Invader Zim

This is one of the best green teas I have ever had. It easily ranks up there in my top 5 favorite teas of all time. I have had the spring and autumn harvests, two autumn harvests (2011, 2012) now. I have to say that while Autumn made me like Laoshan greens, the spring made me appreciate them, Summer harvest made me love them.

It’s very rich and creamy for a green tea with a hint of salt. The vegetal notes are green beany, soy bean, edamame, not at all bitter and absolutely no astringency. It is naturally sweet and crisp and creamy and I know it sounds contradictory but it’s there…I tasted it and it was good!

I could drink this everyday, but I don’t want to lose my appreciation for it and take it for granted. I can typically get five really good steeps out of it. First steep is typically around 165* for about 30 seconds. After that about 175* for 30 seconds. Then I just up the steeping by a little bit, 45 seconds, then a minute, then a minute and 30 seconds. After that the flavor starts to get dull with a bite of bitterness to it. Now I know what I’m making with breakfast tomorrow morning!

I can’t believe I didn’t put any notes on this one yet. This tea is one of my favorites. It’s great hot, it’s fantastic cold, it cannot be oversteeped and it tastes soooo good. If you like mint I hope you had a chance to try this. I can only hope that it will come back next summer. I think (I hope) I have enough stocked up to last me that long!!

Throughout summer I was cold brewing this, and I would cold brew it several days in a row. And then when I felt I couldn’t get much more flavor out of it cold, I would brew it hot for a few steeps before discarding it! You can brew it for long steeps or short steeps or at boiling or at a lower temperature and you know what? It still tastes delicious!

This is one of those very few teas that I can drink close to bedtime and still sleep well. I loved this for after dinner. Even my husband who is not a fan of tea enjoyed this for after dinner. He was afraid it would affect his sleeping though, but I’m more caffeine sensitive than he is and I don’t really feel any side effects…except on an empty stomach.

Even with that I typically feel hungry in between breakfast and lunch during school and I pack a banana and an apple and it will hold me over until I can go home for some real lunch. This tea helped me not feel so starving during that time. I wouldn’t get “hangry” (feelings of anger due to being hungry).

Mint, I love mint of any kind. Cinnamon…real cinnamon, not that hot candy cinnamon flavor. Fennel, which I’m typically not a big fan of, was well done. Puerh, it wasn’t very strong and for this I would say it’s a good introduction into puerhs. Oh and it’s naturally sweet and delicious and I’m going to go drink some more now!

It’s a wonderfully cool fall day that made me crave a nice dark oolong. Now that’s something I never thought I’d say about roasted oolongs! Brewed this up in my 12 oz Italian mug with a brew basket. It tastes pretty much like it did before, see previous tasting note, but because I finding myself more tolerant of roasty notes this one has become that much more enjoyable for me. It was the perfect tea for the cool cloudy weather we’re having here today.

This tea was bizarrely different to me. I like to try a tea for the first time without looking at other reviews so as to not taint my own psyche. So, when I was finished drinking this one and then came back to look at how the other reviews were I was quite surprised.

The dry leaf was a light olive green and smelled slightly smokey. The wet leaf smelled like a sheng puerh, of a wet forest with moss and damp earth, The infusion was a nice golden color and smelled earthy to me.

The taste was just as different. The tea was light in general but I got that earthy note, with a hint of floral, some moss, damp earth, forest, wet woods…just so different from what the description says! Now this isn’t to say it was bad, this tea was very pleasant, the only thing that skews the rating on this for me is that there is some astringency at the tail end of the sip…I abhor astringency, I do not have the palate for it what-so-ever! Aside from the astringency this was a very interesting, in a good way, tea.

Backlogging from this summer again.

Brewed this in my 12 oz mug with a brew basket like usual. The dry leaf was different shades of olive, the leaves looked chopped and smelled slightly roasty, it reminded me of some gunpowders I’ve had.

The wet leaf smelled more like a nice forest after the rain. The infusions was a darker golden color with a slight roasted note and a hint of seafood.

