987 Tasting Notes
I had this a few days ago before I left to visit the in-laws for thanksgiving. Still not my favourite tea, but I’ll give it this – it’s easy to prepare in a hurry, when I don’t have the time to measure out the leaf or make sure the water is the right temperature.
Backlog from last night.
I brewed multiple steeps of this in my gaiwan, but I think I underleafed it, as the flavour was extremely light throughout. The liquor was mostly pale gold, and while I did get stonefruit notes and a hint of astringency/leather, this tea really didn’t grab me the way I thought it would.
First note for this tea! I had this last night when I wanted something without caffeine. The fact that it had raspberry leaf as the first ingredient was perfect, since I’m on my period right now. (TMI? Perhaps. But that’s one thing that raspberry leaf tea is good for.)
The ingredients list includes apple and rosehip, but I have to say that the most obvious flavours in both the dry leaf and the liquor are the fennel and anise. I used to hate licorice-flavoured things a lot, but I’m warming up to fennel because it has savoury applications as well as sweet ones (fennel is great in sausages and pot roasts, I find).
There’s also a bit of mint, but oddly enough, under the fennel/anise blast, I also get a sense of chamomile – which is weird, since there is no chamomile in the blend. Perhaps that’s because of the apples?
Anyways, I can definitely see this being a good winter/nighttime/lady’s time of the month tea. Even better: I had a scratchy throat last night, and I’m fine this morning. I know that licorice/fennel is often used on “throat coat” teas, so perhaps it helped.
Just had this a second time, and my impressions of it tasting chemically are confirmed. I tried a 2 minute steep this time instead of a 3 minute one, and while it was more palatable, it still tasted odd.
I think there’s just too much spearmint in this blend – it needs to be a lot lighter for this tea to work.
That’s a good idea – I wish I had thought of it earlier! As it is, I’ll probably have to wait until next year for it to be warm enough for cold brewing.
Backlog from last night.
I made a pot of this and added some of my cinnamon-flavoured honey that I’m trying to use up, and it turned out pretty well. This tea needs something sweet to balance it, and cinnamon and apple are a natural pairing.
The nice thing is that this tea is so chunky that it should only take me 2 or 3 more pots to have a sipdown.
Oh my god. Oh. My. God.
Cameron B had such good things to say about this tea a few months ago that based on the strength of that recommendation, I requested 5 free samples from Teasenz. This baby was one of those. And oh boy, Cameron was spot-on.
You should have been there when I opened up the package and inhaled the first wafts of this stuff. “Oh my god. It smells like chocolate. Oh my god! It smells like cocoa powder!” I tried shoving the bag in my husband’s face so he could get a good whiff (and thus hopefully convert to Tea-ism) but he wasn’t game.
I can’t get over how good the dry leaf of this tea smells. I took about 2 tsp, brewed it Western-style in my lovely tiny Brown Betty pot, and poured it all out into a large mug.
Considering I only steeped the first steep for 3.5 minutes, the liquor was astonishingly dark and rich-looking. A lovely dark amber colour, like beer bottles. And the smell was good too! Slightly tart, but dark and sweet like prunes or honey.
The taste isn’t quite as good, but it’s still satisfying. Malty, rich, slightly sweet, no astringency, but it doesn’t quite slap me silly with flavour the way I hoped it would.
Now I’m off to have a second steep!
By the way, I woke up this morning with a bit of a sore throat, and I’m worried this may be the first sign of a cold. I better enjoy awesome tea like this now; I’ll save the crappy-tasting tea for when I can’t actually taste it.
Preparation
My throat’s feeling pretty okay now, but I’m watching it. At least if I get sick, I’ll have no problem finding something to soothe my throat.