Christina / BooksandTea Send Message

I really need to knock out some sipdowns over the next few days, as I got some huge samples earlier this week. This seemed like a good candidate – now that I’ve had a cup, there’s probably enough left for only one more pot.

This is interesting. I’ve never tried honeybush straight-up. It’s got the woody taste I associate with rooibos, but there’s also something really fresh and watery about it in the background – the kind of watery bite that I associate with something like watermelon rind (you know the part where the pink fades to white in a watermelon? I love that part).

So watermelon, but also cedar, honey, and even sandalwood. Quite interesting! Not sure if I’d restock though – this seems like it would be better as a base for something else.

The dry leaf of this smelled like Fig Newtons, which is a pleasant but completely unexpected association. Brewed, the cherry really comes forth.

The stuff I spooned into my filter had a big fat dried cherry in it. :-)

This is actually pretty good. The black base reminds me of a lot of David’s Teas flavoured black blends, that kind of mellow raisin-y sweetness. This didn’t taste cough-drop like to me – more like chocolate covered cherries. Another reviewer (I think Indigobloom?) mentioned that the fig, while not readily apparent, added a real depth of flavour to this.

Not sure if I’d restock it, but this was pretty nice. Now to go back to the brewed leaf and dig out that rehydrated cherry to snack on. Yum!

EDIT: Thanks to Ubacat for the sample of this.

Bad Christina does not own a digital scale, so Bad Christina overleafed this tea a TON. The instructions from Ubacat said 4g per cup, and since I have no idea of how much that is, I used about 8 teaspoons for a single 24 oz teapot of this.

I also followed the instructions to use boiling water on a very short steep (under a minute).

As a result, the sencha taste in this is strong, and it’s very umami, but I was hoping for more of the rice to come through.

However, I got so much of this in my swap that I’m not too put out. I’ll see how it works on a longer steep with lower temperature.

Also, over the next few days, I’m going to have a bunch of different genmaichas to figure out which one I like best. Aside from this, I have 3 others in my cupboard I haven’t even tried yet.

Thanks, Ubacat!

Another tea that I’m trying to reduce my stock of.

I’ve been noticing that when brewed at the recommended temperature of 82C, it tastes soapy. I tried brewing it at 74C today to see what difference it would make.

So far, not much – it still tastes soapy, and now there’s a weird musky undertone to it.

Next time, I’ll have to see about underleafing slightly – maybe 1 tsp per 8 oz, instead the recommended 1.25. Bumping the rating down about 10 points because it’s so finicky (from 83 to 73).

Overleafed this tea a bit, but I got such an influx of tea yesterday that I’m trying to sip down what I’ve already got. Also realized that I don’t have much in the way of black caramel teas, and I’ve realized that’s a variety I want to stock.

This wasn’t so bad, even with the overleafing. A tad astringent, but I added some honey to balance it out. I have enough for 1 or 2 cups, I think.

Anyways, do you want to know something cool? I took the buckwheat grains from last night’s sobacha and saved them in the fridge overnight so that I could have them for breakfast this morning. They turned out not so bad! I stirred in a small cup of fruit yogurt and had that as breakfast. So I feel very ingenious.

I made this tonight for myself and a friend. I didn’t realize before then how truly absorbent the buckwheat grains are – they really puffed up in the infuser! I’ll probably take the grains and eat them once I finish drinking off the second steep, which I’m currently working on.

The smell of this is like sesame and peanuts. Pretty tasty and roasty, but I still think of the Yamane-en Hokkaido Dattan sobacha I bought a sample of from Yunomi.us – I’m really considering ordering more of that soon.

This extremely aromatic tea came in the mail today from Ubacat. Yay!

Oddly enough, I only have one other gunpowder green in my cupboard, and it’s also mixed with mint (Golden Moon’s vanilla mint black/green tea). So I guess gunpowder green and mint are the official Moroccan Mint combination?

Anyways, this tea is very very minty, and from what I can tell, it’s peppermint rather than spearmint. I didn’t taste much of the green tea base here, so I think I might want to lower the temperature a bit and see how it fares at 80C. I bet this would also be good with some honey or sweetener added.

I used a steeping temperature that was slightly too high with this tea – 86C instead of 82C. I steeped it for the minimum 3 minutes and got a dark brown liquor that smelled of fruit. However, the taste was quite tart and acidic, almost metallic, and I didn’t get much jasmine. I thought sweetening the tea would soften it a bit, but it didn’t do much.

I’ll try steeping it at a lower temperature, but if that still doesn’t work out, I’ll probably add it to my swap pile.

Thanks to darby for the sample.

I really think I’m going to have to ignore the steeping instructions on the Yunomi.us website and just steep these sencha teas Western-style. I tried following their instructions this morning, as follows:

- 5 g of leaf
- 3 oz of water (used my gaiwan)
- 1st steep: 2 minutes at 70C
- subsequent steeps: 20s at ~80C

The first steep was a deep golden colour, very umami, rather astringent, and somewhat bitter. The subsequent steeps were also umami, bitter, and astringent at first, but the tea mellowed out around the 4th steep.

However, I really just want these teas to be sweet and light. Will traditional Western style (1 tsp, 80C, 2-3 mins, 8 oz) achieve that? So far, I’ve found that Japanese greens are definitely not meeting my expectations.

At first glance, this tea is an unusual mix of flavours: green tea, black tea, mint, and vanilla. I’ve found that I’m not a huge fan of mixing green tea and vanilla together, but I don’t mind black tea and vanilla, and mint goes well with both kinds. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was prepared for something discordant when I tasted it, and that expectation was reinforced when smelling the dry leaf – smelling vanilla and mint together is just a weird combination for me.

But what’s this? When brewed up, it’s surprisingly smooth, and well blended! The flavours are distinct, but they don’t fight against each other, instead combining to form something even better. It tastes good both straight and with a little bit of sweetener added, though I prefer the sweetened version. Even better, despite the boiling steep temperature, the green tea didn’t become astringent.

So, this was a tea I expected to be weird and jangly and disorganized, only to have it defy my expectations and become a smooth, delicious cup. So what fictional character did this tea remind me of? You’ll have to take a look here to find out: http://christinavasilevski.com/2014/05/sunday-tea-books-vanilla-mint/