Dinosara

Thanks to yssah for this sample! The dry leaf of this tea smells almost exactly like SweeTarts candy, and although normall I wouldn’t be into that, today it just kind of made me want SweeTarts. There are tons of fruit bits in this tea which I assume are the pineapple “gems”, but whatever they are, yssah’s packing skills caused them to get mashed together into one massive lump that I had to break up a bit before portioning out this leaf.

The steeped tea does not smell like SweeTarts, or any other candy really. It smells kind of like a tropical juice blend where I can’t quite separate out all the flavors. That’s pretty much what it tastes like, too. I guess I get definite orange, but the pineapple and mango are somewhat muddled. It’s a decently tasty fruity tea, and if you like tropical fruity teas it definitely fits that niche. The black tea base is kind of lame in that it doesn’t add much to the overall flavor of the tea, but it isn’t bitter or astringent and that is certainly what most people look for in a flavored tea (it is definitely all I used to look for! Now I’m just picky). I bet this would make a really delicious iced tea.

Sipdown, 187. Yes, I stealth-sipdowned a bunch of teas by removing ones I am sending in a swap. This sample comes to me thanks once again to Ellen!

When I first brewed this and smell primarily the wet leaves my first thought was that this was going to be on of those very buttered vegetal jin xuans. Fortunately it’s not too buttered spinach (though I bet it would get that way if you steeped it too long), but light and more balanced with a few florals as well.

I do like the designation of this tea as “Golden Lily” (I believe the actual translation) instead of Milk Oolong for a Jin Xuan, because many aren’t particularly milky and if you call them milk oolong people just get disappointed. And by people I mean me. :P It’s really more about the texture than the flavor… very smooth, almost buttery-creamy texture, but not much milky flavor. Anyway, I think this is a very nice jin xuan. I was honestly expecting to be more bored with it, as I typically am with Taiwanese green oolongs, but I am very much enjoy my cup.

Thanks to Azzrian for this sample! I am always interested in new oolong varietals, especially unroasted ones from Fujian/Anxi.

The steeped tea smells floral and buttery but also with a good helping of vegetal. The flavor is nice, very buttery. Slightly buttered vegetables, if they were also steamed with flowers to impart a floral note. The florals are especially prominant in the aftertaste. Almost sweet but not quite. I am quite enjoying this one! It is a really great example of the kind of oolong that are my favorite. At least that is one category I seem to have gotten pretty figured out.

Yeah, no. Sorry yssah, and thanks for the sample, but my keemun confusion continues. There are teas I LOVE with 100% keemun bases. But straight keemuns elude me.

I did ask yssah for a sample of this after she offered because of the fact that I can never seem to figure out keemuns. And I think this is probably a decent example of a keemun. It’s very English Breakfast, bold and robust. A hint of smoke, which is something I have tasted in other high-quality keemuns but something I basically dislike. This would probably be fine with milk and sugar, but at the current steeping parameters it is too strong for me. Slightly bitter and astringent, but it seems like those are things some people look for (or at least don’t mind because they milk and sugar their tea.

I have a sample of Butiki’s Congou Keemun coming and I’m interested to see how I react to that. If I don’t like that one I’m pretty much giving up on straight keemuns :P

This is a pretty delicious Chamana herbal tea as well. I don’t know that I’ve ever had lemon verbena, much less a tisane that is based primarily in it (and I suppose also chamomile), but it is quite lovely. Lemony in a way that is different from lemongrass but I can’t articulate how. The chamomile is very nice in here… Not musty, just slightly appley that works well with the verbena. There is also supposed to be clementine in here which is probably also adding to the entire flavor. I mean, it’s not distinct really but I suppose that the lemon is perhaps a little sweeter and more orangey the more I drink. Almost like a Meyer lemon!

This is a blend I feel like I might be able to recreate, the only kink is the clementine. Perhaps some orange peel could also work. It’s an herbal I really enjoy, and I am definitely on the lookout for those for the evenings.

It has been forEVER since I have had this tea. I have been pushing it around my sample drawer for a while now, never wanting to use it up. Also it brings back good and bad memories. Good memories of kind Steepsters sending generous samples, which is how I found out about this in the first place. Bad memories of that one year that a bunch of us ordered samples from thepuriTea during a Black Friday sale everything came in shoddy sample packaging.

