Christina / BooksandTea Send Message

I brewed some of this last night in the cute little Brown Betty teapot that my mother found at the back of a cabinet yesterday. I didn’t even know we had one! It’s the perfect size – 2 cups – and it pours like a dream.

Hell, it even made this taste better, and considering I haven’t been bowled over by the houjichas I’ve tried, that’s saying something!

Oh tiny Brown Betty teapot, now you are mine, and I will cherish you always. :)

Man, I’m going to be sad when I finish up this tea. The cinnamon smell is so strong and sweet, I love it. I love the whole pods of cardamom, too. I think this chai is an excellent blend – though of course I know others prefer chais that are less cinammony.

Unfortunately, shipping from Golden Moon to Canada is so ridiculous that this definitely will not be a restock. :(

Another backlog from when I drank during Steepster’s Day of Server Doom:

The jasmine in this is really strong, even at a 2.5 minute steep. There’s at least 3/4 of an ounce left. I put the leaf into an empty tin to save space, but it is a bad idea that I already know what tea I’ll store in this tin once I finish this particular tea? Gonna have to mainline this over the next few weeks to sip it down.

Backlog from yesterday morning, after the Steepster Day of Server Doom:

I’m planning on ordering some genmaicha from Yunomi.us in September, so I really need to sip this down. The thing is, a little bit of this goes a long way. I don’t have much new to say about this tea, but it’s decent.

It’s Sunday Tea and Books time, people! Here we go.

The Tea

I got this as a sample from Laurent back at the end of February/ beginning of March, and have been holding onto it then – it’s been almost 6 months, and tonight was the first time I tried it.

I was expecting a blast of citrus and flowers, but the flavour in this is very subdued. I’m getting a little bit of citrus, and I can sense that it’s grapefruit, but it’s not knocking my socks off here.

I brewed this at 87C for about 2-3 minutes, using 2 tsp for 16 oz of liquid. I’ve found that those parameters have worked out pretty well for my other green tea from Nina’s, Demain, but the leaf between the two looks quite different. The leaf in The Des Muses is much longer and spindlier, looking more like a sencha.

The Book

Well, this is probably a bit of a cheat, but what can I say? If this tea is called “The Des Muses”, then I’m definitely going to compare it to one of the Greek Muses, the nine women seen as the embodiment of culture and artistic achievement in Ancient Greece. So which one will it be?

Well, since it appears that I’m not too fond of this tea, I’m going to go with Erato, the muse of lyric/love poetry. I’ve got a bit of a grudge against Erato, so why not?

Let me explain.

I’ve always been a huge fan of the Greek myths. I read about the stories of Perseus and Theseus and Atalanta, and I was old enough to watch the “Hercules” and “Xena” shows when they were on TV, but young enough to watch them and take them at face value – I had no inkling of their camp value at the time.

As a result, I became a trove of trivia about figures in Greek mythology.

Now, fast-forward to an event about 4.5 years ago. At that point, I was part of a trivia league that met in pubs across the city every week on Monday nights. The scoring worked like this: each round of trivia questions had a theme, and during a round, every person on both teams had the chance to answer a single question. If the person who was asked the question answered it correctly, their team scored 2 points. If they couldn’t answer it correctly but their teammates could, the team scored 1 point. However, if nobody on one team could answer the question, the opposing team had the chance to get a “steal” and earn 1 point for themselves if they could answer the question correctly instead.

(Does this make any sense? I hope it does.)

Anyways, this one night, the round of trivia in question was about….the muses! And it appeared that among all of the people on BOTH teams, I was the only one who knew the names of the muses. So I continually saved my team by earning 1 point when each individual lost the chance to earn 2, and kept stealing points from the other team when they couldn’t answer their questions.

However, I didn’t remember the names of ALL 9 muses – I could only remember 8: Calliope, Urania, Polyhymnia, Terpischore, Melpomene, Thalia, Clio, and Euterpe. I was struggling and struggling to remember the name of the 9th muse.

And guess what happened? The ONE muse I couldn’t name was the answer of the ONE question that was posed to me specifically, thus the ONE opportunity I had to score 2 points for my team instead of a succession of 1-pointers.

That one muse I couldn’t name? You guessed it: fuckin’ Erato.

So I couldn’t answer that particular question, and NO ONE ELSE could either. Thus, that question earned a big round goose egg for all involved.

You know what the kicker was?

I gave the correct answer to every other trivia question that was posed specifically to me that night. Out of 10 rounds, I got 9 2-point questions right – my highest result ever in that particular trivia league – and the only one I got wrong was that damned question about Erato.

(Can you tell I still haven’t gotten over it yet? Fuck you, Erato. Seriously.)

Sipdown!

Well, kinda: I took the remaining half of the dry leaf in the tin and chucked into my pitcher to make iced tea. So the leaf is all used up, but there’s still about 6 cups of iced tea left to go.

This is okay, but I wouldn’t consider it a restock. I still don’t taste any lime when I drink this. I get a vague citrusy feel, which is more like lemon, but also a definite hint of creaminess/vanilla. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I definitely don’t get any lime out of this, though.

I think I’m finally getting used to the flavour on this one and accepting it for what it is, rather than what it should be. Consequently, I’m not noticing the vanilla/peach flavour as much, and instead the base is coming to the fore. Really nice and smooth, not astringent. I need to have this tea more often.

I’ve had more rooibos teas now so I can compare this one a bit more to others I’ve tried. The rooibos here is more of the peppery kind, rather than the woody kind, which is nice. I added a little bit of agave nectar, but not really enough to make it too sweet. This was pretty good, though I really need to sip this down soon.

Backlog from yesterday morning.

I’ve had this tea a lot, but it’s still good. It wasn’t metallic like I experienced the second-last time I tried it. Just rich, deep, a tad smoky. Nice.

Backlog from a few days ago.

This was the very first oolong tea I ever tried, and as a result I’m somewhat sentimental towards it. I’ve had other oolongs then, which have been kind of hit or miss, but this one is still pretty ok. I think it’s on the greener end of the spectrum, but still somewhat roasted.

I had about 3 steeps of this, and the third steep was the most floral/astringent and least coconutty. I liked the first steep the best.