Zen Tea

Classic, subtle, and calming. This tea is super-forgiving, and it lasts for around 4 brewings. Probably THE perfect evening tea in my book.

First tea out of my new stash from Zen. So excited to try something local again!

First off, I should note that I ordered online, and had every intention of picking it up. So, I paid for zero shipping. Yet lo and behold, Zen shipped it FOR FREE, and it arrived two days after I ordered it. Seriously?! Wowza. Thank you. I will definitely make contact to see if I need to pay them some extra for their time.

All I’ve been drinking the past 24hrs has been some form of ginger tea or another, so I knew my tastebuds were a bit off. I smelled zero ginger or anything other than green tea from the bag, as well as while it steeped. As it cools, I can smell a bit of lemongrass, however it’s very faint.

Flavor-wise, this is definitely a green tea, with only a smidgen of lemongrass flavor, while the lemon follows shortly after sipping (and again, oh-so-very-faintly). I taste zero ginger, which makes me a bit sad.

I’ll mix this with some stronger ginger tea in the future, because I do like the delicateness of the green tea.

Creamy, malty, fruity… it is, it is! This is a super tasty Assam. And this is a super lame tasting note. Just don’t have much complex to say about this one. It’s a great tasting cup.

I really love Hojicha, but there aren’t many in my cupboard! I was happy to try this one for free with my Zen order a while ago. This one is NICE. Two teaspoons around boiling for one minute for the first steep. Two minutes for the second steep. Both cups tasted the same and SO GOOD! This isn’t the hojicha with the deepest flavor I’ve tried.. it is lighter and sweeter. It tastes like I added sugar somehow. I love hojicha more than most non-roasty toasty green teas (unless it is a REALLY good one.) I would definitely buy this one as Hojicha staple for my cupboard! Honestly, it reminds me of the Honey Smacks cereal it tastes so sweet (I swear I haven’t had that cereal in forever.) So you’re in luck if you happen to read this review, you are addicted to Honey Smacks, and want something healthier as a replacement. I doubt that will happen though!

Sipdown! This was my post-tornado-warning, get-through-the-rest-of-the-evening tea. It’s been surprisingly enjoyable. It’s not at the top of my list for a restock, but I wouldn’t mind having it again.

I’m trying a new morning schedule. Starting today, I’m waking up an hour and a half before I have to leave for work rather than an hour, which was resulting in me being cramped for time, not getting enough breakfast, not being able to make tea, looking like poop when I left the house, and being late anyway.

I am happy to announce that I have been left with enough time to make and enjoy a nice, big cup of tea. The thing I like about this tea is it’s simple. I don’t have to feel guilty when I make it wrong and can’t taste any of the little nuances. Also, I am surprisingly close to a sipdown!

Sipping on this while working on program notes for a concert featuring Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 4. (May I just say that having to write program notes on Baroque music gives me a new love of it. No, not for any artistic reason. Because it’s logical, concise, and I can pick out what’s going on.) Mmmm. I don’t know why, but tonight this tea just hits the spot. Really it’s the aroma as much as anything, it’s always the aroma when it comes to tea.

Speaking of aromas, I dumped the used leaves from this into the trash bin a few weeks back, and the trash STILL smells like vanilla tea. I really hope the parents don’t mind.

I keep forgetting I have this tea. Whoops, guess I better try it.

Mmm! This is actually quite nice! Maybe a little less assertive in the vanilla than is desirable, but that could be my fault as well. It’s nice to have teas like this that are just all sweet and smooth. I took my second steep to work and I couldn’t stop sipping on it. A lighthearted comfort tea. Yay tasty sample!

I love licorice root, have for 15 years now, from my first bag of Stash Licorice Spice…despite how I can see how it’s very sweet and vaguely reminiscent of Sweet n’ Low which I think is vile. Weird huh. Anyway, as a lover of licorice root, I really enjoy this one. It’s sweet and calming, perfect for its claims of being a good destressor before bed.

Had this last night. Good. Sorry I’m not more detailed; I like to note when I try a tea for the first time, even if I don’t have much time or wherewithal to express things fully or even much at all. And EGs tend to be my go-to comfort blanket teas, had when I don’t feel like thinking much about anything at all. So. It takes a really egregious one OR an outrageously sublime one to make me sit up and take notice enough to say much for posterity—generally it’s a case of “any halfway decent EG is just fine for my purposes”.

Once again I try a coconut oolong and love the heck out of it—apparently as flavored oolongs go that’s my thing! This is sort of the perfect middle ground between the very creamy American Tea Room one I recently tried and the fresher, more intense, coconut water-ish Golden Moon one. Makese sense—I’ve noticed Zen Tea seems to excel at balanced flavor (their Earl Grey Cream is a good example). I’d happily drink this again; it’s delicious, both indulgently smooth and fresh, refreshingly perky. But the truth is I’d want all 3, ‘cause sometimes you want a mouthful of coconutty cream and sometimes you don’t. Yum!

Backlog:

I really liked this, although it still surprises me to admit it! I’m not a big fan of the earthy notes of pu-erh or of yerba mate … and this blend has both of those leaves in it! I was thinking this was gonna be way too earthy for me to like it! But, I liked it anyway!

