Michelle

I had a sample of a Lapsang from DAVIDs the last time I placed an order with them, and I was intrigued by it. I only got to try one steeping of it, but now that it’s summer I’ve been craving that smoky sort of flavor. Yesterday I picked up Virtuous’ Lapsang, and I was in a British candy store with my sister today, and I decided to get this one as well.

Not a huge fan of bags, although they are terribly convenient, but a friend (English, raised in France) swears by ToH.

I do like this though! It’s my second Lapsang, and it’s been awhile since I had the first. It’s a bit light, but I didn’t measure my steeping time (it was probably only a minute or two). One bag, 16oz TARDIS mug (because hey, it’s British tea, so I’ll use my British mug… right?). I brewed it hot, but then realized just how hot it actually was outside… so added ice cubes in to cool it off.

Light black tea flavor, dark brown liquor, lots of smokiness. Lighter than I’d like, but next time I’ll steep it longer or add another bag. One thing I’m happy about is the utter lack of bitterness. It’s dark, but it’s smooth.

It’s my 100th tasting note!

I picked this one up on a whim today. We went to Virtuous to get rosehips (our chinchilla likes to snack on them!) and this just looked beautiful in the jar – bright colors streaking through a crisp green leaf. It smells amazing – perfectly fruity. And brewed – wow! The scent is SO sweet, like gummy bears or fruity candies, but completely natural.

The first steep is surprisingly light, with more of a scent than a taste, although as it cools the buttery oolong comes out. It’s a very pale gold, so light that it appears clear as I’m pouring but in the teacup it takes on a color of light honey.

Second steep: Oh! So good. The taste is all buttery oolong, and the scent is still really sweet and fruity. Notes of pineapple and mango and apple and raspberry.

Right now I’m writing the first short story I’ve written in a long time, and listening to the INCREDIBLE music from the recent National Theatre production of Frankenstein. It’s a wonderful night!

So let me first register my utter hatred with temperatures over about 80F. I mean. I would MUCH rather the winter weather when it’s so cold that my feet go numb through my shoes than this utterly unbearable 90+ weather. Especially since we don’t have air conditioning. I just… it’s awful.

#Rant over.

Cold brewed a mixture of Boston Tea Company’s English Breakfast and Twining’s Irish Breakfast. I was going to originally do just the IB, but the tin was a lot lower than I thought. So I figured I’d just go ahead and orchestrate some positive race relations while I was at it. (Sorry. Irish history is a bit of a favorite of mine.)

It’s a good black tea! Not remarkable, but good and solid with a bit of milk and sugar! Really good for cooling off :)

Another lovely sample from a friend! Sadly, no product information available online for this one either, although the label on the little baggie says “Lemon Souffle: To reorder, visit evermoreherb.com.”

It’s delicious though! I haven’t had a lot of rooibos lately, but I was feeling good about this one, so I brewed it hot and then poured it over ice. Fantastic! There isn’t too much of that “rooibos” taste, but the lemon shines through without being overpowering either. It smells sort of like lemon cake, which is just fantastic. And the tea is beautiful to look at as well – red and gold with strips of calendula and marigold petal.

Upon opening the tin, my first impression is that it’s bagged tea… unbagged. The leaves are very tiny and uniformly cut. The smell is pale, but if I stick my nose into the tin I get notes of a standard English Breakfast.

Trying it plain before I add anything to it, I find that it’s very strong. It’s malty and a bit astringent. Adding milk smooths it out. It’s decent. It’s nothing special, but it’s a good English Breakfast.

I got a box of this from a friend. Looking online, I can’t find anything about the tea on its website either, so it looks like it’s been discontinued.

I don’t know if it’s the tea or if it’s my tastebuds that are shot, but I can’t taste this. Same with the Raspberry Royale from earlier – I just can’t taste it. It’s the first time I’ve had bagged tea in a month or two.

It smells great – very fruity, a little tart. But I feel as though I’m drinking scented water, even after the bag’s been in for 30+ minutes.

Sad!

I got this in a fantastic care package from a friend of mine today. I was feeling especially lazy when I got home from work – short-staffed tonight, and lots of work to do. (Although I did really well today – picked up others’ work and sold more than the storewide quota for passes just on my shift alone! Not bad, with reviews coming up…) And then I came home and found a huge box for me on the table!

As much as I wanted to like this tea, I really didn’t. The directions on the packed said steep 1-2 minutes, so I followed those directions for the first cup I had. I could hardly taste it. The second cup, I added a bit of sugar and left the teabag in as I drank, and it still basically tasted like hot water with sugar. The smell is vaguely raspberry and I taste a very light black flavor, but it’s hardly there. Sad, because the dry bag smells great!

Thanks again to Fong Mong Tea for this sample!

