Dinosara

When Frank announced this tea, I had to buy it, even though I had only tried one other tea of his and didn’t have a great experience with it. But pumpkin! And cheesecake! I love love love anything pumpkin this time of year, so pumpkin tea was a must have. To be perfectly honest, I’m not expecting much from this tea based on some of the reviews and my own experiences with Pancake Breakfast, but I had to try. Inspired by my low-temp steep on the Kusmi Caramel tea the other day, I ratcheted this one down to see if I could keep the black tea from overwhelming the flavors.

The smell of the dried leaf is really pumpkin-pie spicey. I get lots of cinnamon and clove and some ginger and nutmeg. The pumpkin aroma I can pick up at times through the spice. Steeped, the black tea has come forward, as expected, BUT there is still a good helping of spicy pumpkin aroma in the steeped tea. I am hopeful! That clove is certainly killer in the aroma. The good news is that I don’t just get black tea from this one. The bad news is that all I seem to get is intense spiciness. I feel like the spices are a bit overdone in this one… I’m getting the pungent spice plus that dusty flavor that you get if you eat too much dried ground spice. And remarkably I’m still getting a hint of bitterness with the quite low steeping temp, but it almost seems bitter from too many spices. Yeah I’m going to have to cut this one with something for it to be drinkable for me (and I like Harney’s Hot Cinnamon Spice, so I’m not afraid of spicey teas!). I don’t get really any other flavors but the spices here. Oh well.

I feel like I’ve been drinking a lot of flowery and fruity teas lately, and I needed a break or something. Even though this one is still fruity, it’s nutty almondy marzipanny flavor called out to me. There’s also something distinctly autumnal about cranberries that fits today’s mood. Mmm, I really do love the flavors of this tea. So delicious! Now that I feel seemingly overwhelmed by teas, I find myself mentally narrowing down my list of teas I must have around all the time. This one is definitely makes the cut!

This is another tea from my swap with Angrboda. I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve had a plain Earl Grey, which of course isn’t really true since I had little else but plain Earl Grey while I was in Argentina. But that’s already been a couple of weeks, so I suppose that’s long enough for me to start craving it again.

The dry tea smells a nice, robust Earl Grey. The bergamot is strong and sweet. I steeped it my usual “unknown black” parameters, but I just noticed that they suggest steeping at a slightly lower temp, so we’ll see how this goes. The brewed tea smells nice and balanced between bergamot and black tea, which has a smooth, somewhat roasty, almost chocolatey aroma. I pegged it as a Ceylon, and sure enough when I looked at the description that’s what it was. Maybe I’m starting to get better at knowing black teas! In any case, Ceylon is my favorite EG base, so that’s a good sign.

The first thing I get from the taste is that, yes, I should have steeped it at a lower temp. There’s a fairly decent helping of bitterness to the black tea base. If I can taste past the bitterness… I seem to get a warm, bready flavor from the Ceylon base, a bright, citrusy bergamot note, and a bit of smokyness in the tail end of the sip and aftertaste. I won’t rate this one this time since I didn’t follow directions, but I will say I’m surprised to get that much bitterness (note that I am very sensative to bitterness in black tea) from a Ceylon. This tea seems like it has the makings of a tasty tea if I can get the steeping parameters right.

Ah, finally time to try this one! Oh my goodness, the dried leaf smells amazingly sweet and floral; I am very excited. I’ve tried one plain Tieguanyin before (at the Harney Soho shop), and while I enjoyed pretty well I wasn’t blown away or moved to buy it. I have a distinct feeling this one will be different!

Brewed “western” style in my 12 oz Kati cup. The liquor is a pale yellowish green, and it smells awesome. Fresh and floral, warm and buttery, sweet and creamy. Yup, the raves about this tea are totally warranted: it is amazing. The main body of the sip is light and fresh and green and buttery, and then toward the end the florals (orchid, magnolia, lilac) really come out along with a very lightly sweet aftertaste that gets a bit stronger as the tea cools. It still never gets as sweet as some oolongs I’ve had, just a faint wisp of sweetness to tease your taste buds. All of the characters of a Tieguanyin are present in spades in this tea; truly an amazing example of it’s kind.

I’m drinking my afternoon cup of tea a little earlier than I usually do today because I want to have not one but two afternoon cups! I just have so much tea that I can’t wait to try it all, and for some reason today I really want some.

