K S

I just read Peppermint Plant’s review. I sure can’t top it. Love this one (along with the other twenty some Teavovre’s I tried).

Sip down :( sigh, but I have to make room for the next round of samples that are in route :)

I think I have always liked this one more than most folks on Steepster. I love the sweet smell of the dry leaf. I love the stew beef smell of the wet leaf. I love the fresh crisp taste with the nice bite at the end. I love the clean green lingering aftertaste. This is just a good satisfying cup with far more depth than it should have for the price. You get all this with only a one minute steep.

I thought about having an Earl Grey-athon today, but when I arrived at work, I remembered these leaves were in the press and they still had love to share. Maybe not the jolt some of you want first thing in the morning but I need to ease into the day. The gentle goodness of this with its sweet potatoes and caramel notes is perfect,

A novice tea drinking coworker came in to my office while I was sipping and just stood around like a puppy. I knew what he wanted but I let him hang awhile. Finally I told him if you want tea you know where it is. He was in the drawer before I finished the sentence. Hilarious. He grabbed a Twinings white tea bag. I smiled and told him how to get the most out of it. He left happy.

Revisited the wonderful tea this afternoon. As good as I remembered!

Under the heading of You might be addicted… All weekend I kept thinking about was getting back to work where the bulk of my stash is stored and trying a mix of Zenjala Coconut Almond and Chocolate Mint Fusion. Both are so good on their own.

Ok, do you remember in science class when you did the experiment with waves. When the amplitude of the waves heading at each other became equal the waves cancelled each other out (or something like that).

Anyway that is what happened here. Despite this sounding like agreat combination, what really happened is they muted or muddied each other. Sad, but wiser. I still have a couple great teas to drink on their own :)

The nice thing about using leaf from last night is that it is almost as easy as a tea bag when your brain didn’t get up with you. Now that I have had a couple mugs I can report the leaf survived the night without me very well.

After I did my usual Saturday morning restaurant tea, I drank sodas most of the day. This evening I steeped this one. Now I wonder why I wasted my day not drinking this. It is so good.

Oh wow! This is good. Sweet shredded coconut, almond slivers. Mmmm. You don’t really taste the green tea which seems a shame but you really don’t miss it because, well its coconut and almond. I gave the second steep to a co-worker. He buzzed me later and said, “You have got to try this on ice” So I did. He was right it was a great glass of sweet refreshment.

As I was drinking this I kept thinking I have got to mix this with the chocolate mint fusion puerh. I am thinking Almond Joy in a cup. I will make this thought a reality come Monday.

Swapped presses today with a co-worker. I got the second steep of this. This has become his favorite tea. It is a fine Earl Grey.

I used yesterday’s leaf and steeped three more cups (total of five – 12oz mugs). The last still had nice floral flavor and the lemon and lime were still mildly present.

Rehashing a bit the first cup was so lemon lime it tasted fake – like you would expect from a flavored tea bag. Maybe if I used a short first steep it would be greatly improved. The rest of the cups were excellent and highly floral like a high mountain oolong with lemon lime more in the background. I think the base is Huang Jin Gui (Golden Osmanthus) and it is very nice. Really like this one. If I can figure out how to improve cup one I may up the rating even more.

Not a full review yet. I opened the bag and it was heavily lemon lime. Kind of too heavy to the point of smelling artificial. The first cup was not nearly as heavy as it smelled but I couldn’t make up my mind about it. The oolong base was coming through but in the background.

As I steeped cup 2 I noticed how full of leaf the press had become. This time the lemon lime are greatly reduced. This is a good cup.

As the cup cooled the highly floral oolong bagan to shine. Sweet, sweet honeysuckle. Now this is a great cup. I don’t have time to take it further tonight but I think this will go a lot longer.

Until I get to see what comes next I won’t rate it. The first cup was a mid 70’s. The second strarted mid 80’s and became a solid 90.

My wife came through surgery with flying colors. Getting anethesia out of her system is a different story. Been a long afternoon. They had NO tea in the waiting room. None. Zero. Nada. Oh, the pain. Turns out they had a pitcher of ice tea out at the nurse’s station. Except I didn’t know it until too late. sigh. So I came home and grabbed this one. Its tea. Its cold.

