Claire

This tea just helped me rock my finals. It’s no secret I have a lot of love for the folks over at Mandala, so last week I emailed Garret about a new thermos and some tea to go in it. Every morning this last week I popped about a teaspoon of this in the bottom of the new thermos, filled it up with water, and then topped it off when it started getting low.

Like the cake form of this tea, this stuff is good. This is really sweet, slightly sour, and not a very strong young sheng. I found even with keeping the leaves essentially steeping all day, it never gets overpowering either.

And if you need to get through finals week, this tea will give you a nice buzz. :)

Another genmaicha tea I’ve been drinking lately, and I used up the whole bag rather quickly. Eep! I love both the color the matcha adds to this and a little bit of sweetness. For some reason matcha doesn’t affect me in a caffeine kind of way, I just feel a little more awake and really mellow. Also got a little bit of sesame and rice krispie flavor in this.

I need some kind of email reminder to post tea logs, since I seem to be too busy to remember to do it on my own lately! Heck, this probably already exists and I’m not tech savvy enough to realize it.

After I weaned myself off of my week of herbal tea, I opened up a bag of genmaicha for my work/school thermos and I’ve been drinking it almost every day since then. That roasty toasty flavor is really calming to me (also I’m happy to report my eye twitch went away).

I really love Den’s. They are easily one of my favorite sources for Japanese green, and now I actually wish I’d bought more genmaicha in my last order!

My low caffeine quest continues, and the eye twitch is getting better. I think I may need to detox a bit more and even go without scotch for awhile though (eep). My liver probably needs the TLC.

This is really nice, and has made me quite drowsy. Good amount of chamomile flavor with just a touch of lemon and orange. It smells and looks wonderful. This may end up in my regular bedtime tea rotation.

Also I just left the bag in there the whole time. No harm done!

When I get stressed I sometimes get eye twitches – bothersome, but they go away once the stress is gone. In the midst of midterms and moving I was getting a frequent twitching feeling in my left eye, and even after we moved it wasn’t going away! So I have decided to limit my caffeine and alcohol for a couple of weeks at least. This means more herbal tea, so I picked this up at the grocery store.
I am a big chamomile fan, and this is pleasing but it’s not going to be one of my favorites. It’s rather sweet for an herbal tea and I keep wondering what kind of flavoring or additive they slipped in to make it taste so sweet. It is certainly pretty to look at though, and it’s helping satisfy my tea craving without the caffeine.

I have officially survived midterms and our move to a new apartment! We went from the Sunset district to a lovely place by Dolores Park. Our neighbors are very friendly and the kitties are excited by all the birds they can see outside the window.

I’ve been having this in my thermos for the past two weeks and it’s really lovely. Very smooth blend, good amount of body, and not at all bitter. A lot of full unbroken leaves in this tea and I am really impressed by the quality for the price. Hugo Tea, if you want to sell this in a larger tin, I would certainly not complain!

Rayn and I tried this last night and both gave it the verdict of YUM.

It tastes very much like a tamarind jarritos (mexican soda) with a little hint of vanilla. I’m pretty sensitive to sweetness and thought it was just enough sweet for me sans sugar. Rayn drained his cup in record time. Two thumbs up!

Oh, also it smells WONDERFUL.

I picked up a sample of this awhile back, as I fell in love with the Jun Chiyabari estate tea from David’s. This is a superb black, with robust toasty notes while being reminiscent of a darjeeling. It had just enough slight bite and fruity flavor to it. This actually reminded quite a bit of the Laoshan black, if the laoshan didn’t have as much of a malty base (I still like laoshan black better). Excellent tea.

I am busy Steepsters, oh so very busy! Lots and lots of school work and library work. Mostly I wanted to write to say I haven’t forgotten about Steepster or tea, even if it escapes my memory to write tasting notes lately. Rayn and our roommate and I signed the agreement on a new apartment today and I am very excited about it. It’s in a great part of the city and literally right next to Rayn’s older brother (who we are very close to).

I’ve filled my thermos up with Black Pearl the last couple of days and it remains a favorite black comfort tea for me. I’ve always liked drinking tea when it’s still very hot, and this one feels like it’s warming my chest when I take a sip straight from the thermos.

