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drank Genmaicha Sencha by ZenTea
1228 tasting notes

Genmaicha. I love it but there either something off with how I am brewing my tea or something wrong with me…. or maybe its this tea. I’m not getting that beautiful roasty flavor like I usually do. I found no puffed rice in mine either. Perhaps I will come back to this when my cold is completely gone and taste something new.

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99

Having this as I type. I actually sat in Zen Tea (Shamble, Ga) today and had this and fell in love with it. Bought a couple ounces and am drinking it at home. Im new to pu’ehr and this is phenomenal to me. Caramel and butterscotch flavors come through really well! Very nice mouth feel with a buttery butterscotch finish! The smell is outrageous! I will forever have this in my stash!

Flavors: Almond, Butterscotch, Caramel

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 3 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML
Tommy Toadman

Sounds Yummy!

albertocanfly

You should really try their coconut oolong or coconut green if you like the taste of coconut:]

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Huh. This is not what I expected, thought it might be that this tea has not aged well. I have no idea how old it is.

I’m getting a slight fruity flavour that’s kind of berryish, but not any really distinct fruits, and then a note that’s creamy and makes me think white chocolate. It’s interesting, but not great.

Flavors: Berry, Fruity, White Chocolate

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 6 OZ / 177 ML
Zack S.

Just wondering where you picked this up? I can’t seem to find the “Zen Tea” website, only “Zen’s Tea House” which appears to be a different company entirely.

Anlina

I got it in a stash sale – I can’t remember from who. I think it might be quite old.

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76
drank White Pomegranate by ZenTea
1379 tasting notes

This smells gorgeous though honestly I would say it was more creamy berry than pomegranate. Still I adore creamy berry and if anything I prefer it this way. It’s sweet and light but thick enough to linger pleasantly in my nostrils.

Once steeped it does gain a slight sour berry smell (though still dominantly creamy berry) and in a way it does smell like pomegranate. Flavour is a little sour with a dry, with a floral yet somewhat earthen notes among a sweet, and delicate berry flavour. Not creamy as the scent suggests but nice anyway. Perhaps still not pomegranate but I am truly loving the berry.

A re-steep reveals less sour notes and more berry. Perfect! Only issue now is the dryness as it’s not the best quality white tea base, but it’s easy enough to get past. My husband said it tastes like weak marzipan and in a strange way it does. So like a mild marzipan, sour berry, dry nut like tea. Perhaps not a favourite but certainly one I intend to try cold steeped :)

Flavors: Berry, Drying, Marzipan, Nuts

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93
drank Honey Bush Choco Caramel by ZenTea
1353 tasting notes

Queued post, written April 27th 2014

I snatched this out of the EU TTB round 2. I think. It sounded right up my alley with the caramel, and I’ve been looking forward to trying it. Tonight the time had come and I’m having it as my before bed beverage.

I did a bit of a sniffle when I poured the water on the leaves and it smelled very caramel-y then. Not super-much like chocolate, but I did pick up some slightly spicy notes of what I believe must be the base. I haven’t got much experience with honey bush. I’ve had before a number of times, but it’s been years since I’ve had it unflavoured. Still though, it was a note that struck me as honey bush. It’s quite recognisable.

The one thing I do remember from when I had it unflavoured years ago was that I could see why it’s called honey bush and that it had a distinctive natural taste of honey. That part of the base certainly comes through here as well, followed by a smidge of spice.

I can taste the caramel as well, probably enhanced by the honey notes (and vice versa), then the smidge of spice and finally a bit of a chocolate-y aftertaste.

This is not quite as rich as I had hoped, having expected something akin to liquid toffee, but it comes close enough that I am happy. I’m glad I stole this. It’s very good.

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82
drank Jasmine Dragon Pearl by ZenTea
1737 tasting notes

Another sipdown. Why have I been neglecting jasmine?

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82
drank Jasmine Dragon Pearl by ZenTea
1737 tasting notes

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82
drank Jasmine Dragon Pearl by ZenTea
1737 tasting notes

The unfurling of the dragon pearls from this Jasmine green tea from Zen Tea was a joy to behold! The leaves are whole, and they just kept unraveling, until at last each pearl (I used 10) was completely unrolled and fully extended. In fact, the leaves are so long that I was able to fish them out, rather than using a sieve to remove them.

