New Tasting Notes

I was very excited to see that my Teavivre order came today, I’ve been out of loose tea and impatiently waiting for my order for what feels like forever. I couldn’t ask for a better tea right now, I feel like I’m drinking the essence of spring. It’s green, floral and minerally and manages to be very refreshing hot. This was just what I needed right now. I’ve had an extremely rough couple of months and right now this is making me feel much better. I was a little disappointed to find that there was only one sample included in my order and it was just white peony, but I’ll live.

ahhhhhh

Decided to try a second steeping. Alas, it’s thin and wimpy when cold-brewed a second time. Might work if brewed hot for second steeping, leaving the bags in the cup.

This is the 3rd Golden tips tea I have had. Thanks to Teavivre for the sample. This is a hearty tea to drink. No astringency at all, very smooth.

I visited David’s Tea yesterday with the sole purpose to pick up some of the much anticipated Birthday Cake flavour. Needless to say – I was not disappointed, this is one of the best flavoured rooibos, or any type of tea for that matter, that I have ever had. David’s Tea was offering samples of Birthday Cake yesterday in the store, and the store smelled like the candles on a cake had just been blown out. It was fabulous. I sampled the tea, and it was delicious, and bought some to take home. I went home and proceeded to drink 4 cups of it – it’s just that good. Yes, it was a tad sweet, but I do enjoy sweet teas – especially in the form of rooibos! So skip that piece of cake after dinner, and skip right over to this healthy version of the delicious dessert!

Thank you Azzrian for this sample! I got a nice big whiff of floral and vegetal scents soon as I opened the bag! When I brewed this one up it smelled like over cooked spinach and was a little darker than I had expected. It tasted like a very interesting mix of green and roasted oolongs. I got the floral and vegetal spinach notes that I would from a green oolong and then I also got a nice charcoal-like flavor. The best I can describe this is basically grill spinach on a charcoal grill next to a flower garden. It was nice and reminded me of summer. Thank you again Azzrian for this sample!

Have I mentioned how much I hate rooibos? This particular rooibos tea is neither sweet, nor creamy, as the bag suggests.

As well, I had expected more flavors with jellybeans mixed in, but all I could taste was bland terrible rooibos.

I couldn’t even finish my first and only cup, I had to dump it in the sink.

Very disappointing.

I got this as a sample as part of my haul. Because of yesterday’s tea cup calamity I’m drinking this from my tumbler (which I still love!); it just doesn’t cool as quickly. I should be working on my English paper! Maybe after this….
This tea smells very sweet. It seems to be the basic base of the lemon soliel blend as well. I still haven’t had one of these fruit so I’m just going off of taste alone instead of a comparison.
This is actually quite good! I was expecting something different from the smell, but this is very sweet. It has a kind of over-ripe banana undertone, but it would probably be less pronounced if served cold. Pretty surprising and nice!

This tea is really, emphatically, sweet. Not just sweet as opposed to tart. Sweet. I used to drink it years ago and I swear the recipe has changed because I used to add both milk and sweetener to it. Now I use milk or fat-free half and half, but never sweetener.

I don’t detect the pepper as much, either. To me, this is a nice spicy dessert tea, very much like chai but not as cloying as the over-sweetened chai I have tried from time to time in restaurants.

I don’t like Kool-Aid but I really enjoy this stuff. I usually drink it hot, leave in the bags, and do not sweeten it because it doesn’t need it. It has a very strong cherry flavor with sweet/tart accents that I find very refreshing. Can also be cold-brewed.

Hahah here I took a picture and everything, expecting this to not be listed yet, but Tabby beat me to it.

I love the bulk stuff at this “farmer’s market” (it’s more like an international grocery). I did not know before that they had greens and oolongs because it’s so crowded I only saw the black teas. So I had to immediately grab this.

I was not expecting much. I paid $2.30 for about 3 1/4 ounces.

I don’t know if it was my low expectations or what, but holy crap, this is actually good! It’s very grassy but sweet. I didn’t want to make much so I used my gaiwan and guessed a bit and steeped it for a minute. It could probably go a bit less and of course I couldn’t find the little booklet from Den’s Tea to at least try their parameters on it. (That search begins after this.)

