Rishi Tea

Floral beauty! This tea has a sort of natural sweetness to it that is extremely pleasing to the palate. The aroma and the taste make this tea refreshing, and I get a good kick from the natural caffeine!

I was given a sample packet of this tea by my local coffee shop. This is the first puerh blend from Rishi that I’ve ever had where I could taste the puerh. What’s funny about that is what it’s blended with is quite strong. The ginger is spicy, but I can taste the leather and earth of the puerh. It even coats my tounge like a real puerh. So I’m drinking puerh and doing ginger shots, I like multi-tasking.

After sampling 7 small cups of tea from the TTB back to back this morning, I needed something a little more earthy & grounding to drink before I headed out to play my gig. I have a whole collection of both Shu & Sheng Puerhs that I haven’t been drinking much lately. I don’t know why.
I will chalk it up to busyness/laziness. I just haven’t been in the mood or had the time to pry off & weigh a chunk of tea, go through all the motions of multiple steepings, etc. My focus has been more on trying to sample everything in my 200+ stash of teas & samples at least once a month, & on sipping down as many of the smaller quantities as possible so that I can start narrowing it down to mostly the teas that I love the most (there will still probably be 200 of them, LOL).

So, I wanted Shu, but I didn’t want to ceremony today. Just a nice cup to ground me & cleanse my pallet, more or less. That’s when Tuochas are so nice, & this one in particular is a fairly nice one. Earthy, rich, & sweet, with hints of chocolate & the earth.
Just what I needed.

I steeped this as instructed: in 16 oz of boiling water, then adding another 16 oz of cold water and putting it in the fridge until chilled. It tasted very strongly of black tea with 32 oz of water, and the amount of lemon flavoring was perfect – not too much. It’s so strong though that next time I’m going to add at least another 8 oz of water before chilling.

I generally love floral, perfumey teas (and for that matter, foods), so it’s natural that I like this tea.

I do wish it was more of a true orange blossom, instead of being mostly overwhelmed by a lemongrass flavor. But it is still very good, and a nice afternoon tea since it’s a bit lower in caffeine. In fact, I wish I hadn’t brewed a cup this morning. In the future, I think I’ll save this tea for afternoons after stressful mornings.

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Backlog:

when I saw the ingredients to this one, I was like “why?” Why does there need to be hibiscus in an Oolong blend? Why???

Why ruin an Oolong with hibiscus?

This is alright. It would be better without hibiscus. Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/02/23/peach-oolong-blend-from-rishi-tea/

When I first discovered Rishi several years back this was the first tea that I tried and if I’m out and about and want some tea this is often my choice (most of our coffee shops sell Rishi since they’re local). This certainly isn’t your grocery store EG, this one is bold and hits you in the face with the smell alone and I absolutely love it. I am a huge EG fan and this is probably one of my favorites, it’s one of the few teas that you will almost always find in my massive tea cabinet. There aren’t many teas that get that distinction, I like variety to much.

I do find that when I prepare this that I tend to keep towards the lower side of the suggested time (3 rather than 5 minutes), otherwise this tea tends to get quite strong. I’m all for a strong cup of tea, but with many Rishi varieties they tend to edge towards over strong if I’m not careful.

If you find this one isn’t to your liking try adding a splash of milk, it really mellows out the flavor and makes for an even tastier tea.

This could quite possibly be my new favorite peppermint tea. That really surprised me because I’m not a huge fan of rooibos. The taste of this is overwhelmingly peppermint on the first steep, but the second I get more of the rooibos coming through. I thought the second steep was a little weak so I mixed the two together and I think that it is about perfect for me.

I used a bagged version of this and it just dawned on me that I used one bag to 16oz of water rather than 8oz [see what happens when your sick, you just don’t pay attention to details]. I really think this might have been overpowering if I had done it correctly, my first steep was incredibly strong even with the extra water. Still, this was really yummy and made my sore throat feel a million times better.

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I definitely forgot I stuck this in the fridge yesterday to steep. Oh well. Remembered now!

I think I just love iced peppermint tea, and this, with it’s spices and twang of ginger is to die for. I just need spring to find its way here so I can sit on the patio with this, a little umbrella, and a book. Yep.

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Wuyi Oolong is a full bodied tea with a sweetness that is far more forward that that of most other green or black teas. It’s as if each leaf were swept ever so lightly with honey and then left to oxidize and develop a rich hearty flavor. This delicious juxtaposition is why I am positively obsessed with Wuyi Oolong.

Wuyi Oolong is a fantastic nightcap tea. It enhances whatever mood you’re in. If you’re exhausted, it will relax you even further. If you’re amped, you’ll have even more energy. After a long day, tough workout or late evening, steep a cup and roll with the vibe du jour.

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This is one of my favourite tea. Super fragrant. The moment I open the cap, its fragrance permeates through the air. I like to steep it for a long time, so the flavour is really strong. I also don’t add anything to the tea as I like to enjoy it plain, which leaves a bitter dry mouthfeel with every sip. Only con is there is a lot of small broken tea particles at the bottom of the tin, so it might be better to use a new empty tea bag for the remaining tea leaves. If you like dry/bittery fragrant tea, you might like this!

I thought it was time for something different in the mornings, I usually make a British Breakfast tea and have for years, but boy am I glad I was ready for a change. This was delicious, it had such a smooth flavor with a hint of sweetness to it. This is one of those teas that I see is being pretty flexible in its preparation, not everything works well with milk and sugar or iced. I only had the one bag, but I’m going to pick some more up and see if this would make a good replacement for the breakfast tea I use when I make iced tea.

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I found one of these hiding in the back of my tea drawer when I cleaned it out last week and just had to make iced tea (even if it is a little to cold yet to sit outside and enjoy it). I really miss this tea and wish Rishi would bring it back. While it isn’t my favorite black tea, it does make excellent iced tea. The bags are oversized, which is much more convenient than using 5-6 bags at a time to make tea, and is what initially attracted me to this when I saw it at World Market several years back. I normally pull this out when we have guests during the summer and always had such compliments about my tea. Definitely much better than Lipton which is what most of them normally drink. I do 2 steepings of this, one at full strength then a second for my guests who like a weaker tea.

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I’ve been drinking this tea every night before bed for the last week. It really has grown on me, I didn’t particularly enjoy the first cup because it seemed like a rather odd combination of flavors at first, but it had the desired effect so I kept drinking. By desired effect what I really mean is this tea knocked me out in under 15 minutes, I didn’t even finish my cup.

I could not for the life of me figure out why I had that reaction to this tea, it normally takes me hours to fall asleep, but after a little reading I realized that valerian root and my seizure medicine don’t really play nicely together. My doctor told me that valerian is actually a pretty commonly suggested treatment for insomnia for people with epilepsy since sleep depravation is a major trigger. I really wish he would have told me that any time in the last 10 years when I’ve complained about not being able to sleep.

Anyway, this review may not apply to most people, but I just wanted to note that valerian actually interacts with a lot of medications so you’ll want to be careful about that if you’re taking any. In my case I was told not to drive or operate any heavy machinery… also avoiding sharp objects might not be a bad idea because this really knocked me out quick. If you aren’t sure if it is going to be a problem just give your doctor a call, in my opinion, it is better safe than sorry when it comes to things such as this.

Now on to the tea itself.

As I said before, this tea really grew on me. After some thought I think my initial dislike was because I don’t really like spearmint. You can really taste the spearmint and chamomile, but what I had trouble picking out was the valerian. Part of that may just be because I haven’t been exposed to valerian enough to really pick it out. The lemon verbena, lemon balm, and lavender flowers really balance this out nicely and make for a nice herbal blend.