Between White Peony and Silver Needle in complexity but with unique characteristics I haven’t seen in a white tea before (hint – chocolate). A longer review on my blog http://theeverdayteablog.blogspot.com/2012/07/zenjala-tea-company-golden-monkey.html

From last night – Been a while since we had this one. Good solid rooibos without being too rooibos, you know. The spices give it a nice zing and mellow out the rooibos. Good stuff.

Today I could taste the vanilla. I didn’t catch it last time. It is very light. The bergamot is nice and medium but the light touch of vanilla makes it very smooth. This is a really good Earl Grey.

My wife is having gall bladder surgery tomorrow. The hospital just called wanting enough money up front to buy a small car. Are they serious? Don’t they remember they took all our money last year? sigh. I need tea. Oh, and they aren’t getting a dime until it clears insurance.

Chugging this one chilled while reading Steepster.

Its Saturday. That means Mother Parkers :)

I have only been sleeping about 4 hours a night for the last few weeks due to stress. Last night this helped me get nearly 7 hours. Yeah!

This is a weird tea, in that when I look at the list of ingredients I think I shouldn’t like it, but Empire understands blending and this stuff just works.

My how my tastes have changed. I asked for this one not knowing what it was. The name just sounded interesting and it was thrown overboard in the Boston harbor :) I opened the tin and could smell smoke. Uh oh. So I take 1 scoop of leaf and steep 3 minutes (the instructions said 4-5, but I was afraid), Last fall my first Keemun threw me. I didn’t know if I liked it or what to make of it. So here I go again. Wow, it doesn’t taste like an ashtray. There is a woodsy kind of smoky thing going on. This tea is sweet. The smoke and sweetness linger long after the cup is gone. There is no bitterness. No astringency. This is really good. No one is more surprised than me. I had three cups. Go me!

I can’t figure out how to grab the pictures off Zenjala’s website. The teas come in a nice tin. When you open the inner pouch the bergamot fills the air. I love the smell of bergamot in the morning. When steeping the scent of the tea is stout. Assam, Ceylon? I don’t know but it smells inviting. Although the bergamot and tea scents are strong this is not an overpowering cup. Bergamot is medium strength and you can still taste the tea. I don’t get the creamy reference in the taste, but then I have been living off the chocolate mint puerh lately. It does have a creamy texture, maybe that is what they mean. Not bitterness. A nice light bite. At any rate this is a solid Earl Grey with what seems to be cinnamon notes, though there is no cinnamon in this. 2 steeps. Quite nice.

This is the third day in a row with this neat puerh. Today only one cup with yesterday’s leaf to see if it could handle it. This is the 4th cup from the leaf and I steeped about 6 minutes. It looked a bit weak but was still quite chocolate and puerh flavored. If you can’t tell I like this one a lot.

Zenjala is a new company to me. This one sounded so good I had to try it. I have added chocolate mint to puerh for over a year and like it. This one has real curls of dark chocolate mixed in with the puerh. It smells so good in the pouch. I am putting together a longer review for the blog but for now let me say this is awesome. Spearmint makes me nervous but in this one it is light and well blended with the peppermint, chocolate, and puerh. The longer you steep the more present the chocolate becomes and the less pronounced the mints. The puerh base adds a pleasant taste and shu aroma. I used sweetener as I think chocolate and puerh both beg for it. High yum factor. I steeped 3 times and I am pretty sure it would go more.

Sipped on this all day. Today I got something a bit different than last time. The charcoal smoke flavoring is the most obvious flavor. Beyond the obvious is a grainy bread flavor. This may be what the description is calling caramel. Occasionally I got hints of cinnamon. At one point and ever so briefly, there was a fruity flavor that immediately made me think peach. It didn’t last long and did not repeat. This never develops anything approaching a tiguanyin oolong taste or bright floral notes like the alishan oolongs. It does have a lingering sweet aftertaste and offers a nice cooling sensation on the breath. A nice Dongding.

So on top of everything else, went to heat up water in the micronuker and after 3 seconds it went Zzzzzzzt and quit. So a quick trip to ‘The Wal-mart’ and I now I have hot water for this mug-o-delight. (One of these days I need a kettle for home) While I enjoy this, it almost seems wrong to add flavors to a delicate white. The bergamot is not heavy and peppery like the green version. It is just a relaxing light cup.