812 Tasting Notes
vegetal ! like rah rah vegetal! like fresh rain and a freshly picked garden. like a cucumber salad or wheatgrass shots after a great run.
and it’s slightly naturally sweet too.
so glad i got this early on and don’t know why it’s not already gone. though i’m glad it’s not because it will be perfect for spring. the bright green leaves and cloudy lime colored liquor will make the sun seem just a little warmer.
for lunch today i went and took and short ABS class. also i’m lazily attempting Intermittent Fasting. no doubt i’ll talk about it too much on here. it’s what i do.
How come you’re attempting Intermittent Fasting?
hi Lynne-tea! ummm sorry in advance for this kinda a long complainey sounding story??
i will preface this by saying that i am not a petite gal. i am basically an amazon and am by no means underweight and i don’t have a runners gangly body.
but basically, all my crazy marathon training has me eating like a crazy person. (i ran a marathon saturday too) my appetite is sky high. which is okay enough, but lately i’ve been making dumb food choices. and i pay for it with bad nights sleep and bogged down training runs and some weight gain. i’m running 3 marathons in April and the next 3 weeks i am tapering training, which means less miles. so it’s a good time to experiment and train my hunger impulses to chill out a bit more.
if i eat lots and really healthy i have a MUCH better time running.
i will say though that it’s almost 4p and i feel STUFFED on the half of the giant lunch i ate. the experiment continues!
have you done IF before? basically i’m reading up on the leangains model and eating all my calories for the day in an 8hr window starting at 1pm.
blah blah blah
i could talk about this forever.
:)
Thats really neat! I always skipped breakfast and had no problem maintaining a lower, cut weight. But now, due to pressure from my family and friends, I’ve started eating breakfast. I hate it. I get hungry within a few hours of having my breakfast and now I’m gaining weight… not too much, but enoughs enough. I’m not going to conform!
I wish you luck :)
goddamn it i can’t believe i just steeped this for 9 min :(
am i right that it would be kinda respectable to dump some out and add water until it’s not bitter? that’s a thing that people do?
…. WAIT WAIT wait. how is it possible that this tea isn’t horribly bitter?!?!?!
i didn’t add water or anything and sure it may not be the best steep of this tea but i swear i am amazed that i can drink it and it’s only slightly more potent than i would like. after 9 minutes!!! how is that even possible?!
this accidental power steep has kinda given me a whole new level of appreciation for this tea. grace under pressure. i’m gonna drink much more of you caramel! cuz now that i’ve seen your inner beauty, i understand you much more.
I want to like that one more
i know what you mean whatshesaid. i bought a big tin of it and was like ‘meh’ and gave most of the tin away slowly. but today something clicked! and i’m glad it finally did. now i will appreciate it with a new perspective.
interesting how illusive tea can be sometimes! such a tease.
It didn’t turn horridly bitter because the base is Chinese, and the rule of thumb for the majority of Chinese blacks is that you have to really go out of your way to ruin them. They have very little bitterness and astringency in them.
Good to know!! How can a person tell if the base is Chinese?
it says in the description of all their teas really basically “Chinese black tea flavored with caramel”. i just don’t know the differences between teas, but now i’m sure i will remember chinese blacks. and how they like to be abused. ;)
i plan to read some books on tea eventually. so i can learn more. just haven’t quite gotten there yet.
thanks Angrboda
Whatshesaid, you can’t. Not unless they tell you. But if you get an experience like this one where something extremely oversteeped stands up to it and remains drinkable you can make an educated guess that it might be Chinese. :) It seems that most often your average flavoured black has a Ceylon base or some sort of blended base.
Shmiracles, this is one of the major reasons that I prefer Chinese over Indian blacks. Indian teas in particular are often terribly finicky and demanding, whereas I find I can get away with most things when brewing Chinese. Chinese blacks just suit me better. :)
As for really being able to tell the different characteristics between regions, I’m afraid that’s largely a question of experience. Books will help, certainly, because they can give you an idea of what to keep an eye out for, but most of it is paying attention while drinking. (Non-flavoured, obviously, because flavouring can hide the base quite effectively)
whoa listen. it has been an AWESOME 24 hours.
last night we had a party at my house and i drank this iced. i also had whisky white iced and made a few others for the future.
then today i had a pretty great marathon. considering how under-trained i am and that it rained even before the race started.
then we went to Carytown Teas and i got a Blood Orange Puerh and a Coconut Oolong and MY GOD Carytown Teas has the best tea ever so i can’t wait to go to sleep just so i can wake up and drink them.
Orange Blossom makes a pretty rad iced tea. i might say that it’s taken me almost a year to enjoy iced tea and this one is the one that helped nudge me into agreement.
Oh, never heard of Carytown Teas. Their stuff looks good indeed.
It’s the only tea place in my smallish city. I purposefully went to just get the blood orange puerh. Because even though I reviewed it wimpily, I basically hadn’t been able to really enjoy another puerh since. But when I saw the coconut oolong on the counter, and everyone on steepster has been talking about coconut oolongs and making my mouth water, I figured I should just get it. The main problem is that they only let you buy a 2oz minimum at a time. So if I do buy tea I end up spending way more $ than I should and my “only buying smaller samples” rule goes out the window.
But like always. I may feel guilty at first, but in the end i’m never unhappy that I have more tea. :)
so you KNOW i like lapsang blends. i just really like how there is this super distinct tea that you think is so strong and kinda overbearing that it’ll only ever be a lapsang. and then you blend it with other teas and it goes all kinds of other new places!
i like to be surprised by lapsangs.
smaug is still my number one lapsang blend i guess. and also the only tea i’ve ever rated on steepster hah. but this one is special as well.
when i smell it dry, unfortunately it KINDA smells like cough syrup. definitely the berry blastiness is to blame. this tea would probably benefit from trying different kinds of steeping. i used a slightly cooler temperature water and let it steep for only about 2ish min. i don’t remember the last cup being so rose hips and hibiscusy, but that is also the nature of blends sometimes. one scoop can turn out noticeably different than another.