I’m thrilled to get a chance to try this one, sent to me by Angrboda! This is definitely one of those teas that gets raved about so much I really wanted to try it. The caramel smell of the dried leaf is very nice… I could just smell it all day, I think. It’s caramel but not a very buttery caramel, but I can’t quite put my finger on how to describe it. The brewed tea has much more black tea in the aroma, with a burnt-sugar caramel aroma behind it. I feel like the caramel makes itself known a bit more in the flavor, and it’s definitely a roasted-sugar type caramel as opposed to a buttery-creamy caramel. It actually distinctly reminds me of some kind of burnt-sugar candy I bought in London once. It pairs pretty flawlessly with the black tea base, which is pretty smooth but it still has a bit of a kick to it, by which I suppose I mean it’s fairly bold. I was surprised by the low suggested steep temp on this one, but upon drinking it I feel like the black tea might have overtaken the caramel at a higher temp. Overall a definitely delicious tea!

Another sample from SimplyJenW! So glad I get to try this; I love lychee fruit, but I haven’t had a lychee black tea before! My first thought when I smelled the dried leaf was “Mmm, lychee fruit!” But the scent wasn’t overpowering. And even though I distinctly identified it as lychee, I don’t think I ever noticed how much lychees smell like rose. I guess that’s probably why I like them so much.

The lychee aroma stayed niced and strong in the brewed tea, backed with a nice, rounded black tea base. And the tea definitely delivers in the flavor: a good, robust lychee flavor (which comes with a healthy dose of rosey-ness), with a pleasant, smooth black tea base that compliments the lychee well but is still a major player in it’s own right. Mm, this is definitely one I’ll have to keep around!

This is the first time I’m logging this tea, but it’s not the first time I’ve had it. I randomly found it when I ordered it at a chocolate shop in San Martin de los Andes, and was surprised that it came out loose-leaf instead of in a bag. It was tasty and had a flavor combination I hadn’t seen before—bergamot, jasmine and red currant—and the chocolate shop sold tins of the tea, so I brought one home. The tea company is actually located in another small Andean village near San Martin, which is cool and unexpected.

The leaf is pretty chopped up, composed of a lot of small pieces. There are some jasmine blossoms, sugary looking red currant pieces, and some other brighter pink dried fruit pieces as well. The dried leaf smells nicely red-fruity, a bit jasminey, with the bergamot providing a high bright note.

I meant to brew this for three minutes but forgot to start my timer, so I’m not quite sure how long it brewed for. The predominate aroma in the brewed tea is the red currant with somewhat floral notes behind it. Despite an unknown steep time, the tea came out well! Lots of red currant in the flavor, with some pleasant jasmine behind it. The bergamot isn’t the star here, but plays a supporting role, kind of like Harney’s Paris or Tower of London. In fact, it kind of reminds me a bit of those teas, which is probably why I like it. Even the obviously not high quality tea base provides a pleasant foundation and provides some nice caramely notes. The tea isn’t sweet, but the aftertaste has the illusion of sweetness. This isn’t a tea that will be easy to find again, so I guess I better savor it while it lasts!

I’ve been drinking a lot of flowery teas lately, and this afternoon I decided I wanted something with a bit more heft. I was going through the tea samples I got from SimplyJenW and this one definitely jumped out at me. Figs are one of my favorite! I’m so happy it’s fig season now and I can get them at the grocery store. I’ve really enjoyed the fig flavoring in some of the Dammann Freres teas I’ve had, so I’m excited to try this one with it’s unadultered fig. Also I have a groupon-type deal for Ovation Teas, and I’m glad to be able to try some of their teas before I buy!

The dry tea smells great, very much like sweet dried figs. The tea is speckled with rather large chunks of dried fig, I got two in my cup this time, which is promising. Steeped, I lose some of that rich, figgy aroma as the black tea base comes out, but I can still detect it when I breathe in deep. The flavor is sweet and nicely figgy. It’s not overwelming, but I definitely am getting the fig-in-tea flavor, as well as nice rounded eating-a-dried fig notes. The brown sugar flavoring just seems to accentuate the fig and give it more of a fig newton filling type of flavor. I am getting a hint of bitterness in this tea base, which means I will have to remember to brew it at a lower temp next time. The only thing I worried about with this one was the Assam, which I don’t think I’m partial to, but as long as I can prevent the bitterness I think the black tea base tastes fine. Thanks so much for the sample, Jen!

