sophistre

I’m not sure why it is that I hadn’t rated this tea before. Tonight is completely the wrong night to do it for multiple reasons, but here we go.

There are some nights that I come home and I’m so tired that I can hardly function properly. This is one of those nights. I am…exhausted. Completely depleted. The last three days have, as I mentioned earlier, been a gauntlet of geekdom at PAX, capped off every night with dinner out with friends, at which much bacchanalia took place, meaning I’ve consumed more alcohol in the last three days than I have in the last three months altogether, and that includes St. Patrick’s day. (I am not, admittedly, really a drinker…but clearly, I do nothing in half-steps.)

Tonight, dinner with a friend having her 29th birthday at a tapas place. Tapas was eaten. Pitchers of sangria were demolished.

I managed to remember to make a decaf/uncaf cup of tea…

But I made it at 175.

Sigh.

The good news is that it’s still pretty good. It’s not the weak and watery mess I expected once I realized what I had done.

Taken on its own merits, I’m sure this tea would get a less generous rating from me…not because it isn’t good (it is) but because it isn’t enough to get me excited.

What is exciting about it is the fact that it tastes this cozy and good, and is clearly black tea, and yet it’s decaf, and I can have it at 10pm without worrying about not being able to fall asleep…which is a big deal, as I have yet to locate too many teas other than some whites that seem capable of being satisfying, sans caffeine.

That alone is worth a handful or two of rating points. This will definitely go on my list of teas to reorder.

Not really an ‘experiment’ this time, per se, but a quick cup. This weekend has been an end-to-end slog of geekery of the highest order, capped off, two nights in a row, with a night out at a noisy bar with about 12 other people all conversing over the noise, and then a drunken collapse into bed (alone, not with 12 other people).

I am hoarse. I am raw. I’m exhausted. And I am about to do it for night #3.

No time to make a full chai, I steeped 1 teaspoon of Samurai Chai Mate and 1 teaspoon of Samovar’s Masala Chai (which I have mysteriously not written a tasting note for, yet?) in a quick 16oz. of water, and threw a tiny bit of milk and sugar at it. I need the caffeine from the mate if I’m going to survive.

Reminds me, as it usually does, of a holiday tea. I’m at a point where I think I really need to get some yerba mate that isn’t dressed up as a chai so that I can try it alone, prepared in a gourd and all of that good stuff. I’m not sure I’ll like it, but there’s no denying that the impact of the caffeine from mate kicks the pants off of the caffeine from almost anything else I’ve tried (though I did manage to get an interesting, refreshingly mellow mood lift from the pu-erh I’ve been drinking, after prolonged periods of sipping — something I can thank takgoti for pointing out).

Anyway…today, back to the con. One last day, one friend’s b-day dinner, and then rest…sweet, sweet rest.

Last night:

TV: " Legs spread same width as the shoulders, body tight, then hit the ball like you’re defeating the enemy. Here the pinky finger is the key. Then you just hit hit hit kaking-bingo!"

Me: -.o

TV: “What are you talking about?”

“He who conquers the left side conquers the world chief. Setting the parameters … that’s really the hard part.”

Me: …zzzzz…

Vespa on the TV: SCREEEEEEEEECH

Me: O.O OH GOD WHAT

Bad times. Baaaad times. Mastering my sleep schedule has always been difficult. With the con today, waking up too early would not have been good, so falling asleep early was not an option. Cue this chai.

I’m not sure why, but the dry blend smells, to me, like an antique store…or reminds me, maybe, of some of the re-enactment houses and locations in Colonial Williamsburg, which I adored visiting every summer as a kid when we would drive up the eastern seaboard. I can’t tell you what it is in the blend that triggers these memories…only that something assuredly does. It may be the very subtle, lingering scent of something smokey in the tea…in fact, I’m certain that’s part of it.

It tastes, after being prepared like a chai, almost exactly like it smells, only with more depth than it’s willing to give your nose. The smokey quality is really appealing to me. It’s very subtle, but very definitely there. You take a sip and you don’t have to look for it, but neither does it overpower a fairly well-balanced, internally-warming blend of the usual chai spices. I have trouble finding the vanilla in here, though.

