Dinosara

Sipdown, 243. Thanks to Nina’s Paris for this sample to try!

I decided to request an Earl Grey as a sample to see how it compares to some of my other faves. I am no longer actively looking for the perfect Earl Grey, because I have found it (Lupicia), but I will always welcome new versions to try. I was unsure of how long to steep this one, because the Versailles Rose was good at 3 minutes but the Marie-Antoinette really needed only 2 minutes. I decided that possibly a tad weak was better than bitter, so I went with 2 this time.

This is a tasty Earl. Two minutes worked just fine. That nice, malty-smooth base that I found in the Versailles Rose makes an appearance again, paired with a nicely balanced citrusy bergamot. Not perfumy, nor bitter like citrus pith. I definitely enjoyed drinking my cup, but it didn’t quite stand out to me as particularly distinctive. Which is fine, because it’s still a very tasty tea and a good example of a well-done Earl.

Sipdown, 244.

This morning has started out poorly. Got a call from my credit card company about frauduent charges… apparently someone used my card number to try to refill their Starbucks card to the tune of $300. So that’s fun.

Also the campus is on a boil order because a water main broke nearby, and will be until the end of the day. Fortunately I already filter my water here for tea (it came out of the tap kind of… brown this morning), but I will also be making only black tea today, I guess.

As always in these situations, I want a tea to make me feel better. I also wanted a sipdown, so I figured I would try this one, which I got a sample of from Ze_Teamaker. Thanks so much for sending it along! This is a mistake tea where Verdant accidentally used Laoshan Black instead of Laoshan Green to make this genmaicha.

I have to say, I have never been too much of a fan of genmaicha (the green version), but this is amazingly delicious. Crisp, nutty toasty rice flavor goes so much better to me with a black base than a green. Oh so chocolatey, sweet and honeyed from the Laoshan Black, it’s like eating the most delicious chocolate museli with honey. Now I am nostalgic for my time in Greece, when I ate chocolate museli with greek yogurt and greek honey every morning for breakfast. Yum.

David, please make this blend available for purchase! It is so good!

Sipdown, 245 (haha, got some tea from swaps in the mail, so my stash has gone up again).

Having my tea tonight in my new “cardinal” mug (http://www.teavana.com/tea-products/tea-cups-mugs/infuser-mugs/p/cardinal-infuser-mug), although the birds on it are not cardinals (silly Teavana). I looked them up in my Birds of East Asia book and they are Taiwan Yuhinas! I feel like I should drink all of my Taiwanese teas out of it.

This one is pretty good, but I have to say, after having had a bunch of the non-decaf version recently, it doesn’t really stack up. It’s close, but no cigar. Still, pretty good on its own and a tasty evening tea.

Sipdown, 241 (yeah, I only ended up adding a few new teas so my count didn’t go to high!). Thanks to Nina’s Paris for the sample of this tea!

Rose and apple; I knew I had to request this one as one of my samples. The smell of the steeped tea is kind of odd, and I guess it’s just the rose and apple combining somewhat strangely. If I smell closely enough, I can pick out the two scents independantly, but it’s not easy.

Unfortunately, this one was not as successful to me as it was for other people. It comes across as bitter and perfumy to me. I am not sure what people are talking about when they say that the bitterness reminds me of biting into an apple and getting apple skin… apple skin isn’t especially tart or bitter to me, and I just ate an apple for lunch this afternoon. There is definitely a good amount of really appley flavor here (although it is perhaps more apple candy than fresh apple), and some herbaceous rose, so I think that perhaps if I steeped this one for a shorter time or at a lower temp, it would come out smoother and work better, but if the astringency is built in for some reason, I don’t know.

I drank this one western-style this afternoon too, again to figure out if I want to order more of it.

I was also super thrilled to see this one in the reserve club package from February because Tieguanyins, particularly the newer style green ones, are pretty much some of my favorite teas. The scent of the dry leaf was really wonderful, green and floral and buttery. And its so bright green! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an oolong that bright green.