This is still pretty good to my tastebuds, although I am not entirely sure it deserves the 90+ rating I had given it before. It’s pretty authentic passion fruit, and the black tea base is smooth and slightly honeyed, which is a lovely combination. You don’t find a lot of straight passion fruit black teas out there (and I don’t like Harney’s), so I may eventually pick some of this up, one day. We’ll see how long it takes me to drink the rest of my sample pouch (probably 1.5 cups)

Thanks to ToiToi for this sample! I forgot that I had asked for and gotten a sample of this one, it was hiding in my sample drawer under several others. I was thinking about sipdowns and green teas, but I couldn’t bring myself to do either, so I decided to go rose black.

Mmmm, smells lovely for sure. Very candy-rosey, or like rose preserves. The flavor of this one is thinner and not as sweet as I might have expected. I think I have also gotten used to a thicker, maltier congou base for my rose blacks, and isn’t really up to par. Part of the joy of rose black tea is a really nice black base tea that complements the rose and supports it (I just realized that I would love a plain Rose Laoshan Black). This one is decent but I have other favorites. It’s a shame because the rose is very nice here. It just need some better support.

Sipdown, 193. Cold brew.

This was a pretty tasty cold brew! The pear was nice and juicy, and that robust black tea flavor also came through in a tasty way. This was a tea that tasted much the same cold brewed as it did hot, but that’s ok because it was tasty to begin with.

Sipdown, 194. Second test of my kettle/setup/tastebuds is an unflavored green oolong that I have had before and recently, so I know what the flavors should be.

This is a butterier oolong, but the flavor is lying within the acceptable range of savoriness for this tea. This tea is lightly floral, buttery, and fresh and green. Quite a nice oolong, and it convinces me that whatever problem I was having yesterday is finally gone.

I wanted to brew a tea this morning that I had had before, knew was sweet with no hint of butteriness or saltiness, and was relatively robust to test my kettle, brewing setup and taste buds. Everything has been newly cleaned (well, maybe not the taste buds), so here’s hoping the weird flavors from yesterday are gone.

Yay I think the off flavor is gone! This is sweet and fruity and not salty or savory at all. I do quite enjoy this tea and if Tower of London didn’t exist, this one would have to have a place in my cupboard I think. It’s definitely good for those times when you want a very flavored tea. It’s smooth and yummy.

So in trying to figure out my weird tainting of my tea this afternoon I tried the water from my kettle again and my boyfriend also agreed it tasted a bit funny. The water is very hard here so even though I filter it, I had some mineral buildup on the inside. I brought it home and boiled some white vinegar in it (thanks Michelle on Steepster forum, for that tip) and now it is sparkling clean. Trying it out now and hopefully everything is back to normal.

I am having some of this tea because I haven’t been feeling 100% lately, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to take some precautionary teas. I think that the taste is gone but I am not entirely sure. I mean, this tea is fairly medicinal, so it’s possible that its just that. I mean, it’s certainly not savory like before.

I feel like I’ve had a lot of green teas and green oolongs lately, and I wanted a rich black tea. This one popped into my mind earlier today when I made the list of the top 10 rated teas in my cupboard, so I dug out my small pouch of it. I had used up my samples from Teavivre but hadn’t gotten around to ordering any more, but then KittyLovesTea generously sent me some more pearls in one of our swaps.

I took a deep sniff of my cup and was reminded about why I love this tea so much. Mmmmm chocolate. Ugh cool down, black tea, why you gotta be so hot?? It is kind of like torture waiting for this to cool. And what is more torture is sipping this tea and finding a wierd savory note at the front of the sip. WTF! So I tried some of the leftover water in my kettle and it did taste maybe a little odd but it didn’t taste savory, and the water from the Brita is fine. That leaves my steeping equipment… my infuser was recently washed because I dropped it into dirty water in the sink, but I got the first savory steep before that, so I can’t imagine. Maybe I need to really scrub it or something. My cup seems fine but who knows.

Ugh, lamesauce. I can’t even enjoy this tea, which is a real bummer.

I will always take the opportunity to try Dammann blends I haven’t tried yet. This one has even been on my list, but it wasn’t a high priorty for ordering. But now thanks again to Ellen I have a sample yay!

Ok there is for sure something weird going on with some element here, but I don’t know if it is my brewing setup (recently cleaned, but not too recently), water (maybe?) or the samples. This does not have the same powerful salty flavor as the Nirvana tea earlier today, but it does have kind of an odd savory note. Fortunately for me, there’s plenty of lovely bergamot, orange blossom and violet as well. The savory note is fading as the tea cools as well. This is a very violetty tea blend, though it doesn’t assult you with violets. More just provides you with enough to roll around in. Don’t think I would restock this one (and I’m glad I don’t have 100g of it), although I am very glad that I got a chance to try it.