Prepared 1c. water, some sugar brought to boil, tea added, simmered 3-4 minutes, 1c. 2% added, allowed to get foamy, removed from heat and let sit for a while. Strained/poured/sipped in front of the tv.

Nothing amazing happens here, everything is ordinary. A huge factory that can be seen from our town, the Medical Mechanica plant. All the adults got excited when it came here, like it was really a big thing. The white steam that billows out every day at the same time, it looked to me like smoke that signified some kind of omen. Smoke that spreads out and covers everything.

Ahhhh.

I’ll just go ahead and admit something right now…I’m not really well-educated about uncaffeinated teas. Part of that is that I tend to just drink white tea late at night, and part of that is that…well, I like caffeine…and the few rooibos blends I’ve tried have made me think, and I am not even joking, of bile. Why is that? Ugh. I have a serious aversion to all things even remotely related to nausea, so…the search for the perfect rooibos blend continues.

This was one of several rare attempts to find something uncaffeinated to drink, and one of the only successful ones to date. It’s really rather good. Mint tea on its own is something I always want to prepare Moroccan-style, boiled in a pot along with a hefty dose of sugar for that almost-carmelized sweetness. Clearly, that is a bad plan late at night. This helps me to get past that impulse by adding some depth and dimension to the mint in the form of some seriously comforting spices. They’re subtle, though…much more subtle than you would find in, say, a chai, and that works well.

It’s a pretty relaxing cup when you have a headache, and I’m a fan. For what it is, I’m not sure there’s any way they could improve on it, so the question of rating becomes difficult…it should probably be higher. I just can’t bring myself to get that worked up about a tisane, though.

Been hoarding this because my tin is running low, but my new one came in today, so…time for some Jackee! I spent all day wandering around shopping in the splinter of sunligyht we’ve managed to get. It was jammed at the Pru…because tomorrow is the first day of PAX East. SO MANY NERDS. Seriously…the conversations I was overhearing…it was like walking around in a Kevin Smith film, only without most of the witty. Or funny. Or, I should say, the intentionally funny.

Still, I can’t judge too harshly…my 3-day badge is sitting right here next to my keyboard.

Okay. Think I may have stumbled on the right approach to drinking this.

Drink, and think ‘dark yunnan tea’.

DO NOT think ‘mushrooms’.

This seems to be working. I think I prefer the taste of this tea when it’s still piping hot, rather than after it begins to cool…but…I am waiting on a second steep right now, and that is the first time I have ever been inclined to attempt anything of the kind, so…

Yeah.

Dark yunnan.

Not mushrooms.

Check.

Edit: With a 16oz. cup, I find I can get only 2 good steeps out of 2 rounded, generous teaspoons of tea…after that the water turns pink. Note to self.

Wanted to try this at a higher temperature after reading Auggy’s note from the other day about how, at that slightly higher temp, the toasted element sort of took a backseat to the milky quality.

This is totally true. I feel like the toasted rice is still very much there, but smoother and less ‘overdone popcorn’ than just…nutty and toasty. There’s a definite saltiness that seems to be part and parcel with the brothy, milky, matcha-creamy flavors.

It would never have occurred to me to change the temp. I’m surprised by how different it is…especially that saltiness. Neat, though.

I am determined to make myself like this tea, because it’s not a bad tea. In fact, I can even say that it’s a good tea, and I just don’t ever want to drink it, for all that this contradiction is utter nonsense.

I’ve seen the information shared around steepster (by Ricky via someone else, I believe) about doing much shorter infusion times, and I will fall back on that if I have to…but I also saw something somewhere about Takgoti recommending to someone else that they steep longer to bring out the sweet part of this tea, so that’s kind of my plan today. Fact: I am scared.

There is just no reason for me to NOT like it, though. Nothing about it is bad. If I were asked to cite the reasons for finding it overwhelming, I would be unable to. It is tea.

It’s not even like it’s a strong liquor and likely to light up my nasal passages. So, wtf?

