Dinosara

Yesterday afternoon I completely reorganized my tea drawers. Yes, I used to have only one (these are very large, deep drawers), but my tea collection has rapidly expanded. It’s a good thing I have an office with a lot of space! Now I have one drawer for large pouches and tins, and one for samples. Anyway, as I was going through things I realized that I hadn’t yet tried this sample that was sent to me by SimplyJenW, which clearly got lost in my jumble because a vanilla rose tea is definitely something I want to try. Thanks Jen!

I never realized that vanilla and rose would combine to form some aroma that is both evocative of both but also distinct in its own right. It’s an interesting combo, and I guess one I’ve never experienced before! This tea is an Assam, and I don’t know how much I like Assams (though I suspect they are not on my list of faves), so I’m interested to see how it plays out in this tea. Overall it’s pretty nice, but there’s something about this rose, or perhaps the rose combo with vanilla, or perhaps both with the Assam, that is throwing me off a bit. This is the first rose tea I’ve had that I really think tastes a bit perfumy. To addess the Assam, well for me even at this low temp it is bitter and too strong for me. I’m pretty sure at this point that I dislike Assams in general. C’est la vie, they are not for me who has a sensativity to bitterness. Maybe I can brew them really weak and see how that goes, heh.

It’s kind of weird that the description of this tea says nothing about what “fruit” is in the flavoring of this tea, just that they are summer fruits. For me, ambrosia is a creamy fruit salad with marshmallows; sorry, my southern is showing! I doubt that’s what they’re going for here, though.

The steeped tea indeed smells like fruit and black tea in a way that is both nice and a bit worrisome (the scent of bitterness?). Fortunately, no bitterness in the taste. I would say it’s peachy along with some other fruit, but I really can’t identify them. The black tea base is present in the flavor and is decent but not great. Overall I’m left with a feeling of ‘meh’… this tea isn’t bad, but I’m not going to be craving it.

This is the last tea from my oolong sample pack from Verdant that I haven’t tried… I know, what’s taken me so long? I have been discovering recently that I don’t care for dark oolongs as much, so while I was curious about this one, I also am going in thinking that I won’t love it.

The dry tea has some vegetal and slightly floral notes, but also some darker note. If it hadn’t been autumn, I might not have identified the overall aroma as that of fallen leaves, but that’s what it’s reminding me of right now. Steeped, I get strong campfire scents, especially early in a campfire when you are still burning tinder and leaves to get it going, and including that almost sweet aroma that some wood fires have. The flavor has those woody, smokey notes but also a surprising (based on the aroma… I suppose its not surprising given the tea origin) floral note that really grows in the sip. Intriguing. This is a very interesting tea, and clearly a very fine one. It is not typically they kind of tea I would drink, but it is impressive nonetheless.

The first time I had this tea, I wasn’t that impressed. The second time (in the side-by-side tasting), I was. Shall we go for 2 out of 3? Stash busting again, I finished off my sample of this tea with this cup.

I’m going to go with a middle of the road on this cup? Somewhere between the last two, which isn’t helpful in the final judgement, I know. The aroma and flavor of this one is actually not too unlike the Joy’s Teaspoon with that warm, rich note that reminds me of a creamless Earl Grey creme (I actually called it that in my first tasting note on this tea four months ago, and unwittingly used the same description today on the Joy’s Teaspoon note). It is tasty and pleasant, but still not blowing me away. I have a feeling my cup of this isn’t as fresh as it could be, and that could be cutting down on my enjoyment. If they sold tins of this tea individually I might buy one, but I don’t think I like it enough to purchase a series where I know I won’t drink one of the teas.

Turns out this is a decently tasty cold steep. I threw the rest of my sample into a cup last night (whoo stash busting), and for lunch I was rewarded with a pretty tasty almondy and slightly formosa-oolongy iced tea. It wasn’t super almondy, but the flavor was there, along with a general nuttiness. I’ve struck out a couple of times recently with cold brews not turning out quite right, but this one was definitely drinkable.

