Featured & Popular Tasting Notes

Additional notes:  So I did end up stocking up on a tin of this with my reward points a while ago. This is just dreamy on a hot summer day.  Caffeine kick with lovely lingering flavors of violet and roses.   Reading outside, I feel like Alice waiting to fall into Wonderland… or at the mad tea party with all this crazy news lately.  But trying to enjoy my day while ignoring the news.   Please everyone stay safe for this fourth of July weekend.  I wish the best for all of you!

Edited to add: the second steep is just as flavorful. It’s really the perfect mix of florals and base of black tea. It might be my favorite floral black tea! Even cold, delicious.

Thank you for this tea Marzipan and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Roswell Strange <3

Yum!!!! This is the best rice sheng I’ve had. The other one I tried was more bitter. This one is smooth and savory and delicious :)

Also funny…one of my coworkers just asked me why he smells crackers. Pretty sure it’s the rice tea :P

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – June Tea #1: – An orange tea

This tea, bleh, glad it’s gone now.
2022 sipdowns: 70
I’m back from visiting family. It was… rough. The most bizarre thing happened. My aunt is around my grandmother all the time so she would know… my aunt thinks something happened to my grandmother and it seems she had overnight Alzheimer’s and the sad part is, it seems to be focused on her direct family members. Like she has no map of her family tree at this point. She asked who my aunt was the day before we went for the visit, her main caregiver, then she didn’t recognize three others of her closest family, including me. The last time I saw her I distinctly remember her saying to me “I’ll never forget this lady.” She thinks we are all hired caregivers or long lost children she didn’t know she had. It’s terrible and hard to process. Not sure if it was consistent the entire time we were there for three weeks. She might have been embarrassed to say she didn’t know who we were, so she could have been pretending to know most of the time. I just kept pointing to the quick dial numbers on her phone. It was all of us on the top row. :( She did just recently survive covid so we are all hoping it is a temporary covid fog. I have heard covid ages everyone 20 years, so there you go. But to survive covid and then a month or two later this happens? uh. So sad. Watching someone go through memory loss has always been one of my greatest dreaded fears.

Today is mine and the Ashman’s 33rd anniversary. We are simple folk who like simple pleasures, so to celebrate we split an everything bagel from Panera at home. He picked up while I made tea.

Da Hong Pao teas can be so different from each other. I had one from a Chinese friend that was almost like drinking a cup of hot cocoa. This one reminds me more of a roasted Dong Ding.

We made three steeps Western style in an 18 ounce pot. Temp was about 190F and I kept it to 3 minutes.

This one really isn’t chocolate-y at all. The texture is thin but silky and goes down smoothly. It is heavily roasted as promised but isn’t smokey, just roasty. It is also a bit nutty, so toasted walnuts are coming to mind for me.

This is an older tea and I will be working on it as my next sipdown. I am eager to try it gongfu because I don’t think I have done that yet with this one. I bet it will be awesome.

Song pairing, cuz it is my anniversary and I am listening to this song over and over this morning. (He isn’t home right now so the repeat doesn’t bother him! I am not that cruel!)

We watch very little tv but we are enjoying this gentle little show.

https://youtu.be/Q5LbTeti0sw

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge Wednesday, April 28th: National Superhero Day Tea #1

I wouldn’t normally share, but it landed on Superhero day!  I had the funnest dream being immersed in a live action Ninja Turtles show, where musicians like Ed Harcourt and Phoebe Bridgers were the costumed heroes…and there was a third musician, can’t remember whom… it looked a bit like Legends of Tomorrow.  The ninja turtles were played by females.  I wish I had stayed in the dream longer for more detail!  It seemed like 20 seconds. Just right in the middle of a battle. Who was Splinter? Who Was Shredder?  haha