I completely refuse to be beaten by this tea. If I were able to point to anything about it and say this is what I don’t like, I would be content to let it go…but I can’t. I even find the smells and flavors interesting. So why do I not want to consume them?

The lack of logic there is vaguely offensive, somehow.

I will cultivate a taste for pu-erh if it kills me.

Come, my friends. Come and hear my tale. It is a story of glory and tragedy, of trust and betrayal, of successes and failures, of the kindness and benevolence of the human spirit and of its depravity and selfishness!

Let me tell you about the heroine of our tale, Jillian, who asked for some tea possessed by our villain, sophistre, about a month ago, and how she — in all of her righteousness — sent forth tea to her nemesis and lo, the wicked sophistre did get distracted by writing and guests from out of town, and when the tea arrived at her humble abode, she was glad. And yet she had sent no tea, herself.

And Jillian went without.

It is to weep!

Seriously though…I fail at post office. I think I mentioned that earlier. I had no idea Jillian was sending me anything until she got her tea, and I feel like a big’ol heel now, because here I am with a very cozy-smelling cup of tea in front of me thanks to Jillian, and the Adagio tin I promised her is still sitting on my front hall table waiting to be whisked off to Canadaland.

I am such a jerk. I’m not even a tragic villain in this story, because mostly I’ve been either consumed by writing or running around with a bunch of other jerks from out of town.

Anyway, thank you Jillian! You shame me! The tea, it will be winging its way to you shortly. (I swear!)

The tea I was most curious about at the time we discussed a trade was a Russian Caravan she had, because at that point I had not had a Russian Caravan tea. I now have A&D’s Caravan in my cabinet, but that’s the only one I’ve tried…so I’m still looking forward to this one quite a bit. Even so, opening up the little packet, it was the smell of this tea that called to my newly-awakened braincells with promises of spices and sweet fruit, and so here it is.

It smells good dry, but I think it smells wonderful when it steeps. The heat really brings several of the spices to the fore in the nose. It tells me there’s citrus here, and I believe it…but it’s the clove-riddled citrus you might remember if your teachers, like mine, had ever had you make one of those clove-studded oranges for the holidays when you were a kid in gradeschool. Cinnamon is easy to detect, and while I would not have fingered almond as a taste present in the tea, I think I find it after I swallow. I could probably have stood to have it be more prevalent in the overall profile, but I’m somebody who douses themselves in almond oil on a regular basis in the bath, so I admit I may be biased. It’s sweet on the sides of the tongue, and there’s a lingering, spicy warmth on the middle and over my palate. There’s even a cozy warmth in my throat and belly that has nothing to do with the temperature of the tea, but instead with the spices involved.

It’s becoming pretty clear to me the more H&S teas I try that they really are exceptionally good at determining the best ratio of flavor to tea. I have yet to try a cup from them that was particularly intense, but I can also say with certainty that I’ve been struck every time by how balanced the flavors have been, not only with themselves but with the tea base.

I could feel a creeping headache coming on when I woke up (yes, when I woke up at 10pm. Just trust me)…but I’m getting close to the bottom of the cup now, and it’s going.

As a tea that reminds you of the holidays goes, this one without a doubt hits the mark. I can easily see myself keeping a little tin around of this, so I may actually add this along with Florence to my ‘will order’ list. Yay!

Thanks to Jillian and her INCREDIBLE supply of patience for sending me tea when I’ve been so dodgy about my end of the bargain!

Yet another rating bump. I’ve been trying to drink this pretty much every day so that I can get it out of my cabinet, since space is at a premium, and the more I play with temperatures the better it is. It is the single most overwhelmingly bake-y tea I have ever encountered, and the smell of it when brewed to the right parameters makes my mouth water the same way freshly baked goods do.

That said…

I am still not sure that I will be getting it again.

Hail, St. Patrick; we who are about to destroy ourselves on an early pubcrawl in hideously bad weather to celebrate your name…salute you.

Yeah, doesn’t quite have the ring of the original, but it captures the foreboding feeling I have listening to freezing cold rain splattering against my window, while I eyeball the clock and am forced to confront the fact that, yes, in four hours, I am going out. Hoh-boy.

