Infussion

Made a tasting note before, but i’m updating this a bit because i’m going true my sample at a pretty fast rate over the last week!

Don’t know why but this week i didn’t drink a single black tea, and usually those are the once i drink the most! White and green this week and most off the evenings i’m craving the more robust light malty tasting bai mudan… going to buy this when my sample runs dry!

I drink so much flavored tea that sometimes I forget just how good a cup of the basic stuff can be! This is definitely a good sencha. The dry leaf has a perfect grassy scent, but the brewed tea doesn’t taste very grassy at all. It’s very clear and bright, maybe a hint of leaf and pistachio somewhere in there. The mouthfeel is so smooth and pleasant, it’s easy to drink a cup without even realizing it! I will definitely be enjoying more of this, especially whenever I make Japanese food.

This is a POWERFUL Matcha! I had some yesterday but didn’t have enough time to review it completely. I do like it but will review and rate it officially next time I have it!

No notes yet.

I tell you I’m starting to come around to green. For a long time I couldn’t stomach greens I was a black and Pu man. However if you have a quality green then it is smooth and palatable. It’s light, grassy, kinda make you think of spring in the dead of winter. Thanks Infussion for allowing me to try this one.

The second sample i received from Infussion was this Sencha. Its a 30gram sample, so they where very kind!

The dry leaf look identical to the sencha i received from jing a while ago. Maybe the leaf’s are a bit smaller but for me it looks very mutch the same! Thats a good thing because the sensha from jing was very tasty!

Now i used one teaspoon of sencha leafs and 70°c water, used a bit less leaf then i did before with my other sencha. Because that one was to strong at first. So after it steeped for 3min i’m tasting a very well balanced tea. The quality is equal to the one i mentioned above! I’m surprised that its that good off a sample.

Color looks bright green and it taste sharp and fresh, i’m liking this tea!

Tnx for the chance u gave me to try it out, will order this one in the future!

going to brew a second and third cup later today aswel, will update this note or make a quick new one to post the results!

Oh yeah! This is nice! This has such a lovely fresh taste … very leafy green-ish, like freshly steamed spinach with a touch of butter. Very bright and lovely.

My full-length review of this tea will publish tomorrow morning on SororiTea Sisters: http://sororiteasisters.com

Until then, let me just say that this is definitely one of the best Dragon Well teas I’ve come across. If you like Dragon Well, you’ve gotta try this!

I had this last night (backlog?) at my sister’s and ended up giving the rest to her. This may be one of the more upfront and consistent white teas to stumble my way. The liquor tends towards a golden-like brightness, although, after I left it in the glass pot for a while it turned reddish and reminded me of a light black. This will hopefully be a good introductory white for my predominantly black tea drinking sister.

I am playing Resonance Of Fate (RPG on Xbox360) and thought I would brew a small teapot of this wonderful tea for two. :)

It’s still as sweet and light as I remember. Lovely.

Nice little white tea. There is a light semi-sweet flavor that I haven’t encountered too often in most of the white tea’s I have tried.

So I just got home from visiting family and found a lovely package filled with tea from Infussion Tea! This one smelled the most interesting so I decided, why not? It tastes pretty much how it smells, which is like some sort of red wood. It’s not bitter or anything and the taste is rather nice, it’s similar to something that you would find in a dry rub for chicken or beef. I wanna just chew on some for some reason, and I just might.

As promised i brewed up to 3 cups from the bai mudan. 2nd Cup i brewed it for 4min and it gave a equal taste. The 3de cup brewing for 5min was getting a bit less in taste but still a nice one!

Didn’t really know what to drink this evening so i’m going to try out a new tea for me! Infussion was so kind to send me a few off there samples… so i’m so kind to make a review!

Bai Mudan, white peony upon opening the sample i’m seeing alot off brown and greenish leaves with here and there a bud. I’m taking one teaspoon full off leaves for my cup and i’m brewing it for 3min with 70°c water…

The color off the tea looks a bit darker then silver needles, it looks very appealing. After it cooled down a bit i’m sipping the cup and i’m tasting a tea thats a bit more robust then i’m used to in a white tea, but i’m liking the taste!

overall a good white tea, gonna try a second and third cup from the same leafs aswel, will add that in a other tasting note tomorrow or so…

Mmm, Bai Mudan is not a tea I have had all too often but this seems like a solid and straightforward cup to me! Notes of melon-like sweetness that flirts with the watery freshness of cucumbers. There’s even a touch of buttery cream that make this cup soft. No complaints here! I’ve been looking to pick up some White Peony and this 30g bag will do very nicely for now.