This is pretty decent, and I really love a good keemun, but this blend does not live up to the pants-kicking the phrase “best with milk” suggested. For breakfast/at school thermos teas, I like a tea that’s supposed to be drank with milk, but without the milk. It has to be STRONG. This is maybe lifting some 20lb barbells. It’s got muscles but it isn’t buff.

I am sitting in the library right now, and there’s a group of girls near me being rather noisy. For a split second I debated throwing a pencil at them, and thought of the line in Moby Dick “it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off”. Apparently I need to go to sea.

There’s been a post office kerfluffle with the Malachi McCormick that Becky sent me (the tea is somewhere in the US – beyond that the post has no idea), so I picked this up at the grocery store to get me through mornings and fill up my thermos on weekdays.
It’s very tasty, and absolutely better than anything I expected from the grocery store. A lot of full leaves in this tin with a generous amount of golden tips. This tea is malty and sweet, and as I discovered one day very difficult to make bitter/astringent even if you forget it for awhile.

I also found out today that I got a 98% on my first linguistics test. :)

It’s been an exhausting week Steepsters! I’m very glad to say my body recovered from the hit-by-a-car fiasco, but then it promptly adopted a cold. Here’s hoping the next two weeks are much better.

This shu makes me so happy. The flavor is rich, woodsy, and sweet. I got 1oz of it in my last Mandala order and definitely need to snag a cake. I wish I could pick up more flavors in this but my review will have to suffice to say this one is a keeper (and a drinker).

Sometimes I realized I’ve almost finished off a tea without posting a tasting note. This is one of those! I think that must mean I like it, but don’t have much to say about it. This pu doesn’t wow me, but it’s not offensive either. It reminds me of the kind of black teas I like to get for my thermos at school – not the really lovely stuff, but still far better than the teabagged crap they have on campus (which is not to say that all tea in teabags is bad, but the ones at my school certainly are).

I’m glad I tried the sample of this, as it’s a nice easy drinker. Probably won’t get a whole cake. That Xiaguan crane I got from Garret on the other hand…I need to post a note for that and I wish there was a lot more so I could horde it.

This is so nice tonight. Really mellow and slightly haylike, but there’s a bit of sweetness here too. This almost smells like honey and wood to me.

I’ve debated posting anything about my day yesterday, but it feels good to air it out. While crossing the street yesterday morning, I got hit by a car. Some crazy lady just plowed into me when I was halfway through the crosswalk; she did not stop at the stop sign. Good news: I am okay. After she initially hit me I put out an arm against her hood, thinking she would see me, and when she continued to push me forward I threw myself backwards out of the way of her car. She drove away, never even looked at me or the various people that were honking at her, and she never stopped. I pulled a number of things in my shoulder and around my scapula, bruised my tailbone falling, and have bruises on my legs. Very thankfully, I am alive and not broken. The whole thing still feels really surreal and kind of like a far away movie.

It feels really wonderful right now to just rest and drink some tea.

Another winner from Butiki!
Today was an earlyish day for me, Doctor’s appointment in the morning, and now I’m having some lunch before work. I’m sipping on this from my thermos.

I really like teas from Nepal, and this is not an exception. It’s Darjeeling-like without being astringent, very woody and tastes slightly like honey to me. It’s a wee bit on the malty side which is quite welcome today.

Stacy very kindly sent me a sample of this with my Butiki order, and it’s delicious! This has some really wonderful flavor for a young raw puerh. I was a bit surprised by the appearance of the leaves – they almost look like the little stickers that get stuck in your socks when you go on a hike. I did a quick rinse with this and started with a 10 second steep in my new (beautiful!) gaiwan. The flavor is slightly smoky, reminiscent of other young shengs but also very sweet. It tastes like oak and apricots at the same time. The soup is a pale yellow color and smells a bit like a nice fire (I mean that in a good way). I wonder how this would age?

Yesterday was Rayn and I’s 2nd annual Aquarium Day (observed). We went to the California Academy of Science on our first date, and later on we decided to go there around the same time every year. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/85659393@N00/8461690309/sizes/l/in/photostream/

I had this last night in my new gaiwan from Butiki, which is gorgeous! This tea really made me scratch my head for awhile. I kept thinking it’s really a black tea…no, it’s an oolong…but it tastes kind of like black tea…

This was like a tippy black tea and a fruity oolong. The flavor was unfamiliar, but that made it really fascinating (as you can probably tell from my ellipses brain wanderings). The first steep tasted almost exclusively like black tea to me, and in later steepings it got more and more raisin-like, and sweet. I think I need to drink this one a lot more so I can figure it out. ;)

More on this tea later, but for right now this is exactly what the doctor ordered. I have a feeling this ounce of tea is going to go bye bye very fast. Malty, rich, toasty, and cocoa like. Sooo good. This warms my soul.

