Ricky

This one has been sitting in my cupboard for the longest time now. I recall that I wasn’t particularly fond of this the first time I had it. The tea experience was, awkward. Thanks to takgoti and Erin for sending me the sampler. If memory serves me right, it was from Erin from takgoti. If I made a mistake, I apologize and thanks to whoever sent me it.

Anyways, I finally decided to tear off the seal to my tin and give this tea another go. I went with 5grams of tea for an 8oz/12oz cup. The tea temperature varied between 185F and 175F. I’m blaming the zoji like TeaNuggets. Steep time two minutes to three thirty. I really more or less winged it. I was trying a new approach, more leaves, more infusions, winging the steep time. Hey if Jesse (Samovar) can make good tea like that, it’s worth a try.

I have to say the flavors are a bit different when you use more leaves, higher temps and rapid steeps. You lose the delicateness of white tea and it ventures more into the hard green territory. I tried this with jasmine silver needles and it wasn’t successful. With bai mu dan, it’s another story. Where as I didn’t like it the first time, I don’t recall why, I really liked it this time. This tea was still fairly delicate where you had to hand to really find the flavors unless you had a clean taste palette. It seemed to have been more toasty and nutty. Honestly, I can’t recall much at this time aside from the fact that I need to make some more of this. I was able to get six or seven infusions out of this one. I think it was five 8oz cups and two 12oz cups. The flavors were still fairly strong up to the 5/6th cup. It was still present in the 6/7th cup but starting to water down.

Samovar recommends pairing with the honeycomb and cheese platter. Seeing as I’ve had the platter before, I can see why they recommend it. The platter would definitely bring out a lot of the flavors. Darn, now I’m craving the honeycomb platter….

Tea logging marathon!

This a great breakfast tea for those blueberry craving days. I was very impressed with the first cup I had of this. It’s not the strongest black tea, but if it were any stronger the delicate flavors would be overwhelmed. It’s more of a mild strength, like afternoon teas. Flavors, you guessed it, blueberry! It’s more like a blueberry muffin or a blueberry cake. It’s probably the vanilla giving it that little extra oomph. If you’ve had Teavana’s Cranberry black tea blend, this one is similar to that. So I have a feeling not everyone would like this.

Tea from Jessica. Thanks!

Nothing really much to say about this one.

Fairly standard honeybush, though the leaves seemed to be particularly fine, like the surface of sand.

Smooth, sweet… it’s honeybush…

^{Compacting several tealogs into one since I haven’t been logging them….}

Over the past several weeks, I’ve sampled several jasmine pearls. The one that still stands out the most to me is Canton’s Jasmine Pearl. The silver needle base really made it shine. It’s light, yet refreshing sweet, a tad of nuttiness from the silver needles. A very crisp and delightful over all experience.

How does Teavana’s Jasmine Pearl compare? It’s good. Nothing really stood out. It tasted a bit light. Pretty typical Jasmine Pearl tea. The floral notes aren’t amazing strong and overwhelming so I suppose that’s a plus. Reminded me of Adagio’s Jasmine #12. Slightly better than Adagio’s Jasmine Pearl, but very, how do you put it, flat. It went down easily, but it didn’t give me the want I more / crave factor.

I would say Canton’s Jasmine Pearls tasted the best. Following Canton’s would be Adagio’s Superior Jasmine Pearls. The superior / standard pearls are completely different from one another. The superior jasmine pearls had more of a natural sweetness. It was more delicate. Teavana’s Jasmine Pearl comes in third and Adagio’s Jasmine #12 ranks last.

Thanks for sending me some of this Jessica!

Woah, brews into a ruby red color. Why am I acting like I’ve never seen this before… Maybe it’s cause I haven’t seen this bright red color in a while. Smells of clove, licorice, lavender and lemongrass hits you right off the bat. It’s not the most pleasant smell to me. Going in for the sip! Hmmm, it’s completely different from the smell. That’s a good thing. Tart from the hibiscus. Sweet from the stevia. Citrus orange peels. It wins a complex tea award. Each sip is sweet and tangy. It’s kind of refreshing. I imagine this one might be quite delectable iced.

Well the tea name is a mouthful. Breaking in the Keurig machine and trying the free tea sampler it came with. Sample one of four. It’s surprisingly good. I’d imagine it’s a consistent perfect cup each and every time. They recommend either a 3oz or 8oz brew, I went with the 8oz and then added enough ice until it made two cups. Sweet and tart at the same time. More sweet than tart though. Went down fairly quickly, can’t recall much other than that it tasted remarkably like sweetened ice tea from restaurants. After I finished my cup of tea, I added more water to the ice that remained and there’s still tea flavors! Guess the ice retained a bit of flavor. I tore apart the k-cup after I was finished with it and the tea leaves resembled rooibos or honeybush after it’s been wet.