The taste was slight floral note, hints of asparagus and green beans. There was a slight astringency at the end of the sip, it was hardly noticeable. There was a bit of a roasted note, possibly a smokey note in there too, it was very faint. I wonder if I would try this tea again now if I would appreciate it more now that I’m starting to develop a palate for teas that have that roasted quality to them.

Backlogging from over the summer during my little break from writing tasting notes here.

The dry leaf was dark green and slightly curled with a scent that reminded me of my mom’s potpourri. I brewed it in a brew basket and a 12 oz Italian mug. The wet leaf was a nice vegetal scent consisting of sauteed spinach and asparagus. The infusion was a nice golden color and smelled predominantly of asparagus with a hint of a floral note.

The taste was a nice light asparagus with a subtle floral note that I couldn’t pinpoint with a texture that was slightly creamy like milk. I found no astringency or bitterness and it re-steeped well three times.

Tried the last bit of my sample of this today using my 12 oz mug and brew basket. Too lazy for gaiwan. Besides, I was curious if it would be much different this way. It is a little different, but it’s still a massive vortex of flavors and notes.

I noticed I’m also much more tolerant of mineral and roasty notes than I used to be, making this tea that much more pleasant. I just wish my taste buds would have shifted a little sooner so I could have bought more, but c’est la vie.

I brewed this one gaiwan style, boiling water with very quick steeps. Did two rinses like the Verdant site says to. This one smells the way it tastes to me. But let me tell you a story first.

I used to work on a farm when I was younger. Go out in the morning and take the cows out to pasture. Then go out to the fields all afternoon throwing hay bails into the back of the trailer until no more bails would fit. Take the tractor to the barn and then stack all said hay bails.

Before heading out for another run we would have lunch in the late afternoon. Typically something that was easy to make yet hardy. Homemade deer sausage and burritos were fairly popular with homemade corn tortillas. I did this for a number of years. Then one year a business decided to buy the farm. Now all that stands there is a huge warehouse that I can see through the forest from my parents house.

This tea reminds me of the days that I worked on that farm. The corn notes reminds me of the corn tortillas. There are some hay notes I get in this tea as well that remind me of working hard days under the sun pitching hay bails. Underlying all that is the subtle note of forest. Where there isn’t farms, there is forest where I live. This tea is one that brings strong nostalgia for me.

This is a pleasant tea that isn’t typically of any other puerh I’ve had. Granted I haven’t had that many, but most are rich with forest and earth to me. This one it is much more subtle, a background note, one that you may not notice if your attention is elsewhere.

I know it’s been awhile, been busy, but I have to share this one. I don’t like darker, roasted oolongs, but Verdant has me changing my mind with them. Their darker oolongs have more than just roasty notes that smack you in the face that I highly dislike. There are tons of different flavor profiles within these oolongs, the complexity always amazes me.

So, I brewed this one gaiwan style, 5 oz ceramic-ware, with boiling water. Sorry, no info on how many grams of tea used…I don’t have a scale so I just eyeball it.

The dry leaf is very dark brown with a purplish cast to it, very pretty, and slightly twisted. It smells like vanilla. There are some roasty notes but it’s nice and soft, no smack in the face! I get something floral, but not like roses or jasmine, more like orchid. There is a farmers market a few blocks down the road from me that sells wildflower honey (it’s heavier and darker than clover honey), I smell that in the tea too.

The wet leaf kind of looks like a mix of browned fall leaves mixing with mulch. I smell that soft roasted note, creamy vanilla, and green bananas (?) don’t ask!

The infusions are a dark amber color with all the notes mentioned above but later on I smell a nice sweet cinnamon coming through.

The first steep was 8 seconds. I got the soft roasty notes, vanilla, creamy texture, a nice floral note…again I’m going with orchid, and wildflower honey. The aftertaste caught me by surprise…I had the texture of a green banana in the aftertaste! It was weird but not off-putting.

The next several steeps were relatively the same in taste profile as I worked up to 15 second steeps. The floral notes grew stronger and the weird green banana texture faded. The tea started to settle into itself with dominant notes of orchid, vanilla, and soft roastiness. After that I started to get sweet cinnamon notes coming in. Oh how it was lovely!

Again Verdant always amazes me in the complexity and quality of the teas they find.

Another from the sample pack.