I didn’t plan on doing cups this back-to-back with the Earl Greys, but now that I started I want to try them like that! I really wanted to try this one again since it was one of my very favorites from the tasting. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of leaf left, so let’s hope this one goes well. I tried to guestimate the right amount of water based on the odd amount of leaf I had (very slightly less than a perfect teaspoon [i.e., 1.5 regular teaspoons]).

It’s amazing how different even just the aroma is on this one from the last one. Where teapod’s Earl Grey was bright, this one is warm, which I feel like is unusual for bergamot. The black tea base seems richer, adding some kind of note to the scent that reminds me of creme Earl Greys, somehow, but definitely not a cream note. That same smoothness richness is still present in the taste, and it makes for a really delicious Earl. Definitely one to reorder.

I think I’ll work through some of the top Earl Greys from my sampling a couple of weeks ago and try them again, this time as a full cup. This is a tea that when I first had it in a tea shop in London I loved (which is why I bought a pouch), but when I came home didn’t live up to my memory at the brewing parameters I used. I did enjoy it in the side-by-side tasting, so let’s hope the steeping parameters are good this time.

Hmm, still not quite right. I still get a hint of bitterness in the cup that I never did in London! I also didn’t get it in the tasting where I used these same parameters. Weird. Maybe I need to go a shorter steep time as well for a full cup. I can taste the Ceylon base and a slightly floral bergamot, but then there’s a pithy bitterness that comes up and really puts a damper on my enjoyment. If nothing else this makes a really nice cold brewed Earl Grey, so I can use up my pouch of it that way.

And here’s my second-ever milk oolong. DaisyChubb was kind enough to send me a sample of this in a swap, and I’m excited to try another one! The dry leaf on this smells more sugary-creamy and less buttery than the ATR, though there’s definitely some butter-cream note in there. I can also catch whiffs of a vegetal note at times.

I steeped this tea basically according to the directions on the DavidsTea site, but I will say I looked through the tasting notes first and wow do people steep this one with wildly varying parameters! Their directions are perhaps a little longer (4-7 min) than I would steep a green oolong normally, and it is both longer and hotter than I steeped the ATR (following their directions). I had a little more leaf than I would normally use, so I decided to drop the steep time so that I didn’t overwhelm the cup. After steeping the tea smells very floral, almost like some orchid oolongs I’ve had, creamy and buttery with a fruity undertone.

This is a pretty tasty tea, floral and vegetal and a touch fruity. I just reread the product description where they describe a “subtle hint of orchid”… I definitely agree on the orchid, but I don’t think it’s very subtle! That’s fine with me, but it means I identify it more with orchid oolongs than the milk oolong I’ve had. There is a smoothness and butteriness, but the creamy milk flavor is fairly light. It does grow a bit as the tea cools, as does the sweetness, which gives it a slight condensed-milk flavor in the aftertaste. If I had never had ATR’s Milk Oolong I might have rated this into the 90s, honestly. I still find it delicious and absolutely would very happily drink it any time.

This is one of those teas that’s so tasty that I want to drink it all the time, but so expensive (and of which I have only a sample) that I put off drinking it because I don’t want to use it up too fast. I only actually every tried it once before, and it was one of the teas that sparked my new interest in oolongs. I haven’t tried another milk oolong yet, but now that I have another sample to try from another company, I wanted to revisit this one and see if it still makes me swoon.

I opened the pouch and was greeted by such a buttery, creamy scent. In the steeped tea it’s still the main aroma, but it’s joined by a floral greenness. First sip, and yup, still amazing. It’s amazing how fruity and floral and creamy and buttery and bready this tea is. Oh so smooth and creamy mouthfeel, a slightly sweet aftertaste that grows as it cools. How do teas like this even exist??