Something…reassuring…was in order, here. Why not try Florence, finally? I have fond memories of that city. Eight months or so out of the year, my mother and stepfather live in a tiny villa on the side of a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean on what is known as the Cilentan Coast, in the Province of Salerno, within the Comune di Sapri, and a bunch of other divisions I can’t be bothered to remember sorting out. It’s nice. Peaceful. There are goats and hairpin turns winding through mountainside towns of a variety that you do not get in the United States, because if you had them here, there would be incidents resulting in cars on rooftops every other Thursday. Somehow that does not seem to happen there, regardless of the fact that every other person you glimpse behind a wheel appears to be one thousand years old and half-blind.

Anyway, I digress. Off to Florence I go, when the goats no longer hold my interest. Hop a train, and bam: buona sera, Ponte Vecchio!

For those of you interested, the very best way to see Florence is not, in fact, to get a hotel room, but to rent one of any number of widely available private apartments just off of the very same Palazzo della Signoria mentioned in the description of this tea. There are a ton of them, and they are available, in the off-season, on what passes for the cheap when you’re talking euros (which means not so cheap anymore, alas).

Anyway, I cannot for the life of me recall having had hazelnut hot chocolate in Florence, but there IS a little chocolate and pastries cafe on one of the corners of the Palazzo called Rivoire that…

…mmm….Rivoire…

…wait, what?

Anyway, enough about Italy. This tea is escapist enough to be worthy of the moniker even if the flavors it so expertly captures are not flavors I immediately associate with that city. I prefer this tea hands down to the plain chocolate blend from them that I’ve also sampled…something in the hazelnut really gives the tea depth, and without it the nose would not be nearly as special. It has the balance I’m coming to expect from a flavored H&S tea, and all in all I’m pretty pleased with having selected it to restore my resolve to march out into the worst weather ever in search of a perfectly-poured Guinness.

Where would I be without this tea?

In sad-town, that’s where.

In my original tasting note, I said that I wasn’t sure I could see myself constantly wanting this tea every day. I was certain it would get old for me…but man, was I wrong.

Buttery, creamy, sweet, thick coconut oolong with a luxurious, lingering mouthfeel that reminds me, without fail, of the heavy musk of gardenias…without the obnoxious lack of subtlety that this might seem to imply.

I don’t have a ‘favorite’ tea, but if I did, this would be a heavy contender for the seat.

Nope, still don’t like it.

But it isn’t making me gag like it was before, so I’m upping the rating, at least for now. I might increase it even more than I have if it were not for the persisting fact that the smell of it is really sort of too much for me. I can actually taste the peaches in this tea this time…it’s that faintly nutty stewed-fruit babyfood flavor I pulled out of the ginger-peach tea from Tea Guys. Some people would probably find it gross, but it doesn’t really bother me. Small side note, Teavana: there are no ‘fresh’ peach pieces in this tea. There may be dried, but I’m quite sure there were no gloppy, juicy cuts of fresh fruit in the bag.

Brews up sort of cloudy. Guess that’s the fruit.

I would probably really not be drinking this if I didn’t feel a monster headache coming on, and simultaneously want something sweet and low-caf as a result. This reminds me of pretty much all of Teavana’s offerings: the ingredients seem to be pretty high-quality and harmless, viewed separately, but the result of mixing them together is a little bit like being brained to death with candied fruit. If you’re into their other stuff, this probably wouldn’t offend.

Edit: Cup cooled down and…yeahno. Not drinking this. Sigh.

So….

I can’t really write a tasting note for this, even though it’s sitting in front of me, because I am confused by this tea. I’m pretty sure I did it wrong.

I’m not sure how many of the marbles to use. I don’t have a scale. :( More, I don’t…really know how long to steep it. And it’s white tea but it smells and tastes very vegetal, and the little marbles don’t unfurl like jasmine. Are they even supposed to?

I’m sending out a tea S.O.S. over here. Does anybody know how to properly steep this stuff?

Admittedly this is not the first time I’ve had this tea. The first time I tried it, I’m sorry to say I didn’t even finish my cup.