Pineapple and coconut, does that sound familiar? Frank’s Pina Colada (52teas)? It’s precisely that, except it’s backed by a green oolong instead of honeybush. The base components the flavors quite well. It gives it another layer of juicy sweetness. All I have to say is, this is winner. I’ll definitely be getting more. I’m starting to love Lupicia’s flavored oolongs. The balance is just amazing.

It’s been a while since this one arrived in the mail. Whenever I reach in the cupboard, the timing never seems right to have it. Either I’m not looking for a caffeine buzz nor is the zoji set to 140F. As I was reorganizing the cupboard today, I decided to make use of my mortar and pestle and grind up some fresh not so fresh matcha. Well, despite this tea being a few months old, it smells as fresh as ever. It has such a rich vegetal smell. From the smell alone you can tell it’s some high quality leaves. It smells very natural. Natural, green mother earth. It’s amazing. Even before I took a sip, I knew this tea was going to be outstanding. Takes a sip, yep, I’m speechless. With some teas, you’re just left mesmerized. This is one of them. It’s sweet, it’s green, it’s it’s, yeah, I NEED MORE!

It’s a tad bitter, but it’s tolerable. The bitterness could have been since I used water at 208F. I steeped for about 10-15 seconds. I took a sip the moment the water hit the leaves. Immediate flavors. Even though the leaves were grind pretty fine, they didn’t seem to dissolve with the water. You’ll need to strain it if you decided to grind the leaves up. The leaves don’t taste bad, but it messes up the whole tea experience.

Ahhh, I just realized this was a 1999 pu-erh. Well, that explains a lot.

I don’t believe I’ve had any pu-erh in the 1990s. If I did, I don’t remember it. Most of the pu-erhs that I’ve had are pretty young, only aged a few years. This explains why I felt this pu-erh was incredibly strong compared to the ones I’ve had in the past. Pretty standard pu-erh, except that it was incredibly bold. This one definitely stood out to me and I could probably pick it out in a pu-erh line up. It’s incredibly earthy, tastes like potting soil.

Wasn’t bad, but a bit too strong even for my taste. I guess I’d probably get use to it over time. Numerous steeps later, still kicking strong. Just what you’d expect.

Wow, it’s almost been a year since I’ve been on Steepster. Eight months ago, at the time I had this tea, I would not have been able to tell you the difference between a dragon pearl and a jasmine pearl’s characteristics aside from the differences in the size and colors. I remember loving this tea the first time I had it. It was fragrant, delicious, soothing. A few days ago when I had this, the first thing I thought of was, wow, plastic. Not really sure why plastic popped into my mind. I mean it obviously didn’t taste like plastic, it just tasted, a bit, fake. It wasn’t as light as other jasmine teas I’ve had. It wasn’t as smooth and delicate. It seemed a bit, umm, artificial. Perhaps my tea is getting stale or it’s that I’ve had several cups of Canton’s Jasmine Pearl. They really don’t compare.

^{Knocking rating down by 8 from 80}

Canton Tea Sampler arrived! Wohoooo! It’s packaged a lot nicer than I imagined it would. There’s a hand written postcard that goes thanks for your purchase. Then two boxes with four samplers in each. Each sampler is basically sealed in an unresealable silver foil pouch. If you’ve purchased from Radiance Tea House, the pouches are similar to that.

Just polished off my tin of Radiance’s Phoenix Oolong so I figured I might as well give this one a try and do a little comparison. The dry leaves are very ummm, earthy. It’s a nice pleasant scent. Smells fresh. The smell of the web leaves as it was steeping reminded me of… this is going to be strange… an ice cream parlor. Perhaps its just because I just walked out of one. Yeah, it’s weird. It was a sweet bakey smell I think. Don’t really remember, but the first thing that came to my mind was ice cream parlor.

Taste: Sweet, floral, but a bit like The Simple Leaf’s Dawn, that charcoal taste. Something about it makes me say earthy, like you can clearly distinguish the oolong flavor when you drink this. I like this one a lot more than Radiance’s Phoenix Oolong, but Samovar’s version still feels superior to this one. It’s basically a matter of the tea strength / flavors. With Radiance’s version, it gets bitter fairly quickly and right before it gets bitter, the floral notes are really weak and the tea doesn’t taste like tea yet. Then again I’m technically comparing apples and oranges as one is a premium quality leaf and other is of a standard quality.

Vanished from my cupboard awfully quickly.

Whether it’s served hot or cold, it’s still quite delectable.