This one was really, super green. Incredibly floral, while also buttery and a bit creamy. Sweet like fresh, crisp sugar snap peas. It is definitely a spring picking and you can tell. Really, quite beautiful. But really, this reminded me of a Taiwanese high mountain oolong more than a Tieguanyin! Very very lovely and a joy to drink. However, I think I typically enjoy the autumn pickings a bit more than the spring ones because they tend to have more butteriness to them.

Guys, I am steeping this one western style. I know it’s almost sacrelige, but I don’t care. I love the original Laoshan Black steeped western style, and I want to compare this one. Of course, with David’s western steeping instructions for Laoshan Black I have now almost completely used up my package, but I wanted to know how much I loved this one before deciding whether to take the plunge and purchase more of it (available for reserve club members only).

This smells of chocolate and caramel and honey. I think 1 tablespoon of leaf (for 8oz) was a bit too much for this one… the leaf is not as wirey as the original Laoshan Black, more compact, so more of it fits in a tablespoon. Well I will certainly have some resteeps of this. Nevertheless, even the overleafed first cup is delicious, which is not something I can say about most teas if overleafed. Chocolatey, lovely. I might have to steep up a cup of the original Laoshan Black to see how they compare and if it is worth it to me to splurge on the first picking. Decisions, decisions!

This has definitely got to be the hottest water I’ve ever gotten from a coffee shop. And of course they love to overfill my travel mug so it splashes on me when it try to put the lid on.

I am returning from San Francisco today. I didn’t get to do as much teaware shopping as I wanted, but I did pickup a few good teas, mostly restocking things I already know I like.

This one, of course, is still perfect for traveling and always delicious. Glad I got wrapped sachets of this because it just makes it so easy to throw in a bag so I can have a cup of tea whenever.

Another sample sachet from my Harney order. I was prepared to be completely underwhelmed by this one. I don’t really know why, maybe I just have a low opinion of most senchas used in flavored tea bases, so I figured this one would be just as boring.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised! When I smelled the brewed tea it smelled green and buttery and a touch savory. The taste was smooth… Yes, vegetal, yes a touch sea-weedy but also very buttery and comforting. No bitterness, no unpleasantness. An easy to drink green tea that would be nice with meals and when you want a simple, tasty tea.

Backlog, had this one this morning with free hot water from the coffee shop. It was not as flavorful as usual, but I don’t know if it was the water or if there was just too much water for this sachet. I think the Dammann sachets tend to be smaller and only for a smaller cup, so they’re not quite big enough for my travel mug, which I believe is 16oz.

Backlog from last night. I stopped by Asha last night after dinner to have a gaiwan service of this one. I have wanted to try it but never got around to ordering or swapping for it. I like Alishans ok, but I’ve never been wild over them. This one got such great reviews I wanted to try it.

At Asha I did get a tea tray and cup with my gaiwan so that I could decant into it. I also got a pot of water, but it was really only enough for a rinse and two steeps. As it was already getting late I didn’t get another pot… also I was there alone and I didn’t want to leave my stuff to go up to the counter and a refill. I have to say that it’s been a while since I used a gaiwan and I kind of miss it. There is something about it that I really like. Guess I should look into getting one.

They only gave me a relatively small amount of leaf for this one, maybe a couple of grams. Less than I would have typically used, and pretty skimpy for charging $7 for the tea service. She informed me that the steep time should be 1 minute, which I guess it would need to be with that little leaf. It was kind of like steeping western style in a gaiwan. I rinsed it, and this rinse was definitely mostly flavorless as opposed to my typical rinses.

This tea was almost impossibly floral. It seemed almost like an orchid oolong, it’s that intense. To me, it smelled so lovely and buttery and delicious. In the taste I mostly got florals and fresh vegetal greenness, without much butteriness or creaminess. But that is what I would expect from an Alishan, and this one is quite impressive. By the second steep the leaves had opened up, filling the gaiwan about half-way. Still light and green and floral. A lovely tea, for sure.

I am super out of it this morning, when unfortunately I need to be super on top of it because I am giving a lunchtime seminar. Hoping this tea will give me a jump-start.