Another afternoon, another oolong. This one is another of my samples from DeRen Tea, and it is certainly tasty. Let’s back up, shall we? The leaves in this tea are very large and loosely scrunched, opening up to huge whole leaves when steeped. The scent of the dry leaves is lightly green-oolongy, with a faint floral tinge. Steeped, the liquor is a very pale greenish yellow and the florals have come out much more in the aroma, with the oolong base taking on a warm, buttery character.

The taste is pretty true to the aroma: light, buttery, slightly vegetal oolong, with a lovely dose of florals and a natural lingering sweetness. I looove oolongs with that natural sweetness, so that ups the marks for this one. The florals are somewhat indistinct… this doesn’t have the floral notes of a particular flower (at least not one that I really recognize), but instead amps up that general floral character that some oolongs have. Overall very very nice.

So this is the second Anxi oolong that I’ve had in the last couple of days (the first being the base of the Gardens of Anxi by Verdant Tea), and they’re both really sticking out to me as great. I have an Anxi Tie Quan Yin also from Verdant that is a spring 2011 harvest, so I now can’t wait to try that one too. Yay for tea discovery!

Several days ago, after I had this tea, I took my steeped leaves and put them in a cup with water for a cold steep. I ended up leaving them steeping for a long time, but I think it was ok because I had less leaves than I would normally use for a 16oz cold brew, and they were already steeped previously. Anyway I pulled it out today and it’s really nice. Very jasminey, with some sweet creamy oolong flavor in the aftertaste that I actually didn’t get in my initial steep. Quite a success, and I’m tempted to cold steep all of my leftover oolong leaves like this to see how they turn out!

When I first got this tea I tried it right away because I was so excited, but then ended up a bit disappointed because I didn’t get as much flavor as I would have liked. After that it sat in the back of my cupboard while all manner of new teas piled up around it, but then I read LiberTEAS’ note on one of the other 52teas about how she always waits a while before trying the new blends because it takes a while for all the flavors to meld together and develop. I ordered both the Pumpkin Cheesecake and the Pumpkin Pancake Breakfast recently and have been waiting to try them, so I thought I’d revisit this one since it’s been so long.

To be honest the aroma of the brewed tea still smells like what I remember: black tea. It’s a bit bright, almost like a darjeeling, oddly. I do get a hint of underlying sweetness to the aroma, but it overall reminds me more of Harney’s Indian Nimbu than pancakes! The taste is very interesting, and definitely different from how I remember. I get a bright, clean black tea, not heavy or malty, followed by a slight aftertaste of maple, perhaps. I don’t really know what’s going on… I read all the other reviews and people rave and rave about how pancakey this is, but I’m just not getting it. Maybe I need to try it sweetened, but I’m not big on sweetening my teas. The overall flavor of the cup is interesting enough that I have no problem drinking it down, but I’m a bit underwhelmed. C’est la vie! Sometimes a tea is not for everyone.

After my previous tea I needed something I knew would be high quality and not over-flavored. I reached for this tea from Verdant Tea’s new Alchemy line because it seemed like it would likely fit the bill. The scent of the dried leaf seems to confirm that: the first thing I smell here is an herby green oolong with delicate floral notes over the top. The tea is chocablock full with jasmine buds and small chunks of orange peel, but the rolled up Tieguanyin leaves still predominate.

This one brewed up a pale greenish yellow, and the aroma has a base of buttery green notes along with a light sweet jasmine. First sip was still a little too hot for me, but I can tell it’s going to be good. Scratch that, this is going to be one of those teas that blows me out of the water. My first impression is that of a buttery jasmine caramel if that flavor combination makes any sense at all. The natural sweetness in this tea is amazing… it’s a light, smooth sweetness like sweet cream butter. Combined with this oolong, the jasmine takes on a totally different character than I’ve ever tried before—warm, rich, sugary, almost herby—but is somehow still distinctly identifiable as jasmine. The orange rind doesn’t really make itself known in the flavor, and I have a feeling that it, like the saffron, is just lending a supporting role to the other notes. As the tea cools it just gets sweeter and sweeter, playing up that buttery sweet jasmine flavor. A++ on this tea, David… it totally rocks!

Ugh… I am currently on some antibiotics which are not kind to one’s stomach, so I was unsure I’d even want any tea today, but I’m doing ok for the moment. Still, I wanted something that might be light and definitely non-upsetting. I chose this new tea, but I forgot what the description was like when I ordered it. Really, Jasmine Lemon doesn’t seem to be the right name for this tea, since it’s really more of a bouquet of all kinds of florals. The tea is full of flower petals and buds of all kinds along with fairly long green and white tea leaves. The aroma is a slightly worrisome artificial sweet-tart fruit candy scent, but I’ve smelled that aroma in dry leaves before and it doesn’t always turn out poorly.

