Harney & Sons

Thank you Ashmanra for this tea sample!

One of the goals in my fathers life was to “See the Country he fought for” which meant…in July, we drove in our 1950’s era Chevy from California to New York City and back. (I remember hearing talk of this desire to ‘see the Country’ from many Vet’s when they retire.)

It was HOT! AND, I had to sit next to my brother Steve who had better not cross over to my side of the car!
There wasn’t air conditioning in the car as we traveled Route 66 through Arizona (stopped at the Grand Canyon), New Mexico and the Painted Desert (explain that one to kids), down into the humid Southern States (ate buscuits and grits). We saw the KKK march down the street in Colombia, S.C. and I was afraid.

I wrote about this adventure some time ago and how my mom made balogna sandwiches for lunch along the way. We stayed in cabin style motels (which were common in those days) and I saw my share of
strange places to eat. Hamburger and hotdog joints shaped like Oranges, Trees, Hamburgers, Hotdogs, Dogs and Dinosaurs.

Dad was looking for historical places. Williamsburg and George Washington’s Church, Lady Liberty, Gettysburg and the crown jewel, Washington D.C. (that was full of cool places like the Smithsonian)!

For my father, going to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the
Iwo Jima Memorial was his duty. Wandering through Arlington Cemetery alone for a long, long time was something I didn’t understand as a young girl. “Dad…come on!”

This was his trip of a lifetime and a dream come true.

I appreciate him now and what that meant to him.
My quiet father had a great life. He was loved and respected by everyone. He had a wonderful life for the son of the town drunk, raised in a shack. I have a lot to live up to.

Tasting:
Ashmanra sent me a lovely tea sample that I’ve held onto for the right time to try.

This is an Oolong, fragrant with the scent of peach and apricot as soon as I opened the packet.
I steeped the beautiful long wiry leaves in 175F spring water for
2 minutes after a quick rinse.

Oh the delicious ripe sweet fruit…amber peaches, freestone’s with all the honey rich juiciness. This was one of those ‘got to have it’ Oolongs!

I steeped it longer, then shorter in a Gaiwan, tasting and testing the flavor. There was a hint of spearmint in the aftertaste. Yes, going back later…it was still there…that spearmint. AND, a toastiness that I love in Autumn tea’s.

Yes, this was one Oolong that I wanted to have in my cupboard!

Thank you Ashmanra, this is a uniquely beautiful Oolong!

I am Jack’s indignation.

It’s not like I haven’t had this tea before. I have, and it was pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. Certainly worth sharing with Mum, who likes both peachy and gingery things. The last time I had this, I noted some bitterness, and I knew it was my fault for leaving the teabag in the cup as I sipped. I was certain that wouldn’t be a problem this time, since I planned to remove the bag after the tea’d steeped. Hmph. I was wrong.

I have to learn to trust my gut. A box containing black, bagged tea recommends steeping for five minutes in boiling water, and upon reading this my gut went, no, that’s asking for trouble. But I went ahead and followed the instructions anyway, and the result was a brew not too bitter to be drunk, but too bitter to be really enjoyed. This tea really does have a lovely peach flavour (I tasted and smelled a bit of ginger last time, but it wasn’t there at all this time), which was greatly marred by the bitterness. The worst part was that Mum’s a Tetley tea drinker, and every time one of “my” “fancy” teas turns out blech, there’s this only-partly-imagined accusatory glare: “My Tetley would never do this to me.” I say again, hmph. I blame H&S for the dodgy instructions, but myself for not knowing better. Next time I’m going to try a three-minute steep, and I’m going to take the tea out of the bag, put it in an infuser, and grate some fresh ginger into it. That should do the trick. (Thank goodness I have a box of this to find the right formula…)

I’m going to have to lower my rating from 75 (my “hey, this is pretty good!” range), though, to something in my “decent, but could be better with help” range, because I think it really does need help to shine.

I can’t believe I’m drinking a black tea unsweetened. I’m not happy about it, but I’m trying really hard to (a) wean myself off sugar—not completely, but at least off the need to immediately add it to every brew; and (b) educate my palate, something that I don’t think I can do if I’m so heavily dependent on some sort of sweetener to enjoy everything. Usually I just take a couple of unsweetened sips before adding fun things (milk, sugar, honey, condensed milk, whatever). What I’m trying to do now is have one full, unadulterated cup if I have more than a sample of the tea, and only then do I get to play around with future infusions. Unfortunately that means that this experience is tinged with just the slightest hint of resentment. =)

The dry tea smells just peachy. I can’t decide whether it’s the fruit, a candy, or perfume-y/artificial. Initially it was pretty overwhelming, but as I got accustomed to it, it began to smell much, much more natural. So in the end that part of it worked out pretty well. I couldn’t detect any ginger in the dry leaf’s fragrance.

