sophistre

Steepsterrrrrrr. I miss and love you.

I have been on a tea-buying hiatus, and as such am not writing tasting notes, while I feverishly try to dispose of (read: drink) a rather remarkable surplus of tea in my cabinet.

However, I needed to write something today to give people a heads-up. Anyone near NYC ought to be aware of the following:

“Harney & Sons in SoHo, 433 Broome Street (between Crosby and Broadway), will pour free cups of tea and hold discussions with experts about the culture at tea this weekend. On Saturday, James Norwood Pratt, author of “Tea Dictionary,” will speak about tea between 4 and 6 p.m. On Sunday, John and Michael Harney join the discussion and guests can sip tea before a screening of the documentary “The Meaning of Tea” at 7 p.m.”

If I were closer to NYC than Cambridge, I would totally go!

Also, my cup of golden monkey was delicious this morning. ;) And now, back to the trenches of my word processor!

HAPPY NANOWRIMO, WRIMOS!

Are any of you participating, this year? Are any of you ALREADY pulling your hair out?

I am!

Seriously, why did I wait until the last second to come up with a premise? Whooo! Today is going to be interesting!

I apologize in advance. I’m totally more interested in making this a steepster shout-out to NaNoWriMo participants than an actual tasting note, which is a flagrant abuse of the steepster system of tasting notes. However, let me make a token effort:

This is a delicious Keemun, but weak the way I steeped it. It got dark so fast that I worried and yanked the basket out of the cup early…but reading Auggy’s note, I think I ought to have let it sit bravely for some further period of time. Smoky and leathery, not astringent in the least, with depth. It lacks the fruity peachy flavors of CTG’s Keemun, which is the one I’m most inclined to compare it to, and I’m not sure whether or not I prefer the other to this — this one seems just slightly less complex. Again, could be a result of understeeping, and likely is.

Now, with that out of the way…

If anybody is doing NaNo, they ought to get at me in PMs or comments! I’m collecting writing buddies, of course, to cheer me on, and be cheered on. ;)

Wanted something different from my usual for my BIRTHDAY TEA, so I am having the last of the Bohea that Auggy sent me. It’s just what was needed: something smooth and slightly sweet, but also very flavorful.

I really like this one best when it has sat for just long enough to reach that magical level of temperature that’s just less than piping hot, but not yet at ‘warm’. It seems to thicken up and get sweeter and fuller-bodied, with a delightfully smooth smoky finish. Mmm.

Oh, steepster. The reasons for my absence are manifold but positive. A book to write, a new boy to date, a birthday month and much travel, two separate bouts of illness (flu, 1; head-cold with lingering cough, 1) which may or may not be related to the aforementioned travel, and the fall video-game release blitz have together conspired to keep me happily drained and preoccupied to the extent that what little remaining energy I have has been diverted to things other than writing tasting notes. I have been sticking with tried and true favorites. I have not purchased tea in over a month. This may be a good time to purchase lift tickets in hell.

But!

Last night I was feeling bored with the usual suspects, and I’ve had this left over from my swap with Auggy, so I decided to give it a brew. I didn’t notice until I actually sat down with it that it also contained vanilla (I probably could’ve deduced this from the name, admittedly) — but that is, in fact, the greater portion of the forward flavor in this cup, and it dominates the aroma. Once you sip, you get the warm fuzzy tongue-hug of vanilla immediately, and this gives way to a noticeable sweetness and the very, very slightly sweet flavor rhubarb mixed in. It’s not quite tart the way that rhubarb is, but there’s an astringency in the cup that seems to play into the memory of that tartness…and it’s not rhubarb-as-seen-in-strawberry-rhubarb-pie, but rhubarb the way it tastes when you get stalks of it fresh and eat it that way, only scaled back and toned down enough to not cause your mouth to pucker. It’s a very subtle flavor, but not difficult to spot — maybe ‘gentle’ is a better word than ‘subtle’.

Something about the tea reminds me of the flavored blends from 52teas — the apple flavors in particular. I don’t know if that’s the leaf or just a consequence of the rhubarb flavor. I am indecisive.

