morning, and to take a chunk out of the chill.

I wasn’t feeling like a black tea this morning, so I decided to give this a try. I think last time I made it I used my gaiwan, but this time, in my perfect mug, it was… well, rather perfect for the moment!

My school house tea-making is rather lax in general, so I think this steeped for something like 10 minutes while I made copies. I was kind of on autopilot, so I added sugar like it was a black – I never do that for greens, but in this case it worked out well.

A couple months ago, my husband knocked over some of the cast-iron cups for my tetsubin. They fell and the enamel chipped, so it gave me an excuse to order a new pair – as well as the new trivet I’d been wanting! A sample of this tea came with the order, in a cute little tin. Now, I’m little more than a novice when it comes to green teas – I’m just not as good about placing their notes in comparison to the black teas I’m more familiar with. This is smooth, and I can taste the usual green vegetal notes, but they seem to build up to a slightly nutty aftertaste.

Backlog from yesterday.

I got this in a mystery swap from Shelley_Lorraine. Thanks! This is a very smooth oolong. nothing too exciting about it. I think when it comes to oolongs I like them either really buttery or roasty, otherwise they’re kind of boring. But it was still a nice cup.

Thanks, EnjoyingTea, for the free sample. This came in the cutest wee li’l tea tin. And I greatly appreciated the amount of free tea stuffed into it. I imagine I can get at least 10 cups in if I’m careful.

This is delicious. The leaves smell nice, a fresh almost-nutty scent. I steeped a tiny scoop of this and left it in for a while. The flavor is nice and strong. Distinctively “oolong” but without any fruity aftertaste like some others have. Instead, it tastes almost-smoky and just toys with turning bitter but never does. YUM.

Smells like roasted honey. I dont think I noticed so much honey scent before, but I tend to pick up on more characteristics the more times I have a particular tea. First taste is still roasty like I remember, but finishes off sweet. I’ll probably be buying more when my sample runs out.

I’m totally loving this oolong. Very generous free sample when I bought a teapot from Enjoying Tea. It smells vegetal in the bag, but very roasty after brewing. I don’t like a strong roasted flavor (not a fan of dark-roast oolong or genmaicha), but the flavor of this is wonderful. It’s sweet and mildly roasty (I do like a pinch of roastiness).

This tea is quite interesting looking, as it’s packaged in a little mandarin tangerine. You can add as much or as little as you like of the peel! It is quite prone to bitterness, so be mindful of the temperature. The orange is a nice compliment without overpowering the tea. There are also green and black tea variations, but I haven’t tried them yet.

I’m not exactly a tea expert, but this is one of my favorite teas. It can turn bitter easily, but is perhaps more forgiving than many white teas as long as the water isn’t too hot. It has a very subtle and delicate taste with a pleasing fragrance.

A very generous sample from Enjoying Tea.com. I bought a couple Gaiwan and and this tin came along. For some unknown reason, my oolong collection is almost exclusively made up of Taiwan oolongs. I think I went through a phase of trying to decipher the subtleties of high quality, lightly oxidized Taiwan high mountain teas. Undoubtedly, these Taiwan teas are light, bright, fresh, fragrant and subtle. It seems, probably because my palate lacks sophistication, that I prefer a more robust, assertive flavor profile.

This Fujian oolong displays a fairly strong, tobacco-y dry leaf scent. Quite strong, but once rinsed and heated transforms into a pleasant roasty nuttiness. Obviously, this tea has undergone a modest amount of oxidation producing a yellowish – lt. brown liquor that is pleasing to the eye.

I had to experiment a little to get the my desired water-to-leaf-to-flavor ratio. The first steep was fine, but I thought this tea had better potential. I added a bit more leaf and steeped a bit longer and was impressed with how much deeper the flavor evolved. I was able to coax out a hearty, nutty swallow. As my cup cools, maybe a little leathery hint arises. Unlike Taiwan oolongs I’ve tried, this tea almost entirely lacks any floral aroma. On the upside, this tea has better endurance than most Taiwan teas.

Overall, this is not a great oolong, but it is a pleasant cup. Worthy to be served to company as long as the company isn’t too fancy.

I must thank Azz for this fine little sample. I say little, but it appears from the website to be what they send in a sampler. It comes in one of those cute little tins that you can get about a full pot out of and she never even opened it. I can only assume she had drank it somewhere before.
I like this tea alot! There’s one definitive destinction as to why that is for me. It has the perfect balance and delivers the vegetive crispness, yet without crossing the threshold and becoming astringent or bitter. It has the nutty notes I love, yet is still somewhat buttery in the mouthfeel. It’s light and airy with a slight to moderate sweet note as well.
As it cools I find the vegetive notes begin to outweigh the roasty ones, which turns out not to be unpleasant to a roasty prefering drinker such as myself. I steeped this one four times. The latter two steepings the vegetive and roastiness was toned down and what was left was a buttery sweet gulper. I don’t like for my cup to cool, but sometimes you get distracted queing up the next song, which leads me to my musical pairing.
tunes-Im back on a Mumford&Sons kick=White Blank Page/Thistle and Weeds/Dust Bowl Dance/I Gave You All/Sigh No More/To Darkness-Kripa.
Alas I have yet to get the new album, but the portions you can play from the website lets me see I want it.

Sipdown! I have had this tea for a very long time, and it tastes more roasted than I remember. A good thing!

This is a good oolong! It’s toasty sweet. That’s what I’ve decided the term is for that distinct flavor- toasty but not really roasty, sweet but not honey sweet. Toasty sweet. It’s also nutty; not really buttery or creamy. Every once in a while I think I taste some floral but it disappears pretty quickly. I like!
I’m running a bit of an experiment. I’ve had tummy troubles for several months now and my husband is blaming it on how much tea I drink. It’s the only thing ive changed in the last few months! So I am paying strict attention to how I feel during or after drinking tea. Here’s hoping its not the tea. :’(

I received a big pack of samples from Azzrian today, thank you so much Azzrian. This is my first EVER matcha. I’ve been wanting to try it for so long, I’ve just always been put off from buying it by its typically high price tag.

I was a little worried that the results wouldn’t be great since I don’t have the proper whisk, but I managed to get it nicely dissolved and VERY frothy using a normal kitchen whisk. The flavor was very nice, it was the Japanese green flavor I’m accustomed to only smoother and with a very unique and full texture. It was very thick, smooth and vegetal. And now I’m getting a bit of that Japanese green euphoria and energy that I sometimes get. ;) Good stuff, thanks again Azz.

Finished this one off tonight, it was very good I will for be buying it again.

This is real nice to drink on a rainy day like today, i love this tea.

i like this one alot