Spencer

Several hours later, still as good.

nom nom nom nom. Good flavour and big leaves.

Pre-steeping, my nose revels in the wonderful and delicious smells coming from the dry leaves. This tiramisu smells delicious, and it is strong enough that I can hardly detect the scent of the red rooibos underneath it.

After steeping, the aroma of rooibos has been brought to a more prominent place, but the tiramisu is not letting go of its grasp on the scent and the senses. The liquor has steeped a deep red colour, yet remains bright and clear. Eagerly, I lift the cup to my lips in anticipation…

Creamy! This tea has a very thick mouthfeel that actually starts out being a bit thin, but when the sweetness of the tea finally hits, it thickens considerably. The rooibos has come through beautifully, though it almost seems to have too much rooibos flavour (as compared to the tiramisu). The tiramisu does put forth a good showing, however. It boldly jumps out at the drinker, and lasts a while, settling in a delicious aftertaste. With each sip, I’m left wanting to take another sip and another…

I really enjoyed this tea, which is probably an understatement, considering how fast I went through the first cup. I gladly give this tea an 85 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

Time to go have another cup!

Two teaspoons of tea, two cups of water, and five minutes later…voila, two delicious cups of green rooibos. Lighter in colour than a red rooibos, the The taste of this tea is bold and very herbal, lacking the sweetness normally found in red rooibos. The smell of the first steeping matches the herbal taste, but slow sips bring out subtle hints of sweetness that only serve to make this tea tastier.

This tea lasted through two separate steepings, and I did very much enjoy this new and different experience in the world of rooibos. I highly recommend that anyone who has never before tried green rooibos take the opportunity to do so. Suffuse Tea’s Green Rooibos is a great place to start.

Well, these pearls certainly are downy…I felt one of the little balls of tea and it was soft and fuzzy. The jasmine smell is sharp and sweet in the dry leaf, and makes me wonder if the taste will be the same.

I used approximately two teaspoons of pearls, in two cups of water, for three minutes (give or take ten seconds, as I initially forgot to start my timer, oops). At the end of three minutes, the brew was very watery, so I let it sit for two minutes more. At this point, I’d like to take a moment to say that while I enjoy the challenge of matching up just the right steeping time with just the right amount of leaf and water to make a delectable cup, I do wish that more companies would give what they believe the ideal steeping conditions to be, even if it’s a rough estimate, since not all teas are created equally, and generalizing conditions does not always work out. Regardless, the extra two minutes seems to have helped immensely, as there is greater unfurl to the leaves and more colour to the liquor.

The jasmine scent is just as sharp in the completed cup as it was in the dry leaf. And the taste….Wow…that’s incredibly…mediocre. Thankfully, the sharpness of the jasmine hasn’t come through in the taste of the liquor, yet everything about it is very average. The flavour is smooth, and light, and has a nice jasmine scent and taste, but, all in all, it just seems to be lacking something in a big way.

I enjoyed drinking it, but Jasmine Pearls are one of my favourites, so that could bias me a bit. I give it a 65 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

Opening the package, the dry leaves smell grassy and have a perky sweetness about them that I’m eager to try (too much time spent drinking roasted and musty green teas has drawn me from teas like this). Two teaspoons of leaves, two cups of water, and three minutes later, I had a pale green brew with a much deeper aroma than the dry leaf had. Deeper, yet still as sweet, the grassy notes linger as well.

Deliciously smooth. The grassy flavour does not overwhelm, as some greens are apt to do. For such a lightly flavoured tea, the brew seems to carry a moderate amount of thickness to the mouthfeel. However, even those light flavours are complex by themselves, making each sip a lingering pleasure, if left to settle on the tongue.

The sweetness and delicacy of the brew leave one with a very refreshed feeling, and it is a very enjoyable tea to drink. I gladly give it a 77 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale, and would certainly recommend it.

Noticing that the last tea I drank that had “Mao Feng” in the title was a green tea, this made me curious, so I first went and looked up what “Mao Feng” meant. According to the “wonderful source of all knowledge,” Wikipedia, Mao Feng “is a term in tea manufacture denoting the picking of a bud and two leaves of equal length.” It goes on to tell about their broad, curved shape and the desirability of this design.

Dry, these leaves are long, thin, and wiry. The aroma is mild and a bit malty. After steeping for the recommended time, the aroma really opens up, revealing delicious smelling honey tones. Hmmm, but the leaves haven’t expanded very broad…though they are curved and flat.

Taking my first sip, the flavour explodes across my tongue, drenching it in much the same flavours as were smelled in the completed liquor: a bit of a malt, with sweet, dark honey tastes.

What seems to be a simple tea actually contains a myriad of experiences for the senses, all coming together to make this a nice tea experience and a delight to drink. I rate it a 75 out of 100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

Less peppermint and more rooibos when cold-brewed. Tasty, and more well-balanced than when hot-brewed.