Dry leaves are long and twisted with some white ones mixed in and smell of spinach and something floral. Wet leaves turn a nice bright green and smell slightly floral with a grassy-spinach note. The infusion is golden and smells a hint floral.

Taste is notes of orchid and grassy-spinach. There is also a slight creamy texture that I presume goes along with the orchid notes. There isn’t really a distinctive note of grass, but the spinach isn’t quite like you’d get from the store. It’s almost like it’s wild spinach that picked up scents of the grasses that grow around it.

Another from the sample pack.

The leaves look like bright green spears, not bright vivid green as matcha is, just bright green like grass is. The smell of the dry leaves is very light, I get only hints of something that isn’t quite smokey, roasted perhaps. It’s so light I can’t quite put my finger on it.

The wet leaves have a little stronger smell, not much, allowing me to get hints of something floral and green. The infusion is very pale and has a very light scent that just smells like tea, nothing more specific.

Taste is so very light. I tried brewing this in my 12oz mug and also in my 5oz cup. I did the 5oz cup second and with more leaves to try to coax out some more flavor. The smaller cup with more leaves did get a little more flavor but this tea is just so so light, not to be confused with weak.

Actual notes I got were floral notes in the front and a very light crispness throughout. Not much in the way of mouthfeel or aftertaste. It reminded me of an early morning with soft rays of light breaking through the clouds and warming up the dew on the grass. Bringing up one of the blades of grass and putting the little sun-warmed droplet on your tongue. So very light, so very soft.

Backlogging from yesterday.

From a sample pack, makes me glad I ordered it when I did since there were four different green tea sample packs and I believe there is one left, maybe two.

The dry leaves are green and twisted with some white leaves mixed in and smell very fresh, crisp and grassy. I even said yum out loud! The wet leaves smell buttery and grassy with the slightest hint of a roasted note hiding in there.

The taste is not quite like I’ve experienced before. It was grassy and brothy, like a miso soup, it was so good! Very umami, very yum! There was a silky-creamy texture with a nice mouthfeel. I couldn’t get over the brothiness of the tea, I’ve never experienced it quite like that, it was sooo good! I kept writing yum in my tasting notes!

This was a tea that I had been eyeballing since I saw SimpliciTEA’s review. I will definitely be getting more!

Backlogging from last week.

I ordered a nice little green tea sample pack as a new customer, this is from that pack.

The leaves are relatively straight and dark green and are very green smelling. There is no other way I can really describe it other than green. The wet leaves turned a bright green and smelled very oceanic with steamed greens.

The taste contained notes of seaweed and artichokes. There was a sweet juiciness that fills the mouth. There is a bit of astringency in this tea, something I do not care for. This is my first time trying a tea from Rwanda, one of the reasons I’m not rating this, the other being the astringency.

Backlogging from last week.

A sample I received from Stacy, thank you.

The leaves look like emerald spears and smell like homemade dough for pizza or for bread. Wet, the leaves smell like bread with greens mixed in, like zucchini bread, it smelled good, made me hungry.

Taste was like spinach bread, I’ve never had spinach bread but it tastes like the zucchini bread but replace the zucchini with spinach. There is a silky texture and it’s a bit astringent. There is also a juicy quality at the end of the sip.

I like this tea because it’s so different, I can’t say I’ve tasted bread notes like that in tea before, and I like it! Unfortunately I don’t like astringency at all. I feel like I’m about as sensitive to astringency as I am to smoke…which is pretty sensitive. If you can handle a little astringency then there should be no problem.

Backlogging from last week.

Sample I requested with my package. I didn’t want to buy a full ounce of this because licorice is in the ingredients and I’m not a fan of licorice. I do enjoy tulsi and mint though and had to give it a try.

Upon opening the pack I immediately smelled the mint and tulsi. I saw little bits of fennel and what I guess is the burdock root. I took a little nibble at it and it wasn’t licorice, it kind of tasted like dry bark, earthy.

Taste was nice and earthy tulsi with a little bit of spice from the fennel. The mint was more of a feeling than a taste. The licorice appeared in the aftertaste, but it wasn’t too bad, sort of mellow, it wasn’t that overwhelming cloying sweetness in the back of the throat that I usually experience.