Light, pale, fruity, nutty, it all blends together rather pleasantly.

I am calling quits to this rhyming as it is starting to become a wee bit, ummm, unbearable.

^{Yeah, okay, not trying that again. So this blend is amazing. It has sort of a Lupicia characteristic to it. The scent isn’t as strong as Lupicia, but the flavors compliments each other very well. I can taste the subtly sweetness from the black currant and I can also clearly distinguish the bai mu dan. Had this one iced and loved it. I’d definitely consider repurchasing this tea. Oh yeah, and don’t steep the tea for four minutes like I did. It’s not really bitter, it’s a bit strong, but still very drinkable.}

Woah, woah. Fricking Amazing Iced.

No seriously. It was okay hot, but the iced version is tons better.

^{Previous rating seventy-five hot.}

Never really liked cherry cola, but something about cherry cola in the form of tea makes it very appealing. The first time I opened the pouch, my nostrils were hit a concentrated blast of cherry cola. While I don’t drink cherry cola, I smelled the cola component and a sweet candy like cherry component. The flavor, yep, you guessed it, cherry cola and honeybush. Remarkably similar to soda, but a bit flat that you can tell it’s tea.

Really enjoyed it the first time, but a few tries later, it was pretty ordinary. Tried it iced, yeah, not that good. Flat dull soda. I think it would have tasted better if I steeped it in hot water then proceeded to cool it so the cherry component could come out a bit more.

Hmm, a Lupicia tea I’m not super fond of. After having this a few times I think I prefer plain houjicha better. I’m not saying this is a bad tea, but my taste buds aren’t agreeing with this one. Toasty-ness from houjicha, check. Milk caramel? I suppose, not really sure how it’s suppose to taste like. I definitely get a sense of caramel, not the regular burnt sugary ones. This one is more of a lighter sweet one. I suppose it’s like milk. The milk aspect of this is a bit weird though. Old milk? Not sure. Hmm, perhaps hot milk. All I can say, it’s a bit weird to me. Drinkable and tolerable, yes. Enjoyable, neh.

I’m not too sure about the “this green tea will never taste bitter” part…. I should have listened to the steeping instructions and stuck with one minute, but I went with two instead and boy was this incredibly strong and bitter. Nothing a bit of water couldn’t remedy.

Four infusions later later, it was still fairly delicious. It’s a pretty good green, but nothing really stood out to me aside from the initial whiff/sip. Vegetal taste and a burst of floral sweetness. The flavors weren’t as strong afterwards, but that may have been due to the fact that I became accustomed to the flavors.

Now this isn’t as sour as Frank made it sound to be ;)

Semi complicated tea. Definitely a honeybush body.

It’s sourish one moment and sweet the next. Oh yes and lemon.

It’s enjoyable hot, but it seems I’ll have to try this one cold.

I just realized this is a monkey picked ti kuan yin. Now it makes sense why this tea never reached into bitterness territory. While I didn’t fall in love with this tea, I did love the fact that it never got bitter or overwhelming. A three minute steep versus a seven minute steep made no difference. Sure it was stronger, but it didn’t become unbearable like a black tea would have gotten or other ti kuan yin’s I’ve had in the past. This was a typical oolong, very smooth, moderate floral and buttery notes. There’s really nothing extraordinary that pops out, but if you enjoy ti kuan yin, then this is a good one. Another tea from Chicago Tea Garden that I can possibly drink everyday without a complaint. I think it’s this that makes this an exceptionally good tea.

^{I preferred Samovar’s Four Seasons over this one as the later steeps with Samovar’s had more of a pop, but I’d probably keep some of this around for company just cause it doesn’t require a lot of attention :)}

Snailssss! Invasion of the snailsss! Such awesome tea. So awesome that I immediately recommended it to my fellow tea drinking buddies.

Zoji was set at 208. I wanted tea. Toss up between Ti Kuan Yin and Golden Bi Luo. 208, hmmm, too hot for a green oolong. Guess the snails won the race.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a black tea, but after drinking today’s cup I want some more. It’s rather complex, yet light enough to enjoy on a daily basis. Eight steeps, black tea? Quite possible. I was on my fifth or sixth before my stomach started grumbling announcing that it was time for me to stop with the tea for the day. I was reminded of Simple Leaf’s Dawn when I drank this one. I call this one smokey, but TeaEqualBliss calls it toasty. I can see that. It was charcoal like dawn, but on a lighter scale. Malty, cocoa, smokey/toasty, sweet, overall very pleasant and enjoyable. I’ll definitely need to purchase some more once I run out. I think this would be a great tea to serve company. You know why? It doesn’t get bitter! One set of tea leaves, eight steeps, no bitterness. Success! :)

Was I suppose to throw the whole orange into a pot to steep? Oh well, I did so anyways. Where as the chrysanthemum and rose pu-erh jumped out at me and made me go hmmm this is pretty delicious, I wasn’t too happy with this one initially. The first few steps made me want to give up on it. Orange rind, bad idea! I think if you go easy on the steeps it’ll be fine though. It’s basically pu-erh and ehhh sourness. Makes me wonder how a lemon pu-erh would taste, probably pretty good. If you’re a fan of the citrus-y orange peel, you might like this one. The pu-erh was pretty good though, silky smooth as always.