The liquor is pale greenish yellow, and mixed in with the green tea leaves were full-on jasmine petals. A very nice tea—the flavor is lightly floral but also slightly sweet from the green leaves. I am looking forward to the second steep!

Flavors: Flowers

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec 2 g 10 OZ / 295 ML

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63
drank Black/Green Toasted Almond by ZenTea
1500 tasting notes

Hm. Glad I tried it (I most definitely was curious) however this is far from a must-have for me too. It’s roasty and sweet, almost like a vanilla marzipan, however it’s just too… I dunno. Green? Tart? Off? Dunno. Something is just not my style.

Thanks to Dinosara for sharing this with me!

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 12 OZ / 354 ML
Dinosara

Not sure why this had to be a black/green blend. Black tea base only would have been better!

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81
drank Genmaicha Sencha by ZenTea
661 tasting notes

This sample was from Dexter3657. I had this yesterday and really enjoyed it. Very roasty toasty flavour and the caffeine was light compared to other genmaichas I’ve had. Probably because there’s a good amount of rice compared to sencha in the mix. I don’t know if this is the right tea I’m leaving my review under. It certainly seems to fit the description but there’s no previous reviews on it….

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 1 min, 0 sec
Dexter

http://steepster.com/teas/zen-tea/30466-genmaicha
That’s actually the one I sent you. Happy you liked it. :))

Ubacat

Thanks Dexter3657! I looked around trying to find it and this was the only one I could find at the time. Thanks for the link. I can see it’s a popular tea.

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96
drank Jasmine Dragon Pearl by ZenTea
4164 tasting notes

Thank you DigniTea for sending some of these precious pearls! I usually love Zen (I actually just placed a smaller order yesterday because they have the best sales…and because I was sleepordering. Whoops. Also, the book I’m reading at the moment ‘The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing’ is fantastic. ) Zen suggests one teaspoon at 176-195 degrees for 2 1/2 minutes.

Steep #1 // 25 mins after boiling // 2 1/2 min steep
Oh I feel like I’ve had this exact tea before somehow but I love this! (They might be Ovation’s pearls… I’ll have to try them again soon.) The jasmine is so sweet it is on the verge of tasting like bubblegum to me. I remember a jasmine tea that did this before. The jasmine takes front and center, even though it doesn’t seem like a strong jasmine to me, more sweet than floral – the green tea itself stays in the background. It’s very nice!

Steep #2 // 20 min after boiling // 3 min
This cup was still delicious but it had a slight tinge of the overbrewed-green-tea flavor. A little brisk. Still plenty of jasmine flavor though. If you’re looking for jasmine pearls, these are those. Tea tea tea. Tea.

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70

I really hate the new steepster look. I had not written a taste note using it yet but “unavailable”? Offputting and anyway, considering where my part of the world is, most of everything would be unavailable to me on a internet setting anyway.

Recommend this tea? WTF. I have no idea, I might recommend it to some people, depending on what they were looking for.

This is a tea from the euro box prepared by KittyLovestea, thank you so much! I am always on the look out for night tisanes with some punch and this was my first pick of that travelling box. In all a pleasant drink but got some issues with it. The most basic might be that I like, love rooibos (good rooibos. There is a difference between good rooibos base and bad rooibos, trust me), and honeybush seems kinda of wimpy next to my usual rooibos. This might make honeybush a much better choice for people who actively dislike rooibos, though.

The other problem was while this smelled intensely and tasted nicely of caramel and chocolate it was also a sort of artificial candy bar caramel and chocolate scent and taste. Just stroke me as artificial and a bit cloying. Though perhaps that sounds too harsh, a pleasant drink, not just infatuation or staple material.

Anna

Hahaha, I love a good WTF-review.

cteresa

I hate the new steepster look. And with the travelling box I got tons of things I feel obliged to make taste notes of, when I am finding the new look totally off putting. I suspect I will not hang around here for much longer.

Sil

Initially I liked it…now, after a few days? I don’t like a bunch of things and find myself ignoring most of the new stuff. I REALLY don’t like the “sell” feature.

K S

The recommend feature I am OK with. The unavailable – if that means from Steepster then say so. If it means from the vendor, it doesn’t belong here. The similar and recommended teas belongs at the very bottom of the page – it is just annoying. Move the vendor description back to the top. Lose the from the community snippits – also annoying. If I don’t give a review a score it considers it not reviewed. Most importantly give us back the avatars next to the reviewers name on our dashboard. Applause for trying to update things but listen to what we want- OK? Off my soapbox.

cteresa

I dislike the recommended, maybe because for me it´s not so clear. Or maybe I just live with finicky tea drinkers, who only like one type of drink. But recommend a type of tea for everybody, probably not, I would put caveats even to my most loved teas.