This isn’t bad for an herbal blend with licorice. I would only drink this once in a while though.

Got my package in from Butiki today! This is the first one I tried. The leaves are dark green with some lighter ones and are slightly curled and twisted with a nice grassy-beany scent to them.

I brewed this in a smaller cup (about 5oz) but not actually gaiwan style. The wet leaves were a brighter green in color and the aroma was the same but with a creaminess to them. The infusion was creamy greeny goodness and pale in color.

The taste was at first a hint of something floral and juicy, it was creamy/buttery yet it remained crisp. Reminded me of buttered peas and beans. It had wonderful vegetal notes of green beans and asparagus. Perhaps a hint of spinach, but that could have been from my lunch earlier.

At the tail end of the sip I did get sweet corn on the cob that Bonnie got, but it wasn’t as prominent for me, it certainly didn’t make any less better. Definitely a good green tea and a good intro to Stacy’s teas.

I cold brewed the last of this one. I switched things up this time around though. I started off with my 12oz Italian mug, I put the tea in, added a little bit of brown sugar and a splash of vanilla. Then I proceeded to fill the mug…but not with water…with milk. It sat in the fridge for about 48 hours and I’m now drinking it on this disgustingly hot day.

The milk is slightly discolored from the pouchong and is incredibly smooth and sweet and creamy and I need to buy more for this purpose! I even had my husband sip it and he didn’t think it was too bad. He hates coconut and doesn’t care for tea. This is incredibly delicious!

Another one from the sampler pack. The leaves are dark green and have a wonderful vegetal aroma similar to spinach. The wet leaves have a higher aroma with notes of butter and brussel sprouts. I brewed this one in my 12oz mug, again being too lazy to brew gaiwan style.

I happened to be starting the computer up as I started to brew this and so I had left it brew for much too long making the first infusion very bitter. I added some honey hoping to make amends, but to no avail. But through the bitterness I could taste a nice creamy, buttery, vegetal green tea with hints of corn. I could tell this would have been an awesome tea had I not royally screwed it up.

So, I poured out the first infusion and made a second. Even after having the first one sit for at least 4 minutes the second infusion still had plenty of flavor in it! Here I could taste the wonderful creamy, vegetal green tea without any bitterness. The flavor was a bit muted simply because of the long steep time in the first time around.

This tea holds up surprisingly well, I bet you could get quite a few good infusions out of it…dare I say you could get 5??? Even through my mishap this still turned out to be really good.

No one has made any notes about this yet???
First!
I just ordered this as a sample. I opened the little packet and was greeted by a wonderful aroma, it was grassy in a savory way. Like a lawn that was mowed yesterday and today is humid bringing the smell up better. The leaves are long and green.

I brewed this in my 12oz Italian mug. I’m feeling a bit too lazy to do gaiwan style today. The wet leaves turned a beautiful bright green hue and the smell reminded me of a sencha, it was so wonderful. The infusion was very pale with notes of butter.

Taste was fresh and grassy with a floral note, orchid perhaps, and a slight nutty note, chestnut maybe. The texture was silky and creamy yet the tea remained light and fresh. What a wonderful green tea, this is what I like in green teas, this is why I crave them, why I prefer them.

Backlogging from this weekend.

A sample David was kind enough to send me.

Brewed this gaiwan style for 15 infusions after the initial rinse. I’m not going to write about all 15 infusions, just the first 5 where the most changes happened for me.

The dry leaves were brown and packed and smell was woody with a hint bubblegum, but not just any bubblegum, it was the Big League Chew bubblegum!

Wet the leaves unfurled with shades of green and smelled like mushrooms.
The first infusion was crisp and woodsy like conifers with notes of mushrooms and a sweet note that I couldn’t place. The mouthfeel was thick with a creamy-silky texture.

The second infusion was still very woodsy with mushrooms. The texture became very smooth, more velvety. There was a sweet spice starting to come in, something like nutmeg but not as strong, I couldn’t place it.

In the third infusion there was definitely more spice, the earthy notes were becoming stronger and pine notes were making their way in.

Fourth steeping had that sweet spice turn into black pepper. The pine notes were much stronger and the aftertaste was becoming thick, mouth-coating thick.