I’m on a mission to try all their pu-erh!

Over the weekend, I had some guests over and I asked them if they wanted some tea. I guess it was stupid of me to ask them what type of tea they wanted. The response was of course, lipton. I ignored them and took down my tin of phoenix oolong. Then I thought to myself, hmmm, they wouldn’t appreciate this tea and I can’t make it properly so I decided to use pu-erh. Can’t go wrong with this tea. I dropped a few toucha’s into a yixing pot and poured in boiling water and it was good to go.

If you’ve had pu-erh before then you can probably guess how this tea tastes. It’s a typical black pu-erh, very smooth, no surprises. The rose definitely adds a bit of depth to the tea, but if you have some plain pu-erh lying around and a package of rose petals (you can purchase a large bag fairly cheap at a tea shop, I know Ten Ren carries them) just mix the two and you’ve got yourself this tea. I might start doing that seeing as I have an abundance of both sitting around.

I wasn’t really sure how to steep this one. I think I should have treated this like flower blooms and left it to steep in the cup indefinitely. The instructions stated to give it a minute steep, but I felt that wasn’t enough. I tried a minute, two minutes, three and four. I felt it was best somewhere around three to four. One to two minute steep produced a drinkable cup of tea, but it lacked consistency. Some sips tasted a bit watery followed by a tad of tea flavors and so forth. A longer steeped fixed the issue. So flavors. Pretty standard, ehh Chinese, green tea. That salty, malty, bland, dry kind of taste to it. I think that’s actually described as smokiness (see Chicago Tea Garden’s website). They state that it’s sweet followed by smokiness. I can definitely taste the sweet part, followed by something a bit more boring.

Good tea, but I prefer their pu-erh’s better. Definitely better than Adagio’s Green Peony. Woaps, Adagio does not sell Green Peony. I know I’ve had peony before…. hmm….

I spent a good five minutes rummaging through my tea cupboard searching for lost tea.

You see, my order slip stated that I had purchased seven items, but I only counted six. Turns out, this tea was attached to a piece of paper that said free sampler, so that completely threw me off. All is well in the world again!

First the packaging. The samplers come in little ziplock pouches, if you’ve received tea from me, then they are basically the same ones I pack my tea in. They also include these little tea cards which are pretty darn sweet. So these tea cards are slightly larger than an index card and they contain pictures and information about the tea. If you turn the card around then you can write notes about the tea. It’s pretty cool! They also include a little steeping guide for their teas. Pu-erh thirty seconds for the first steep, X amount for the second, etc.

Moving onto the tea. I found a yixing teapot when I was unpacking several weeks back. I don’t think it’s high quality so I skipped the whole ceremonial process and just poured hot water into it to give it a good bath, ehh I mean cleaning. I’ve been mixing different pu-erh teas into it. Plain pu-erh’s all the same =]. So I threw two of these toucha’s into my yixing pot and gave it a good quick steep. It’s a tastes like a pretty typical pu-erh to me. Surprisingly smooth. That’s the first thing I picked up on. The chrysanthemum can be picked up, but it’s really too faint to be noticed. There’s really one chrysanthemum flower attached to each toucha. Not much more to say, but I’m excited to try Georgia Tea Chicago Tea Garden’s other tea. I’ve been seeing too many Georgia tea logs lately… I keep searching Georgia Tea instead of Chicago tea. Where’s the New York Tea Co.?

Wishing I had more of this than a tiny tea satchel. I completely forgot that Lupicia recommends using 4 oz of water for their satchels. I stupidly used eight ounces. Even with my hiccup, it tastes pretty darn good. This one reminds me a lot of Lupicia’s Momo Oolong Super Grade. Light green oolong with a hint of mango flavors. Where as Momo oolong had whole loose leaves this one is chopped up into tiny pieces. Not really much to say, once you try Lupicia, you’ll start to understand the quality of their tea. They are pretty consistent with their flavors.

^{Apparently this one is really good iced. I’ll have to try my momo oolong iced.}