This will do until one day I have the money for a really good gyokuro.

Still yummy and refreshing as I attempt to flush an excess of caffeine out of my system from earlier today. Still doing a cold brew/infusion. It’s not QUITE “iced,” but I can’t seem to get the little slider above that without going too high.

When we got in our spring harvest last year, it quickly became legendary. I was so happy to see it enjoyed by so many people, but also nervous about whether the next harvest could live up to its reputation. After sharing all the kind words said here on Steepster with the farmers through our friend and Tieguanyin devotee Weiwei, our friends in Anxi decided to send us an even more exquisite autumn harvest.

Now, spring has returned. I expected to have to wait another three weeks or so to get any of the spring Tieguanyin, but Weiwei, whose father has devoted his retirement to finding the best Tieguanyin in the world, was able to secure this early harvest. Usually Weiwei will describe a fine Tieguanyin as ‘passable’ and a mind-blowing one as ‘pretty good.’ I have been waiting to try this Tieguanyin which she called ‘amazing.’ I thought that she would just send a sample for me to approve, but she just made the call and sent a full batch of this tea. We got a large portion of the farmer’s harvest. Since they are a family operation and hand-pick everything, only 15 pounds were available when we shipped. I already asked Weiwei to have them reserve whatever is left.

I tried to describe the tea when I made a product page this morning, but it is so hard not to resort to ridiculous metaphors. This tea is the essence of spring. It is like all the young flowers, the delicate buds, the vibrantly green grass have all been crystallized into this drinking experience. It is supremely humbling. Thank you Weiwei, for the confidence to bring us this tea so soon after it was picked.

I really look forward to sending this out to all my friends here on Steepster and hope that everyone has an equally incredible experience with it. Happy Spring!

I guess this could’ve used some rock sugar…

There are fruits all around in this tea, it even smells delicious, but there’s an unfortunate hint of the overpowering hibiscus, and the even lesser safflower and cornflower.

Overpowering flower blossoms can be a problem, as they take away a lot of the fresh and bright flavors that would otherwise be prominent in a blend like this.

In this case, the hibiscus adds a disgusting amount of tartness and bitterness to a potentially great fruit cocktail.

I would love to drift away to paradise, but the jarring hibiscus unfortunately takes you back to the tart bitter reality.

According to the description, this tea was traditionally offered only to the emperors of China. Those emperors must have either been incredible tea-masters, or lacking the tastebuds that detect tannins.

Or maybe I just just an off-batch, but, I can’t drink this stuff. It kind of reminded me of that time I tried eating an acorn. No matter how I steep it, it just feels like a cup of biting astringency. I’ve actually had this little sample tin around for a while, and once in a while, I feel adventurous and try it again. Maybe today, I think, will be the day I can coax some nice flavor out of this. Every time I regret it. Even using almost tepid water temperatures, even using two-second steep times, the intense astringency overpowers everything (which is sad, because I can tell that there really is a nice flavor underneath).

It could be just me, though. I shared this with a friend once and she thought it was great. Maybe I’m just super-sensitive to astringency (or maybe she’s descended from one of those Chinese emperors)

Ah well. Today was the day that I used the last of this tea, to no flavorful avail. Farewell, Snow Water Green Cloud tea. At least you had a very cute name.

I don’t know what I was thinking this morning. Apparently I thought this was going to be a light, gentle, quiet tea, so I used TWO tea bags in my first cup. With 2% milk.

And I’m OK. My hands are not shaking. In fact, 4 hours later, I am about to have another cup, this time brewed with 1 silken bag for about 5 minutes. No milk, sugar, half-and-half, or lemon.

[Pause] [Sniff] [Pause] [Slurp] […Pause…]

When I sniff I can catch that sharp, almost vinegary smell someone else mentioned. It’s rather nice, like malt vinegar or even balsamic.

