Claire

I think I could become very fond of this tea.

When I opened the package there were the familiar bright green twigs of kukicha, along with small yellow-orange flecks of yuzu and green matcha powder coating the inside of the bag (I reminded myself not to inhale too deeply). The yuzu smell is very strong when you smell this!

This brews up into a dark olive green liquid made slightly cloudy from the matcha powder. I haven’t had many yuzu flavored things, so this was fun to taste! There was a bit of kukicha flavor and then pow! tart yuzu, almost like lemon but my taste buds couldn’t quite place it. They went it’s like lemon…but no…maybe more like a mandarin…no…
The yuzu is a bit tart, but nowhere near hibiscus tart, just a pleasant citrus flavor. I think this could be really tasty iced.

This is a chance combination of tea and a book club!
I recently had an idea that I thought was really cool, but wasn’t sure how others would feel about it, so I decided to put it out on the interwebs for feedback. And the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

I’m sipping on Nepal Black from David’s Tea and starting up a new book club titled “Old Books Are Cool”. Every week we’ll be reading a chapter from a book that is at least 80+ years old, most of which will be free in ebook format and certainly free from the library. At the start of every chapter I’ll be posting themes, historical context, cultural context, and sometimes questions to think about.
I really wanted to find a way to share with people older literature that often gets ignored in today’s society, I think in large part because it’s hard to understand without all the contextual stuff that goes with it.

So why am I posting this? I want to open this up to any friends on Steepster, or Steepsterites in general who might be interested. Our first book will be The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells and I’m aiming to start next week. The book club is being hosted in google groups so anyone can participate no matter where they are, and if someone has a week they can’t read they can just catch up whenever they want.
If this sounds like something you’re interested in, just send me a message with the email address you’d like added to the group. :)

This is tasty! I was cranky with the ginseng green I got from Adagio, in large part because the predominant flavor was ginger and not ginseng. No such trickery here. I was a little spooked that the label said to steep this for 5 mins, but the flavor is perfect.

The tea looks like little mossy rocks. I showed them to my housemate and he thought they were cool too, even though as he said it “doesn’t look like tea”. I watched this one brew in the steeper. In the first couple of minutes the layer of ginseng starts floating off, and the water gets a tiny bit cloudy. After that the oolong leaves themselves start to unfold, tiny and leafy. Unlike most ball oolongs which really unfold during the steep, these stayed somewhat ball like. They almost looked like little pieces of rolled up seaweed floating in the water.

I love the flavor of this. The oolong flavor is at the forefront, tasting a bit like a roasted tikuanyin. After that there’s a hint of ginseng and a sweetness that reminds me a bit of stevia. This tea also feels really cooling inside my mouth.

Drinking the last of my sample of this tonight, and I’m sad to see it go! I noticed tonight that if I sip on this right away it tastes a bit odd to me, almost kind of bitter, but as it cools it develops the velvety chocolate I loved last time.

I’m doing homework at 10:15 on a Saturday because all my professors decided to be “nice” and make everything due the week before Thanksgiving break instead of after. What is there to do except sip chocolate tea while writing literary analysis?

I’ve been wanting to try a black tea from Nepal for awhile now, so I had to pick this up first at Davids today.

The leaves are long, wiry, and slightly curled with some golden tips. The aroma of the dry leaves is beautiful – full of malt and cocoa. While brewing the leaves unfurl to nearly three times their size, and turn a light brown color. This is a neat one to watch steep.
The flavor is spot on for me. Lots of malt, cocoa, and a hint of honey-like sweetness at the end. For some reason I thought this would be like a darjeeling, but it’s much more “robust” than that. I really like this!
We had a long day of running errands and ended up held up by a problem with the MUNI system for awhile, and I very much wanted a Decent Cup of Tea by the time I got home. This did the trick. :)

And the last tea we tried tonight. I have a confession: some day I will be a crazy cat lady. I love my two cats and completely spoil them. One of them is named Ginger, and I thought it was adorable that this tea is called “Ginger’s Oolong”. Yep, I’m a dork. I got a sample.

I was a bit surprised at first because most of it looks like very small leaves, almost as if it was made with a CTC oolong. I thought, who would make CTC oolong? Then I remembered I’ve drank tea bag oolong before, the beloved yamamotoyama, and while it’s nothing special it’s not awful either.