After brewing my tea is a pale yellow with some dusty bits; they are likely small pieces from all of the whole flowers in the leaf. The scent is much more subdued, but still with the same general profile. This tea does taste familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s definitely sweet-tart and slightly fruity in a very floral way. I don’t, however, get any distinct notes; no jasmine, and definitely no lemon. This is the second tea from this company that I’ve tried, and though I’m pretty sure they don’t blend in-house, the teas definitely err on the side of lots of somewhat artificial flavoring that pretty much obliterates any flavors from the tea itself.

ARGH. I just figured out where I know this tea from. It appears to be identical, minus the sencha, to the Macabeo tea from ESP Emporium that I have had and not really enjoyed. A sniff test of both teas confirms that they have the same aroma profile. Interestingly, I do seem to enjoy this one better than the ESP version, but only slightly. Curses! Foiled by a new, tempting name. This is exactly why I wish I knew where the tea was coming from in these places… now I have 2 more ounces of a tea I never would have bought if I had known what it really was.

And with that ringing endorsement, does anyone want any of this? Free to a good home; I have way too much tea right now to have this one languishing in my cupboard.

I ordered a bunch of samples of Dancong from DeRen Tea because it’s a type of oolong I have yet to explore. I’ve only tried the Dan Cong from thepuritea, sent to me a while ago by QuiltGuppy, but I enjoyed the flavors in that one so wanted to try others of the type to see if it’s for me!

I prepared this tea “western” style, with 4g of leaves in a 12oz mug, because I don’t have a gongfu setup and probably won’t until I go to China next spring. The leaves are long, dark and twisted, and when brewed some are greener than others. The aroma of the steeped tea is really nice… roasty grains, like a dark oolong, but also sweet and floral like a green one.

The floral note is the first one in the flavor, but it’s quickly taken over by the roasty notes. I’m acutally getting a slight bitterness in the aftertaste, but I’m hesitant to dock the tea for that because I feel like it’s likely an issue with one of my parameters. Other than the lingering hint of bitter, I do like the combo of the floral plus roasted flavors. I’m not sure that I like them more than the pure fresh floral flavor of some green oolongs, but I have a number of other dancongs to try as well!

I have tons of new teas to try, but this morning I wasn’t feeling great so I decided I needed to fall back on my lemon ginger green. I could go for even more ginger in this one, but I love ginger, and this is after all primarily a lemon tea. Still very tasty and nicely soothing for the stomach.

When I got home tonight, there was an extra large package sitting on my doorstep. See, I was expecting a package from Monterey Bay Spice Company, from a groupon I had bought a while ago, but I had just ordered a bunch of samples of a lot of their teas, and this package was way too heavy to just be samples. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up to find a full pound of this tea in there! I looked at my receipt and the sample for this tea doesn’t have the same type of item number as the rest of the samples, which is probably the source of the mix-up, but I did only pay $1 for it. I had been kind of miffed that the shipping for this company is a flat $13, which seems high to me, but I suppose I got my money’s worth anyway.

So I have a lot of this tea. Is it any good? I didn’t even mean to order the decaf version! I decided to brew up a pot tonight to see. Fortunately, it’s definitely drinkable. It’s very, very orangey, with a somewhat more subtle spice compliment. Cinnamon, definitely, but also the kind of warm autumn spices that often accompany it, and none of them is very overpowering. The decaf black tea is inoffensive and hardly present in the flavor, but at least it’s not chemically (at least, not to me). Would I choose this tea to get a pound of normally? Probably not, but you can bet I was relieved when I took a sip and it was pleasant enough.

I have so many new oolong samples right now it’s really hard to choose one to try, but today I was wanting something extra floral, so I chose this one which will certainly deliver. This was one of the free samples that I ordered from DeRen Tea, which has a new online store. I was able to get samples of almost all of their oolongs for basically just the cost of shipping, so I couldn’t resist. Thanks DeRen, for the samples!

Somehow I’ve never tried a jasmine oolong, though I totally love other floral scented oolongs. The dry leaf on this one smells very very jasminey, and includes jasmine petals as well. I might have expected the leaves to be rolled, which seems to be common with green oolongs, but this tea looked more a standard green, with slightly twisted leaves. Brewed, the liquor is a deep golden yellow, and the aroma is all jasmine, sweet and floral with a slight greenish undertone, which makes it smell fresh. I’m realizing that it’s been a while since I had a jasmine tea, and I’ve missed it!