(come to think of it, i might have found a good lapsang iced option. weird i know but i’ll try anything once.)
i might go so far as to make my own blend including the lapsang souchong & almond tea but removing the berry blast and replacing it with orange rinds? marmalade? I’m Brillaint! anyone know how to get in contact with Cara McGee asap??!?!? it’s urgent!
Bring It On Down To Veganville!
little balls of yarn!
http://instagram.com/p/W4rekMoc-w/
yummy yarn.
haha. I think SNL had one about tea before… rather than Veganville.
ya with Kristen Wiig dressed as a tea bag and playing the auto harp! but man do i have the veganville songs stuck in my head hah
Little balls of yarn never fail to make my day. Thanks for the pic :)
2013/11/08
this tea is BACK! and let me tell you i ordered two full tins worth! i never order that much of one tea. but that is seriously how much i like this one. i’m not even a huge david’s tea fan, but this tea remains special. i had a big cup this morning and will probably have one tomorrow too. and the day after. forever. until i have to buy more yet again.
hello holidays! hello and good morning and hello!
2013/03/14
since the day i received the ‘24 days of tea’ in the mail, i’ve just been grabbing a bag or two of the little sample tins and throwing them in my purse to take to work. at my desk i have my new asian style mug in the color of peppermint, and i just turn my electric kettle on and pull out the tins to see what i have with me.
so when i grabbed this one next and saw it had little peppermint sticks in it i was kinda tickled. (sprinkles add a weird oily coating and grimy residue to my tea, but candy canes are just a flourish!)
it’s an invigorating, slightly sweet, tiny tingle minty tea and PERFECT for noon tea.
why do we love this one so?!?!?!
i mean, there are several of us that drink this every day with enthusiasm. and i don’t understand it really because even with all the affection i have for this tea, when i try to describe it to someone it never really sounds as good as it tastes. but heck, all i can say is that i never thought of myself as a mint or peppermint lover. and i still don’t think of myself as a peppermint lover. but i can honestly drink this everyday with ease and joy.
mysteries are mysterious.
i have this tea for breakfast almost every morning i love it so much. i can’t explain it. i never thought of myself as a peppermint person. not at all. but there is something else going on in this tea. maybe it’s not the candy canes, but the secret part that i like so much.
i can’t believe that, over the past few days, i have deleted 200 blank reviews from my tea log.
i now have a list of 27 teas that i have drank more than once but i did not write a review of. and i’m planning to make some sort of note about them, even if it’s just a word or two (thumbs-up? thumbs-down?), over the next few weeks.
i’ll re-taste them if i’m able, or i’ll just have to recall as much as i can from memory if i have to.
the idea is that i will then know when i have for real tasted 500 teas :)
anyways…
now off to a Pi Party! with tea in hand of course!
Ahhh I want to have a pi party, or go to one! Jealous right now!
a Pi Party! sounds AWESOME!
…..what’s a Pi party?
Today is National Pi (Pi 3-14) Day so people eat pie!
(duh). I want to eat pie! That’s way better than what my husband told me today was!……haha
well when this came back into stock, i ordered 200g of it. that was only a month ago. and yet a few days ago i ordered another 100g. i drink it that fast. i drink it when i’m not sure what tea mood i’m in. i drink it when i just don’t know what else to drink.
It’s a pretty great fall-back tea! Or latte. :)
every time i’m about to steep this, i think of momo’s review:
“why did they think this was okay to make?”
it has an oily top coat. probably from the candied fruits. or the white chocolate more likely.
it’s not as awful as all that. but really a puerh can be so much better than this.
Too true!
umm, this has gotten a bit weirder since it’s cooled down. or maybe it’s cuz i’ve eaten lunch and i’m not starving?
oh god i HOPE this is NEVER someone’s first puerh. that would be the saddest story ever.
I feel like I probably made so many people afraid of this, but just thinking about it, I can remember that oil sheen off the top and the smell… /shudder/
also I totally meant shudder but I am still internally terrified and forget how to do all the fancy text tricks on here when thinking about this again.
I wrote the review for this one, then decided it sounded too harsh and just deleted it. Now if only I could delete that taste from my memory.
woah … i just let out like a HUGE BLERT LAUGH. and i’m standing outside on the corner in public.
i try to not be too influenced by the reviews here on steepster. but i also enjoy reading them and taking the opinions into consideration as i sip. so i can’t help but notice how this tea does not have the highest of ratings.
and i can see why cuz it’s not exactly bold or super fruity. the davidstea website describes it as a ‘rich blend’ but it actually doesn’t seem that rich. the Bai Mu Dan is nice and even. but i barely get any peach from the cup. and i’m glad i don’t get stevia either.
i will declare that i like this tea. mostly for it’s relative simplicity. and i may brew it extra strong and drink it chilled at a party we’re having at my house tomorrow.
tea instead of whisky. because i have a trail marathon to run on saturday. a marathon that i am DRASTICALLY ill prepared for. and also i’m sitting on a tennis ball to try to relieve a muscle strain on the back of my right leg. not a bad strain, but annoying, and 26 miles will make it angry. so hopefully some of this pressure point massage should help? either that or it will bruise my leg up nicely :) hah
i’m wearing a tardis dress for the race.
hopefully it won’t be too rainy.