Fifth steeping the spice began to fade. The earthy and pine notes were getting stronger still with mushrooms coming back in. The aftertaste was very thick. The aftertaste coated my mouth with a texture similar to eating a too ripe banana.

The later infusions had more pine notes, earthy almost soil-like notes, and mushrooms. For my first time brewing my own pu-erh I would have to say this was a success!

I make my own herbal blend of lavender, chamomile, peppermint, and red rooibos. It’s a lot like this blend minus the rose petals, but it’s so much different. I feel like there is almost too much rose in this one. If you like rose then by all means go for this, but if you don’t I wouldn’t go near it.

One thing I do with my personal blend is keep all the ingredients in separate containers so that way I can put in a decent ratio as compared to this tea where everything is thrown together. I feel like if I would buy rose petals and put into my own blend at a different ratio that it would be so much better.

Alas, I know it doesn’t make sense to send all the ingredients separately, but I feel that it’s just better that way. I will stick to my own blending instead of buying this. I may buy rose petals and add as necessary though to mimic this blend eventually.

Got in some samples from Teavivre the other day and had to try this one right away. I love jasmine pearls…in case no one has noticed :) and this immediately made it’s way toward the top of my list.

These are beautiful little balls of green and white leaves with a very pleasant aroma of sweet jasmine and hints of honeysuckle. The wet leaves are heady without being cloying while the infusion is a very soft floral.

Taste is a wonderful soft sweet jasmine with honeysuckle in the tail end of the sip lasting into the aftertaste. There is a wonderful silky texture throughout the sip and an almost sparkling quality in the aftertaste.

It’s sweet jasmine without being cloying.
It’s floral without being soapy.
Caffeinated yet wonderfully calming.

The only problem of loving jasmine pearls is the price, usually they are expensive. Teavivre’s price for these on the other hand make these well worth the purchase. Excellent quality for an excellent price.

After having a sample of the Mi Lan Xiang Phoenix Mt Dancong and finding it quite fascinating I asked for a sample of this.

The tea leaves are a dark brownish-green and slightly twisted. Dry and wet the leaves smell of roasted fruit. After a quick rinse I brewed this gaiwan style. My sip of this tea left me baffled as to what the taste was. First I thought oh there’s some sort of floral note, soft light note of jasmine. Then I thought hazelnut with the nutty taste and creamy texture. Then there was sweet toasted marshmallow followed by an orange note but more in the taste without the citrus texture, kind of like a creamsicle. The aftertaste was spearmint with the tingling sparkling sensation.

What madness is this?! It seems whatever I wished to taste I could find in the tea! As I continued tasting I came across a lightly buttered croissant, lightly grilled stone fruit, and some sort of pine wood. As the steeps continued the roasted flavors came out more and mineral/stone notes came into play as well.

This is a bizarre and wonderful tea than unfolds and shows so much in flavor. It is not nearly as bold and has less roasted notes than that of the Mi Lan Dancong. It still has roasted notes and mineral notes, which I am not a big fan of, but this tea is just so complex that it makes up for those notes!

Sample from Teavivre

Cold brewed this time. I just realized that I didn’t write my original tasting note in here…I’ll have to do that later. Anyways, Cold brewed I found this tea to be much more enjoyable. Before when I brewed it hot I found it to be very floral without much of the tea base coming out and it lacked a bit of the sweetness that I have found in other jasmine. It also had a bit astringency no matter how I brewed it.

This time when I threw it in the fridge over night I gave it a sip and threw some in my travel mug for class this morning and boy was it delicious!

The slight astringency was gone, the jasmine had a wonderful sweetness to it and I could taste some of the tea base. The tea base wasn’t very strong, it was there enough to taste it and help balance the jasmine. But the sweetness of the tea was what really impressed me since I wasn’t getting any of it hot.

I didn’t add much sweetener either, 1 Tbsp brown sugar (not packed) for a quart of water with 2 heaping tsp of tea. That’s how much sugar I always add to cold brews, but this had that natural nectar-like sweetness to it…delicious!

I only have a little bit of this left and it’s all going to be cold brewed!

Thank you Teavivre for this sample!