Earl Jeff

Well I had a whole thing written up about this. I clicked “save” and got an error page. I like the content on this site but I get these error pages a lot, it’s kind of annoying.

I’m gonna summarize what I wrote before rather than try to reconstruct it.

Summary:
- Vanilla/nutty taste, minty finish and aftertaste that is very nice and refreshing.
- I was a little concerned the caffeine might be too much for me – since coffee often leaves me feeling jittery, and I had read this was more like coffee than teas in terms of that. Too me it felt comparable to a black tea, didn’t leave me jittery at all.

Really enjoyed this.

Meta: Added this tea just now and accidentally hit the “enter” key which saved the tea in the database before I had a chance to add all the info. Since I joined here less than a month ago, I can’t edit this to include all the right info. Grrrr.

Anyways, I reallly wanted this tea to be a nice bedtime tea for me (it’s rooibos, so caffeine free), and it just didn’t deliver. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by all the amazing loose leaf teas I have right now, but this just tastes really bland. It smells a lot better than it tastes. The smell is sweet and cinnamon-y and like apple pie. The taste is faintly of apples but it just leaves a lot to be desired.

I have other teas from Octavia (that I have yet to review) which I enjoy a lot, so I expected this to be good and it was a disappointment. I (thankfully) had only gotten one of the sample pouches, and not a full tin.

As an aside, one beef I have with Octavia is they don’t include very specific brewing instructions with their teas. If anyone has temperature/steep time recommendations for rooibos (red tea), please post. I never drink it and without guidance from Octavia I was just guessing. I used the generic 3.5 minutes at boiling water that they recommend, and had put 2 tsp in my cup.

Enjoying some of this now. (I tend to drink white tea at night, the caffeine in other teas would keep me up until 4 AM.)

This is very good.

I ordinarily put no sugar in my teas but the instructions recommended it. I tried a couple sips without sugar at first, then decided to add a bit of sugar and it really brought out the flavor in this tea – I feel like the sugar enhanced rather than diminished the tea’s flavor. Tastes awesome. Makes me long for a summer afternoon. I will no doubt get some more of this once summer rolls around. (Which will be mid-June, if we’re lucky lol.) I bet this would make an AMAZING iced tea.

This tastes a little similar to cantaloupe and cream to me. Both are outstanding and they are different, and I can’t decide which one I like better.

No notes yet.

I had a cup late this morning after eating a couple paczkis, which were over-the-top in their richness, as paczkis tend to be. After that, I was looking for a tea that’d be light and refreshing, looked around at what I have, and figured this would fit the bill.

It did.

It’s a very nice oolong with a light infusion and a strawberry taste. I also tasted a slight floral taste, maybe roses? Just a hint, and it’s a secondary taste, and compliments the strawberry taste very nicely. This is a very refreshing tea, not too sweet. (I don’t sweeten any of my teas or put cream in them, chai excepted.) Speaking of chai, I had a couple cups of chai a little earlier which I’ve already logged. I still have the leaves awaiting me for a second, third, fourth infusion of this lovely tea. If they’re substantially different than the first, I’ll make additions to this note later.

EDIT: Second infusion actually looks a bit darker than the first, if memory of the first serves me well. Also the floral notes taste a little more pronounced. It’s definitely a rose flavor I taste. This is still a very light, nice, refreshing oolong. Also I’m amazed at how the leaves have expanded. I steeped 1 tsp, per recommendation, and it looked like such a tiny amount of dried leaves in my infuser, but they’ve really expanded a lot. By the third or fourth infusion they’ll probably be completely filling up my infuser basket. (I’m using a ceramic infuser basket / mug that I got from Rishi, which I really like a lot.)

EDiT: Came back after a night out and gave these leaves another infusion. It looks like each subsequent infusion is darker than the last, which is different. Although with this latest infusion, my mind was completely somewhere else and I didn’t let the water cool down to 180 degrees, just absent-mindedly poured the boiling water in. Still tastes fine though.

EDIT 2: LOL my infusions are full of fail today. This latest one, like the last, was at full boiling, and also for 10 minutes. My mind is just….. elsewhere, haha. Anyways, it actually still tastes good. :)

Just had a couple cups this afternoon.

I followed East Side Rob’s recipe:
- 1.5 cups water
- .5 cup milk
- 2 tsp tea
- mix together in saucepan, bring to a boil
- add sugar, honey, stevia, or your sweetener of choice (I used honey).
- simmer 5 minutes.

The first time came out a tiny bit on the weaker side, so, second time I added more honey to the mix and more tea – I went with 4 tsp instead of 2. The bag said 2 tbsp (!) per 8 oz. water, which would be a ton, IMO, so making it with 4 tsp is a happy medium, I think, between what East Side Rob recommended and what Rishi recommends.

On the second try (with 4 tsp) the black pepper taste was just a little too strong. Next time I’m gonna try it with 3 tsp, and also shake up my bag before preparing it just to make sure all the spices are evenly distributed. Next time I’m also gonna add just a tad more milk because I thought it could’ve been a little creamier.

I’m not a huge chai drinker but I do like it every now and then and overall this is an awesome chai, highly recommended. I just need to work on getting the ratio of the various ingredients exactly how I like them.

