New Tasting Notes
Backlog:
This is the first tea that I tried from the Box of Chocolate sampler. Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2012/02/14/white-chocolate-strawberry-from-52teas/
Upping the rating a teensy bit.
This time I brewed it at 205 for 5 minutes (with the cap on my mug brewer system) and I broke down and added a spoonful of pure cane sugar.
It’s so much better like this! I might have actually changed my mind about this tea….. My cup yesterday just made me go “Eh, this is boring” but today I’m really enjoying it!
Preparation
Oh banana oolong. You are so amazing. So slightly sweet and banana-y and creamy and calming and delicious. Where have you been all my life?
On cup three and I think that’s all it will give me. The smell is still creamy banana and oolong but the taste is very weak, even after nearly 10 minutes of steeping. NOOOOOOOOOOO – I’m still planning to sit here doing statistics for another couple hours! :’(
Preparation
I do miss drinking coffee sometimes but not the acid reflux that always seemed to come with it. It doesn’t really taste like coffee but it’s dark and satisfying with a nice barley hazelnut and date flavor. I did add some soymilk and it’s a nice afternoon drink, I had some for dessert last night too. I liked it and will probably get more and try the other flavors. Although I guess it isn’t really a tea! ;-)
This tea must be magic!
I completely forgot about it while my 13.5-month-old threw a fit about not being able to climb on the bookcases. Sigh. I nearly panicked when I realised that it’d been steeping for nearly 20 minutes and I only have a limited supply left. Amazingly, it was still warm, creamy and delicious. No need to add milk or sugar.
It’s a Christmas miracle… just not Christmas anymore…
Preparation
I steeped two bags in my travel mug to have at work (milk and two heaping teaspoons of sugar, cuz that’s how I roll). I’m not a coconut fanatic usually, but WOW. The coconut flavor really came through. It reminded me a little bit of an Almond Joy candy bar. I can’t wait to have it again!
Preparation
My sister bought me this a few years ago for Christmas and I liked it. She bought me more last Christmas, and I decided to have some last night. After dinner I wanted something quick and sweet and this fit the bill.
If you’ve never had it before, this is black tea powder, sugar, dried whole & nonfat milk (why both I ask myself?), dried honey and natural flavors. Now I don’t consider this a true Chai-mainly because of the tea powder. It does have plenty of other delicious flavors, and tastes like a sweet Chai tea. IMO, it is too sweet, and the black tea flavor is there, but not strong enough.
It is a dessert Chai, and that being said was just what I was in the mood for. It is delicious, and quick. I also prepared two other quick teas, so I could watch the 136th Annual Westminster Dog Show! :)) I love dogs (and most animals), and I watch it every year. So, I began preparing two other teas I’ll review later. I spent the next 3 hours watching the competition next to my dog Lotis. :)) More on him later!
Cupped: Tuesday, February 14, 2012.
Reviewed: Wednesday, February 15, 2012.
Preparation
The sweetness is what I didn’t care for in this concentrate either. I like my chai on the spicy side! :p
Yeah, but I do like it occasionally as a dessert, but it is not a true tea.
Yeah, but I do like it occasionally as a dessert, but it is not a true tea.
Is the black tea powder simply made from grinding leaves? O.o
I missed the dog show, I was busy being eaten by our three rescue puppies. I am hoping hubby will fall in love with one or two of them and let us keep them! :) He needs a new canoeing buddy.
I think so Tamm.
I hope he’ll come around Ash!
I was worried this was going to be very grape, after some of the other reviews. When I poured water onto the leaves, it did have a grape aroma, but it subsided quickly. I kind of had a sniffing version of a double-take.
I added milk and sugar immediately, since milk & cookies really needed it, I figured it’d help here to get that cookie aspect out.
I don’t get much of the raisin, it does just come straight off like grape, maybe slightly raisin. It isn’t offputting though, because it’s soon followed by what does in fact taste like a cookie in liquid form.
It’s okay, but I’m not blown away by it. Then again I would never purposely choose oatmeal raisin cookies over chocolate chip!
Preparation
Second cup of this sample. I added more leaf this time (3 tsp to 15 oz of water.) I don’t know how long it steeped, but I’m guessing around 4 minutes. The vanilla seems more subtle than I remember it, and not at all artificial. It’s mostly black tea, but the vanilla is there in the background smoothing it out. This is lovely!
I must have forgotten to shake up the bag for my last cup… this is like a different tea. I’m increasing my rating!
Preparation
This tea is just one of those teas that makes me smile as soon as the hot water hits the leaf and a wave of wonderful aroma comes out of the cup. It’s just so good! It’s also one of those blends where I don’t even know what all the different flavors are, but I like them. Yes, I get the florals, including the rose, but there’s also a fruitiness that I’m not quite able to identify. Sometimes I wish I knew, and other times I don’t really care because whatever it is, it tastes good.