Do you know that sad empty feeling that usually proceeds finishing an amazing series? I’m no good with endings. I just finished steins;gate (a sci-fi time travel anime) for the first time and I needed something to pick me up and carry me off to a new series of books or shows. This was a great cup for that transition- and it held up well to multiple steeps! I guess it’s time to finally finish Lord of the Rings (it’s going to kill me).

Thank you, Infussion, for this lovely sample.

I used 1 tablespoon for 375 ml of water.

On the sip I’m detecting a soft melon-like flavour with a bit of a sour spinach-y edge. The spinach edge gives a heaviness to the overall flavour. Alfalfa sweetness is present. Very mild roasted flavour near the end of the sip in the background. Mildly buttery. I’m not getting an overwhelmingly swampy flavour. Almost a sugary sweetness is present.

Lingering aftertaste has peppery notes.

As it cools, I am getting hints of the licorice/ginseng tingly sweetness.

Rating: 85

This is the mellowest Sencha I have ever tried. It’s not grassy whatsoever! It’s incredibly clean, mellow, calming, and somewhat reminiscent of pistachios. Not bad!

Dragon well (Longjing, Lung Ching, whatever) is one of my favorite teas. When infussion so kindly offered 3 samples to steepster users (the other 2 samples I have to figure out how to use, not being tea-tea!) this was a no-brainer choice. Longjing, I am always interested in!

And this does not disappoint. I am trying just the first infusion with plenty of water and a 3-something minute steep and it´s dragon well magic, intense, sweet, buttery and nutty.

Thank you Infussion Tea for this generous sample!

When Infussion’s parcel arrived, my parents took one look at the Polish address and said you didn’t… No! I didn’t! This was a kind free sample from the company. I haven’t ordered a big box of expensive teas from overseas… Yet. I’m looking at you, Mariage Frères

I’ve had Dragonwell from a few places now so I was stoked (do people still use that word?) to try another! Infussion’s Longjing reminds me the most of Silk Road- not too dry and not too buttery. The Dragonwell from David’s Tea is so dry and nutty it makes my mouth pucker, while a cup from Andrews & Dunham’s is like butter on my tongue. The first steep of this caused neither of those reactions.

I don’t have a gongfu pot here or own a gaiwan so it was Western brewin’ style for me. The first steep was noticeably roasted and vegetal with some slight nuttiness (don’t ask me to name the nuts). The cup was also somewhat astringent as the water temperature was likely too high. Not bad for a kick. It came off a little strong but this is one of those teas that taste a lot better if you let it sit for a few minutes before drinking. Lowering the temperature sometimes helps with reducing astringency or bitterness.

At this point I was thinking it was OK but not sure if I would want to order this particular one again. Then I second steeped it. More roasted butter nut soft veggies!!! This is how I like my Dragonwell- mellow. I’m a wimp.

Thank you Infussion.eu for the samples! I’ve never had a dragon well before… so I thought this would be the one to choose! The leaves are flat, green and fresh. I waited for the water to cool way down…the steeping instructions say 140F. I steeped for 40 seconds. Don’t worry, the flavor is there! The taste is delicious. It kind of reminds me of an oolong, but that may be because I’ve had plenty of oolongs, not many green teas and no dragon wells. It has the bright, fresh, vegetal, sweet, silky smooth flavor of an oolong. The flavor really lingers in my mouth and it has a bit of a quality like a milk oolong. I don’t drink green teas often because they aren’t usually interesting enough, but this one could easily become a green tea staple. Definitely not boring and definitely very tasty! I wish I had requested more of Infussion’s actual tea samples rather than things in the herbal category, since this one is so good.

So thank you to Infussion for sending me the samples. This is the largest pouch in the shipment. I must say after reading up this I’m very intrigued. I’m not sure if the aphrodisiac properties, antidepressant, or properties are what I’m looking for but I don’t mind trying something new. By itself I am reminded of shredded cedar chips. The taste of the straight up bark is the same. It’s not terrible or great but I would say it’s an acquired taste. However I have noticed a few things with mixing it with other teas\tisanes. Straight up I didn’t notice anything difference in mood being lifted or something else…wink wink nudge nudge. Mixing it with plain Nobleza Gaucha Mate I have found is my favorite so far. Somehow they negate each other flavor wise in a teaspoon to teaspoon ratio. Yesterday morning I mixed it with Teavana Zingiber Ginger Coconut Rooibos. Again it was pretty good. However I felt kinda spacey for most of the day and had trouble concentrating. I don’t know if that is part of the “buzzy” effects. Regardless I’m going to try this with mixed with a few combinations and see what we get.