Mediocre, at best.

+ Oatmeal = Tasty

The dry leaf was incredibly sweet smelling. This proceeded to mellow out when steeped, so that the aroma of the black tea mixed wonderfully with the smell of toffee.
The taste was merely mediocre, I’m afraid. Black tea with barely a hint of the toffee that was so tantilizing in the scent. Pity.

Drinking this more for the rooibos than for the virtually non-existantant orange. The only reason it gets such a high rating is because the rooibos (not whatever else is in here) is tasty.
Should more aptly be named Bad-kop Rooibos Orange, instead of Good—kop.
Meh, rooibos is rooibos, and mediocre rooibos is better than no rooibos at all.

On a side note, that was my last bag of this tea, and I certainly will not be searching after this tea in the future.

When I opened the package, I was a bit weirded out by the glossy/greasy look of the leaves. In past experiences, this basically implies leaves coated with artificial flavouring – bleh. Steeped two cups for two minutes. With the amount of bitterness I got from the first sip, it was as though this was two minutes too long. Great smell….fail taste. I splashed a bit of milk into the cup after having one cup straight. That helped to cut the bitterness, but the bite was still there.
At least it was better than Bigelow’s French Vanilla.
I didn’t bother resteeping the leaves.

Brought some of this tea with me to a McCormick & Schmick restaurant. Their “hot” water was merely hot…and this tea took ages to steep in it. At least it was pure water, or this would have tasted terrible.

Tasty pu-erh, though I was a bit disappointed at the strength of this tea…the steeping instructions really should read 5-6 minutes, not 3-4. But that’s just my personal opinion. Perhaps under different steeping circumstances, this would have turned out better, so I will have to try it again later (under different circumstances).

For the price, I’m not sure that this oolong is really worth it. Most oolong smooth out over time, and this one got bitter when I let it steep a bit longer than usual. Tasted a bit like Darjeeling with a touch of spices.

No notes yet.

Delectable. I loved it, all three steepings that I put it through. I bought it originally as a replacement for Rishi’s White Peach, which it could sadly never replace, but it’s a great deal and a fine tea.

I love oolong, and I love finery, especially in the tea world. So when the chance to try this tea came up…an oolong, mind you, that is supposed to be one of the finest available, and available only in limited quantities, I jumped at the opportunity.

The dry leaf holds light, vegetal notes that are, surprisingly, reminiscent of a few white teas that I have tried.

The steeped liquor is a brilliant gold, with excellent clarity (the benefits of utilizing a glass vessel for steeping). It also has a darker aroma, more akin to darjeeling. Ah, but the first sip was nothing like drinking darjeeling. Light and fruity (what specific fruit flavours – I cannot quite place), the liquor slipped over the tongue easily. Incredibly soft mouthfeel combined with a surprisingly bold, yet not overwhelming, aftertaste to provide a wonderfully pleasant drink.

Steeping the tea again, for a few minutes longer (five this time), led to a brew of much the same strength and character as the first. I was pleased at the resilience and quality of this tea. I most definitely enjoyed drinking this and would certainly keep this on my list of teas to keep in stock. I give it a 90/100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

I love improvising, especially when improvising allows me to accomplish exactly what I would be otherwise, if I had not been improvising. In this case, I wanted to review this delicious smelling tea, but was in a location where I had the means for heating water, yet no implements for making tea, save a solitary mesh strainer. So, I proceeded to use an oversized wine glass (preheated, of course) as a teapot, and strained off the tea into small coffee mugs (my improvised tea cups), following the completion of the five minute steeping time I used (generalized for most rooibos).

Result?

Success, at least so far as brewing the tea was concerned. Now onto the tasting…
The dry leaf had very much carried the peppermint oil smell, nearly overpowering. The hint of orange, at least, was present (better than past teas of this type that I’ve tried, where one of the two main ingredients ends up completely overwhelming the other. In the aroma of the steeped tea, the orange and peppermint blended nicely and equally, providing a mellow and sweet smelling brew.

Ah, and time for the first taste! Will my improvised tea session turn out well?

Yes! My first sip was deliciously orange that slid smoothly over the tongue, leaving an aftertaste of juicy rooibos and cool peppermint behind. Mmm, tasty. Surprisingly, this tea held its flavour even when I decided to steep it again, though that may have been the result of using a bit more dry leaf than is usual for this type of tea.

No notes yet.

The smell of the brew is faintly floral. The taste brings out more floral flavour, to blend smoothly with the light oolong. Pleasant drinking, this tea.

I cold brewed a couple cups of this tea and am now trying it (now that it has finished).
It is quite tasty, with a subtle sweetness to offset an also-present subtle bitterness. Overall, quite refreshing and tasty when steeped in this manner.

More cold-brewed, and it smoothed out (not so sweet and bitter) toward the bottom of the bottle.