As far as my favorite superheroes go!  The usuals are fine, but I tend to like the outlier meta things, but probably not as outlier as true comic fans COULD go.  I’m more of a fan of snark like Deadpool or Constantine… maybe “heroes” that flip things around like Watchmen.  But I’m watching the marvel movies in order and just watched Black Panther. So maybe infinity war/ endgame will wow me some more when I watch those. But this time we are going to go with BIRDGIRL which I happened to mention the other day and forgot could have been mentioned today.  Trying to rack my brain for any food mentioned on the show and I only remembered a soup with too much tomato, which doesn’t fit except for that lovely blend from 52teas I don’t have any more… so I will go with a tea with “bird” in the name.  I have been meaning to try this one with milk, so this will do for today.  I still can’t really stand the licorice in this blend when I’m drinking it plain, but I will say milk improved it… mostly because it muted the licorice. haha. But it added a creamy element that fits with what this tea is SUPPOSED to be (without the licorice.. would have been great to have MORE actual banana pieces replace that licorice – I don’t see any banana as is).

I have a Mental Health Crisis training all day over Zoom. It’s like 12 hours or so. So i’ve been drinking lots of tea. This tea has a nice tart citrus flavor although I don’t think I would be able to identify it as peach. It definitely is quite citrusy and specifically I taste a lot of lemon. It’s tangy and enjoyable but I am bummed because I love peach teas. I’ve also been craving peach tea for the past few days. Persimmon is listed in the ingredients but I have no clue what that tastes like. So I can’t say if that is coming through or not.

Now that I have had some time to rest and have my head on somewhat straight again, let’s kick off this Sunday with a blast from the past. This was yet another tea I reviewed last month, yet like quite a few others, I never got around to posting a formal review on Steepster. So, without further ado, here goes.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 195 F water for 7 seconds. This infusion was chased by 13 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted aromas of char, wood, caramelized banana, and graham cracker. The rinsed leaves presented new aromas of coffee beans and toasted rice. The first infusion showed hints of grass and fruitiness on the nose. In the mouth, I found flavors of sweetgrass, watercress, cattail shoots, cream, butter, char, graham cracker, cinnamon, wood, and caramelized banana. Subsequent infusions saw the notes of coffee and toasted rice appear in the mouth. I also picked up on hints of vanilla, elderberry, and blackberry. Subtler impressions of squash, minerals, orchid, roasted walnut, and honey flitted in and out of focus in the background. The later infusions demonstrated a more pronounced minerality on the nose and in the mouth. A touch of buttered popcorn emerged toward the end of the session, while lingering traces of wood, char, and cream remained on the palate.

As charcoal roasted oolongs go, this one was very nice. It was a complex tea, yet it was also very subtle. Each aroma and flavor component was integrated very well. If you are the type of person who prefers toasty, mellow teas, I could see this being a perfect fit for you. Personally, I greatly enjoyed this tea, but I ended up wishing that it were not so even-tempered throughout the session. In places, it was almost too mellow and balanced for my taste.

From a LONG AGO travelling teabox.  I was craving sheng, so I wanted to finally try this one.  I wanted to split the smaller sample into two steeping sessions, so only used one teaspoon while also not filling the mug completely.  Mini steeps.  I must say, I haven’t tried very many from white2tea!  (And seemingly the 2015 Poundcake has a MUCH higher rating than this one, if that says anything.)  The flavor here has a thicker mouthfeel – is that where the “cake” in the name comes from?   Very sweet, slightly starchy, very minerally, almost lemon and vanilla and cream.   Certainly sounds like some sort of cake!   But also with a lovely sort of tanginess.  Either I haven’t had sheng in a while, I don’t usually wait 52 minutes to steep sheng, this sheng is exceptionally different, OR white2tea is simply magic, because this sheng is addictive.  Hopefully it’s not my new thing because I only have a few samples of sheng in the cupboard.  However, as I remember usually happening, the steeps after the first tend to lose their magic.  I really should learn to steep sheng much cooler, as I thought I learned that lesson long ago.   This might be my problem with sheng – I love the first steeps but then they get worse from there, probably because I don’t have patience or I oversteep.  Or the Western steeps have been ruining sheng all along.  That first steep though!
Steep #1  // 1 teaspoon // 52 minutes after boiling  // rinse // 40 second steep
Steep #2  // 35 minutes after boiling //  1 minute steep
Steep #3 // 20 minutes after boiling // 45 second steep
Steep #4 // 20 minutes after boiling // 1 minute steep

Randomly pulled this out of the stash and rinsed it nicely and noticed it had a strong aroma. Rinsed it a second time just because I am use to really smooth sheng at this point.