Brewed up this tastes lightly floral and fruity with a nice bite of ginger, almost like drinking a not very strong herbal ginger infusion. But unlike the Adagio supposedly-ginseng-but-really-ginger tea I had recently, this is good. Nice ginger flavor without being overpowering or drying out my throat and mouth. I think this works well with the oolong as a balancing act.

Edit, a couple of classic Ginger photos:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lubrvgPgJa1r581hyo1_500.jpg
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzkeizxv0j1r581hyo1_500.jpg

Rayn and I are having an exciting Friday night…of drinking teas and watching Avatar episodes. Okay, so it’s exciting for me!

I have to say that I don’t care for durian, as a fruit. The smell is, to put it nicely, kind of revolting. I once sat next to someone on the bus ride home who had a fresh durian with them, and by the time I got home I thought I was going to puke. Essentially, the taste is decent but the smell is not. However, I’d read/heard so many good things about this tea that I figured I had to at least try it. After all, I once tried durian ice cream and that was actually not so bad, since the smell was not as pervasive.

So I opened the dry tea up, smelled it, and went yuck durian! But I told myself to be brave, scooped out a few teaspoons and brewed a cup. And it’s good. Really tasty, in fact. Once the tea is brewed it’s like it loses the nasty durian smell and just retains the delicious tropical fruit smell/flavor.

It can happen…durian tea can be good!

Note: the bottom of this review contains a personal story I felt like sharing, but I’ve inserted a line for folks that just want to read about tea.
Perhaps this is just me, but most of what I’ve had from Adagio has seemed “stale”. I put FOUR heaping teaspoons in my steeper, steeped it for 2 minutes, and I got slightly green tea flavored water. I’d talk about what this tasted like, except that’s where it stops. I can tell there was some tea in the water – that’s pretty much it!

Ironically I just ordered something from Adagio, but it was a tasting cup. I really wanted a small cup to taste some teas with; the steeper I typically use makes 16oz, which just doesn’t work with lots of steeps.

And right after I ordered it, I had a funny mental intersection of tea, memory, and emotion.

When I was 19, I liked to get up in the morning and drink at least two or three cups of coffee. I lived with my friend Marc, who was brilliant on a ceramics wheel (and in lots of other ways too), and he surprised me one day with a HUGE mug that he’d made for me. The thing had to be at least 24oz. I loved it, and used it to drink BIG cups of coffee and tea.
About a year later, he drowned while in Africa for work. It was strange and shocking; he had traveled to lots of different countries, and was in great shape since he was an avid swimmer and rock climber. It took me a long time to accept that he had passed away, and then to grieve. A couple years later my then significant other dropped the mug one day, and it shattered into a million pieces. I felt shattered too.

Right after I ordered that tiny little cup, I thought it was so odd that nearly a decade ago I had loved that big, big mug. And now here I was wanting this tiny little cup to drink my tea.

Made a cup of this while I was getting dinner ready (pineapple chili). I’ve been in the mood lately for lots of black tea, and I’ve been sipping on Harney’s Malachi McCormick blend just about every day for the last week.

This is both surprising, and delicious. I was not expecting the smoky flavor at all. Having just recently tried a lapsang souchong, I was instantly reminded of that flavor but toned way down. No campfire sensation, just a hint of smoke. On top of that there’s a dark cocoa flavor along with a bit of honey-like sweetness and the slightest hint of malt. This is not astringent at all. Like the Malachi McCormick, this doesn’t knock my socks off, but it’s a really well done black tea blend.

I’ve been so busy lately! That probably won’t change until Thanksgiving, but thankfully there is tea and chocolate, and sometimes even chocolate tea.

I forgot to log this the first time I drank it, last week. I had just made a cup when a friend stopped by on her way home from work, we chatted for a long time, I made her some tea (peppermint), and then I made dinner for everyone. Somewhere in there I forgot about posting a review!

I was a little wary when I saw the tiny pumpkin candies; usually when I see candies in tea it means I will soon be thinking “holy sugar overload, Batman”. But like everything else I’ve tried from DellaTerra, this is really great. The chocolate flavor is rich, dark, and creamy. The pumpkin flavor isn’t strong for me, but still there mingled with the chocolate. I can also taste the cinnamon and nutmeg blending with the pumpkin and chocolate. And best of all, it isn’t too sweet!

Dessert tea is definitely not an every day thing for me, but DellaTerra is winning me over as a good choice when I do want some flavored tea!

My first time logging a chance combination!