I got a small pouch of this tea free with my order from ZenTea (i.e., eZenTea.com). However, it doesn’t appear on their website! There is a listing for it (and a tasting note) here on Steepster, but no product description. How am I supposed to know what to think about this tea?? Heh. It is rare that I drink a tea (especially a tea with such a non-descriptive name) without knowing beforehand what it’s flavored like. The dry tea on this one smells sweet and desserty, perhaps mostly like caramel. I do get some chocolate as well.

Steeped, it smells nutty, chocolatey and a bit toasted, a little bit like how chocolate chips smell when burnt. In the flavor, I find that caramel again, along with the burnt chocolate note. There is a very slight bitterness to the cup. As it cools a definite nuttiness (perhaps hazelnut) comes out that makes me forget about the bitterness a bit. I feel like this tea would be super delicious with milk and sugar, but I usually only take my teas plain, so that’s not happening. Perhaps I will take the rest of this sample (about another cup) home and try it some weekend with all the fixins’.

I really love the idea of lavender Earl Grey because, well, I like bergamot and I like lavender, so why not? But I have found that lavender is a tricky beast in teas, even for someone who loves florals, so finding the right blend is difficult. Here’s another lavender Earl Grey for me to try, this one from a swap with aisling of tea. Thanks!

The dry leaf on this one smells pretty nice, but I find that’s usually the case with these teas. Steeped, I get strong black tea aroma with some lavender and a hint of bright bergamot. The scent of this tea reminded me of something from my childhood, and I finally placed it: the smell of the soap while I was washing my horse. I know, not the best olfactory association for tea. :P So I didn’t expect to like this tea, but I was surprised. The taste actually isn’t soapy, as long as I can get past the aroma. The black tea base is really smooth, and the lavender is herby and fairly strong. The sips I take vary from slightly bitter to rather pleasant, which is a bit weird to me. I wonder if I need to steep it a slightly shorter time to bring the lavender down just a notch. As far as the Earl Grey portion of this goes, I don’t get a lot that says “hey I’m an Earl Grey”, but you know there’s something there that keeps it from being just a lavender black. I don’t think this one is completely successful as a lavender Earl Grey to me, but it’s also not a bad tea all around.

I was reading the water sourcing thread in the discussions, and it made me start to question the water I use for making my tea. See, I have a sink in my office that bascially was never used before I moved in, but the water that comes out of the regular tap is disgusting, often slightly brown or yellow. Also it is clearly extremely hard because a slow drip has left the inside of the black sink covered in a whitish scale that doesn’t respond to any kind of acid. I wouldn’t even want to drink it after running it through a Brita filter. My whole time here I have always drank the deionized water that comes out of the other tap; it’s clear and tastes fine. It’s also what I use to make all of my teas. But deionized and/or distilled water is supposed to be really bad for making tea because it’s very “flat”, lacking dissolved ions from minerals and such. I find it hard to believe that the water I am using is very deoxygenated because it comes out of the faucet with such pressure that it must immediately reoxygenate itself, and I don’t know for a fact that the water is truly deionized; someone in my department tested it from a different faucet and found that the pH was off from neutral. Anyway, I started thinking about how it would affect my tea, so I wanted to try a back to back with it and some bottled water I had left over at home from the “hurricane” a few months ago. I wanted to try a somewhat delicate tea I thought might show off the differences, so not a heavy black or something, but also a tea that was inexpensive enough and that I had in a large enough quantity. This fit the bill, so it will be my guinea pig tea.

All of these cups are brewed identically except for the water source (new leaves each time of course), so I’m putting them all in this note. First, the “deionized” water from the tap. This is my baseline, so right now it just tastes like it always does. Floral, a bit vegetal. When I had this tea a while ago it was still early in my oolong journey, and coming back to it now is interesting; the buttery sweetish flavor that I really love finding is only very faintly present. I do still really enjoy how floral this is and the magnolia, which is such a lush, rich floral.

