AJ

Just got the package from Jillian. I think I’m psychic (or have impossibly discerning hearing) because I heard the mail come in through the slot and thought, ‘PACKAGE!?’ And I had been about to head out the door to get tea at Murchie’s too.

I added all of the teas to my cupboard, even though most are just a single teabag (and I certainly don’t afford that luxury to the many of OTHER single teabags that I have) and thus will end up removing them after that single use (minus this one, because I’m using it up RIGHT NOW so I didn’t add it).

At any rate, I dubbed this the ‘Mystery Tea’. It wasn’t in a bag and it wasn’t labelled. I looked up the company on steepster under the assumption that it was one of the three that we have listed. I eliminated the rooibos easily enough, because even though I couldn’t smell anything really, it definitely had some green tea in there.

Steeped it as a green, and I could smell it STRONG for a few minutes (not very pleasant, but luckily that seems to have dissipated). If I stick my nose in the cup, it smells minty. Whaddya know, I think I know which one it is. Every so often I get a whiff of something REALLY weird (and not in a likable way) smelling, but then it’s gone.

Going to sip this. I’m afraid. Mint! But black AND green tea, and I usually like blackgreen tea blends. I can do this.

Don’t taste really any green. I got a slight black tea flavour and then a stronger mint that trailed into the aftertaste. There’s a fruityness in there too, but I don’t know of what. This almost just tastes like a herbal tea. A slightly fruity mintness. I’m basically just assuming it’s Bora Bora now. Too obviously mint. I don’t have much experience with any of the other ingredients listed, so I can’t pick them out, but maybe those are that weird smell I keep getting but can’t seem to taste.

It’s not bad. It’s actually kind of nice and refreshing. The mint isn’t overpowering (it usually is for me, but that’s probably just my bias against mint), but I still don’t get really any other flavours. Actually, there’s an earthy turmeric aftertaste to the mint. Huh.

Drinking this with my very late-night dinner (two hours ‘til midnight) of baked potato, perogies, and yorkshire pudding sans the gravy. Very starchy indeed. But I love my starchy foods. Maybe I’ll try to down a few strawberries and a banana afterwards to even it out.

I wanted something savoury and dinnery to go with it. I didn’t go for the lapsang because although I was craving good smokyness, I also wanted a good strong black tea taste as well. This isn’t filling that spot as well as I thought it would, I don’t think (maybe I should have mixed it with some Assam), but it is still quite good, and definitely fits in with starchy foods (and the mysterious, unknown spices on my potato).

Also, there seems to be something wrong with my NEW kettle. Although the water was CLEARLY BOILING (and had been for SOME TIME—I know, I sat and watched it do so for a while), the kettle itself refused to whistle.

I called it Operation Murchie’s.

I was faced with a unique opportunity. My geomorphology teacher was feeling fairly under the weather, but forced herself to come into class long enough to answer questions concerning our next lab, as well as give out the compiled Class Stats before leaving to head home and rest.

Thus I found myself with three and a half hours to spare before my statistics class began. My first thought, logically, was “I should go to Murchie’s!” it’s usually a forty minute skytrain trip to get there from home, and only a slightly shorter one from my campus. Thus I’m usually unable to make the trip between classes (unless I fully intended to run to and from stops, and only spend a maximum of about ten minutes in the shop itself). I worked out how much time I should be able to spend, and then headed off.

The trip took barely thirty minutes (less time than it should have!), and here I am. I’d been planning to try the Library Blend for a while (it just SOUNDS deep, earthy and relaxing). I’ve sipped a few of Murchie’s black/green tea blends, but most I found I could only taste the black tea in.

This one is definitely green, although the colour is only slightly paler than the usual black. It’s okay, but I think I like their Queen Victoria better (a green black blend with a bit of lapsang; it tastes mostly black, but you do get hints).

The initial taste is black, but then very green, but it’s got a bold, taste—the black grounds it and keeps it from being TOO vegetable tasting. It smells green too. Overall it’s nice, and I think the name is very fitting (I could see myself sipping this in a library while reading), the taste is lovely (although not overall ‘for me’), and I might just get it again some time.

Murchie’s doesn’t have a wifi connection, so this was typed up in Word while I was there with the intention of posting once I returned to my campus.