The flavor is very pleasant. It’s very much like a plain jasmine green, but without the grassiness of the green tea. The oolong flavor is slightly vegetal, but in a warm, not bright, way. The jasmine lacks the honeysuckle sweetness of jasmine pearls, but it’s definitely a strong jasmine… people who dislike strong florals beware! There is a very slight bitterness to the edge of this tea, which makes me think that I should drop the steeping time a little next time. I’m enjoying this tea, but honestly there’s not much more to the flavor that would make me reach for this over a jasmine green, and it certainly isn’t replacing jasmine pearls for me. As the tea has cooled almost to room temp, a light sweetness comes out that makes me think that this one would be great iced.

Back to the daily grind! I have fully recovered from my illness that took me out all last week. That, combined with my extended trip, makes getting back into the old routines kind of weird feeling. But my morning tea at work is one of those routines, so I’m easing back in with something familiar and yet new… this Earl Grey from Verdant Tea’s new Alchemy Blended line. I finally got around to ordering from Verdant Tea, which I had been meaning to do for a while, and I was excited to see their new line of flavored teas, which David kindly gave me a free sample of two of them (and I ordered an ounce of another!). Looks like I’ll be the first to rate any of them on Steepster.

The dry leaf on this is composed of very high quality looking Yunnan Golden Buds along with a smattering of orange rind and a few shards of lemongrass, but the black tea is by far the main component here. It smells very citrusy-bergamotty in an utterly delicious way. I steeped it for 3 minutes this time since I do that with all blacks the first time around, and the liquor is a dark reddish-amber. The golden buds have definitely come out in the aroma now… the tea has a rich, honeyed aroma, slighly caramely, like some of the other “golden” teas I’ve tried, with a bright slightly citrusy earl grey note that is really secondary to the tea, but still present.

In the taste, first I get a bright bergamot note that opens up into a honey-caramel golden bud tea taste, and it all finishes with an aftertaste that combines the two nicely. The bergamot is bright and bordering on astringency, not very tempered by the orange and lemongrass, though I think they do make it a decidedly citrusy bergamot as opposed to a floral one. It’s bold without being strong, if that makes any sense, because it doesn’t overwhelm the golden buds, but it also is no shrinking violet in the flavor. I’m really digging this Earl Grey blend, which is pretty different from other Earl’s I’ve tried before, mostly because I don’t think I’ve seen an EG made exclusively from golden buds! Definitely a winner, and one I think I will likely have to keep around!

I had a groupon for this tea company that was expiring in about a month, so I went ahead and bought the tea while I was already buying tea from other places. So expect a lot of new teas here for a while, because I have a ton of stuff to try!

Before my travels, I was really getting into oolongs, so a lot of my new teas are oolongs. I’ve always wanted to try the Raspberry Oolong from AC Perch’s, which is supposed to be awesome. Funny, that there aren’t very many raspberry oolongs out there from any tea company, but this one happened to have one, so I had to get some. The dry leaf pretty much hits you over the head with berry aroma. Sure, raspberry, but also just tons of all kinds of sweet-tart berries. There doesn’t seem to be any berry pieces in the dry leaf, but there is some kind of pinky-red petal in there… possibly hibiscus or rosehips, which is a bit surprising. Nibbling on a dry petal makes me think hibiscus. There aren’t very many of them in there, so we’ll see how they affect the steeped tea.

The tea brewed up really light yellow (no pinkness), and it smells tart-fruity and a bit floral. There’s also a bit of that green oolongy aroma in there. Despite the light color, the taste is pretty full. I’m enjoying it, but I do think it’s a tea that might not be for everyone. The raspberry flavoring is quite strong, especially as it cools, and it kind of drowns out the oolong itself, though I feel that it’s definitely lending a floral character to the fruit. And I can’t decide whether the flavoring might taste a bit artificial. I don’t get any hibiscus or that it’s too tart from this. Actually the aftertaste is rather sweet. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the pot and I will have no problem drinking up my ounces of this.

I’ve decided that my guts have recuperated enough that I should be able to handle a cup of black tea. I’m putting off trying some of the new samples I have, particularly a bunch of puerhs, until I seem to be at 100%, but I should be able to handle other teas now.

