The Simple Leaf

Sipping this, I’m really missing Simple Leaf. There were so many other teas from them I wanted to try. Mountain Malt, Black Frost… I think I repeat myself every time I drink this tea. But they shut down so suddenly; you would think they would need to sell off some of their stock first. Where did all of that tea go, I wonder?

Sipping this very hot and savouring it. I have a calculus test to take in a little under two hours. I can never bring myself to worry over these things, and sipping tea only calms me more. I hope I pass.

Dirty, dry malt, raw cocoa, this is such a wonderfully confusing tea. I’m no chocolate fan, but I can understand what people mean by ‘raw cocoa’. That dusty, astringent, dirt taste, with hints of very bitter chocolate. I’m so glad I still have a few good scoops left. This is not a tea I want to finish off. We’re still getting acquainted.

Rather enjoying this this morning. Warm and cocoay-earthy. Good for book-reading, I think. Even though I never quite know whether or not I TRULY like this tea, I think I’ll be rather sad when I run out. Especially since the Simple Leaf shut down. There were so many other teas from them I wanted to try! I should have bought an ounce of each one the first time around, instead of just planning to do it in batches of three. If only I’d known.

I don’t think there will ever be a Single Estate tea company as wonderful as them. It’s all the awesome companies that go under, sadly. I’m almost out of the ti guan yin I got from the Jade Teapot too.

The dry leaves smelt of earth and chocolate, surprising me because I hadn’t thought I’d get any actual chocolatyness until I tasted it. The leaves are HUGE and wiry, and difficult to measure for me, because I do everything by volume, since I lack a fine enough scale. But the leaves are so huge that attempting to scoop out a teaspoon is impossible, because you can SEE the gaps.

The brewed tea smells merely of earth, no chocolate. A dark, dusty, maybe toasty sort of smell.

It’s a very unique tea taste. Earthy again, sort of toasty I guess. I want to say ash-like. There is a dry bitterness to the earthyness that makes me think of cocoa powder. Overall, the tea is very odd. I’m not sure how much I love this at this point, luckily I have a lot to experiment with. Gimme some time, I can’t give this a rating yet.

I just realized when now that there is a deep, rich cocoa after-taste in the back of my mouth, made even more evident when I breathe out. Overall the taste is just full bodied. Dark. So odd.

Truthfully, I’ve never been a chocolate person, but I’ve never DISLIKED it, so I had to try this tea anyways.

And oranges.

I had not had a green tea in a long time and thought that this might be a pleasant change in my normal drinking habits. The first thing I was struct with was the balance of sweetness and grassiness in the dry leaves. They had the vegetal aroma of gunpowder green tea mixed with a sharp sweetness that did not overwhelm, but rather blended well.

I was surprised to find that this green tea comes from India, specifically Arunachal Pradesh. Having never tried any green tea from India before, I figured I was in for a treat.
The aroma of the brewed tea matches the dry leaves perfectly with an excellent balance of vegetal and sweet. My first sip is surprising, as the cup is really quite bold. Right when the taste is almost too much on the vegetal side, it lapses into soft sweetness, before I even swallow. A pleasant surprise indeed, as most teas this bold are merely full of grassiness and vegetal flavours.
The cup continues to develop, leaving me with slightly smoky aftertastes, yet smooth finishes throughout.
As I sip my way through the cup, I enjoy this tea more and more. It has complexities in the aroma and flavour that put it a step above other greens that I have tried. I would definitely recommend giving this tea a try. I rate it a 75 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

Many heartfelt thank yous go out to Dan for his generous gift of this fascinating tea! I have been waiting for enough money to be able to order it for months now only to find out last week that the company had closed up shop. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed but then Dan stepped up with his generous offer of a sample of this tea and I must say I was over the moon.