Brewed, the peach fragrance is only very slightly muted, and the ginger fragrance sort of pops its head out and waves hullo before disappearing again. I can’t really smell the tea itself, either; it seems to really just be all about the peach.

The tea tastes peachy. While each sip has that pleasant burn/bite of ginger, the flavour itself isn’t really present. I think this is unfortunate, because a better balance would really make this tea shine. I’d also like to taste the base tea, but everything is overshadowed by the peach.

Surprisingly, I had no trouble at all with astringency, unusual in my experience with black teas (and I’m really sensitive to it). I did have a problem with bitterness, but that was entirely my fault: I got lazy and left the bag in the cup, choosing to chug the tea instead of getting up and disposing of the bag.

As grumbly as I am about it, not indulging my sweet tooth did, I think, improve my experience and evaluation of the tea. That said, I’m really looking forward to my next cup, because I just know that I’m going to love this sweetened. =) I also can’t wait to try it iced. (Because peach!)

Tea amount: 1 bag
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: None
Dry mouth factor: 2/10

Second steep note: I know, steeping a bag a second time is usually pointless. But as this was an experiment, I didn’t want to “waste” a new tea bag on it.

I’m not feeling well. I went to Tar-zhay with Mum the other day, trying to hunt down some of that seasonal/holiday milk (red velvet!) momo said was there. I didn’t find the milk, sadly, but I think I may have come back with some cooties. The fun tickle in the throat, the malaise, the occasional nausea…all the usual party guests are here.

I took two Tylenol and wanted to take some Airborne (the orange kind). I always take it in cold water, but just discovered that I can take it in hot water, too. So I went ahead and boiled some more water and poured it into the same cup and dropped in the Airborne tablet. FYI, it bubbles way more aggressively in hot water than in cold and is lots of fun to watch. =)

Anyway, this orangey rooibos hot fizzy concoction was really good. I love Airborne by itself, and this was much better. It’s so good, in fact, that I wish I could take Airborne more frequently than every 3-4 hours; I could happily guzzle this all day. Next time, I’ll try this with a new teabag to see if the stronger rooibos flavour is an improvement.

I’ve just had my second cup of this. I had the first cup a few days ago and I’m…flummoxed. The two cups were very, very different. I can’t imagine what was wrong with my olfactory sense and tastebuds then (or is, now?) to make my perception so wacky.

Last time, I didn’t write a tasting note because my cuppa was kind of icky. I could have sworn that I smelled something a bit fishy—maybe not fishy, really, but kind of…fish watery? I dunno, it was all very odd, hence no tasting note. This time, all that was gone. I just smelled paper (this is the bagged version that I have) and plain rooibos.

I don’t know what makes one plain rooibos better than another. I’d think that they’d basically be the same. I wouldn’t say that about actual tea, but red rooibos, ya. Buuuuut I guess I’m wrong, because although this has all the “proper” elements of a plain rooibos—its warmth, its woodsy aroma and flavour, etc.—it’s just okay, not great. I love (red) rooibos, so I’m pretty forgiving, and I’m no expert, but I’ve tasted better. How and why better, I’m not entirely certain, just…better.

Weird: there’s a bit of astringency, but not in the usual sense. Instead of hitting the back of my mouth, it hit my throat, like actually in my throat. It lasted just a moment, and disappeared as the tea cooled. Such a strange sensation.

Steep time: I just left the bag in the cup. I don’t worry about rooibos getting bitter and knew that I’d sip-gulp the cup down in a few minutes, anyway.

Tea amount: 1 bag
Water amount: 6oz/~175mL
Additives: none

Woo, 100th note! Do I get to join the Little League team, now? :D

Oh my, I thought I had logged this one! Well I was feeling kinda like I was in a tea funk. Everything I’ve been making lately hasn’t been tasting as good. My Rose Congou was a bit bitter and not rosy enough. My matcha latte was also bitter and I had to make myself finish it. Maybe it was the new soy milk I was trying out… So I thought I should get back to basics and go back to an old love. Green oolong, I’m sorry I abandoned you.

Lovely scent and beautiful pale yellow-green liquor. Floral first steep. Smooth brothy texture. Second steep, cooked bok choi. Creamed dark green veggies. Soothing. Just like summer. I do still love tea!

Now, for something as expensive as this tea, (about $11.80/oz), you’d hope this tea would blow your mind with fantasticness. And while I wouldn’t say my mind is blown, I would say that this is very tasty. Not tasty enough to pay full price though because I can find equally tasty Taiwan green oolongs for less.

I’m getting something like fresh apple skin now. This is why I love green oolongs. Some flavors you know to expect. Others just creep out and surprise you.