I got two sachets of this for free with my last Harney order (it seems like one of the standards they throw in). I have never been a fan of English Breakfast… I don’t know what it is. I love many Chinese blacks, and there are flavored blends that I love that are 100% Keemun, so it can’t be that I don’t care for Keemun teas. Maybe it’s because they seem designed to be taken with milk and sugar, and I don’t usually drink my teas that way. However, today, I steeped it as strong as I could (with only 197°F water available to me) and then dumped a pile of milk and sugar in it. It’s decently tasty this way, though it certainly won’t become a regular part of my morning routine.

Sipdown, 238. This is the last sipdown I will be doing until I get home from this trip, and by then my stash will have grown by an uncountable number of teas. At least I got down below 240 before the trip! My next goal will be to drop below 200, and then I will reward myself with a tea order that I have been plotting for almost two months now.

Today I discovered that there is a small cafe in the courtyard of the building I’m working in, and I got free hot water this afternoon from them in my travel mug. Score! Now I can get an afternoon fix a little bit easier.

Om nom nom. It’s kind of amazing having fresh sachets of this, because they are even better than before, if that is possible. It’s just SO GOOD.

Noticed this morning that the hot water dispenser at the hotel says it is dispensing water at 197°F, which is a little cooler than I would normally brew black teas. But I usually brew Harney blacks under boiling anyway, so it works ok. Too bad I didn’t bring any oolongs!

For my first real night in Berkeley I walked up to the Imperial Tea Court for tea and dinner. I had scoped out their tea menu before and new I wanted to order the gaiwan service of this tea. I also couldn’t resist ordering the Pork Dragonwell Dumplings… with dragonwell tea in them! Unfortunately the serene ambiance of the place when I came in has been ruined by a whiney little kid sitting at the table next to me.

When the waiter brought out my tea he brought out a gaiwan and pot of hot water, but no pitcher or other cup. He asked me if I had used this type of teacup before and I of course said yes, but I didn’t mention that I usually had another cup! I guess it was because this tea is a dragon well, but then I would have expected a tall glass for steeping I guess. Then I saw someone else actually sipping the tea through a crack using the lid to block leaves! Not sure if that is an actual “thing” or not but it worked.

Anyway, I did my best to blow aside the leaves and take sips, and the first steep of this tea was impossibly sweet and fragrant, like rose candy. This is a beautiful, beautiful rose tea. The dragonwell was light and buttery, and all around delicious. I knew I had to take some home with me, and that I did.

Also the dragonwell dumplings were delicious! Mostly porky, but with a burst of tea flavor.

Well my hotel had the tiniest “continental” breakfast every (just cereal and coffee), but they also had a machine that dispensed hot water. Score! I made a mug of this to go with me to the collections today. Now it is the afternoon, though, and I could really use another cup of tea, my energy is suddenly flagging a lot. I don’t think there is an electric kettle in the breakroom, unfortunately. I am tempted to run out and buy a milk tea at Asha. I think I can spare the 15 minutes or so.

This time at the airport in Detroit a coffee shop sold me a cup of hot water that I then poured into my travel mug. They actually sold me a cup of hot water, not tea, for 50 cents (the tea was almost $3!). Well it worked out. And this tea is fantastic, of course. Possibly there was too much water for the one sachet in my mug so it was a touch weak, but it was still delicious.

Discovered today that Asha Tea House is on my way from my hotel to the museum, so I will pass it every morning… unfortunately it doesn’t open until noon! None of the tea houses open early here, so I am forced to be without good tea in the morning (hotel room coffee maker hot water is not something I would subject myself to).

I made a cup of this for the first time in a long time the other day but it got ruined because I guess my travel mug wasn’t cleaned properly. This time it is clean!

I went to a coffee shop at the airport and ordered a hot tea, but got them to fill my travel mug with hot water and give me the tea bag separate. I was given a choice between two seemingly different decaffinated Tetley tea bags. LOL no. I kindly took the tea bag and then back at my seat and whipped out a sachet of this.