My stomach has been off today. I got REALLY excited when I learned that Arizmendi, a local bakery, is making gluten free pumpkin muffins. I picked up two yesterday, one for me and one for Rayn to have for breakfast today. I think there was either some gluten cross-contamination or I’m just really not used to eating sugary/grainy foods anymore because my tummy was not happy the rest of the day!

I’m sipping on a combination of Adagio’s Anhui Emerald Seed (green) and some peppermint, brewed up at 175 for about 3 mins. It’s nicely pepperminty without being too strong, and since I haven’t cared for this green tea at all (it doesn’t seem to have any flavor no matter what I do with it) it might as well go towards the healing effort. :)

Another home run from Della Terra!

The first thing I noticed after I brewed this is that it SPARKLES. And I was so excited about it that I had to go over to Rayn and go “Rayn, Rayn! Look at this tea! It sparkles!!!” And he confirmed that yes, it was in fact sparkling. It looks like little glitter is just dancing around in the tea! So cool!

Then I smelled the tea: ripe strawberries and a little bit of rose. No pu-erh smell. After a few seconds, it was time to taste. I taste earthy pu-erh with no hint of fishyness. Then the juicy strawberry flavor, like strawberry candies. I taste just a hint of mango.

I’ll be honest, I was expecting this not to work. At all. But it totally does! And seriously, tea that sparkles? Della Terra just keeps impressing me.

A terrible thing happened today: my dark chocolate went missing. But never fear! After reading Nik’s wonderful review today I knew there was a solution, since DellaTerra so kindly sent me a sample of this with my order.

This tea smells absolutely divine, and I’m not just saying that because I’m tired and just studied for my philosophy of religion class tomorrow. It really smells amazing, like shoving one’s nose into a bag of cocoa. I put an extra teaspoon into my steeper because I wanted lots of chocolate flavor today.

And mmm, completely delicious. This is so close to the flavor of sipping on a cup of cocoa, and I’m sure it would be just like that with a little milk. I really like the teas from DellaTerra and this hits my dark chocolate spot!

I got a tagalong of these to bring to school. The tea at my college is sad. So, so, very sad. Neglected bags of tea sit in glass jars exposed to light and with the lids off for most of the day. Typically I bring some kind of bagged tea from home that is unremarkable but at least not blech, and help myself to the hot water in the cafeteria dispenser.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is quite delicious. It’s not bitter at all, and I’m sure the pyramid tea bags help quite a bit with the flavor and quality. The best part, though, was it reminded me of being a kid and chomping on giant slices of toast liberally slathered in apricot preserves (and butter of course, don’t forget the butter). This reminded me of an Earl Grey, but with more of a “jammy” flavor.

I just realized that Terri Harplady logged this yesterday, and she also thought of toast and jelly!

A couple of short notes today. I drank this early in the morning, and it is now late and I’m yawning!

My partner’s last name is McCormick, so when I saw this I went oh my goodness! It’s McCormick tea! I’ve been on a quest lately to find some decent, inexpensive, everyday teas and ordered a tin of this. After all, it bears the last name of someone I love very much, so for that alone I figured I could like it.

And I did! It’s not going to knock your socks off (in other words, it’s no Laoshan Black), but this had a pleasant malty flavor with a hint of cocoa, and no astringency. Although I disregarded the instructions and brewed it for 4 minutes instead of 5.

As a testament to its name, this is in fact a Decent Cup of Tea.

I didn’t mind the flavor of this so much, although it tasted like ginger, and not ginseng. And not really like green tea much at all. The problem for me is that it completely dried out the back of my throat to the point where I felt a nagging tickle back there. I did make it through about 2/3 of the cup before I just couldn’t stand the dry feeling anymore, and got up to go make a cup of Den’s sencha. Now I have to decide what to do with the rest of this – if anyone in the US or Canada wants it send me a message!

I’ve been making iced tea for our housemate lately, and Monkey Fart is currently in the pitcher. Tonight I had some with dinner (beef brisket and a big salad) and I have to say, yum! This tastes like a banana, and reminds me a little bit of hard candy. Pretty tasty, and this is housemate approved (but I didn’t tell him it was called Monkey Fart, it’s a secret).

No notes yet.

I have so many delicious teas right now! I’ve been in a real black tea mood this past week so I brewed this up today with lunch.

This is a beautiful tea to look at, with bright yellow pineapple pieces and flecks of white coconut standing out against the black tea. The dry leaf and the brewed tea smell just like pineapple! I took the first sip and tasted lots of coconut, which I love. As it cools the pineapple has really been coming to the forefront. In addition, this tea is not bitter or astringent in the slightest, and I think it would make a fantastic iced tea. I’m really impressed by the flavor of this, as I tend to dislike teas that taste “artificial” to me, and this does not.