They say ‘Keemun’ for the leaf. I can see it. It just doesn’t have much character as Keemuns go; most of what you’d expect from it gets swallowed up by the vanilla, which is perhaps the point.

Not bad! Not something I’ll be looking to replace, but I like it better than I thought I would, and I’d be interested in trying other teas like it — which is apparently not as unlikely as it sounds; in searching for this online I discovered another vanilla-rhubarb tea from Sweden, produced by Friggs, whom I know from previous conversations with a Belgian friend of mine produces some kind of magical blabar (blueberry) tea. And I remember that because, blabar is an awesome word for ‘blueberry’, and anytime my friend says ‘Friggs-Blabar’ it entertains me.

This ‘herbal’ and I are sorting things out.

I have a hard time calling it an herbal, even though I know that, by way of tea terminology, it’s entirely the right word. It just seems so strange. It’s comprised entirely of shredded cacao shell — little flakes of it — and seems even more of a stretch for the term than usual, to me.

Oh well!

I was pretty excited to get it. For four dollars you get a pretty impressive 4oz bag! This is good, because they want 3 teaspoons of the stuff per 8oz. of water.

Opening the bag, the scent is heavily, unapologetically, mouth-wateringly chocolate. Tea isn’t the only heated beverage that I love a little bit more than I should, as it happens — I’m also quite fond of artisan hot chocolates, and there is nothing quite like that rich, real-chocolate smell.

I steeped it up with glee. Steeped, the aroma is even better — like rich drinking chocolate.

And then…I was sort of disappointed. It was quite bitter. I actually would have expected this, given the product itself and its unaltered organic authenticity, if it weren’t for the tasting note and description, which suggest it’s quite sweet. Which is not to say that I wanted Hershey or Swiss Miss sweet; as I say, I like good chocolate, and am quite fond of some bitter, fruity dark chocolates, and I can say with authority that I wasn’t looking for the over-sugared chocolate thing we’ve got going in this country.

This is not a terrible thing, though. I can work with this. I am just going to have to play with it in order to figure out how best to coax the chocolate flavor into a creamy, tasty state…because the aroma promises it, and I desperately want the flavor to come more into line with what the scent is.

In the first effort to figure out how to do that, I prepared it tonight on the stovetop, like a chai — boiled/simmered for a few minutes, topped with milk, heated again, strained. I added a bit of turbinado sugar, but not much.

I was also sort of naughty and used whole milk, just for over-the-top indulgence.

It is quite good. There’s still bitterness, but it’s pleasant, the way that chocolate bitterness can be, and the chocolate flavor is rich. A lower-cal option to actual hot-chocolate, but prepared this way, I’m not sure it’s much better, and so will be continuing to play with this one for a while.

Yeah, twist my arm, right? ;)

Leaving a rating off until I’ve played with it some more.

Sometimes, steepster friends, one has to take a step away from drinking tea. Shocking, right? But our hobby, it comes with hazards — like consuming many times more than the safe daily dose of caffeine on any given day (500mg being the extreme outer limit of that dose). The half-life of caffeine is something between 5 and 6 hours for an adult with a liver functioning at full capacity — i.e., assuming that you’re not taking additional chemicals like Rx drugs or somesuch into your system, or drinking alcohol, or otherwise suffering from compressed liver function. With single cups of loose-leaf black tea weighing in at 25-110mg depending on preparation…and my love of chai, which extracts as much caffeine as possible from the leaf?

Suffice it to say, it’s occasionally a good idea to purge the system of caffeine and rehydrate with something other than a hardcore diuretic from time to time!

Restraint is so difficult. :(

Okay, enough of the public health and safety notice. I picked this tea today because I wanted something that screamed, ‘I AM BLACK TEA!’ while still being very clean, crisp, and easy to drink. It beat out the assams in my cabinet to that purpose…though I notice that my favorite ceylons seem to have a lot in common with assams — a berry-like scent while steeping, some malt, some of that subtle molasses-like character. It still retains that light ceylon crisp/briskness, though, that almost makes me hallucinate the flavor of lemon, thanks to a long mental association with iced tea.