Next, bottled water (Dasani, “purified and enhanced with minerals”). Can I tell a difference? Yes. Is it super dramatic? I am relieved to say no, not to me. The flavor is a bit brighter, somehow, like this water brought out the “greenish” notes more. I can’t even say that I prefer this water; I like the bolder florals I got with the first cup. Also I can kind of tell that this bottled water is harder than my DI tap water, but the extra minerals weren’t necessarily an improvement to my tastes. Like I said, I don’t know that the water is actually deionized that’s coming out of my tap, so it may not be as “flat” as it normally would be, but I don’t think it’s seriously affecting the taste of my teas, and that’s really what I wanted assurance of.

Another product of my swap with DaisyChubb. The ingredients in this one again seem similar to my maté from Argo, but this one has malted barley in it, which is new. I was going to steep this one for 4 minutes like I often do with matés, but as it was steeping it smelled so powerfully like coffee that I pulled it out at 3 minutes.

Now that it’s finished steeping the coffee smell isn’t quite so strong, but it is definitely there. Definitely that heavily roasted aroma. I also get a few notes of unsweetened chocolate. The flavor reminds me a little of coffee, primarily those roasted notes, but because it’s maté it’s not bitter like coffee. This one isn’t as chocolatey or almondy as others I’ve had in the past. If I was a coffee person, I would probably really like this tea, but as it happens I am not. It’s pretty decent, but I still prefer the maté from Argo.

If I thought the dry leaf from the last Dan Cong I had smelled like fresh lilacs, it’s nothing compared to this one. My mom has a lilac bush in the front yard and the smell of them in the spring is intoxicating. I’m not holding my breath that this scent will carry over to the steeped tea, but I do know I would love a tea that did have those notes in it. The dry leaves are incredibly long and spindly on this tea, and definitely more green in color than the other Dan Congs I’ve had. They’re plumping up a lot more as well.

Wow, the steeped tea for this one smells like a Tie Guan Yin, not a Dan Cong! Not that I’m complaining. Sweet, floral, a bit leafy, with a hint of that buttery character often found in Tie Guan Yins. The flavor is actually surprising because I expect it to taste like it smells, but it doesn’t. Honestly the flavor in the main part of the sip is hardly there, but in the aftertaste there’s a tantalizing floral note that grows and lingers, including the faintest hint of that oolong sweetness. As the cup comes down in temperature those lighter flavors start to become more forward in the sip. All and all definitely a more favored Dan Cong, even if it doesn’t really seem like a Dan Cong to me, but still not a tea I would restock.

I realized I hadn’t tried all of my samples of Dan Cong teas from DeRen, and since I just had a different Dan Cong recently, I decided to try the last two teas this afternoon. This is the first one!

The dry leaves smell very floral, and it’s definitely a floral note I know, but I can’t place right now. Springy, almost like daisies. Maybe lilacs? Yeah, I think lilacs. It has those really fresh, green leafy notes behind it, very much like smelling a fresh flower. This tea was brewed “western” style with 4g of leaves for 12oz of water. The lilac aroma has sadly gone away in the steeped tea, but I didn’t really expect it to stick around. Now it’s all roasty toasty dark oolong scent. That’s pretty much born out in the taste as well, which is all dark dark oolong. I don’t get any lighter flavors from this one (certainly not any “honey orchid”)… but I’m starting to think my expectations are all wrong for these dan congs. It still doesn’t mean that they’re really “my cup of tea”, but there you go. Maybe it would be better if I brewed them gong fu style, but I feel like it wouldn’t make that much difference. I get notes of firewood, charcoal, and burnt grains. The mouthfeel is a tiny bit drying and a bit astringent. I thought this might be a tea I really enjoyed based on the description, but unforunately not.

So I had a little bit of Earl’s Garden from DavidsTea left; not enough for a 12oz cup, but about a perfect teaspoon (i.e., 1.5 actual tsp). I didn’t have great success with it hot anyway, so I decided a cold brew incorporating it would be good. I usually put 4 perfect teaspoons in my 16oz cup, so this time I put in one scoop of Earl’s Garden, one of The Earl Grey from teapod, one of China Rose (black) from ESP Emporium, and one of Chung Hao Jasmine (green) from Upton. Kind of like Rosy Earl Grey, but with the added berry from the Earl’s Garden. Turned out great! Fruity with lots of berries and bergamot, floral with strong rose and jasmine. Really quite a delicious cup of tea, and one I might recreate by doing the last three I mentioned above with the fourth scoop being Black Currant or Red Fruits black tea.