Darjeeling Second Flush, I hardly knew ye. Drank the last of this today in my to go mug. It’s still pretty tasty but I miss my malt monster black tea. Thankfully my friend Becky and I are tea swapping and she’s sending me nearly a pound of Malachi McCormick! Am I lucky or what?

Some news for my Steepster pals: my hearing test resulted in good news and bad news. The good news is that while I do have some hearing loss, the audiologist said it’s not too severe and she did not think that I need a hearing aid at this time. The bad news is she does think I have some nerve damage inside my ear, and said I should see an ENT as soon as I can afford it.

In other news, I am now an official member of the Letter Writers Alliance! If you would like some snail mail, feel free to send me a message with your address. :) One caveat is that I am a pretty busy person, and it may take me awhile to get something cool out in the mail to you.

Only one teaspoon of this left! Thankfully Rayn gifted me some iron goddess from Samovar, and I have lots of oolong coming in from Butiki. :)

I haven’t been drinking much oolong lately, but it remains one of my comfort teas. When the day is long and I am tired the act of measuring out the rolled green leaves, watching them unfold, and inhaling the scent of orchids as it wafts up from the cup contents me. There is so much in that little cup of pale yellow liquid.

I am going to be doing something soon that I’ve resisted for a long time: getting my hearing tested. About 8 years ago my left eardrum was damaged in an accident, and my hearing never fully recovered. I think I have known for awhile now that it was getting worse and not better, but did not really want to admit it to myself. Today my doctor referred me to an audiologist for testing, and I called them and left a message. Baby steps. I can do this!

Yummmm. For some reason I hadn’t opened my sample of this yet, and decided tonight was a good night for it.

I can taste similarities between this and the laoshan green, but this is far sweeter, creamier, and slightly nutty. It feels thick on the tongue instead of sparkling. I taste a little of the laoshan green bean/asparagus flavor but it’s a lot more understated in this tea. The sweetness in this almost reminds me of a spring oolong.

Another fantastic tea from the He family. :)

I’ve had this the last couple days in the travel mug. It’s not the greatest darjeeling I’ve ever had, but certainly not bad either, especially for the price! A little bit of fruity sweetness and mild astringency.

I think I’ve either finally been spoiled by loose leaf, or this box of tea was stale. I’ve tried a couple of cups now and it tastes like dust and paper. Or maybe I’m just working in the library too much…

I am still in love with this. Not much more to say about it except I wish it was available FOREVER and I am almost out. But, I do have what I think is a funny story for my fellow steepsters about me, my tea thermos, and OMG GERMS.

We can’t have any food or drinks inside the department of the library where I work. The materials we have are too old/valuable and it’s one of those things where no one ever thinks they will spill but then they do, and holy crap that 400 year old copy of Dante’s Inferno is ruined. So right outside our double doors we have a little table where people can set their drinks or snacks. Last Friday I was working on foldering old newspaper clippings when I spotted a man lurking just outside the door. I looked up from my work and realized that he was touching my tea thermos. And not just touching it, but unscrewing the lid, looking inside, etc.
I should note at this point that I can be a real neat freak, and I am most definitely not okay with random strangers touching things that go near my mouth. So basically I was screaming on the inside at this point, but I managed to compose myself, got up and opened the door. I asked him, “Can I help you?”
He looked at me, then back to our various thermoses and drinks on the little table and said “Is all this trash?”
I said something like “No, it’s not trash, these belong to the people who work here. That is my thermos.”
Now I THOUGHT at that point he would buy a clue and put it down. But nooo. Instead he says “Oh”, and continues playing with the lid and looking inside. “Is this a tea thermos or something?”
I said “Yes. It’s MINE,” in my most notsubtle-ohmygosh-stoptouchingmystuff voice.
At that point he finally put the lid back on, set it back down and said “Oh okay. Have a good night.”
Steepsters. I had to soak that thermos in so much hot water you would not even believe it. DEFILED.