Well, it’s not bad, but it’s not ‘fresh strawberry’. And why is that? Because they used dried bits of strawberry, instead.

Anybody who has ever eaten a dried strawberry will immediately understand the difference — I’m talking really dried, not just slightly dehydrated and chewy. The flavor of the fruit changes pretty drastically when that process happens, so…you know, the flavor that you get is much different.

Not my must-have cup — I think the dried-strawberry-strawberry-candy-or-possibly-preserves taste could get old in a hurry if sipped often — but it’s going to make for a pretty awesomely tasty pitcher of iced tea, I can tell. It’s nice and naturally sweet, so sweetener won’t be necessary at all.

I have been waiting a very long time to try a milk oolong.

I blame this delay on the Steepster Select feature. Just at the point at which I’m considering buying more tea, something awesome gets featured and I find myself set back. Fortunately, this last select had me browsing around thePuriTea’s site, and I gleefully added milk oolong to my order.

I’m into savory teas. Creamy stuff is a weakness, but I don’t often add additives to my tea at all.

Was it worth the wait?

I think so. :)

Opening the bag, it smelled like the candy I enjoyed eating most when I was in Japan — Milky. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s quite possible to get completely sick of milk candy in a very short period of time, but for that brief time, it is a glorious treat.

Similarly, there is a Brazilian candy that I can’t remember the name of, and it essentially consists of caramel (their caramel is rather different from ours, a bit grainy, a bit milky, and not nearly as sweet) pressed between two very thin wafers of some kind — I mean thin like a communion wafer or something, not like a wafer cookie. Those are also very delicious, and that is also what the aroma of the tea reminds me of — oolong, overlaid with that faint milky sweetness characteristic of both types of candy.

I’m not sure why I don’t connect those types of candy to milk. I never thought Milky tasted like milk, but I could tell you for certain that it was milk candy. Does that make sense? I’m sure it doesn’t, but it’s true.

Yeah. Cup is disappearing with a ferocious swiftness. Milk candy atop oolong floral notes (always gardenia to me, for whatever reason)…slightly caramel-y, but the almost-salty-very-creamy caramel of other countries, not the heavily-sugar-syrup caramel of ours.

This is…delectable. Oh, yes.

I have read — somewhere, I forget where — that some exporting tea companies flavor their milk oolongs (and other teas, like Lapsangs, for instance). I don’t know how one would determine whether or not that has been done to a tea, but I fervently hope that this tea experience is not manufactured. The thought of a plant producing something as sinfully good as what I’m sipping right now is just too lovely, and it would make me sad if it had been mucked-about-with.

Bumpin’ this down a bit. Not because it’s not good — it is — but because it doesn’t any longer belong in my ‘gotta have this on-hand’ bracket. There are a few other places I think I’ll be going for my savory-sweet-spicy-floral-buttery TGY or Ali Shan fix instead. It’s expensive leaf all-around, generally, but a few others I’ve tried have had a fuller flavor profile, and I miss it when it isn’t there.

Won’t have any trouble going through this though. I’ve been unusually heavy on the leaf because I’m trying to clear it out of my cabinet and don’t feel the need to be so miserly with it anymore. It brings out that soft spice beneath all of the floral, which is fun.

And now, a public letter to my zorapot:

Dear Zorapot,

You are fun. I like to watch my oolong leaves rehydrate in your belly, and your stainless steel lines please me, but why must you occasionally leak? Why must it be so difficult to be certain that your mouth is sealed on the rubber when I close you up?

Please do not leak all over my desk, and especially do not look as though you aren’t leaking when I check you, then wait to leak until I leave the room to get something, then begin leaking copiously near the laptop that I’m writing a novel on.

Smooches,
Maggie.

Just a quick cup of Jackee since my Zoji was rather inconveniently between temperatures again.

I like Thomas Samson…I do…but I’ve found enough Assams that are similar to it that I don’t feel as though it’ll be creating an absence in my cabinet when it’s gone. This, on the other hand…this is a different story. I’ve still not found the tea that will replace Jackee, and it saddens me, so every cup that I have is sort of bittersweet — literally and figuratively!