And the last tea we tried tonight. I have a confession: some day I will be a crazy cat lady. I love my two cats and completely spoil them. One of them is named Ginger, and I thought it was adorable that this tea is called “Ginger’s Oolong”. Yep, I’m a dork. I got a sample.

I was a bit surprised at first because most of it looks like very small leaves, almost as if it was made with a CTC oolong. I thought, who would make CTC oolong? Then I remembered I’ve drank tea bag oolong before, the beloved yamamotoyama, and while it’s nothing special it’s not awful either.

Brewed up this tastes lightly floral and fruity with a nice bite of ginger, almost like drinking a not very strong herbal ginger infusion. But unlike the Adagio supposedly-ginseng-but-really-ginger tea I had recently, this is good. Nice ginger flavor without being overpowering or drying out my throat and mouth. I think this works well with the oolong as a balancing act.

Edit, a couple of classic Ginger photos:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lubrvgPgJa1r581hyo1_500.jpg
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzkeizxv0j1r581hyo1_500.jpg

Made a cup of this while I was getting dinner ready (pineapple chili). I’ve been in the mood lately for lots of black tea, and I’ve been sipping on Harney’s Malachi McCormick blend just about every day for the last week.

This is both surprising, and delicious. I was not expecting the smoky flavor at all. Having just recently tried a lapsang souchong, I was instantly reminded of that flavor but toned way down. No campfire sensation, just a hint of smoke. On top of that there’s a dark cocoa flavor along with a bit of honey-like sweetness and the slightest hint of malt. This is not astringent at all. Like the Malachi McCormick, this doesn’t knock my socks off, but it’s a really well done black tea blend.

Here’s some speed reviewing of a quick cup of tea I had today. I received a few tea bags of this selection to try. Thank you, ashmanra! I had only a few minutes to gulp one down while at the office. Here are my results:

o The tea bags were impressive. They were strong like nylon, large, and pyramid shaped.
o I couldn’t smell bergamot in the unbrewed bag.
o I steeped the tea for about five minutes in boiling water.
o The color was golden brown in my paper cup.
o The flavor was medium-strength, pleasant, malty, slightly sweet, and without bitterness, but I could barely taste the bergamot.
o Did I like it? Yes, but I would like to try this blend in a real cup and in loose leaf to see if the bergamot is less shy.

And that ends this tasting note moment.

Another sipdown! More accurately, a pour-out. The little leaves that I had left went into the composter. It’s so incredibly old, the chocolate note is waxy, and I swear there’s even a cardboard note in here too. I wouldn’t want anyone drinking this stuff, at least when it’s already 3.5 years old.

Happy Canada Day! I cold brewed a jug of this overnight and am finishing it off with some whipped cream-flavoured vodka. I know it’s not my favourite coconut blend to cold brew but was too lazy to open up another pouch of 52teas CCP.

The sweetened chocolate is starting to me get to me in this blend, I think. Even last time I had it hot I thought it was a little too artificially sweet.

I’m happy to announce that I am part of the Lush family again! I just got back from my first day at one of the locations here. Boy, have I ever missed working there. I love coming home smelling like it.

Total coconut fiend here. Let’s cut to the chase. This isn’t the best coconut tea I’ve had, but it’s pretty good. The base is great, but I was hoping for a little more chocolate, I think. Actually, this kind of reminds me of Tea Desire’s Praline de Champagne even though that has rose and strawberry on top of the chocolate (and perhaps coconut too, it’s been years).

It’s better hot, especially with soy milk. Naturally, the chocolate coconut comes through more strongly with the milk.

Cold-steeped? Meh. It kind of turns a little floral. I think the amaranth is speaking up this time. Don’t know what’s with that. 52teas Coconut Cream Pie still reigns supreme when it comes to iced coconut black tea.

This might be my most favourite tea, ever. First, it is foolproof. You can steep it for ever, with hot hot water, and it only ever gets more delicious. You don’t need milk or sugar, but if you add them, equally delicious.
Secondly, it is so cinnamonny and sweet, it is just heaven. Its like DT’s Glitter and Gold with a little more “umph” (sp?!). It also has many resteeps to it. Ooh I love it. It’s really worth it.. Yum..

This was included with a swap from Jes. Yay! Erm, but is it ok if I don’t like it? :)

This tea and I don’t get along very well. It smells kinda like warm pink jello, playdough, or plastic and tastes… pink. Don’t really know how to describe it. I saw the bergamot, so I was not expecting to love the tea anyway, as I was prepping for something kinda like an Earl Grey. The smell is powerful, but once I got past the nose it was a much milder candy sweetness, like a pink starburst, and it tasted far less fake and plastic-y than it smelled. Tried adding a tiny bit of sugar about halfway through the cup. Ooops. I liked it less then. Glad I got a chance to try this, and equally glad it was a sample and I didn’t buy a whole tin! (Which I might’ve if I’d seen it first because they are beautiful!)