Preparation
Inspired by Angrboda, I felt the need to try something smokey today. Buuuut, as it turns out, my Lapsang-exclusionist practices combined with the worst organization of 20+Kg of tea you ever did see has left me scratching my head over where I had Lapsangish teas hiding about. It may seem a silly question to some, but why so little in my collection when I’ve reviewed more of that kind of tea than some of my favorites? Well, while I’m happy to taste samples and screw with brewing parameters to the extreme to challenge my prejudices on tea types, this is how I think of most Lapsang Souchong:
Yeah, a little smoke is nice… Just not enough to beat my senses to a pulp. And definitely not that chemically-tasting junk that has liquid smoke added to it.
Anywho, I gave up looking and just went with a particularly smokey Keemun-style tea instead.
I got a pound of this from ITI last April and it’s as potent as ever. I do take issue with the labeling as being “the finest Keemun” when it’s from Sichuan, but am glad they list the origin prominently in the title (unlike some of the resellers). In terms of fine-ness, or whathaveyou, it tastes good but the “finest” thing about it is the grading. There are so few leaves in here that are not the same approximate length, width, color, and degree of rolling. That translates into this being one of the most consistent teas per pot if other parameters are held in check when simply measuring volumetrically. I was having a real doozy of a time trying to brew tea this past week when I forgot my centigram balance at work several times (personal control issues – not difficulty getting good results), but with this tea it doesn’t much matter. A level tablespoon comes out being within 0.07g over the course of 25 samples… Yeah, there’s some variance and I ought to take more samples than that for significance and such but I’m lazy and how many people really feel a crushing need for 0.01g resolution or greater every time they brew tea?
This time ’round I went for a couple big mugs of tea rather than my usual smaller service with more infusions.
8.5g tea in water brought just to a boil so in the 30sec gap between preheating and pouring on tea the temp in my 1.5L kettle had dropped to 99C. Reheated same water to like temperature for second infusion. Water mass was 357g first round and 348g for the second infusion using 4min and then 5min steep times.
Dry leaves are wee lil’ black needles coiled tightly lengthwise with a smooth curve making most of the bag sort of resemble cartoony eyebrows. This tea would actually work well in combination with a couple dots to make all sorts of little smiley or frowny faces… I’d better keep that idea for later…
Dry fragrance is a mix of hardwood smoke, burned pine wood (not pine smoke), dried and live cone bearing horsetail ferns, and a sort of shifting fruit characteristic. Bugs me when fragrance shifts, ‘cause unlike aroma and flavor it’s most likely due to desensitizing to the smell. Opening the bag, this goes from woodsmoke and a bit of tar to burned wood, to the smell of an area a grassfire razed a week or so prior, to the smell of peaches then oranges then apples. Lesson of the story – if you want smoke to be perceivable in your cup, don’t stick your face in the bag more than a couple times over the course of a minute (here, I am evaluating fragrance mostly after drinking a full mug, before my second cup).
Wet aroma is like wet burned conifer. Something like redwood with that sort of fibrous moist bark aroma, but more of a Bishop Pine “snappier” woodiness tossed in. Wet leaves are wet leaves, though, and don’t tell tons about the flavor compared to the other indicators – seems to alter the experience more when preparing smaller quantities back-to-back, smelling the rising aroma upon pouring fresh water each time. A bigger pot captures more liquor aroma on the walls, though, and the mixture can be intriguing. In this case, the mix is surprisingly Nilgiri-like (especially following the second infusion) in a moist squashy and light tulip aroma.
Liquor aroma is oak and moss smoke in equal parts with rose petals. Shifts to the smell of oranges in a bowl after it starts cooling. Not much more to it, but I suspect it’s largely due to certain aromas obscuring others since I can get crazy nectarine, carnation, black pepper, raisin, tomato sauce, jack/mozzarella cheese, ocean water, leather, cardboard, or even the smell from inside my boots after a long hike from this depending on how I brew it. In general, sticking to around 2g/100mL and above 85C will avoid the funkier aromatics.
Body is at the light end of full-bodied or high end of moderate-body. While there is a light sharpness to it, it’s more in terms of acidity rather than astringency; overall it’s pretty smooth in that regard. This tea is potent, but not with any particular characteristic as most discernible flavors pop in and out with relatively light tones on par with the intensity of a Wuyi Yancha prepared under gongfu prep guidelines. Overall base is like charred hardwood (or driftwood) but other characteristics override it in sequence. Flavor starts off appley. And pie crusty. Toss in some raisins with a bit of those little grape seeds in ’em as it progresses. Fair amount of light cassia in the aftertaste. Light bite starting mid-draught and carrying onward mixed with afteraroma conjures up a heatless similarity to black Tellicherry Peppercorns. There is a vegetal undercurrent (more obvious in second infusion) with a good similarity to Brussels Sprouts but it remains in the background as a vegetal accent so no worries to you haters of all things Brassica. Aftertaste leaves lingering reminder of unflavored oatmeal and grilled veggies – kinda sweet, kinda snappy, kinda chary, and ultimately satisfyingly heavy.