On the up-side, steepster peeps, tonight is going to be a good night, because tonight I go to see Rodrigo y Gabriela play at the Opera House. I am pretty excited, not gonna lie. They’ve gotten me through more than one tired, backside-dragging bout on the treadmill. Their energy is incredible, and if you haven’t heard of them, I heartily recommend checking them out. Diablo Rojo is the track that hooked me, but they’re all good. The album 11:11 is amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/artist?a=GxdCwVVULXfcuOZY-J8rvrP9Hsyf5VVz&feature=artistob

I am just getting moving today. Literally. I woke up at 3:30pm.

What that means is that today’s brainpower is exclusively reserved for what I’m working on, which means that I’m not allowed to do things like distract myself with tasting notes.

So that means a tried-and-true standby.

My poor coconut pouchong. It’s so parched and brittle and dry, now, despite being stored in a tin with an airtight, rubberized seal. Polishing off the last bit of the container I put it into has been daunting, but I really ought to bite the bullet and just make a gigantic pitcher of it iced, to make room for fresher stuff.

Still good though. It’s not fancy. It’s not rare. It’s not even as complex as most of the teas I enjoy. It’s just expertly balanced, and creamy and coconutty and delicious, and I love it.

The labels on the foil packets are hand-written (weight and type of tea) on a Canton Tea Co. sticker, which is a really nice personal touch…but also a bit difficult to puzzle out when the handwriting gets difficult to read. My packet says something before Ali shan, and it looks a great deal like ‘Odony’. What is Odony? I thought to myself.

But it’s not ‘Odony’, it’s oolong.

The amount of time that it took me to figure that out (because it really does look like Odony, in my defense) might suggest that I’d be better-served drinking a black tea right now than an oolong, but whatever. ;)

I love this tea.

I should say —

I love this type of tea.

It’s creamy and cozy and slightly floral, sweet and always reminds me a very little bit of baked potato, for some reason. They mention ‘fruity’ in the description and I don’t get that, really, unless you count the sweetness as fruit. It’s a savory, comforting cup.

It also withstands a lot of abuse. Two heaping teaspoons of it (I like that people are calling them ‘nuggets’ — if I ever change my steepster name, it’ll probably be to TeaNuggets, because, lol) in my zorapot gave me three flavorful 16oz infusions, and they could probably go longer. Not only that, but my temperature was bouncing around — 190 for the first (for about two minutes, just long enough for the leaves to begin relaxing), 175 for the second and third (at just about a minute and a half for the second since the leaves were closer to open, and two and a half for the third).

Not exactly systematic, but my Zoji was switching temps and I was caught up in my writing. Sometimes just drinking the tea is enough. Will leave a rating off until I do things more properly though, I guess.

Started to write a tasting note about this one, and have been unable to finish it — I’m having some kind of crazy reaction to something…of the ‘restless/irritable/full-body-tension/creepy-crawly limbs’ variety. It is intensely unpleasant! It cannot conceivably be the tea unless there’s something strange in it that I don’t know about, which seems unlikely. One should hope it wasn’t the tea, because it was rather good! I don’t ever seem to drink greens (discounting matcha), and this was a reminder that I probably should…it is everything the description mentions, and a very mellow, tasty cup. It reminded me of sencha, but less intense. That might seem to imply watery, but such wasn’t the case — it had a very pleasant fullness.

I suppose I ought to strike caffeine off of the list of things I can have today, all things considered. Sadness.

Cooked on the stovetop.

I like this chai with honey. Some chais I find the molasses element of raw, turbinado sugar to be most complementary, but this one loves honey.

It isn’t the most ground-breaking of spice mixes, but it’s good. Let’s be honest here: chai is, unless it’s imbalanced, pretty standard in what it delivers. Most chai blends use the same Masala-like spices. Those that improvise on this formula succeed or fail but still retain something essentially chai-like, and fill the same niche as a beverage. Some of us will prefer chai that leans on one spice or another more heavily than the rest, because individual tastes vary, but most of us who like chai in a general way will be happy to drink these variations on a theme, too.

What I particularly like about this chai, aside from the way it makes delicious friends with honey, is that it is rocket fuel.