When I read some reviews of this one I really wanted to try it because it seemed like my kind of tea. I love cranberries and pears, so why not together with black tea? Luckily DaisyChubb sent me a sample! Thanks!

The leaf is full of big chunks of fruit, cranberries, apples, and pears (which look pretty weird when rehydrated). I was totally not expecting the aroma after it steeped. Mmm, caramel! Where is that coming from? Underneath the caramel are notes of black tea and appley fruit. The flavor is primarily fruit… definitely apple and pear, with some tart cranberry in the second part of the sip. The caramel notes manifest very lightly in the aftertaste. The black tea just kind of sits down at the foundation, not too present, which is fine with me because when it does peek out I’m not sure I like it’s flavor too much. The fruit flavors, possibly mostly the cranberry, are fairly tart and have a slightly drying mouthfeel. Overall this tea is very tasty, and very autumnal!

Another DavidsTea sample thanks to DaisyChubb! Thanks for sending me the last of your packet of this to try, you are too kind! This one smells peachy peachy peachy dry. It’s not what I would consider an absolutely natural smelling aroma—it’s not what most peaches smell like when bitten into—but it’s still a very pleasant one. The slightly rolled green oolong leaves are mostly buried in a relatively fine powder of flower petals, with some obvious fruit and almond chunks in the mix. Steeped, the aroma of the peach has transformed into a more natural profile, like the smell of baked peaches. This mental picture is helped by the buttery oolong scent that has joined it. The liquor is murky with an odd color that looks reddish amber in the middle but intense yellow on the edges. I find it hard to believe that there isn’t also saffron in this mix, but it doesn’t show up in the ingredients.

I’m unsure if I got a good tea:extras ratio here because there was so much flower petal powder in the bag, I just dumped the rest of it into my steeping basket. Still, it’s a nicely flavored tea, with different flavors that are distinct but also work together pretty well. That tart, fruity peach flavor is there of course, along with an almondy nuttiness. I don’t get as much buttery flavor as I did scent, and the green, fresh notes I would expect from the oolong are a bit suppressed here. There is a kind of rich, almost savory note in the back of the aftertaste at times… which also makes me think of saffron. Overall a pretty tasty cup of tea, especially for anyone who’s a huge peach fan.

Update: I tried a second steep of this after rinsing some of the “yellow” off and got a cup that actually looked like tea (clear orangey-yellow), and tasted like tart, fresh peaches with a lightly vegetal, greenish accompaniment. I do think I prefer it in this second steep.

There was something about that last tea that just made me feel ill… sometimes that can happen with a particular type of black tea (though I don’t know exactly which one). Hopefully it’s not a type that’s common to all DavidsTea black bases! I decided to go with this tea to fill my non-traditional Earl Grey craving and hopefully chase away lingering yuckiness. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had it, but I still totally love it. I have a bit left, but it’s definitely a reorder when I get through that.

This is another tea from my swap with DaisyChubb! Be prepared to see a bunch of notes on teas from that swap, heh.

I wanted to try this one because of the Earl Grey + red fruits (basically) flavoring, which would be similar to the bergamot, red fruits and jasmine tea I brought back from Argentina (minus the jasmine, of course). I read some reviews so I’m not expecting much bergamot flavor, but I did get a bright hit of it in the scent of the dried leaf along with a decent amount of berries. Right after brewing the tea smelled like black tea, berries and bergamot in that order, but after cooling a bit the berries take over. A lot of strawberry, a hint of raspberry and black currant.