First unadorned sip is strong, definitely “fills the mouth” (if I’m beginning to understand that term) with the flavor of tea, and then retreats with almost no aftertaste. I could get used to drinking this black. Must try this experiment with my Assams later.

Now it’s cooled down a little and I can take bigger sips. It’s a bit puckery but pleasant. That’s “briskness,” right? H&S doesn’t seem to think it’s very brisk, as they only give it a 1 on their scale of 1-5. Maybe I am a wuss, after all.

This is my first China tea of this new exploration, and I believe it is the first Keemun I have ever tasted. The knowledgeable tea buyer at my local British import shop guided me to it when I asked whether they carried a pure Keemun. It’s not clearly identified as such on the bagged tin, although if you read the back it says “Produced in late spring in Annui Province, China handplucked, fully oxidized.” I believe on the loose-tea tin it does say “Keemun” in fine print.

This was another part of my haul recently. I got this primarily because it just sounded nice! This tea was surprising because initial reviews I’ve read penned it as being much more in your face than what I got.
For me this tea was a lot more subtle than people suggested. The vanilla was the strongest in this blend for me. The tea reminds me of oatmeal cookies, light ones! Although the tea is pleasant and overall tastes pretty good; I have had better. I think that the other elements (besides the vanilla) should have a higher quantity in this blend in order to really stand out. I think this would be a nice “sharing” tea for my friends who don’t normally drink tea.

Watching this steep was incredible. I’ve been drinking oolong from another company, which i now see probably sent me the dust at the bottom of their tin. This oolong is full leaves, with the most pleasant banana aroma. It is this beautiful light golden color that makes you want to guzzle it down, until you remember how hot the water is. It tastes as light as it looks, which may be due to a lack of enough leaf on my part. There is a banana sweetness that hits your palate, but the oolong is missing, which is odd. Any suggestions on better brewing?

I used 2 teaspoons in my IngenuiTEA. Filled to about 12/13 ounces (not the full 16).

Mixing with Fujian Premium Black by Dragon Pearl Whole Teas

Mixing with Citrus Ginger by The Secret Garden

I drank this a few days ago but forgot to log it at the time. I was busy studying for a bio exam at the time and didn’t really pay much attention to the flavour as I normally would. The leaves smelled amazing, though— very chocolate-y. I could almost taste the chocolate malt milkshake in my mouth.

Anyway, I have no idea how to brew mate. I read somewhere about splashing it with cold water before putting in the hot water, to preserve the minerals, so I did just that, waited a few minutes, and then proceeded to add boiling water.

The aroma was still very, very nice, though I couldn’t pick up as much of the chocolate as I was expecting, after having smelled the dry leaves. Oh well. I took my first sip and could detect a hint of chocolate, along with something that I think is what mate tastes like. I don’t remember much else about this mate, since I was engrossed in my biology textbook for the remainder of the cup.

This tea was a bit of a letdown after the high expectations I had of it after smelling the dry leaves, but overall, I still enjoyed it. Also, it’s quite likely that I didn’t brew the mate properly/am not used to how flavoured mate tastes. In any case, I do plan on trying this again in the near future. Hopefully I’ll be able to pay more attention to the flavouring by then.

My first rooibos tea!

I’d heard about rooibos teas from a friend of mine who really likes them. I decided to give this one a go after the $1/oz deal from Tropical Tea Company.

I tried this while—surprise!—studying for an exam. So, again, I wasn’t paying very much attention to flavour. I just wanted something pleasant to drink while trudging through endless lines of text and various powerpoints. Be warned that my memory might be fuzzy on some details.

So, the details: blueberry. Lots of blueberries.

As a matter of fact, that’s all that I can remember of this. Blueberry when I opened the pouch, blueberry when I brewed this, blueberry when I drank it. I get the feeling that I probably missed some subtle notes of other flavours in there.

If you don’t like blueberries/blueberry-flavoured foods and drinks, don’t get this. I love blueberries, and berries in general, so I intend to have another cup of this sometime again.

And now, the word ‘blueberry’ no longer makes sense to me at the moment. Yay, semantic satiation. :P