The catuaba that Infussion sent me as a free sample didn’t seem to wake me up this morning, so I thought I’d try steeping these… they are supposed to do that to. I thought about mixing these with the catuaba, but I wanted to steep them by themselves first to give them a fair chance. They look like tiny blueberries. I steeped them for ten minutes with just boiled water. The steep color is a pinkish pale color — for some reason I thought it would be red, but I guess that is what hibiscus is added to tea for, and this tea is only berries. Sadly, the taste is like hibiscus anyway. It seems like a mixture of blueberries, cranberries, hibiscus, rosehips… and something else that I can’t place. They are very tart and sour. The berries seem like they should be an ingredient in a blend and not just by themselves. I don’t think this significantly woke me up either. This isn’t really my thing, but I’m sure it is the best for what it is.

Thanks Infussion.eu for the samples! I had this one this morning. I wanted to try this one because at small amounts, it will wake you up and make you more alert. My brain needs all the help it can get. So I steeped 3/4 of a teaspoon. Infussion says 1-3 grams is supposed to wake you up, 3-9 grams is for sensitivity increases and “aphrodisiac uses” and 10+ grams make you sleepy. I’m not exactly sure how one tea can both put me to sleep in higher doses but wake me up at lower doses. (And yes, I had to look up how many grams are in a teaspoon… one gram = 1/4 teaspoon… I think I need to drink this tea before figuring out any math at all.) But I really hope I did this right… I really don’t feel like being sleepy all day! Infussion said to steep for ten minutes at boiling. The “leaves” look like very shredded light-colored wood chips. The steep color is a very interesting orange! It looks like it should be orange flavored. But the flavor is really like wood chips and slightly bitter. It isn’t terrible at all (to me anyway) and if it wakes me up, it will be worth it. But I can’t see people who don’t like rooibos liking this tea. I think rooibos is delicious. There is also a bit of a flavor profile here that tastes like a cappuccino to me. I don’t have those often though and that’s probably just my tastebuds…just something there that reminds me of cappuccino. I wonder if this tea will wake me up more than a black tea though. I had this plain today because I wanted to review it fairly, but I’d much rather mix it with something else in the future. The Schisandra Chinensis berries that Infussion sent will probably come in handy for that, especially since I kind of requested those two together for that reason. They are both supposed to keep you awake! (And it was funny logging into steepster to see the infusion times for these and seeing that Momo had the same idea: to brew them together!) The only problem with this tea is that I’d rather grab something more fun and tastier to wake me up in the morning. But it’s an interesting change! This is getting a good rating because I can’t see a tea made out of wood chips getting any better than this.

Two and a half hours after drinking: I was yawning more than usual, so I don’t think this tea woke me up very well. So if it doesn’t wake me up, I can’t see drinking it. I guess things affect me differently.

AHHHH I GOT A C IN HEALTH ECONOMICS SO I DON’T NEED TO RETAKE IT. I’m pretty sure I did worse than that but I guess he realized he was terrible so everyone deserves a C. (C- = retake. BLEH)

Anyway I had this last night because I wanted to see if it would make me sleepy. I cannot tell you about the “aphrodisiac uses” but I will tell you about the 1 tbsp in 12 oz of water method of gettin’ sleepy.

It works quickly! It tastes terrible though, at least to me. Very effective, but has the flavor of cedar chips.

I’m not sure if this would taste very good if you tried to sweeten it but ugh, it made me tired but the taste was not worth it. I think I’ll try mixing it with the Schisandra berries I got just to get rid of that bitterness/woodsy flavor. I mean, it is bark so obviously there’s no way to get rid of that.

But it’s definitely a cool herbal tea, especially for falling asleep. And you feel warm and fuzzy first. If chamomile fails you, catuaba is here to back you up.

I used 1.5 tablespoons for 375 ml of water.

Detecting a licorice-like sweetness that tingles my tongue into the aftertaste. Pleasant swampy-vegetal taste that may be a little strong. I am strongly reminded of the scent of alfalfa hay. Very mild astringency. No bitterness. Sweet throughout. Slightly buttery. Overall refreshing flavour. Lemon notes present, reminding me of the taste of a freshly squeezed lemon in water.

Second infusion at 5 minutes. Flavours from first infusion are still present but softer. Smooth and buttery quality. Softer sweetness throughout.

Third infusion at 7 minutes tastes very similar to the first infusion. More vegetal-tasting.