First steep was rough. Second steep was harsh. Third steep was me wondering why I’m so forgiving.

Ended it there. Quite bitter for a 4 year old tea since this is from 2012.Mine came right off of the cake too so either I am realllly spoiled with sheng or this is just a punch in the mouth and I’m not a masochist.

I am pulling out some teas for a swap this weekend and of course had to have some of this tea. It’s been ages! I remember how I liked it but the smokey flavor was a bit much for me at the time. Thinking of how I loved the smokiness from the lapsang souchong I tried a few weeks back I was thinking I might enjoy the smokiness now.

So did two quick rinses. Then 10 sec. OMG!!!! Love, love , love this tea all over again. I usually throw out the first few infusions of most pu’erh but I was drinking on the first infusion and loving it.

So fun to pull out an old tea and love it even more.

These are pretty good. The jasmine flavor is noticeable but not too strong. The black tea base is very smooth, not malty or astringent. I bought the 2 oz sample size from David’s Tea which will last me a long while at the rate I drink non puerh teas, mostly first thing in the morning.

I brewed this once with about 3 tsp leaf or 8 pearls and boiling water in a 16 oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper for 4 minutes.

Well…this weekend turned out quite different than planned. My boyfriend and I were set to leave to visit his mom for a week. The first time since I started working that I could take Christmas off. We were renting a house on the beach, and I was very much looking forward to it.

Cue COVID exposure at work. Boyfriend’s mom is immunocompromised, so we couldn’t risk exposing her to something. Had to cancel the trip. We both got negative results back, but I’m feeling sick. Boo COVID. We are both vaccinated and boosted.

So, I am still taking the week off of work and planning on drinking lots of tea.

This pone is particularly delicious. Bready, malty, caramelized. Smells like cacao powder.

I enjoyed this tea a lot more than I expected. I couldn’t really taste the white tea (there was a lot less of it than in the picture on the website). It mostly tasted like a light apple juice. I think the chamomile was a great choice and perfect pairing. I only tasted a hint of the cinnamon. It’s not special enough to order, but it’s definitely refreshing. I preferred this one hot – it was comforting and well-balanced. Once it cooled, I tasted more white tea, which I don’t personally prefer. I made a cold resteep of the leaves, which ended up with almost a caramel apple flavor.

I think this has to be a tea ordered from a larger company and repackaged. I’m pretty sure all the teas from this brand are in that category, which makes it easy to replace when a smaller distributor goes out of business, which is what led me to this brand to begin with.
I like this tea. It’s an enjoyable cup that has resteeped well and kept me company while I slog through the post holiday feast mess left in my kitchen. Sip tea, pick through the turkey carcass I put in the instant pot over night, sip tea, vacuum pack the extra salmon I smoked yesterday, sip tea, pack the smoker up, sip tea, do a load of dishes. I love the puerh base. It has a depth to it that I appreciate and the caramel toffee flavors pair well with it to make a smooth cup. I wouldn’t say it’s amazing, but at the same time I’m really appreciating it. Thank you tea for helping me get through this workload!

Additional notes: So this note is for the current harvest of GM that Nicole was so kind to parcel out for a few people – thank you so much! I can tell right away that this is a different harvest. Rather than like a traditional black with hints of gold leaf, this one is mostly dark amber and very very fuzzy. The flavor is less like my favorite golden monkey (deep chocolate, caramel) and more like tomato soup than chocolate or caramel. I’m a little sad about that. It isn’t the same tea, but it also isn’t a bad tea. I just wish it was the sammmmmeeee.