I am not even joking.

A double-cup-deep mug of this, and I am good to go all day long.

Some days, that isn’t necessary…

And some days, it really, really, really is.

Here’s hoping that I can actually manage to herd cats well enough to get my protagonists arrested today, shall we? They have been defying me for weeks.

I do really love the greener oolongs, I have to say. Sometimes the greenness of them — by which I mean that tip-of-the-tongue astringency that says, ‘hey! I used to be a green and growing plant, and I thought that you should know that!’ — can put me off after a few steeps, but when all of the buttery, creamy, floral, greenish goodness is in balance, it’s a truly aromatic, comforting cup.

Something about this one reminds me of popcorn! Very lightly buttered popcorn. It was more intensely floral when it was much hotter, and now seems to be settling down and softening, such that the floral and green elements are nicely balanced by a round, buttery flavor.

It’s not an overly-complex oolong, but it’s a very friendly one. There’s enough going on there that focusing on each sip is pleasant (thank you, popcorn flavor!) but not necessary — I can sip it while I’m doing other stuff and enjoy it sheerly for the smooth flavor and broth-like texture.

Yum!

Sadness today. My leaves are well over a year old at this point, and I think it’s time to admit that I ought to restock with fresher stuff. I suppose I ought to make a blend with what’s left. It’s still very good, but some of the richness has tapered back, and the honey in it is no longer so prominent. It’s much more ‘basic tea’ than it used to be — unless my allergies are just acting up without my noticing again, which is possible. How congestion in the head but not the actual nose manages to impact my taste buds I suppose I shall never know, but there it is.

At least it’s still quite easy to drink. My cup was gone in no time!

Ohhh chai.

You know, chai is a staple for me in the winter. It is, nine times out of ten, how I start my mornings. There’s something particularly special about the smell of chai in your kitchen before the sun is fully up on a cold Boston morning, sitting and looking out from an eighteenth-story window at the city skyline. All the better if it’s snowing at the time.

Not so much in summer. Something about hot milk in the heat, you know? But I haven’t had it for just a long enough period of time that I was excited to find some chai in the swap package from Auggy, especially since she’d noted to me that she’s not super-fond of chai overall unless it’s more sweet than spicy (do you know how difficult that was for me? Do you KNOW how much chai I was obligated not to share? It is to weep).

So, yes! I made this, this morning. The smell coming out of the package was fantastic, though I will admit that having avoided chai for a while, some of that could be chai-deprivation speaking. Made it in the usual manner — stovetop, simmered in sweetened water for a bit, then topped off with an equal part milk (1% today) and reheated to near foaming, removed from heat, let sit, strained and poured.

It’s not bad. It’s primarily strong on cinnamon. With imbalanced chais I tend to prefer the ones that are heavy on cinnamon to those that are heavy on cardamom, since the latter tend to make my tongue numb. This one is strongest on cinnamon but not overpoweringly so. There’s some almond and vanilla there, but they’re in the background. I don’t get orange at all from the tea, but this could just be a function of the stovetop method, I dunno. I’ll probably have to make a point of trying it plain…but I will confess, I can’t really think of any chais that I’ve liked that way more than I like stovetop chai; the spices are usually way too much for me without the mitigating creaminess of this method of preparation.

It’s pretty tasty, but I think I’ve discovered slowly but surely that CTC leaf really does hold up better to my favored way to prepare chai. Most other leaves get that slightly bitter edge that milk and sweetener soften but don’t eliminate.

I’d drink this without complaint, and with enjoyment, if it were given to me, but it’s just not doing anything that makes it stand out from an ocean of other similar chais. The aroma is lovely (to me) but the flavor is pretty standard-fare.

Still a very nice way to start the day, when I have a loooooong and undoubtedly painful slog through a whole slew of pages that need writing today. Getting started after a small vacation is always very trying, so a chai caffeine bomb was probably the right idea!

Oh!, I said, after I poured the water on the leaves, and was sniffing the cup on the way back to my desk. Flowers!