I tried brewing this one Western style. Didn’t feel like going online to check brewing instructions, so I used the whole six-gram sample, water somewhere around 180-190, steeped for 4ish minutes. Sort of my general oolong parameters.

It’s good! Online I see that Fong Mong recommends a 6-minute steep, and I might push it up there for a second steep. It’s a bit weak. But then again, I don’t mind pale teas.

The scent is creamy and almost like fresh-baked bread. It’s not butter so much as it is wheat. There’s a floral taste at the tip of the flavor, and a light vegetal aftertaste. I’ll probably update after a second or third steep, but for now – delicious!

Thanks to Fong Mong Tea for such a generous sample!

First steep (~5s): Very light, almost buttery. Liquor so pale it’s almost like water.

Second steep(~15s): Liquor’s a bit darker, a very pale gold. Light scent of toasted walnuts, maybe a bit of rice. Not like a genmaicha, but sort of as an afterthought. Almost a sort of potato-y sweetness.

Third steep (~25s): Still a very pale gold. Similar to the previous steep. Maybe the sweetness is sort of a lychee flavor?

Fourth steep: (~40s): Very pale, light flavor. Reminds me of a Dragonwell green – light, buttery, smooth. I’m thinking that I should have either used more leaf or started steeping longer. It’s good, but a bit tame.

I love later steeps of this. It’s so clean, it’s like drinking a sort of oolong-scented mineral water. Delicious.

This is the last tea from the ThinkGeek sampler… I hadn’t tried it because I haven’t found a plain Earl Grey I’ve liked in a long time. But A and I had a tea tasting yesterday for our tea party (decided on a Darjeeling, Cream of Earl Grey, Gunpowder and Rooibos), and we did a comparison of this against DAVIDs Cream of Earl Grey.

This wins! I’m hoping it’s the same as Adagio’s Earl Grey Bravo (or at least exceedingly similar), because I really want more of this. It’s balanced well, without too much bergamot but with just enough to give it that coolness. Added milk and sugar as per.

Dry leaf smell – cinnamon cookies. There is no other way to describe this. This is cinnamon cookies or cinnamon coffee cake straight up.

Steeped, it’s a beautiful red-gold. The cinnamon has abated a bit and the almond comes out. It smells a bit like a rooibos, to be honest. I added milk and a bit of sugar, which brought out the cookie flavor of the tea. It’s very creamy and very smooth, and definitely something for dessert!

First of all – thanks to Rachel for such generous samples!

Looks like Dragonwater has gone out of business, which is sad, since this is such a great tea. The label says it’s a blend of Assam / Sencha with peach flavoring. The scent of the dry leaf is beautifully peachy, and it comes out on steeping, with hints of the sencha behind it.

The liquor is a beautiful honey-colored gold, lighter than a typical Assam but darker than a Sencha… which makes sense.

The flavor is predominantly peach, but it highlights the tea instead of detracting from it.

I would write more, but I’m off to work… sigh.

Sipdown. I’m sad to see this one go, actually. It’s bright and fruity. Not really a night tea but it was easy to reach! The pineapple is right there at the front, but it’s not too overpowering – the mallow and apple do a lot to tone down the citrus flavors. Very good iced with a touch of sugar.

Drinking this because I wanted a tea to add milk/sugar to tonight. Just the right amount of nuttiness, a little bit toasty. Beautiful light brown until I added milk, and now it’s an opaque dun color. It’s great for blending, but a bit finicky – it’s very strong, so I have to add milk unless I steep it for <2 minutes.

I bought this tea in Joy’s Teaspoon Ocho Sampler months ago. I love the idea that you get to create your own sampler. It’s so personal.

Anyway.

I had about half of the sample left, since when I first tried it, I really didn’t care for it. But I was craving something dark tonight, and didn’t want to sit through a gong fu brewing, so I figured I’d try this again.

The leaves are very small and broken. They’re a deep, rich black, and the dry smell is something of cedar and pine, with fleeting hints of plum. When brewed, it really is a beautiful purple color. It’s a very pale lavender, not like anything I’ve seen in any other tea.

When steeped, it loses the wood notes in it, and if I hadn’t prepared it, I would swear this was an oolong. There are light notes of cedar, but those take a backseat to the vegetal scents and the sweetness, almost butteryness of the smell. Naomi is right – it smells very clean. There’s a little bit of bitterness in the aftertaste, but it’s not unpleasant.

All in all, I like this tea a lot more than I did when I first tried it. I’m not sure I could afford to purchase it, as it comes in at about $20/oz… but it sure is a good cup tonight!

This was probably the one I was least excited to get in the sampler pack from ThinkGeek. I’ve had Adagio’s Blood Orange before and wasn’t thrilled with it. This doesn’t appear to be the same thing though… there are definitely some green leaves in there, yet ThinkGeek describes it as an herbal tisane. Whatever the mystery is, it’s actually really good.