Unavailable, LOL, as if “available” would be available to me at a decent shipping costs, so for me just strike that.

And yes yes to tea description at top, it is baffling why it is down.

cteresa

Oh, and just to add, am beta testing the ios app, and did not like it. A few of the things were already, in retrospect, geared towards this change like not showing user icons but tea photos (and oh dear, since we can add any image to tea descriptions without them asking about copyright of the image, this might end biting them), so I had mostly been ignoring the app and using the web interface, though that is now gone.

Anna

I agree with everyone’s peeves about the new interface. Considering the amount of work that went into it, it would have been pretty awesome if some more of the actual user requests from the massive forum thread containing actual user requests had been addressed.

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drank Magnolia Oolong by ZenTea
180 tasting notes

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drank White Pomegranate by ZenTea
180 tasting notes

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drank Strawberry Papaya by ZenTea
180 tasting notes

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86

Last sample I have to review from my order of Zen samples from a few months ago. This is one of my favorite fruit teas! Zen never ceases me with their blends! I was hoping the fruit flavor here would be this good. Pomegranate, goji berries and blueberries (though there aren’t actual blueberries, the blueberry flavoring is nice and sweet like ripe plump blueberries.) There are actual goji berries here though! There are supposed to be actual pomegranate, but I don’t see any in my sample at a glance. There is also lemongrass to give it a spritz of lemon. The green base is okay, but I’ve had tastier green teas. I’ve had some pretty bad fake “fruit” tasting teas (actually from some reputable companies) but this one is very nice! Refreshing!

ETA: Zentealife.com has a 20% sale right now that I just happened to notice!

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81

Carrying on down the chocolate tea river with this blend.

It has an amazing chocolate caramel scent, like an actual chocolate bar or those caramel chocolate sweets you get in mixed tins/boxes for Christmas. As strong and delicious as this smells it’s also a little on the dry side.

The caramel comes through nicely, not too sweet but very nice against the rich chocolate base. It also has a wafer like flavour present amongst the after taste. Luckily there is no real dryness in flavour to this tea so it must have been in the scent only. The caramel grows stronger as I pour myself another cup, becoming more creamy and sticky like too.

I really like this tea though my husband said he prefers The Malt Shop by Della Terra which is the last chocolate tea we had together earlier on.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec

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76
drank Pouchong (Bao Zhong) by ZenTea
226 tasting notes

Tried this one yesterday evening, unsweetened. It smelled and tasted of toasted walnuts: a hint of bitterness, but mostly just slightly smoky and a lot delicious. :) I enjoyed it, but I do prefer my oolongs to be not quite so dark. My husband would probably have loved this one, so perhaps I’ll buy it for him as a present sometime. :3

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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77
drank Black/Green Toasted Almond by ZenTea
14991 tasting notes

sipdown! another tasty almond tea. I’m trying to drink other teas alongside my puerhs today to help with the sipdowns. This one was altogether pretty tasty, though not my favourite almond tea :)

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77
drank Black/Green Toasted Almond by ZenTea
14991 tasting notes

Thanks dinosara! this is a pretty tasty almond tea. I didn’t ruin this one by steeping it at too high a temperature heh. I don’t know that this would find a permanent place in my cupboard but it is quite nice if you’re looking for that almond flavour. I agree with dinosara that the base is a little lacking. Overall though, a pretty tasty cup!

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80
drank Oolong Royal Ginseng by ZenTea
15 tasting notes

A very fragrant tea with an amazing first cup. Unfortunately doesn’t last past two brewings.

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I received a sampling of this tisane from someone … and found it in my stash tonight. I don’t know how old it is … but judging from the existing tasting notes on this, it would seem it’s probably at least a year old. It’s still flavorful. I taste honeybush … nutty, sweet, honey-like. I taste caramel … sweet and the caramel adds a creamy element to the cup. The chocolate is weak. I don’t know if that’s because of the age of the sample or because the chocolate just wasn’t strong enough for my chocoholic tendencies. The flavor does build though, and now that I’m midway through the cup, I notice more chocolate than I did at the start.

Overall, it’s decent. Because it is an older sample … I’m not going to rate this.

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