Sipdown (353)

I decided to try to go to a walk-in clinic in London because my cough has gotten pretty bad and so I mustered up some energy to go over. Except when I got there and gave my health card to the person at reception, she told me my card was likely invalid since it is an older version of the Ontario health card that is being phased out. I told her I haven’t gotten a letter to update it yet and that they are being accepted until July 2020. She put the info into the system and when the card came up invalid, she just looked at me and basically said “I told you”. She then told me it would be $50 to see the doctor and when I offered my credit card, she told me they only accept cash and the closest ATM is at the Shopper’s Drug Mart across a busy main road.

Given that I am sick, I didn’t have the energy to (1) attempt to dodge traffic and run across a busy road or (2) walk the block to get to a light to cross the road and walk down the block to the Shoppers and then circle back again to return to the clinic. So instead I just went home.

My sister took pity on me and sent her husband to come get me. Then this morning, my brother took me to a walk-in clinic by my sister’s place. Initially my health card came up as invalid at this clinic too. However, unlike the jerk in London, this person called Service Ontario to look into the matter and it turns out the card is still valid, they just missed a letter because on my version of the card, the number is in the middle of the card but the letter is in the bottom corner.

So this very long story basically ends with me finally seeing a doctor and getting prescribed a puffer and antibiotics and lots of fluids and this tea from Roswell Strange came to mind. It’s a mild green tea which takes honey quite well so it’s nice for when you’re not feeling great. Thanks Roswell Strange for sharing. Like you, I don’t love green teas but as far as they go, this is pretty good.

Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam Latte Sipdown (197)

I’m done!!! I’m finally finished. Fingers crossed I passed and don’t need to do this again but even if I do, it won’t be for a while and so I get to finally relax! I have over a month for work to start and I’m so excited to do so many things. Among those things is getting back to my tea…and trying to get some sipdowns in before the month ends. This makes for my third sipdown this month.

This was a delicious latte. The cold foam has a melted ice cream consistency so it paired perfectly with the root beer quality of this tea. It really helped bring the whole flavor together.

Scavenger Hunt – A tea flavored like my favorite waffle topping

I have really been enjoying homemade blueberry syrup on our waffles for the past couple of months, and this is an old tea that I need to sip down. I have a huge amount left because I bought a one pound bag long ago. It isn’t hanging around because it is bad, I simply have too much tea to get them all sipped down in a timely manner. Yes, I give away tea, I serve tea to guests, but still here we are.

My reviews in the past were mostly begging Michael Harney to offer it loose leaf, and apparently lots of people did so because it is available that way now. The company used to have an employee or two who monitored reviews on sites like this and they have been oretty responsive ot requests in the past. Great customer service.

This tea started out available in Historic Royal Palaces tins only, 30 sachets and frequently sold out.

With food, I pretty much only taste the blueberry flavoring, and blueberry almost always reminds me of grape Dimetapp, which I loved as a child. Last cup after breakfast you can taste and feel the green tea, a little brisk and my mouth is slightly dry. The green base is lightly grassy but blueberry flavor is still the dominant note.

Thank you so much for passing this along, derk!  derk wasn’t thrilled with this one and we had a swap we were building, so I requested this one.  I love these types of pu-erh that look like a candy bar that you break a piece from.  This one just happened to have lilies in it.  By the time the fourth steep had unraveled in the basket, there was an entire big lily blossom floating at the top, not to mention the smaller petals throughout.  Wow!  It’s amazing how tea unravels sometimes.  The flavor was very consistent throughout all four steeps.  A very dark shu — I couldn’t really taste anything floral per se, but the pu-erh is very delicious on it’s own.  The main note being starchy and bakey like a good rye bread.  Nothing offensive here at all. But also not terribly distinct.  I do like how dark it is though! Now that it’s cooler weather… let the great chai avalanche commence!
Steep #1  // 1 square for full mug // 20 minutes after boiling  // rinse // 2 minute steep
Steep #2  // 18 minutes after boiling //  2 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 5 min steep
Steep #4 // just boiled // 11 min steep

So… https://www.instagram.com/p/BCq0Fo4xYH3/ happened just recently and this morning I am going in for a drug test which means I will fill up on tea prior to driving to the ‘lab’.