Sipdown, 195. Cold brewed this one for approximately 8 hours.

This turned out pretty well; intensely floral, and sometimes maybe too much floral, but overall tasty. No astringency in the cold steep, as expected, although I would perhaps steep this one for less time on another cold brew so that it was a little less overpowering.

Sipdown, 196. I’ve wanted to try this one for a while, and now I have finally gotten a chance thanks to Ellen. I love fig everything, so a fig blend tea was for sure interesting to me.

It smells nice and fruity, although somewhat like a generic fruit flavored sencha. The flavor shocked me though! WHAT is that horrible savory flavor?? It tastes like if you made a miso soup with waaaay too much miso. It fades pretty quickly and I am left with the flavor of berries and figs (it reminds me a lot of Thé du Hammam by Le Palais des Thés), but woah. The initial part of the sip so SO salty tasting. WEIRD. This does not seem to be normal so I am assuming some other wonkiness here that is causing it.

I got a sample of this tea in my recent swap with yssah and had to add it to the database without any other information other than it is apparently a Yunnan golden buds type tea. Also I don’t have a clear method for steeping golden yunnan teas, so this is kind of an amalgamation. Hope it works out! I do have enough for another cup.

The leaf on this one is really pretty. Lots and lots of gold everywhere, and nicely long with a bit of fuzziness. When brewed there are a quite a few hay-ish notes in scent of this that I have been noticing in Yunnans lately. The flavor is slightly sweetish, with some earthy sweet potato to it. A bit of hay and woodiness in the flavor as well. It’s kind of thin, so perhaps I should have steeped this one longer; I’ll try 3 minutes on my next go. Overall a decently tasty Yunnan but I would have expected perhaps a bit more (sweetness, yamminess, honey/caramel notes) from such a nice looking gold tips tea. Then again I tend to prefer Fujians to Yunnans so I don’t have as much experience with them.

Sipdown, 197. Hmmm just noticed that my past two teas have been “happy” themed. Maybe I am trying to subconciously improve my mood since I had to get up early and I have a headache. :P Thanks to GiggleGoddess for this sample.

I was curious about this tea because it is a guyusa, and I wanted to see how it compares to Butiki’s guyusa blends. Not that I am looking for a replacement, but more just curiosity. As for steeping parameters, I can understand them for guyusa and green rooibos, but I just realized there’s also jasmine green tea in this blend. Glad I dropped the steep temp to Stacy’s for guyusa.

Woah this tea is getting very dark very fast, but it smells pretty tasty. It’s got that green, leafy guyusa smell, but it also smells sweet and fruity as well. It smells like strawberries, but even though it doesn’t smell like fresh strawberries, it’s not quite candy either. More like macerated strawberries you would get with strawberry shortcake.

This is pretty tasty! Very strawberry, but surprisingly I like it considering I am usually not the biggest fan of strawberry flavor. The guyusa keeps the strawberry from getting to sugary/candy sweet, and gives it a green note that works well. The hibiscus and rose hips in this must be pretty subtle because I can’t really tell that they are in there. There is maybe a hint of tartness in some sips but again that helps cut down on what could be an overly tooth-aching flavor. Anyway, this is a pretty tasty blend and it reminds me that I should pick up some more guyusa blends.

Sipdown, 198. Decided to go for this since I knew it was tasty; I thought I might have two servings of this left but apparently I’m bad at judging becaues it happened to be a sipdown. Also, I’ve decided that I have a new cupboard rule: now that I’m below 200, I will be allowed to order tea when I get to a point where my new order won’t increase my cupboard beyond that. So if I want to order 5 teas from a company I have to get down to 195 first. My next goal is 196 for a Butiki order, but I also will have a swap coming in that time, so I’m going to try to go lower in the meantime.

I kind of overleafed this one a smidge so there is a slightly too-strong note in there, but it is still delicious. Yup, when I go to Paris hopefully this July, I will definitely stop by Fauchon for some tea (and lets face it, delicious candy!).

Thanks to yssah for this sample. I am on such a rose black kick lately. I now have several 1ish cup samples of rose black but I think I am going to save the rest until my rose black from In Nature tea comes and have a rose tea taste-off. This company seems to be a wholesaler only as there is no information on purchasing their teas from their website.

Also my nose has decided that it is a faucet lately. It’s not stuffy (good, so I can still smell the teas) but it is very sneezy and runny. Could be allergies, I guess; it’s been a long time since I’ve lived this far south and maybe my allergy antibodies are all off. Time to get some local honey at the market.