What kind of flowers, you ask? A legitimate question, without an adequate answer from me. I can still get the smell of them as I sit here waiting for the cup to cool…but it’s definitely floral. Like standing in a florist’s, and outside they’ve just freshly cut the grass.

As it cools some, that scent is darkening down to something more patently Darjeeling in aroma — a bit floral, a bit honey, a bit grapes on a vine.

The taste is much more pronounced in the honey department than the smell, which makes me happy. I am a big fan of honey (though I never really add it to my tea, unless I’m making chai…because milk and honey are made to go together, of course).

This is quite nice. I’m used to the Darjeelings I’ve tried leaning toward being thin and grapeskin-tart when they’re still very hot, and mellowing and filling out as they cool; this tea is currently just on the comfortable-to-drink side of hot, and it’s mostly honey-sweet, smooth, a bit savory — probably from the full mouthfeel. I keep sipping and looking for new flavors, but it’s remaining pretty consistent, nothing new from one sip to the next. This is alright, though, because each sip is pretty pleasant, surprisingly cozy for a Darjeeling. There’s a very subtle hint of the tartness at the very back of my tongue the longer I sip, but it’s not showing up for the main event.

I don’t drink a slew of Darjeelings, but of those I’ve had, this one is pretty tasty!

I’ll get around to noting steep 2 in a little bit.

(Holy cow, my rating system is a mess. It really needs some janitorial work!)

Another sample from Auggy. I picked it today because she said she’s not really a fan, and because I’ve got a little bit of that heavy-head feeling that tells me I’m congested even though my nose isn’t actually stuffy, but there’s plenty of tea in the bag.

My first thought, smelling the brewed tea? ‘This is a Keemun?’ It smells a bit like an Assam, to me. Chalk it up to my inexperience with Keemun teas if you like, but it does. It’s malty and it smells a bit like oats to me, or bran, maybe…something that reminds me of the feed room and making bran mash for the horses we had when I was younger. There’s also a biscotti sort of smell, which is characteristic of my favorite Assams.

So, lessee.

Fresh pine, eh? I dunno about that. There’s a tartness there somewhere that isn’t quite making it over the hummock of mere suggestion into actual tartness, and I guess one could interpret that as pine. To me, it is lacking something essential to ‘pine’, so I’m having a hard time making the connection.

Brown sugar is the only other note they mention up top. I can get it, but only in the way that I can get pine — it could be there, and actually if that’s true it seems to me that the pair of flavors are inextricably tangled up together, but those are not two things that I would come up with on my own, blind, without being asked. Blind, I would probably ask if this were a blend. A blend of Assam, Ceylon, and Keemun. It’s not punchy enough to be an Assam, it’s too bright; it’s not very much like other Keemuns that I’ve had, and it’s far too malty and dark in its flavors for a Ceylon, and yet I can see qualities of each of them here.

I keep coming back to that whole grain flavor I tasted at the beginning. It’s in the aroma more strongly than the flavor, deeply inhaling, but it’s quite prominent. I like it. Unfortunately it’s probably the only thing this tea really has going for it in the interest department, and the tartness — while it isn’t bad — isn’t contributing positively here, either. It’s a solid tea, but not something I really need to have, and definitely not the replacement for Mr. Muntz.

Soooo, yeah. I must like this a whole lot, because I’m having it again today. This means I am out of the sample that Auggy sent, which means I really do like it, which means I’ll be entering a state of beverage emergency until I can restock it. I wanted something cozy, something tasty, something that would feel like a snuggle in my stomach after another day of having too much caffeine for my own good. Something to help me get in the right mindset for going to sleep (no small feat, with me. There are Rx chemicals that have balked at such a task in the past — I’m looking at you, ambien!).

So. Good.

And I love that it can take me through several 16oz. steeps — I can be sure that I’ll get my fill. (So will the buckwheat berries, as it happens; they suck up a lot of the water in my cup, so it does require a little bit of topping off).

Now, if only it weren’t so infernally hot outside, it’d be the perfect end to my day!

I thought this was a green tea. In all seriousness, I really did. It brews to a greenish y ellow color, and there is a great deal of particulate in with the fuzz (with some leniency for the fact that this was shipped to me, and may have been crushed a bit along the way).