And it’s a good tea. There’s not really any debate as to the quality of it, or that it promises you the sweetness of osmanthus blossoms alongside the subtle sweetness of a fruity white tea. Those things are all present and accounted for.

It’s the matter of what osmanthus blossoms smell and taste like, and whether or not you’re in the mood for them, I suppose. It’s a very particular sort of floral, in the sense that jasmine tea or rose tea are a very particular sort of floral. Above and beyond the vague description of ‘floral’ for things like oolongs, there is no way to escape the fact that osmanthus infuses every last corner of this tea. On my first encounter with it, I think I was entirely undesirous of steeping myself in that particular aroma and taste.

Tonight, a different story. It was good enough to brew twice, as a matter of fact, and I enjoyed the taste both hot and cold. When the cup has cooled you’re free to find a little bit more of the sweetness they promise, but I would still not call this a particularly sweet white. Osmanthus seems to hint at honeysuckle and apricot without delivering a tangible sweetness, as though what you experience is more like the memory of those things rather than their presence.

All in all, a good and subtle cup, and one I’m glad I gave another chance to…unique and different, and probably inimitable, the only tea that will do when this is the tea you’re wanting.

Having a hard time rating this one, so this tasting note is going to be something of a placeholder, with a soft score.

This is a very subtle white. It’s so subtle that there isn’t much flavor to be had when the water is still hot — the ‘hot water’ flavor overrides the delicacy of the flavors in the tea (and I’m using filtered, fresh water in an all-glass cup, so there aren’t any lingering flavors coming from anywhere else to muddy up the taste). You can get a very vague sense of the citrus they mention in the aroma while very hot, and I thought I could detect what they were identifying as cloves, but everything was so humid and watery that it wasn’t easy to pull anything specific out of the cup.

As it cooled, however, it became much more interesting. It was still an incredibly light cup of tea, but instead of searching for the sweet flavor, it became immediately accessible. I’d say citrus and floral elements were the most notable. If there were other sorts of fruit in the flavor then they were elusive to me.

I think I’d prefer this tea if I upped the amount of leaf I used to increase the strength of the flavor, so with what remains of my sample, I may give that a try later this evening and see how it goes.

I have so much love for this tea. Even the smell of the dry leaves in the can is enough to send me halfway to a state of evening before-bed bliss, as this has rapidly become one of my favorite teas for winding down at night. It has a fresh, clean, dewdropped taste that I find soothing in the same way I find cucumber soothing, plus a gentle nuttiness and very slight honeysuckle sweetness that keeps it on the cozy, warm, snuggly side of things. Two steeps of this are always a good way to end my night.

So, this is getting a major bump, but not because it’s a tremendously amazing black tea, or anything. It’s getting a bump because the last time I rated it I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth out, and definitely must have oversteeped it. I’m not getting the intense sour bitterness I’d been having during that attempt. Strangely, though, in brewing this cup with actual parameters, I’ve lost the raisin/prune sweetness typical to many blacks. Instead, that has been replaced by …

Hmm. I suppose it’s malt, but…it’s the most bake-y malt I’ve ever smelled or tasted. It reminds me of the smell and taste of the floured underside of a loaf of bread. And it’s a pretty good cup of black tea, at least when brewed for a fairly short steep time, but it’s getting a rating cut because it’s pretty darn (every time I type that word I snicker. I snicker way more when I goody-two-shoes cuss than when I let loose with an inventive blue-streak. Not-cursing is the new cursing) expensive — almost 20 bucks for 2oz. For that price there are teas that provide equal amounts of satisfaction for a great deal less per cup, and which have a hope in heck (snicker) of being resteeped without turning into a bitter mess. So…I will finish my bag of this, but I probably won’t rebuy.

You know, I had a hard time evaluating the vanilla teas from GM, and I’m having a hard time evaluating this one, too. On the one hand, I really do like the creamy warmth of actual vanilla. On the other, I am beginning to think that it’s difficult to represent it at a strength sufficient to contend with black tea whilst also avoiding the risk of an aftertaste that isn’t necessarily flattering.