The first sip on this was incredibly bitter! So disappointing. Remember that I’m very sensative to bitterness in teas, and someone else had problems with bitterness, so I should have known better than to brew it at boiling, I guess. Beyond the bitterness I can taste that it is very, powerfully fruity. Even without the bitterness this doesn’t seem like quite the right flavoring for me. The black tea base also errs on that side of whatever black that I really don’t like the taste of (and often that’s where the bitterness is coming from).

The first time I had this one I really enjoyed it but I felt I hadn’t put in enough leaf, that the flavors weren’t strong enough. I also brewed it fairly cool based on the instructions on their website, instead of where I would usually brew an oolong (especially a dark oolong). This time I’m pretty sure I have an appropriate amount of leaf, and a slightly hotter temperature, and also I’ve tried a lot more dark oolongs since this one, which was one of my first. I wanted to try this one again because thepuritea is having a 15% off sale right now until Nov 15 (use the code FALL), and I’ve been wanting to try some of their other teas (even though I really don’t need more tea right now).

So! This is very floral for a dark oolong, which isn’t surprising because it is scented with osamanthus flowers. The aroma I get from the steeped tea is dark and roasty, but with a definite sweet, floral note. I don’t really get the stone fruit aromas they mention, but the florals are sweet enough smelling to almost be fruity. That sweetness doesn’t carry over to the flavor/mouthfeel, which is actually more minerally (a character I’m starting to see in dark oolongs especially after having Verdant’s Big Red Robe). There are some toasty firewood flavors, and I do pick up a bit of a unsweetened cocoa note (not chocolate, but actual unsweetened cocoa powder). The high notes at the back of the sip are floral with bit of fruit. Revisiting this one, I’m less taken with it than I initially was. It’s still a very nice tea, and one of my favorite dark oolongs I’ve had, but I still don’t totally adore dark oolongs in general.

I have a sample of this thanks to DaisyChubb! I have returned from Las Vegas and even after sleeping a ton yesterday, I’m still exhausted, so I thought maybe this would be a good pick me up. I have a roasted maté with chocolate and almonds from Argo Tea that I haven’t had in a long time, but the aroma of this steeped really reminds me of it. Chocolately, almondy, roasty. There’s also another note in there that must be the raspberry, because it’s a bit berryish, but only faintly. It doesn’t stick out, really.

First I tasted chocolate and nutty almondy flavor (not almond extract/marzipan flavor, but more acutal nut flavor), but there was a note I couldn’t really identify at first that threw me off. I think it is the raspberry, but it didn’t really taste like raspberry. Then I read some reviews on here and now am definitely noticing a distinct banana flavor. It’s pretty tasty and I’m enjoying the cup, but there’s something about the fruit combo in there that’s throwing me off. I feel like I might prefer my roasted maté sans fruit. Also things that taste like bananas (that aren’t bananas) aren’t really my scene. But I’m glad I got to try this one, and I do feel a bit more awake now!

This tea is much the same in composition and overall feel as the other teas I’ve had from his company, though I would say this one is closer to the vanilla tea than the Earl Grey, which I feel was more successful than these other two. Like the vanilla, the tea base on this has a tendancy to get bitter, though this one lacks the creamy sweetness to smooth it over. The passion fruit flavor is fairly tart, but also has a mellower side which keeps it drinkable. These are so far decent enough teas and at least a step up from the conference teabags I would likely be having otherwise.

This morning I picked up this tea, one of the few other options at the coffee shop (I was disappointed that they don’t have any of their oolong teas for ordering; no doubt because they only have sachets at the shop). I steeped this for approximately 3 minutes, definitely not longer, and it still had a faint bitterness at first, though that faded as it cooled a bit. I’m getting the idea that the teas from this company are highly flavored, but so far they’ve been high quality flavors (if only the same thing could be said about their tea base). The vanilla here is strong but rich and a bit creamy with definite caramel notes. Unfortunately the black tea base has a tendancy to get bitter, and even when it’s not it’s not really that tasty. But a decent wake up tea this morning.

Hey I figured out how to use the sliders on my iPhone! Turns out my problem was trying to actually slide (silly me) them instead of just tapping. :p