Picked out some of W2T Finest DHP; which I was unable to find on Steepster. The dry leaf has a nice soft cocoa smell, but that vanishes when it is brewed. Thankfully this is not one of those DHP that have a harsh throat feeling that I call ‘rough tea’. The taste is of a mildish roasting, to which I prefer. The key aspect about this tea that I most enjoy is how smooth and soft it is making it easy to drink in the morning in my case. Not much of a body or lingering taste, but that’s okay because it does leave residual heat in the mouth that is pleasant. Not to be confused with delicate, this tea is smooth and easy to enjoy resteeps of.

If this indeed is the right tea that I am reviewing…

What an interesting tea! I steeped it briefly at boiling and am drinking it straight up unsweetened. When it was hottest, my first few sips were vanilla custard. Enchanting. And then, as it cooled, it got all malty frisky. And then, a few astringent notes started rising up. As I continue to warm my cup by topping up from my travel mug, the buttery notes resurface. Yummy and very much enjoyable, but a tad finicky.

Thank you, Sil, for sending me this one to try.
I am very much behind on trying samples and tea swaps in general: ok, ok, behind with the whole tea world really, but making slow gentle progress nevertheless. Aaargh.

Decided that i need to try and have a few puerh/gonfy type sessions today because the weather is shit outside and i’m working from home. I also haven’t had a chance to do much of anything besides western brew so i’d like to change that. I have a ton of puerh that i want to revisit, some samples and a cupboard to get in order! :) I pulled this one out as i also want to try and get at least one sample down today. I’ve had this one before, courtesy of dexter (as is this sample) and i rather enjoy it.

oh god. i just lost my train of everything. we’re doing this mini “introduce the team” thing at work and i think i just convinced my boss to make it powerpuff super hero themed for fun…. which doesn’t happen in a bank normally for this sort of thing and i think he’s onboard since he just sent my his own avatar that he created, complete with his cat. oh god i am dying here…

Last of my ESGreen samples – I saved this one for last because this was the one I was most looking forward to trying.
This isn’t really doing it for me tonight. It’s a bit too finicky, some astringent, and not at all in my preferred flavor profile. If you get the steep just right it is fruity, but it also has some bitter cocoa notes, maybe even a hint of molasses. Just a little oversteeped and it turns really aggressive on the bitter notes, maybe a hint of smoke.
I’m sure this is a quality tea it’s just not for me.
All in all though I’ve been really happy with the samples I got from them. Really liked 3 of the 4 and would consider ordering from them again. LOL I have a BUNCH of loyalty points so I SHOULD order from them again.

Just saw Ashmanra’s review of this – and as someone who’s gone out of their way to review teaware in the past I can’t believe I didn’t think to review this! So thank you, for the reminder to do so!

Gonna keep my review simple and to the point; I definitely like this set. It was my first experience with an aroma cup – and I’ve definitely liked it. With the help of some Youtube tutorials I’ve found it very easy to pick up. And, it really adds another layer to experiencing and review teas, and since I’ve definitely been branching out this year away from more Westernized ways of brewing it was a nice way to sort of ease even farther away from that preparation style.

I also think the size of both cups are really nice; with the amount of tea I usually brew up at a time they hold the perfect amount! The tray is nice too; usually I keep coasters or potholders on the table that I prepare/drink my tea at but it’s much more aesthetically pleasing to look at the tray instead. And finally, I appreciate how tasteful the branding on the set is; nothing splashy or in your face!

PS. Happy birthday Marzipan! Couldn’t have picked a better birthday twin! Hope you’re drinking some really good tea today to celebrate.