I forgot how pleasant this is. Smooth, malty base, well-balanced citrusy bergamot. These are good travel sachets to have, and they are available at some grocery stores.

Sipdown and backlog, 238. I am traveling again, this time off to California, and was so busy getting ready yesterday that I completely forgot to log the sipdown of this tea.

This tea was less than impressive. I wanted to love this tea, as I love milk oolongs and I love coconut oolongs, but my taste in milk oolongs is picky so I guess it’s not too surprising that this one would have ended up not one of my favorites. It’s tasty enough to drink, but it’s not nearly as creamy and coconutty as I would have hoped. Oh well, good to sip it down.

Sipdown, 239. This sample comes to me thanks to Kasumi no Chajin! Pretty sure this is the first white tea from Africa that I have ever tried.

The leaf on this is long, fuzzy white tea leaves that are whole and thus difficult to meaure out with a teaspoon. I think I used more leaf than usual for a western-style brew, but it didn’t seem to be over steeping after 2 minutes so I went the full three. It’s still a very pale yellow, and smells fruity and a little nutty, even. The flavor is light, and I probably could have steeped it even longer, but it is still quite lovely as is. Possibly my favorite non-jasmine white that I’ve ever tried! It is so sweet on its own, and I agree with apricots as the fruit that it most reminds me of. The flavors are tantalizing, and keep you sipping again and again so that they build in your mouth. A really impressive tea!

Sipdown, back to 240. This sample is apparently 2 years old, and I overleafed it a bit, so we’ll see how this goes.

Well, sadly, the sakura flavor is pretty much gone. Happily, this is still a pleasant, nutty sencha even in it’s old age. I was considering buying some of the Sakura Sencha this year, but I think I will hold off even though I know I would like to get some just because I would like to see how low my tea stash can go in a year, and there are other things that are higher on my to-purchase list. Next year, if my stash is manageable, I’ll probably spring for some.

Sipdown, 241. Thanks to Nina’s Paris for this sample! Rose is of course one of my favorites, so Versailles Rose was an immediate selection. Plus grapefruit sounded like an interesting combo!

Well it seems like you can count Nina’s among the Parisian teas that I really enjoy. First off, delicious black base. Malty, nutty, with a hint of honey. Based on reading reviews of their other teas, it seems like this one has a much subtler flavoring. The grapefruit is light, just adding a slight citrusy note to the tea, and the rose is also very subtle, coming across as lightly herby-floral. I probably could have used more of those flavors here, but the base tea is quite delicious so it doesn’t matter as much to me. Looking forward to trying my other samples!

Paris! My parents are planning a vacation there, so I have been giving them tips and such. Just so happens I brought some sachets of this home with me too. It has been a long time since I’ve had this tea, and when I opened the pouch the sachet was so strong and delicious smelling it made my mouth water.

MMMMM man I forgot how much I love this tea. Red fruits, caramel and bergamot, some of my favorites. This tea really is love in a cup.

Sipdown, 242. I randomly picked up a sachet of this at a hotel or conference once, and I have had it in my stash since. I brought it home with me this weekend because my parents don’t have a good tea set up so I brought sachets.

This also means that the water is less than optimal, but I don’t think that it is the reason that this tea is both mostly tasteless and also bitter. Not just tannic black tea bitter, but the taste of poorly deployed, bitter bergamot. No wonder so many people dislike Earl Greys, when they are always exposed to examples like this. With sugar and a splash of half and half it is ok drinkable, but I’m glad I never bought a box of these a the grocery.

Sipdown, 243 (back log). Those of you who have taken notice of my tea numbers will notice that this is a sipdown but my tea numbers have gone up by three! Well I got Nina’s samples and a swap in the mail, so my total number has once again risen.

I may have over-leafed my travel mug a touch, as this was a tiny bit bitter, but holy crap did it smell intensely like cinnamon brownies. The hint of bitterness made the overall sip taste like unsweetened chocolate, like you were making brownies and forgot the sugar. I bet brewed strong like this, with the addition of sugar, this would be so decadent.