It’s white tea? Really? I guess I can see that now that I know. Probably bai mu dan, which never makes me think ‘delicate’ as far as the white teas I’ve had go. It’s usually vegetal, slightly sweet, and a bit musty for reasons I have yet to isolate.

Anyway, so yes! Smells a bit like suntan lotion, with something faintly sour, also. Like maybe the bar of an all-inclusive hotel in Cozumel, where everybody’s been ordering pina coladas all day long in the hot sun, and there’s still puddles of it in the moat mats…or you can smell it through somebody’s pores, somebody who’s wearing Hawaiian Tropic lotion…or something. Something like that.

That doesn’t sound particularly alluring, does it? But it probably has shades of pleasantness, with the faintest a definite undercurrent of not-so-great to spoil its tropical-ness? If that’s how it sounds, then I’d say I’m hitting the mark, because that’s essentially what it’s like. On my first sip I made the ‘ew’ face, but then I took another one. And another one.

It’s drinkable primarily because the coconut taste — which really and truly is more like the tanning oil than any coconut I’ve ever opened and eaten — saves it. I always did like the smell of that stuff. I’m pretty sure I’ve never met anybody who didn’t like that smell, actually.

The rest of the tea is immediately forgettable. There might be pineapple in there somewhere, but I can’t imagine being bothered enough to try and enhance it somehow. I don’t know where the slight sourness is coming from, but I think it’s a dealbreaker for me.

Not a horrid cup, but not my cup — I’ve been too spoiled by the Coconut Pouchong to settle for less. Still glad for the chance to try it, though! Thanks Auggy!

‘I love this tea. Like, yeah. A lot.’

That was all Auggy wrote about it on the card with the bag, and then she noted steep times. How could I not go for this?

This has been included because I am presently on a crusade to find a Keemun that will occupy the ragged hole that’ll turn up in my cupboard eventually, but which is currently occupied by Jackee Muntz. Jackee will not last forever, after all.

The smell has a lot of depth. Freshly steeped and too hot to drink, I kept catching glimpses of something fruity behind the familiar smell of Keemun’s mild smoke, then something bright and bake-y, and something slightly nutty. These are terrible descriptions, but I would be hard-pressed to be more accurate with them. As the cup cooled a bit, still hot for drinking but no longer billowing steam, the smell became predominately bake-y fruit. It wasn’t until I opened up the page to start writing a note that I saw ‘grilled peaches’ on the description and said, YES. That! I am the first to be skeptical of tea descriptions, since people are usually more suggestible than otherwise, but this is a far cry from ‘well, maybe I can find that there if I think about it’…oh, it’s there. It’s there in spades with the bake-y flavor that makes me want to say this is like…like…like slathering something in peach preserves and grilling it. I’m trying to figure out what the ‘something’ would be. Its been a long time since I had potato bread last, but maybe something like that?

This translates very well to the taste. Sipping, the flavors are as above, with a pronounced and obvious musk and nuttiness (I associate both with peaches in my head), without losing a very mellow, shadowy sweetness.

I don’t get the roses mentioned from this cup, though I think the sweetness at times tastes more floral than fruity to me, particularly in the aftertaste. Holding the tea in my mouth, it’s more starchy and bake-y. As it cools even more, the fruity smell is coming so far forward that it almost reminds me of the tropical plaintain thing that some of my favorite teas have…starchy but sweet. I would never in my life have expected something like that from a Keemun, but there it is!

This is one smooth steep. It does have that sort of ‘I could get bitter and sour on you in a hurry if you use too much leaf or steep too long’ taste on the middle of the back of the tongue, but I think that’s just a Keemun thing generally, and it hasn’t made good on the threat, so I’m quite pleased.

It isn’t the salty-sweet caramel pretender that Jackee is, but this tea has a lot of the qualities I enjoy in a cup, so I think I shall find a place for it on the reg.

Subsequent steeps will get noted in a bit.

