Grinnyguy

Successfully gave it to my girlfriend, who luckily likes it more than I do!!

I was given this tea by my sister’s boyfriend, who visited Nepal recently. This is lovely, fairly similar to my Sikkim Temi. Very moreish

My tea timer on my phone told me to make this using 70degC water and to steep for 2 mins. I usually use slightly hotter water and am careful with the timings because any more than a minute makes it horribly bitter.

It was a bit of a pain to get water at 70degC and I ended up mixing together hot and cold water to get the right temperature, but I followed the instructions precisely, even heating the mug (I made it with a tea ball) to make sure it was right.

The result was a better cup of sencha than I have had for a long time, a fuller taste without being bitter.

I’m learning….

It’s not a tea that I can get used to. That’s not to say that I don’t like it, it’s just not what I expect from a tea!

This has a very sweet smell, sickly and sweet. Luckily it doesn’t taste so sweet, although it is sweet compared to most teas.

In the taste, the ceylon tea balances out the sweetness of the maple, and they are probably in about the right balance. But somehow the two flavours don’t quite mesh together.

I have enjoyed it, but I can’t say that it stands out as being my favourite tea – just as being a bit interesting and a bit different. Worth a try, but do like I did, and get a pack of a dozen bags, not a hundred!

It’s been in my cupboard for a long time and I’m glad to see an empty tin so I can put some bagged tea into a nice clean tin and clear some space.
It’s not that I didn’t like, but I’ve never really found that flowering teas are my favourites, and the same is true of this one. It’s pleasant, and the flower taste goes nicely with the tea, I just rather that they didn’t bother mixing them. Hmm…

A good solid darjeeling. I need to look up how much these cost, because it’s a pretty nice no-nonsense tea.
I find with some Darjeeling that it is too bitter without milk and yet so weak that the flavour gets drowned by any milk you add. This tea seems to get a compromise so that it works with OR without milk, amazing!

It’s actually an excellent Earl Grey, especially considering it comes out of an ordinary-looking teabag. I’ve had it sat around for a few weeks because I wasn’t expecting much from it.
It’s a nice fruity Early Grey, without the tendency of some Earl Greys to have a hint of dishwater in the flavour. If anything, the bergamot flavour dominates a little too much, but I don’t mind that when it’s fruity like this. It’s quite warming and gives you a cosy feeling inside

Nice solid black tea, good with milk

It’s all finished before I wrote a review, but I can say it is absolutely delicious. As the product description says, it’s more mellow than some ginger tea, but it has a bit of a bite to it anyway. It’s one of the best flavoured tea I have had in a long time and I will be getting some more one day. It’s one of my favourites, one of my girlfriend’s favourites, and one of my housemate’s favourites too – it must be doing something right!
Tastes like proper fruit rather than pretend stuff, tastes like ginger, and still tastes like black tea. Balance – that’s the word for it.
Recommended

Will at Iford manor teas sent me a sample of this tea when I ordered some other teas. It’s a beatuifully fresh-tasting clean oolong. It’s not a very very powerful one, but it’s good enough to taste just as good on the second brew. It has the sweetness of a first flush darjeeling but just the faintest smokiness of an oolong to remind you what you’re drinking. An excellent tea.

I had a tea party for my birthday with some incredible cakes and of course a selection of teas. I wanted to get a few more people enthusiastic about tea. I can recommend it, it was a wonderful afternoon. Of course there were people who asked what my favourite tea was, so I showed them this to give them the idea. It’s an excellent tea – probably not the best First Flush Darjeeling there is, but it’s delicious and much cheaper than some of the other ones you can get

It’s taken me three or four tries to get this tea right, something which I probably should have expected as it’s quite cheap on the scale of First Flush Darjeelings. Now I’ve got it right, though, it’s absolutely delicious and I know exactly why I tell people that First Flush Darjeelings are my favourite type of tea. So sweet and gentle, I just love drinking it.

For the record, the trick is to use slightly more leaves than usual, use water at 85degC and steep for 1.5 mins or thereabouts.

A colleague has been telling me that he drinks Earl Grey at home, so I brought him a sample of this to try. He was impressed! It’s a very good Earl Grey, noticably different (and in my opinion better) to most other earl greys and he agreed with me.

I don’t often feel like lapsang souchong but this really hit the spot yesterday

I had a really good christmas and got lots of new tea from people who see my obsession as an easy opportunity to buy me presents (I’m not complaining). But several of them remain unopened while I drink my way through this one. It’s easy (in a bag) and yet tastes very nice. It’s got the balance of fruit and tea quite well – it’s quite sweet but not so sweet that I screw up my face like I do with some so-called teas

I can’t decide whether the addition of the kwai flower improves this. I tend to think not actually.

I’m not really into flowery teas though, so the fact that this is getting is reasonably high rating shows that it’s a pretty good tea. It also stands up very well to being steeped several times without losing the flavour, so it must be good tea!

It’s a proud day today. I gave a cup of this to my housemate. He has had several cups of green tea at work and been very disappointed. They were cheap teabags and my personal experience is that it is very hard to find a good green teabag.

So I let him try a sip of this gyokuro that I was drinking and – wow! – he really loved it. He gulped down his builder’s tea (Tetley) and asked for a whole cup to add to the little sip he tried at first. He even said it was a little bit sweet.

I have been persevering with my housemate for over two years and he is finally showing real signs of understanding tea, and really appreciating the difference between the good stuff and the bad stuff. And he has such good taste in tea: as I have said before, I think this tea is excellent!

The best part about it was the funny face he pulled when he scalded his tongue. I know it’s mean to laugh, but I couldn’t help it and I laughed and laughed and laughed and he stuck his tongue out at me.

I have a picture in my head of what a green tea tastes like. Gunpowder tea, for example, tastes a bit like it, sencha tastes even more like it. Now I have discovered Gyokuro and it seems to me to taste more like a green tea than any green tea I have ever tasted.

It’s delicious, and incredible how you can get so much flavour without tasting bitter. The experience is like a rainforest. You pull the infuser out of your pot or cup and some impossibly vibrant coloured stalks are showing through the mesh. The infuser drips with yellowish exotic-looking liquid. It smells full of life and energy and you can almost hear the animal calls and rustles that you would hear if you were in darkest Paraguay.

It’s a rainforest in a cup. Impressive for a leaf from the opposite end of the world

All gone!

All gone!

This is my ‘normal’ tea for home at the moment. I’m often not the person who is drinking it though, because I often make it for my housemate while I make myself something more interesting. He invariably compliments me on how good it is and asks me what it is (he’s very good at showing an interest in my tea obsession). I can’t say it’s wonderful, but it does the job it’s supposed to, and it does it pretty well

This tea is three and a half years old, by my reckoning, so the flavour is starting to go. That normally makes for a particularly pathetic cup of tea. But today it turned out pretty well.

What I did was use more leaves (probably 1.5 times as much as usual) but brew it exactly the same (1 min using 80 degC water).

So, until I hear anything better, my solution to old leaves will be to use more leaves and treat it the same otherwise :-)

Lesson learned!

Very delicious AND it came in a bag, so it’s hard to complain about this. It came in the post from my aunt and uncle so that just goes to prove what wonderful people they are!

By the looks of it, it took me about a year to get through this 125g. All year, it’s been my most comforting tea, for times when I need my favourite tea because something had better cheer me up soon! Maybe i should get some new first flush darjeeling, I do love it!