This not exactly what I’d refer to as a “chai” since it really only has pepper and cardamom in it, but, it is still deliciously spiced and I love the vanilla and chocolate notes of this, and the coconut gives it even more creaminess and I think that the creamy tones help to offset some of the earthy notes.

Here’s my full-length review of this tea: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/05/02/organic-energizing-chai-blend-from-zen-tea/

It’s my layman’s understanding that yellow tea is pretty hard to acquire at a reasonable price outside of China (or at has been least up until very recently), and I’m aware of the possibility of inferior or even counterfeit teas branded as such. Not at all implying that’s the case here, just noting in general as I really have no basis to judge what an authentic yellow tea “should” be like. (I have a couple more coming my way this month, so maybe I’ll get a better handle on what the general characteristics are based on common traits between the few I’ll be able to try.)

That said, I’m quite taken by how unique this appears. Dry it looks a little like long golden/tippy black leaves, there’s definitely a bit of oxidation, and the dry smell is quite extraordinary—it really is like a cross between all the basic tea types I’ve tried. There’s the toastiness of black tea and roasted oolongs, but also a fresh green mossiness more akin to greens and other types of oolongs, and that whole “delicately sweet floral perfume” aspect of Chinese whites and scented teas. Brewed in the cup this is surprisingly reddish brown but with gold undertones, reminds me of some of the peachiest and roastiest most classic/old-fashioned oolongs. The flavor is very mild and pretty smooth but as it cools a gentle darjeeling-ish woody astringency comes in that I really dig. As it cools further a fruity sweetness comes in. Good choice on an overcast damp mossy fall day like this as it evokes mossy forests and wet wood. Reminds me a bit of a class of oolongs, I forget which but I had some from Butiki a while back, where there are darjeeling qualities. Or perhaps it was the darjeeling that had oolong qualities, I forget. Whatever it is, I like it and it does come off as pretty unique.

This rooibos brews up so dark, it always catches me a little off-guard. I still think that this tea is more almond than vanilla. Thank you for changing the name (from Vanilla Heaven) Zen Tea— it exemplifies good customer service to listen to your customers!

The woodsy rooibos melds well with the almond and vanilla. It is better with a splash of milk, but I drank it bare tonight.

This was a good dessert tea. I found that it tasted just as much almond as vanilla though, so the name is a little misleading. But that’s ok because I enjoyed it. I added a tiny splash of vanilla creamer because I felt like I needed something to cut the rooibos a little and it amped up the flavour significantly (obviously).

This was a good oolong, too bad it isn’t real coconut flavour though. It is very smooth and almost creamy coconut.
Resteep 5 minutes, tastes just as good as the first.
It is also delicious iced.

I cold brewed this yesterday. Too much hibiscus this way. I would need to add sugar for this to make it taste like strawberry for me.
I am not sure I would buy this again

This is pretty tart, and I wasn’t a fan hot. I will have to add a bit of sugar next time and see how that fairs!

Backlog…didn’t really look like pearls much, and I found the flavour lacking, by comparison to other black pearl teas like Teavivre’s Fengquing Dragon Pearls. Those were rich, this was thin. Maybe it was my brew. I have more sample from Cavocorax so maybe a steeping down the road will yield a better brew.

Thanks to Cavocorax for the sample! I just finished drinking a whole jug of cold brew, so a hot tea is muchly needed.

This is one mightily bold Assam. Maybe one of the most robust ones that I’ve had to date. Very dark and malty. This calls for some half and and half because I feel like something more desserty right now.

This one is so, so good with the cream. My mom always talks about the old-fashioned malts that she used to get in high school with her classmates, kind of like what Archie and the gang would have at Pop’s, and this is what I’d imagine those malts to taste like, except cold and thick like a milkshake. Wow, you know how awesome an Assam ice cream would be? Häagen Dazs ought to tackle that concept.

Well then, I finally sipped down my 100g tin of this. I even discarded the tin; as cute as it was, it didn’t seal that well. I adore this tea when it’s fresh. I’d say it’s the best EGC I’ve ever had. However, with all the other stuff going on in my cupboard, this tin took over a year to finish, and it started losing quite a bit of flavour after eight months or so. Guess that’s not too bad, and a little over a year is reasonable, but I find it’s something great to have around in larger quantities only if you have a small tea stash to begin with, you know?

Funny how when I first purchased 20g of this, that only lasted less than a week. Logically, you’d think the tin would have lasted no more than a couple months then, right? Honeymoon phase or not, I still highly recommend this tea to anyone, and it makes a great cold brew if you’re looking to finish it off, which is what I’ve been doing over the past couple weeks.

This makes a killer cold brew. Smooth base dusted with bergamot and creamy vanilla. Sign me up again and again and again.

And again.

Apparently I did not have enough bergamot in my system so I reached for this, my bottle of vanilla extract (I need to make sure I leave some though for post-Christmas baking!), and half and half. So deliciously creamy.

I even put a jug of cold brew in the fridge for tomorrow so can’t wait to see how it’ll turn out. Don’t think I’ve done that with this one yet.

Yesterday evening, I thought of the awesome sale that Zen had right after the New Year, and how I just had to pick up a lovely tin of this. I realized, whoa, that was almost a year ago already. And I barely touched this even though I absolutely love it. What gives?

So here I am sipping on a gigantic cup with light cream and vanilla extract. The dry leaf still smells almost as fragrant and delicious as it did the day I received it. But I still need to have this more often!