But of course Murphy had to have a good joke on my behalf this morning. As I was waiting for my tea to steep my son needed to use the bathroom. Being just under four he still needs someone in there to make sure he washes his hands. Just as he was turning on the faucet I caught a glimpse of the time on my watch and I let out an expletive. MY TEA! Rushing to the kitchen I hurriedly removed the leaves from the pot and looked at my watch again. 8 1/4 minutes! I had oversteeped it! This tea I had been waiting so long to try and would never be able to buy more of. Not one to waste tea and being much more hopefully optimistic than most (or just plain mule-stubborn!) I poured a cup, added sugar and waited for the liquid to cool a bit.

Oh my goodness! I was overjoyed to find that this is one of those rare teas that do not go bitter when mildly oversteeped. The toasty, nutty notes hit my tongue first. It wasn’t until about halfway through the cup that I picked up the vaunted cocoa flavor that had hit me full in the face when I opened the sample package. I certainly tasted it through the rest of the pot though!

Currently working on my second pot (9 minute infusion) and the flavor is just as lovely as the first steeping.

Again, many many thanks to Dan! I’m looking forward to trying the other teas he sent as well :)

I’m reviewing this tea for Mike at It’s All About the Leaf (http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/). It’s a great website with some truly excellent reviews of teas and tea-related products, so you guys should go check it out if you get the chance. :)

The tea is fairly unremarkable in terms of appearance and scent – it doesn’t smell stale and the leaves are fairly whole so it seemed to have been handled well from that standpoint.

The flavour is fairly standard for a green tea. It’s on the lighter side of the spectrum and it has some vegetal hints, but I think I can also pick out the traditional Darjeeling muscatel flavours, these are much more muted from what they’d be in their black tea form. It also lacks a Darjeeling black tea’s astringency and I noticed a sweetness creep into the tea as it cooled.

The resteep is lighter and greener-tasting, without the faint muscatel notes. So nothing fantastic or special.

India has historically been known only for its black teas and it’s only relatively recently that they’ve diversified. The accumulated centuries of knowledge about growing green teas in China and Japan can’t be learned in a night but these guys have given it a good effort.

I tried this earlier today thanks to Meghann M and even though I am not a big black tea fan I decided to give some “finer” black teas a try and I must say this is pretty good and I can taste a cocoa taste to it which is pretty cool! I personally couldn’t drink this every day or even often but, that’s just me who doesn’t care for black teas that much. But I can tell that is a black tea that is of great quality and for that I will mark it high, because it is good…it’s just not for me… the non-black tea lover hehe.

Had this again with fresh mint, iced, and sugar. This bold ass am holds up so well w/the fresh mint..

I have lots of mint around my yard and some of it is looking stringy. My husband is begging me to get rid of it soo, mint iced tea is in order…. So, after experimenting, mountain malt turns out to be an excellent pair for the mint. The mountain malt, a bold and strong assam, is a perfect counter-point to the medicinal flavor of the fresh mint.

Goodbye, oh lovely tea. My packet is now empty. (I’m not officially copying the sip-down of others, but I am trying to empty out the tea cupboard)
Cocoa-y, toasty, and warm.. such a lovely tea. Yum.

Need to start off the day with someone decent. So I turned to Dawn this morning. Yum…

Soothing yet energizing. :)

Hey Steepster! Sorry I haven’t been around much lately. I went on vacation for a week, then we decided we wanted to upgrade homes (we have a very small little house, and we’re trying to get a larger one). If any of you have ever sold a home, you’ll know, it’s a LOT of work to get it ready to put it on the market. So I’ve been running around like chicken with my head cut off. The house goes on the market on the 9th. Cross your fingers for me.

Anyway, here’s a review I wrote a while ago for www.itsallabouttheleaf.com – one of everyone’s favorite teas.

These are some of the most beautiful leaves I’ve ever seen with a black tea. Usually black teas are all short pieces, small and fairly boring looking. This tea has long, twisty leaves with the occasional silver highlight. And the aroma.. oh it will take your breath away. Sweet, malty, and exotic with hints of dark chocolate.

These elements come across in the flavor as well. For an unflavored tea, its got a lot going on. And, it has a lot going on while being one of the lightest black teas I’ve ever had. There’s hints of malt, the chocolate, and some other dark flavors that all blend together and in the melding end up quite light, almost refreshing.