This tea brewed up kind of pale for a black tea but I am pretty sure it is a black. It smells kind of odd; like roses, I guess, but also a little chemically? Actually I know what it smells like but I don’t want to admit it to myself because I will never be able to drink the tea. I have never associated that smell with roses. The flavor is sweetish but yeah, chemicals. Weird! I have never expienced that with a rose tea. I guess this is an unexpected sipdown because I won’t be drinking more of this. So now I can say that the scent I am reminded of here is old alcohol-preserved museum specimens (animals, I mean, generally lizards), which I used to work with ages go. Incidentally it is also the scent of the heinous Chinese liquor baijo. Not what I was expecting this early in the morning!

Sipdown, actually 199 (though I still haven’t added the LITs that aren’t on Steepster yet). Time to sipdown an Argentine herbal blend.

What an interesting blend of flavors; I could smell the cinnamon and ginger from the bags, and definitely in the brewed tea along with the fig for sure (my boyfriend says: smells like Christmas). Well shoot, it would figure that the one rooibos that I really enjoy would be basically impossible to find in the states. This does taste like Christmas, with warm spices and fruits. It reminds me of mulled cider, even though its not particularly appley.

There is another Chamana tea that I really like, so maybe I will be able to find them someday. Otherwise the next time I go back to Argentina (whenever that might be…).

Sipdown, 195. Now I can add those other teas and only be at 200 lol. Thanks to yssah for a sample of this tea.

I guess this was another tea that I didn’t really look at the description of before I asked for a sample of it. I didn’t realize it was an herbal, and a medicinal one at that. I love guanabana fruit but this is the bark, twigs and leaves apparently. Annnd that’s what it smells like. Musty, kind of like old hay. And the flavor is odd because it tastes intensely dusty, but then underneath that it is sweet and kind of fruity like a soursop. But man, that dusty taste! It’s almost enough to make me sneeze.

I won’t rate this one because it is really outside of my usual, but it was interesting to try!

Sipdown, 196. Thanks to Ellen again for this sample!

I tried this tea at Asha’s location in Berkeley but perhaps under suboptimal steeping conditions. It was good but they had a 2oz minimum for tea purchases and I didn’t feel like investing at the time. It’s always nice to try teas under your own control, how you would “usually” steep things. So I requested a sample from Ellen to give it a second shot.

The tea smells oh so floral and a little sweet even. The taste is pretty vegetal but also floral and fresh. It once again reminds me that I enjoy alishans but am not enthralled by them, and that’s just fine. This is quite a good one, though.

Sipdown, 197. Thanks to Ellen for sending me a sample of this tea!

I have never had a shincha before but I am curious about them. Of course, I am totally going to butcher this tea because I am not steeping it Japanese style but in a more western way because that’s what I have the equiptment for right now. The leaf is very fine and a good amount made it through my very fine-holed infuser, but now I have a dark yellow cup that smells amazingly nutty and buttery.

Well shoot my steep was a little too long I think, as I am getting a bit of bitterness/astringency that others have noted with too long a steep. The very first thing I taste is fresh and so buttery, but then that astringency takes over.

I decided to try a resteep of these leaves at 90 seconds to see if I could end up with a more pleasant cup. This one smells less buttery but it tastes much sweeter, although there is still a hint of astringency here.

Honestly this is similar to my travails at the beginning of my experimentation of any somewhat fussy variety of tea. I could see myself a couple of years from now coming back to a shincha and brewing it properly and loving it, but that would take some time and I am not so much in my tea exploration phase anymore. But glad I have this one and another sencha from Den’s to experiment with a bit.

Sipdown, 198. I cold brewed this one but I learned two things doing this: 1) it really does make a difference how much leaf you put in and 2) I use a lot of leaf for my cold brews.

I’m not sure it was because of the underleafing or what, but this one wasn’t great cold brewed. I suspect it was partly the underleafing (~1.5-2tsp for 13oz) because there wasn’t enough flavor in it to cover up a slight bitterness that may have been the hibiscus. Anyway, it was a learning experience. I had thought the glasses I was using for cold brewing were 16oz, but in the process of doing this I measured the water and found out that they are actually about 13oz. In the past I have used 2 TBSP of leaf for making cold brews in these glasses, thinking I was using 1 TBSP of leaf per 8oz water. Well I will have to try a few gradients and see what works best, but 2 tsp for 12oz (what I would use for regular brewing) is definitely not enough!