That aside, I’m enjoying my cup. The aroma of the tea itself is heavenly. Harney’s description of the tea, while enchanting, is completely inaccurate for me — I didn’t ever spend any time in the winter baking sugar cookies with my grandmother, and if they’d known any of the three women I called variations of the name ‘granny’, they would probably kill themselves laughing at the very thought — but if I had, then perhaps it would’ve smelled like this. It’s a nice, musky, low vanilla scent, not the super-sweet vanilla of confectionary. Vanilla is one of those flavors that, when most natural, makes me think of…thick-petaled flowers with sweet, oily scents, sitting in pots half-hidden in shadow in a warm, dark room, in which the only lighting comes from a low-burning fireplace. It’s sweet and shadows, but warm shadows.

It isn’t completely overpowering, either. The aroma is stronger than the flavor, but only by a hair. I’m drinking this plain because I want to see what the tea does in my mouth, because of this aforementioned inclination for vanilla to leave an aftertaste…and, sure enough, it does have one — even high-quality vanilla-bean ice cream does, so that is by no means the fault of the tea — though it certainly wouldn’t prevent me from having another cup.

It’s good enough that I think my next go-around I’ll be sipping it with some sugar to see if that decreases the tang in the aftertaste. I expect that a tiny bit of sweetener will elevate this from being merely a warm-fuzzy cup of comforting tea to a real treat that borders on indulgence.

In an effort to reduce Adagio sample tins, inspired by Bethany, I decided to go ahead and start mixing stuff together. Today it was Assam Melody and Keemun Rhapsody, and the results are pretty good…one teaspoon of each for my 16oz. teacup. Raisiny-sweet without being too astringent, a smooth cup to start the day.

And yes, that’s Mr. T. Mr. TEA. …yeah, I know, it’s not that funny.

Yum.

I’ve actually had this one before now and not gotten around to logging it. It’s one of those teas I tend to reach for when I’m frazzled or overcaffeinated or exhausted or the weather is grey and awful and I want to hibernate — and I live in Boston, so this is often — and all of those states usually result in a total lack of interest to write coherently about what I’m drinking. This morning I eagerly took my tin of A&D’s Caravan down from the shelf thinking I’d like to try it, only to discover that the stupid Zojirushi was on 175. Foiled! What could I have at 175 that would…

A-ha.

And so, this tea. It’s a beautiful oolong. Samovar recommends 1-2 tablespoons for 16oz. of water, just shy of boiling. I deviate from this in about every single possible way. 2 tablespoons in 16oz sounds incredibly overpowering — I do two teaspoons in 16oz, and the resulting cup is never watery. One day, when I have a good yixing teapot to devote to this kind of thing and I want to super-saturate myself, I will try two tablespoons…but for now, two teaspoons seems to be more than enough.

I also can’t bring myself to use very hot water on the tea. I’ve thought about trying it several times just to see what would change, but these cups are rather pricey, and I know that I like this cup at 175, so I’ve been uninclined to chance it.

It brews up beautifully…that delicate yellow with the faintest edge of pale green that you get with a ti kuan yin or ali shan. Those are the oolong types that this reminds me of: buttery, a bit floral — gardenias are a good comparison, but this floral is less ‘waxy’ and not quite as cloying as gardenias can get — with quiet undertones of something oolong-nutty as well as a chlorophyl green-ness. What I like most about this tea is that the chlorophyl-ish taste — which they’re pinning as ‘clover’, and I can definitely see that — isn’t an astringent sharpness toward the end of the sip, the way that I’ve experienced with some other similar oolongs. The tail end of this sip seems to round itself off in my mouth, remaining buttery and full-bodied rather than thinning out to threads of super-green vegetal flavor…if that even makes any sense. The mouthfeel is substantial, very heavy and smooth.

Ahhh. So good. It will almost be a shame to obliterate the aftertaste of this tea with a cup of Caravan.

No time to worry about that! Onward and forward into uncharted territories!

Ignore the fallen! (/Harbinger)

*edit: Ha. Note to self: close-tags on steepster interpreted properly. Whoops.

Got this as part of an order from Harney that consisted strictly of a bunch of samples.