I am also thinking about my dad today, who lives on the south west coast of Kauai. They had an emergency weather alert last night but he is fine now and at home. I’d send him some of this delicious tea but I think he actually gets sick of Hawaiian food!

Lupicia is amazing. Why don’t I go there more often? Because it’s in the mall!

I couldn’t resist taking some of this home after I smelled it. It has a warm aroma of strawberry and rose layered nicely on top of the black tea. I love the tiny roses mixed into this tea, it’s so beautiful! Combined with the tin they have for this I felt like I was buying some tea art.
Brewed up the liquor is a deep red color. It’s slightly sweet with a light strawberry flavor that doesn’t taste artificial. Then there’s a hint of vanilla and lingering flavor and scent of rose. This is so delicious that I almost regret not going to the mall more often.

Woah! I feel I should preface this review by stating that I really like whisky – especially smokey, peaty whisky. So when I opened the packet the first thing I thought was WHISKY!

This really does smell like a campfire when you open it – lots of smoke and peat smell right up front. Brewed, the liquor still smells smokey with an undertone of rich black tea. A few sips in and I can taste a bit of sweetness and there’s a bite at the back of my throat. This honestly feels like sitting in the woods around a big campfire, and that is what you are drinking. The wood, the smoke, a bit of earth.

I think I may need to try more lapsang souchongs!

Today was one of THOSE days. The kind where things keep going wrong and you start wondering what you did to piss off the universe. So it was clear that I would need two things when I got home: a piece of dark chocolate, and some good green tea.

1/3 of the cup in and I already feel so much better and relaxed. I love Japanese green tea. This sencha is a gorgeous dark green similar to the color of a gyokuro. I put two teaspoons in my steeper, filled it with water and watched all the beautiful leaves float up to the top. The liquor came out an almost dark olive green with a strong grassy scent. The tea tastes vegetal with a bit of sweetness and is getting more bitter as it cools. Mmmm.

Tonight is a tea review and story night!

First, story: where I live in San Francisco, parking one’s car is a real pain in the butt, so I take the bus to and from school/work. Some days taking the bus can be a real pain in the butt too! But today MUNI (the bus/train system in SF) gave everyone on my bus a special Halloween preview show, albeit unintentionally.
It was about 7:50 when the bus pulled up, we all filed on and it lurched forward to the next stop. And then stays stopped for about five minutes. Suddenly, the lights start turning off and then on again at random, and people start getting spooked and whispering to each other. The bus driver calls out that she thinks the bus may be dead, but she is going to try restarting it. So she turns the bus off, lets it sit for a few minutes, and turns it on again. Right as the engine coughs and sputters as it attempts to LIVE (Frankenstein cackle) the back door opens and closes several times in fast succession, and a few girls standing by it scream in surprise.
Sadly the bus stayed dead and our Halloween show ended, as we were directed to get off and wait for a new bus to pick us up in about ten minutes. By the time I got home I was really in the mood for some good TEA!

Second, tea: This smells sooo good. I think now I may not have used enough tea in my steeper, but this still has a lot of flavor. At first all I could taste was cinnamon – for some reason I can really tolerate hot beverages, so that may be a product of my sipping right away before it cooled. As the tea started to cool I could taste brown sugar, and then the sweet raisins. Yummy dessert tea! I think I am still a bigger fan of straight teas than I am flavored, but I like this and it was a nice cuppa after my spooky bus ride. ;)

Had a cup of this tonight while I finished up some homework. Again, I am struck by the beauty of the leaves. What started out as 2 small teaspoons of rolled leaves floated to the top of the water, and unfurled to fill my steeper with whole, dark green leaves.
The flavor is refreshingly sweet, slightly crisp, very floral, and buttery. This is oolong heaven for me. I’ve pre-ordered an ounce of the autumn tieguanyin from Verdant and I am so excited to try it based on this summer harvest. This is a fantastic oolong.

And as an example of how different two people’s tastes can be, I am including Rayn’s (my partner’s) “review”: he asked for a cup of tea and said he would love whatever I was drinking, so I brewed him up a cup of this oolong as I dreamily sipped away. When he took his first sip, I asked him what he thought. He said “flowers,” and then frowned. I asked, “you don’t like it?” He said, “I feel like I’m going to have allergies any minute now”.