I brewed about half the tin (~0.5oz – just eyeballed it) as directed (212 for 5 min), then poured it over ice and added a splash of orange vanilla seltzer. Oh, it’s fantastic. I think I may actually order more Blood Orange from Adagio and keep it in my summer stash!

It’s tart from the orange and the sour apple, but the vanilla seltzer gives it a little bit of creaminess. Delicious!

I’ve been craving pu’erh all day, which is odd for me.

But I suppose it’s due to Bonnie and all you lovely people on my dash reviewing pu’erhs that’s made me crave it.

Considering that I haven’t really found it to be to my liking, I don’t have much. But I do have a little sample tin of this one from where I ordered a sampler pack. And you know what? I really like it this time.

It brews a beautiful dark red, caramelly color. And then the scent – very earthy and dark, like walking barefoot through a dark forest, the dirt and leaves under your feet, scent of pines in the air, a lake up ahead. It’s all age and rocks and time.

Oh, and butter and peppermint and sugar snap peas.

I’m a pu’erh convert! More reasons to buy tea… ahha.

Hm… this is a sipdown.

I think I was just too excited about getting Mario tea, along with my TARDIS mug.

It’s not bad, but I’m finding that the jasmine is overpowering, especially in the first few steeps. I’m on steep 3 or 4 at the moment, and it’s sweetly green with just a hint of the jasmine scent… I wish it would start out this way!

This is the last of the samples from the DAVIDs order I placed a few months ago. Don’t tell me it’s time to get more…

Straight senchas are usually a bit too grassy and vegetal for me. This one’s good though. In the scent I’m picking up the usually straight grass notes, but there’s also something toasty and sweet, sort of like kettle corn. There’s a little fruitiness in the smell too. I can’t quite put my finger on it – apples, maybe, or grapes.

I think I steeped it a little too hot, as there is a bit of bitterness, but it’s good anyway. Primarily it’s vegetal, but there’s a toasted note to it, almost like a very light gyokuro. DAVIDs website says that it’s dried using wood fires, so that’s probably where it comes from.

It’s good. I probably won’t order it again, but it’s good nonetheless.

EDIT: Thanks to a suggestion from ScottTeaMan, I tried steeping it at a much lower temp. I guessed on my kettle to bring it to about 155, 160. Suddenly all the bitterness and much of the vegetal has gone away, and it’s buttery and sweet with notes of fruit, so I’m upping the rating!

DOCTOR WHO SERIES: John Smith

John Smith is the pseudonym used by Ten in his stint as a human as a teacher in an English boarding school. It’s strong, traditional, and very, very English.

A blend of Earl Grey, vanilla and hazelnut teas. Drank with a touch of sugar and milk, as befits your traditional English teas.

I like this. When I want an Earl Grey, I almost always go to one of my flavored ones – it tones down the bergamot a bit. I’m tempted to try selling these on Etsy or somewhere, but I don’t know if they’d sell!

I’ve been noticing lately that I get really tense around 9 at night or so. My chest is tight, I can’t get a full breath in, my left thigh is crazy tight, I start experiencing all the sensations I usually tune out. In short, just generally panicky. I’m not really sure why, but I think it might have to do with the caffeine I’ve been drinking… although I’ve been drinking mostly green tea lately.

Anyway, I’m going to try a cup of chamomile at night to try and wind down. I bought a big bag of this from Adagio since it’s so cheap. Right now I’m drinking it hot, in about a 3-1 ratio of chamomile to lavender, with a pinch of spearmint and a spoonful of lavender honey as well.

It’s good. I don’t love chamomile and honey on their own, but the lavender and spearmint tie it together. The chamomile is a bit apple-y, and there’s a coolness from the lavender and spearmint. The strength of the lavender is smoothed out by the honey, and the lavender-scented honey isn’t as strong as, say, plain honey. All in all, it’s a decent blend. I may dial the lavender back a bit, next time, but it’s definitely drinkable.

I was looking through my sample box, looking for a green tea this morning, and I stumbled across this one. I can’t believe I forgot I had it!

The dry leaf is a dark-scented, almost like a light Darjeeling. The pieces are small and fairly broken, and although I’m drinking it out of my TARDIS mug (I can’t get over it. It’s fantastic.) it’s a mid-range light yellow.

It tastes the way it smells, sort of a darker green with hints of pepper and cucumber. It’s a bit bitter, but as my tea kettle only does 180 and 212 with accuracy, I had to guess for the 195. It’s good, though. It’s a hearty green.

I’m just going to keep drinking this until my little sample is out. I think I’ll order more from Adagio when it’s out… I definitely like it on the lighter side, with 1tsp/8oz at 212 for 4 minutes instead of 5 – more green tea, less jasmine.