I mentioned before that there lies the potential for funkiness in this guy. It doesn’t reward high-concentration-short-brew methods well, though you can produce interesting flavors from it. It winds up with off-balance body to liveliness and the potency of aroma doesn’t match to taste intensity at all. Likewise, it can come off wussy in taste when knocked below 1.5g/100mL and/or 3min steep. The period between 2:30 and 3:15 shows a pretty big difference in brewing this using near-boiling water. Beyond 4:30 at 2.5g/100mL or greater pushes tannic acidity, but it’s still approachable at 6min below 3g/100mL, if a little tart and monochromatic.
Great alternative to Lapsang. Doesn’t hold a candle to some Qimen Hongcha out there at all. Goes great with a wide variety of food – especially carby foods. Drink this on a cold winter night with some bread pudding and you’re in heaven. Have with oatmeal in the morning and you may be satiated ’til dinnertime. Gotta be in the mood for it, though.
Preparation
I tend to prefer the more smoky sorts of Keemun over the floral sorts too. A good Keemun has to be a bit of a bully, not some little lady in a pink dress and a sun umbrella. :)
I agree about the whole Keemun/Sichuan thing. It’s misleading, really. But at least it’s better than the talk I went to once where the speaker (from a local tea shop) claimed that all Keemun in the world, all tea with that name, all grades, comes from ONE estate. I have my doubts. That’s either a bloody big estate, or they’ve somehow worked out how to speed-grow the bushes… Come to think of it, that was actually the same lady who once tried to have me believe that Formosa Oolong and Taiwan Oolong were two completely different beasts. Haven’t set foot in that shop since.
Hahaha, I think I’ll add your story to my list of “ridiculous things misinformed tea merchants spew”
I really like thick, dark teas. I really, reaaaallly like thick, dark teas. The first sencha I ever tasted was the Organic Miyazaki Sakimidori from o-cha.com, a positively stunning experience from the thick cloudiness of resultant brew to the amazing grassy flavors to the absolute euphoria following, and solely responsible for inspiring my love of tea.
I had held off on trying Pu Erh for quite a while, not quite understanding how I would brew it or why it came in little blocks, but having tried all other main varieties of tea from white to black, I decided it was finally time to introduce myself to post fermented teas.
The smell of the dry leaves was funny, not quite like anything I’d ever smelt before and definitely containing some of those fishy notes I’d heard of. I first broke off a little bit of one of the little bundles and infused it for 30 seconds. I probably should have rinsed the leaves first, but regardless I was immediately impressed by the first infusion – dark as coffee, thick mouthfeel and very surprising lack of astringency. I like this tea. The flavor is very earthy, almost like a counterpart to the grassiness of the Miyazaki sencha but one layer closer to the center of the earth. I was left with a powerful envigoration after one cup, noticeably heightened with the second, and more so than I experience from black tea. Perfect after a large meal.
Definitely happy about my first experience with post fermented tea, and I will definitely consider getting more.
Preparation
Purchased this while in Yarmouth visiting family over Christmas. Apparently a local drug store (City Drug) has started blending and selling their own tea – Very intriguing. The beau and I decided to get a bit of this, but they only offer their tea in 50 gram bags. Bummer (and kind of a strike 1). We decide to get it anyway, despite there being no visible price chart (strike 2). This 50 gram bag came to 12 dollars with tax!!!! First off, no tax on tea in NS. Second off, that is an outrageous price – No wonder the price list is hidden. They also charge more than $10 for a 100 pack of T-Sacs. We won’t be buying any more tea there at those prices, so we had pretty high expectations of this puppy.
We finally rbewed a pot of this up with breakfast, and it was pretty darn good. no bitterness – which is great. There was a rich, creamy flavour which was more caramelly than anything else, but quite nice. The pomegranate they talk about on the packaging was nowhere to be seen, but it was prerty nice. I think I might even prefer it to the Sawadeee Monk’s Blend based on the richness, but at the price it is, we’ll live without when this pack is gone.
Tasty, and the coconut is very well paired with the Assam black tea, but still makes me feel somewhat like I’m covering up the natural tea flavors with fruity additions. I’ve heard it’s amazing with coconut milk which I can readily imagine. I think I would best enjoy this tea brewed very strong, with some coconut milk added, to drink on the go. Not something I would meditate over in the morning.
Preparation
Finally, a David’s Tea that I like. But then, I am a hardcore mint fan. They’d really have to screw up a mint tea for me not to like it (like add lemongrass & lemon verbana ahem Tazo Zen ahem). Not as amazing as my own home-grown mint, but still, quite drinkable.