I am so excited that Auggy included some of this in the package of tea that she sent me. It sounded so weird and interesting that I’ve wanted to try it ever since it made the rounds a few months ago. The hardest part of getting packages of new tea is caffeine management, or at least enough restraint to achieve something akin to it. A few steeps of Bohea and Golden Monkey were delicious, and I very much wanted to continue down the roster of black teas she sent me, but prudence requires that I consider uncaffeinated options instead. Soba-Cha to the rescue!

Confession: I screwed up my portions. I added my standard 2tsp. to the infuser of my 16oz cup, only to find (after two minutes of steeping) that the recommended amount was a tablespoon per cup! I didn’t add quite that much — just another two teaspoons — because I wanted to have enough left to make more later.

I was never a huge fan of puffed cereal as a kid (except for rice krispies, and even those were hit and miss with me). When I went off to school for highschool I grew rather (unfortunately) fond of corn pops (hello, early freshman fifteen!). I think that genmaicha has completed the revision of my prior wariness, and paved the way for my enjoyment of soba-cha.

And I do enjoy it! The nuttiness is delicious. There’s something just sweet enough about it that seems to recall honey-nut cheerios to me, which is a win. It’s not an incredibly complex flavor, but there’s more complexity than I might have expected, and what’s there is warm, roasty, and savory. The fact that this is not only a caffeine-free option for the evening, but also edible as-is so that it can be sprinkled onto other things — those are just extra wins in my book.

Every now and then I try a tea that I am certain I will get cravings for in the future, and I know that I need to buy it because it’s going to begin creating very specific itches that only it can scratch — like Ryokucha, or the Sticky Rice Tuo-Cha. This is one of those teas. My wallet, it groans with the strain of many upcoming tea orders.

Only vaguely related: I saw in one of Auggy’s tasting notes that she wanted to sing ‘Jimmy Crack Corn’ while drinking this. It kind of made me lol, but I have to agree. This is what I decided to queue up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRX91eF_cY0

(Stuff like this is why I can’t set my itunes to shuffle. This, sandwiched between Burial’s dubstep and things like Arcade Fire, would make for a totally schizophrenic listening experience. The trials and tribulations of having a wide musical palate! These guys are pretty good though. This is the money-tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKTXJUYiAT4 )

Not all Golden Monkeys are created equal.

As much as I dog on Teavana’s — the price alone begs for minor mocking, even if you’re not snooty enough to sniff at the association to the store (really I think the eyeroll factor with Teavana, for me, comes from their desperate desire to portray tea as a magic bullet cure for zapping cake-fat off of our tushes or as an ambitious panacea for the unrealistic curing of any number of other ills) — I enjoyed it. (Woo! There’s a run-on sentence for you!) I said in my tasting note for it that I wouldn’t buy it again, and I haven’t, but I considered it more than once. It was the single bake-y-est tea I’ve ever had, and once I figured out that short steep times were its friend, I found it utterly craving-worthy, if only for the aroma alone. I preferred it to almost every other Golden Monkey that I’ve had since then, by a slim margin.

This tea is another outstanding Golden Monkey, but for different reasons. It has some of that bake-y quality to it — I find it very alluring; my palate interprets this in the same way that it does bread — but pairs it together with a profile that is irresistibly Yunnan. I have been plunging my nose into my cup in search of the proper analogy for the sweetness there, and coming up short. Sweet potato is not adequate, this time, nor is raisin. Perhaps if the two got together and produced delicious, delicious love-children? Who were actually made of bread?

The tea has a very thick feeling both in the mouth and after you swallow. I’ve found in the past that Golden Monkey is easy to screw up; steep it just 30 seconds too long, and something about it takes a turn for the strangely sour or the unbearably bitter. I think the lesser amount of malt in this (vs. the Teavana stuff I’ve been comparing it to) makes it a far more forgiving cup with a delectable, umami-savory quality.

Steep two was every bit as good, and the goodness sticks around long after the cup is cold. Steep 3 is incoming, and then I really ought to stop brewing black tea for the day, lest the top of my skull pop completely off. Whoo!

Definitely going to have to pick up some of this for my very own. Thanks Auggy!

Edit: What remains in my cup (there isn’t more than a hair of tea) smells, cooled down to utterly cold, distinctly of brown sugar and nothing else.