This is a must-try tea – even for those who are unmoved by black teas. This may be your gateway drug tea. (Come to the dark side – we have cream and sugar!)

http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/808/tea-review-the-simple-leaf-dawn-3/

Finished this off. I’m sad to see it go. It was great in my Libre.

I put this in my tea tumbler yesterday, and enjoyed the first two steeps on the clock there (nearing the end of the second steep, the manager for that day wandered by and cheerily noted that it wasn’t a PC Waterbottle [the only kind of drink cashiers are ACTUALLY allowed to have on-shift]; I awkward-laughed, but he is fairly laid-back and doesn’t exactly care that much, and even spent about half an hour with me after my shift had ended, just standing around the discount DVDs bin helping me find interesting movies and ignoring his phone).

The first two were fairly similar, and nothing from the norm (I’m having trouble remembering them now, though). However, I forgot to remove the leaves from the filter yesterday, so I just resteeped them a third time today. The colour is a bit lighter. I had a large bowl of milkless cereal (I poured myself cereal only to look into the fridge and realize we were out of milk), so that may have affected my tastebuds because I cannot taste anything. Maybe it’s just still too hot. The smell of the tea is much weaker too. Hrm.

Sipping this again. Quite late, too, ten at night. But caffeine’s never really kept me up (and even if it did, I stay up pretty late anyways). I dropped the steeping temperature down to 170 this time; last time I used 180.

Writing this during my second steep. The first wasn’t much different from how I remembered my first attempt with this tea. It’s a darker oolong I guess, with oolongy qualities and blacky qualities. Near the end of my first pot I thought I got a sort of thick, honeyness to it. Like honey without the sweet, maybe.

Second steep came out just as dark as the first, however the taste isn’t anything significant. I’m getting something sharp, but I think it might just be the water. I was a bit lazy and didn’t use filtered, I’m so bad. I will next time, though. It’s sort of an odd pepperyness, but that seems a weird thing to use to describe this tea, since it’s supposed to be very light with hints of honey.

I decided to skip the last untried Tea Desire tea I’d purchased and try this one. I didn’t want anything black for the late evening.

It smells very deeply vegetal, like that bagged ti guan yin I have.

Luckily it doesn’t taste anything like that. It’s light, but dark, not green, more closer to a very milk black. But not a Darjeeling black. I’m not tasting anything significant right now, but it’s still quite hot.

But I like the bright honey colour. I hope I see some semblance of the name in the taste when it cools a bit more. However, enjoyable so far. I think this is my kind of oolong. Not green, but definitely far enough away from black for a difference in taste.

When I breath out I’m getting that sort of Ceylon black taste that reminds me of honey (not in the taste, just in the Black Tea And Honey = The Perfect Match mind-set I grew up with as a kid). With that is a bit of Black-style astringency. But there’s also the sort of oolong taste I remember from Jade Teapot’s ti guan yin. Hard to explain.

There is almost a touch of bitterness as well. I spent some time trying to decide if I should go with two minutes or three, because the package reads three, but looking over the tasting notes many did two minutes instead. Perhaps next time I will try a lower temperature as well. Their samples are pretty hefty, I have a lot to experiment with.

I’m not getting any touch of the honey factor, but when I take large gulps I get a sweetness, and overall it has an appealing smoothness. Also getting more of a nutness. It’s odd, it smells vegetal but doesn’t taste it. I think someone said woodsy, and I can see that too, somehow, even though I don’t know what ‘woodsy’ should taste like. Deep, I guess.

The second steep has a sharper taste, less dryness.

Light, sweet taste, kind of flowery finish. No bitter at all, very smooth. Sweet aftertaste that lasts.

(Disclaimer: I just ate a bowl of chili.) Fairly light flavored, almost makes me think of something with a little lemon in it. As it has cooled, it’s gotten more bitterness through it. It’s pretty good but nothing really jumps out at me.