All-time favorite tea.
Feel like Japanese royalty with this sensational drink, a jewel among green teas.
This is a beautiful, strikingly green tea with a shade-grown flavor, a lightly vegetal and full-bodied tea that leaves the palette fully satisfied. This is a refined, and hardly forgettable tea.
Highly recommended. This is the creme of the crop in Japanese teas.

Though caffeinated, the tea is remarkably zen-inspiring.

**If deciding between Gyokuro and Heavenly Gyokuro, the difference is minor. To save a few bucks, go with the standard gyokuro. It is no less superior, and will not disappoint if brewed well.

Solid Japanese tea commonly served at Japanese restaurants.
vegetal
grassy
fresh
solid yellow-green
full-bodied
reccomended

I think this was the one that Fleurdelily sent me.

Initially I had a little happy when I saw this, because I like berries in general in tea. I just had the one bag and that turned out to be lucky because when I went to make it, I had not seen that it has hibiscus in it.

I cannot abide hibiscus. It tastes like blood. All metallic and sour. Ew.

At first I had a small suspicion when I poured water on it, and it immediately started bleeding a strong, bright red colour. However, while this is a tell-tale hibiscus sign, I have learned that it’s not the only ingredient to do that.

Not until now when I came to post did I see the truth of the matter.

And even if I hadn’t, I would have found out by the aroma. Let’s just say that this does not smell like any raspberry I am willing to eat. It’s all sour and ugh. Luna the Cat appears to agree. This aroma does not give me very high hopes for the flavour.

No, indeed not. It doesn’t taste like a raspberry I am willing to eat either. It doesn’t taste like raspberry at all! It’s just all sour and hibiscus-y. I can’t drink this without making a face, and trust me, I have tried my very best here.

Which leads me to a bit of a rant, frankly. American blends with berries seem to be loaded with hibiscus nine times out of ten. I have even seen people here on Steepster marvel at the fact that berry-flavoured blends without hibiscus even exist. What’s with all the hibiscus, people? It does not taste like berries! Berries are not sour by definition and not all berries taste the same, so if you take the trouble to actually use berry flavouring alongside the hibiscus, why do you insist on making it taste uniformly tart with hibiscus? Do you even have tongues to taste with?
It is possible to make something berry flavoured without letting it even stand next to a hibiscus flower. As far as I can tell this is largely an American phenomenon (do-doo-dodo-do), and I have never ever seen a European fruit or berry blend that contained hibiscus, while still claiming to be a plain fruit blend. Ever. Never ever ever.

Now I realise that this is a raspberry herbal and that implies that there are different sorts of things in it that aren’t tea. Raspberry leaves and raspberry flavouring, this I expected. But rosehip and hibiscus, just to make it red and tart, oh so very tart indeed, this I don’t understand. Does raspberry not taste sufficiently like raspberry on its own?

So chalk this down as a massive disappointment from someone who has been curious about raspberry leaf for sometime and believed she was going to try it at last. I don’t need to try hibiscus. I know what that tastes like.

I’m sorry, Fleurdelily but this one was just not for me at all. To be frank, even if I had seen that it contained hibiscus, I would probably have tried it out anyway because you never know when something otherwise unpleasant suddenly shows up in just the right combination. I had that experience with rooibos that was sent to me and it completely turned my opinion of rooibos upside-down. Just ask Cteresa. I suppose I’m vaguely hoping that the same thing might happen with hibiscus, but I’m not really super-optimistic about it.

I can’t sleep. So, I’ve given up and decided that if I’m up then I might as well enjoy what I can of it. Sooo…I’m drinking this as a midnight cheer-me-up, to hell with the caffine. It was a sample that magically appeared in my recent order, always a good thing. This is very nice, smooth and vegetal. I think I needed something that reminded me of springtime and sunshine. Given the wonderful snow we’ve had recently…this was deffinately worth a smile underneath the grey clouds. Yumminess.

I thought Matsuda’s sencha would spoil me for this standard, more affordable Japanese sencha, but no, I love it! I would describe it as buttery and vegetal with some sweetness to the aroma. The flavor is strong and that first mug easily becomes bitter when brewed over a minute (which I did. Sorry, Sencha). The liquor is clear, vibrant green-yellow, with lots of little particles at the bottom of the mug. Yummmmmm.

I bought this because I had a gift certificate to Amazon, and it seemed like the best choice at the time; I drank all of it in a week it because it was so easy to prepare. Although it seems that many have liked the flavor of this tea, I found it comforting but bland. I liked the bitterness of the cut black leaves, and the hints of vanilla and fruit, but didn’t taste much complexity there. Sometimes, however, what counts is cheapness and ease of preparation.