This wasn’t quite what I expected, but I think with some playing around it could easily become one of my favorite chai options.

It is not what I would consider typical chai, and I suppose Harney probably doesn’t consider it to be typical chai either. Rather, as someone else noted, it’s a flavored black — there are no bits and pieces of spice or dried fruit or additive here; the tea consists of little black-tea crumbles that remind me of grape nuts, if grape nuts were the color of black tea, and smaller. I was concerned that preparing this in the traditional way — in a pot on the stove, first in hot, sweetened water and then with milk, 1:1 — would ruin the tea, subsequently, and I wasn’t right, but I wasn’t entirely wrong. Despite not being populated with a slew of additional ingredients, the spice profile here seems to come through the milk just fine, and in a balanced, appealing way. In fact, my favorite thing about this tea so far is how balanced the spices actually are…far too often I’m finding chais that club you over the head with cardamom.

That said, I think the little pieces of black tea did not hold up well to being scorched by the hot water, as there’s a faint bitter-sourness to be had. Not enough to be unpleasant — this is still a good cup of tea — but enough to wave a little flag up at me that says ‘hey, jerk, that was a little bit too hot’.

The scent in the pot as the leaf sat in the hot water was not particularly strong. I think the solution to brewing this as a latte in a pot might be to increase the leaf but reduce heat and steep time for that concentrated flavor that holds up well against milk without turning bitter.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

12:30pm: Resteeping Jackee. He is teasing me, taunting me from the underbrush with glimpses of caramel and confectionary, but smoky still. I am dogged in my pursuit of my elusive quarry. I will have him. I will record my every cup, and all resteeps.

1:00pm: Blast. Too much leaf. Delicious, and yet I feel I am falling father and father behind my prey. The scent was so close before. Damn it all!

1:45pm: I’ve read and reread the copious amount of notes from those who went before, and determined to decrease the steep time, and the leaf amount yet again…and now the trail is hot again.

2:45pm: I WILL FIND YOU, CARAMEL JACK

3pm: We strike out yet again.

3:30pm: And again…sudden impulse to alphabetize video game and cd collection ignored as irrelevant side-effect of caffeine consumption…

4pm: And again…

5pm: Is it 5? …I can hardly keep track of the time…the cups of tea…the tea that looks for a moment as though it will reveal itself to be caramel tea toward the last, but which goes on to breathe its last, only tantalizingly close to what I seek! I feel it shall drive me mad! This expedition is a failure, a failure! I also may have consumed too much caffeine in my pursuit of this ghost, this paper tiger…

6pm: I CAN SMELL HIS MOCKERY. There in my empty cup, let sit for a time…the sweet smell of caramel…sweeter than the tea that occupied the cup, and now I am sure that he TOYS WITH ME! Hands…have begun to shake…

7pm: So close…so close…I can’t give in now…ohhh, the lovely colors…

7:30pm: Tea… i
s

DanGe rous (halp)

must…
find….
caramel…
fzzbrtth x.x

I haven’t found it. Yet.

You know what I mean. The caramel. That’s the buzz with this tea, isn’t it? The caramel flavor as the cup cools?

I haven’t gotten the caramel chew.

Yet.

The exasperating part of this is that I can sense how the flavors in the tea would become the caramel. All of the right qualities are there, right up to the salty-sour tickle at the sides of my tongue that seems sweet by turns. It’s there. But it’s hiding, resistant, clinging to the edge of the precipice that allows it to tout itself more as a smoky keemun than a caramel chew.

The good news, of course, is that the tea it continues to insist upon being is excellent. I think I prefer it over either of Adagio’s offerings sheerly by dint of the extremely smooth, silky, substantial mouthfeel that it gives as you sip. Adagio’s lacks the sweet-sour-salty feeling this one gives me, but it seems far more one-dimensional, too…and a little bit more brisk. Good, but not quite the fullness of flavor I get here.

The other good news is that a) I’ve discovered the leaf holds up well to a single second steeping and b) getting close to, but not quite to, the caramel flavor so often touted, means that I’ve got plenty of reason to drink cup after delicious cup of this tea. I can hardly complain. Experiments…they will continue.