I had this tea on Saturday (2 days ago) so it’s not super fresh in my mind.

I remember about 10 years ago, when I first started drinking tea, getting a honeydew white tea. It was a bagged tea, from Republic of Teas I think. I remember being SO excited for it, because I had just heard about white tea and it sounded so exotic and interesting. I also remember being disappointed when I tried it.

This tea was everything I hoped that tea would have been. As for the name of this tea, “cantaloupe and cream,” I don’t really taste the “cream” part, but that’s fine. This tastes awesome, like a cantaloupe white tea should. Given that cantaloupe and white tea are both more subtle in flavor, the flavor on this isn’t real intense and that’s to be expected. It’s very, very good though, I enjoyed this a lot and when the bag is out I will likely buy more.

Had this earlier today. I was amazed by how clear the infusion was, at first I was a little concerned that nothing had happened, haha.

This was pretty good. It was nice and refreshing. Didn’t blow my hair back with an intense flavor, but it’s light, delicate. It’s there, but very subtle, like the smile of the Mona Lisa. It does indeed taste like pineapple, and a little flowery, but definitely more pineapple than flowery, which is the right flavor balance IMO.

I drank this yesterday.

I ordered the Coquelicot Gourmand from Dammann because I had it at my cousin’s house and it was spectacular. Since I was ordering this from Dammann, which is in France, I figured I may as well add something else to my order while I was ordering from them. I like Earl Greys so I got this.

Didn’t taste much of the “fleurs” in this Earl Grey avec des fleurs. To me, this just tasted like a normal Earl Grey… a very good Earl Grey, but since I had expected a little something more, I was a little disappointed.

No notes yet.

I’m backlogging this, this is what I had yesterday, so it might be a bit light on details. This was a very good, smooth black tea. No bitterness or astringency. I didn’t really taste the fruity finish that the description lists. What I did taste was a note of yams or sweet potatoes, which sounds weird for a tea but it was actually interesting and tasty. For me, the initial note was the sweet potato taste followed by the black tea taste, no fruity finish.

I put some of this in a travel mug to go, and left about half of it in my car while I was at a Beethoven piano sonata marathon. By the time I came back, it was ice cold, so, I unintentionally found out this makes a very good iced tea, lol.

WOW.

I recently placed a fairly sizable order with Butiki largely based on reviews on this site. As an aside, the Butiki folks are wonderful. I corresponded with them a bit via email and they offered excellent customer service and follow-up on my order. The order was fulfilled, shipped, and delivered very quickly.

I got my order from them in the mail today and decided to try this tea, thinking a maple pecan oolong would warm the soul on a wintry day.

I was right, and WOW the taste of this tea was wonderful. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe how good it was. It was definitely a When Harry Met Sally “I’ll have what she’s having!” type experience. (Those that have seen When Harry Met Sally know what I’m talking about. Those that haven’t should go watch it, preferably with a cup of Maple Pecan Oolong.)

The flavor was exactly the ideal of what I imagined it’d taste like. The maple and pecan flavors are very rich without being over-the-top decadent. Just the right amount of sweetness: yes, it’s definitely there, but it’s not an overwhelming, POW! in-your-face type sweetness.

I’m still learning about the vocabulary of reviewing teas, and so just learning to pay attention to things like mouthfeel, but I would say this tea is very smooth.

I steeped it per the instructions on the bag: 170 degrees at 4 minutes.

The only reason I didn’t rate this a 100 is because the subsequent steeps (on the third one now) are a little weaker than the first, whereas some other teas I’ve had still taste roughly the same on the third or fourth steep. I did do the second and third steeps at 4 minutes though, like the first, so in future I’ll try adding more steep times to subsequent steeps.

Bottom line: If you read the title of “Maple Pecan Oolong,” and think, “Ooo, that might be something I’d like,” go get this tea, you won’t be disappointed.

I can definitely taste the notes of honey and muscat grapes in this, which to me are much more present in the smell of the tea than in the taste. Those notes are quickly replaced with the typical black tea taste (which is nice in this one) but this is even more quickly replaced with a bitter taste which lingers a bit. This tea starts out great but the finish is only so-so.

I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do in my steeping to decrease the bitterness – I’m somewhat of a novice so if someone has any suggestions, let me know. I did, however, steep it according to the instructions on the bag, at 190 degrees for 4 minutes. (The instructions state 4-5). There is also a good chance that my tasting experience was corrupted by not having a neutral palate…. I ate a couple of small clementine oranges, which are very sweet, about 10 or 15 minutes before I had this tea.

This tea seems like it has the potential to be quite good if I can find a way to tone down the bitter finish. Second steep soon forthcoming.

EDIT: Second steep still was at 190 but only for 3:40 this time. Much, much less of the bitter taste, however, the other flavors were also diminished. Next time I make this I’ll have to be sure and try a shorter steep time on the first steep.

EDIT 2: Picked up my cup again (the second steep) after it sat awhile and picked up some spicy notes that I didn’t before. Black pepper and another spice that I can pinpoint but the name escapes me at the moment. (I’m not that good with spice names, I’ll look it up in a bit, I know which container in the cupboard it is but not the name.) Definitely very interesting, if nothing else this seems like a very complex tea.