An inti zen mix box of tea bags was one of the packages of tea I picked up in Buenos Aires before I came back. I tried their Earl Grey early on in the trip, and when I saw the mix box I really wanted to try this tea when I saw the list of ingredients, with honey, vanilla and cacao. The tea bag has an intense scent of beeswax-y honey, with a slightly odd herby note. Brewed, the aroma is kind of odd and complex. That beeswaxy honey aroma is still there, but it’s joined by what I guess is a combo vanilla/chocolate note, but it’s hard to separate them.

It tastes ok, but yeah, that honey flavor tastes more like eating a honey beeswax lip balm than actual honey. The tea itself has a bit of a bite (apparently it’s an assam), and it almost seems like there is more spices hidden in the tea; it reminds me of a light chai or something. I don’t get distinct vanilla notes, and the chocolate seems to meld in with the black tea. There’s a slightly musty, hay-like note in the aftertaste. I’m also reminded that I don’t much care for assams. And tea bags make me much more sad then they ever used to… I don’t mind sachets, but tea bags are just always so disappointing. Well I’ll be back to my collection of loose leaf at work next week.

I am feeling a bit better today… the past days I’ve been too sick to even want tea! I’m already tired of my doctor-ordered chicken-noodle-soup and crackers diet, but though I’m feeling a little better I’m definitely not well yet. Sigh.

This one is rooibos with cinnamon and “crunchy” lemon, and I chose it because I thought the lemon would be nice right now. It smells very cinnamony through the bag and very cinnamony when steeped. There’s a faint brightness to the aroma that is likely the lemon, and that slightly nutty note that I get from rooibos. I wish there was a little bit more to the flavor… it’s a little weak, though I suppose I could steep it for longer without any ill effects. Also definitely cinnamon in the taste. I don’t get a lot of lemon, but I guess there’s a brightness. Basically it’s mostly a light cinnamon rooibos tea. I think I’ll brew it longer next time to see how it changes the taste.

Hey looky here, I actually did bring back tea from Argentina! This is a tea that I normally wouldn’t have given a second thought. The combination of flavors—spearmint, verbena, eucalyptus and melon—doesn’t really sound that appealing to me. But I had a bag of it at a friend’s house in Argentina at the end of an evening of a bit too much wine hoping it would help settle my stomach. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it! So I bought a sample box from this tea company that included some other herbals that sounded tasty as well. It is a tea bag, which I normally avoid, but you take what you can get.

Since I’ve been feeling pretty awful lately, and that includes some GI troubles, I thought maybe this infusion would be the tea for me. Mmm, and it’s definitely very nice. A bit herby, melony and sweet, it tastes like delicious fresh sweet canteloupe. The other herbs add some depth and other flavors to the tea, but they don’t overwhelm. I’m often afraid of mint in a tea, especially with fruit, because I often don’t like that combination, but it works. And I think it’s already soothing me a bit. Now I wish I had bought a box of only this tea to have it around!

Well, I have returned from Argentina, and brought with me some kind of cold/flu bug. Bleh. I don’t have a huge selection of teas at home, but I chose this one because it includes ginger, which would be good right now I think. I got this one a while ago as a free sample from Utopia, but I kind of put off trying it becasue I’m not the biggest fan of strawberry flavoring, and I didn’t much like peppercorn in another tea that I had, so we’ll see. I’m glad I came here before I steeped it; I’m not sure what kind of tea I thought it was, but it definitely wasn’t a Green/White blend. Fortunately I was able to wait for my water to cool a bit and not oversteep.

Steeped, the liquor is a kind of odd tan color, and it has the light aroma of strawberries with a hint of pepperiness. The flavor is slightly weird to me, and a bit difficult to suss out all the parts. There’s definitely some strawberry, which thankfully doesn’t taste like artificial strawberry flavoring. That seems to come out primarily at the tail of the sip, bright and sweet and fruity after a warm ginger/pepper note. It’s not distinctly gingery, per se, more just that pepperiness that ginger has, no doubt brought out by the peppercorns. I’m also thankfull though that it’s not super peppercorn-y; they don’t overwhelm the flavor like they did in the other tea I had that had peppercorns. There’s just a warmth to it. Overally I was pleasantly surprised by this tea; I didn’t expect to like it all that much, but I am enjoying it. Thanks again to Utopia for the sample!

Usually I don’t try to steep a sachet of this in a single cup of hot water, but I had had it with crappy tea lately so I did it anyway. That combined with a 5 minute steep was too much for this tea, and it got bitter. The second steep was better. I think I’ll have to do a few short steeps in the small (6oz?) cup to use the sachet, but I really need my tea. Only about a week until I’m back to the states and my cupboard full of goodies!