I don’t know how hot the water is that they give you, but I think I steeped it roughly around five minutes before removing the teabags.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

I made this again, and divided some to try it with milk (I didn’t want to add milk to ALL of it because I’m not really in the mood for milk in my tea [I hardly am {see: never, sans chai}]). You can still smell the maple, that’s a good sign… And the maple taste is actually a bit more evident. The milk mellowed the tea but not the maple. This’ good. It’s still not strong, but it’s slightly more evident in the aftertaste.

I actually made it with a cooler temperature and longer steeping time today, just to see if I could get any stronger of a taste. There’s a moderate difference (not dramatic, but not weak at least).

Maybe I’ll try sugar. But I’m enjoying my tea as it is right now, so perhaps another time.

I’m going to start out by saying that the smell of the dry tealeaves is strong. And it is NOT the artificial maple smell so many Canadians are used to in buying their fake Doesn’t Actually Contain Any Maple syrup (because as well all know, the ones that ACTUALLY contain maple are USELESSLY expensive and usually reserved for the tourists, while packaged in nice maple leaf-shaped bottles; they’re also a fraction of a size of the two-litre “Pancake Syrup” you can usually buy [which, at least, doesn’t even TRY to claim that it contains any maple]).

This is MAPLE. MAPLEMAPLEMAPLE. I passed it around for smells and got some “woah strong”s (although most were a good “woah strong”, because it is delicious, delicious maple). I realize I’m not really sure if I can smell the actual tea used, but there is a ‘down to earth’ness to the smell which I think may be the tea smell mixing in perfectly with the maple smell.

I walked over to grab my steeped tea and didn’t even need to lean down to smell it—sniffed the wet tea leaves, and the smell was good and strong. The tea itself—mmmm. This tea, I predict, would make a very good breakfast tea. Especially for people who need to cut some sugar and starch out of their diet and need to stay away from pancakes and maple syrup.

I’m really hoping the taste is as evident and wonderful as it smells. The taste usually has to be pretty strong for me to really like it, and most flavoured teas I end up drinking, the taste is too weak for my personal preference. Pleasepleaseplease…

Just tasting the tea. Astringent, a tad bitter even though I only steeped for five minutes. There’s a maple aftertaste. I’m thinking I should have steeped this at a slightly lower temperature (that can be could for flavoured blacks, I’ve been told).

I let it cool a bit, and that definitely made a difference. The maple lingers all through the taste, and I would like to commend the very nice base black tea, because it is quite nice (and the bitter has faded mostly with the heat). I think next time, a lower temperature for a slightly weaker tea taste to see if I can taste the maple more.

The maple that I CAN taste is delicious. Yum. Noting, though, that this tea is not sweet. It’s just maple, not any sort of maple sweetness. Although now that I think about it, I bet the maple taste may come out more with sugar. Maybe even milk (the black tea used seems like it should be able to stand up to both). But I didn’t add any myself. Maybe next time.

Today was a good day. I got tea, I got dice (you can never have enough dice; these ones are blue flecked with gold!), and I got comics. No, I didn’t just get comics either, I completed a comic series I have had, incomplete, for many years. Hurrah (just Deadpool The Circle Chase, nothing exciting or expensive)!

I can definitely smell the ginger in this, although it is a bit ‘dry’ I suppose (gingeraleish?). I had to be sure about the smell, so I got a hunk of real ginger out of my freezer (yes, I have a giant hunk of gingerroot in my freezer—it’s best not to ask) and grated some onto a spoon to get the smell going. My ginger smells a bit more ‘gingerbread ginger’ish.

I figure it might just be the smell of the black tea. Hmm. But there is ginger in it! You can SEE the hunks. They’re not huge, but there’s a lot of them.

You can smell the ginger in the tea… Not as strong, but that’s because there’s a good ‘tea’ smell in there too. Still slightly gingerale smelling (but I think what I mean by that is a sort of carbonated smell—I have no idea). The more you smell the more the ginger smell comes out. …Which is making me want to just sit here and sniff this all day. Mmm ginger. I can do that for a little while, because I’m letting it cool to a drinkable temperature first.

There is a bit of a bite, and then a black tea taste. I suppose I could have let it steep for six minutes instead of five. If you let it sit in your mouth for a moment you get a ginger taste, with a bit of sweetness. The more you sip it the more ginger you get. It’s not insanely strong, which I think makes it perfect for most people (but others—my dad included, love ginger so much they eat chunks of pickled ginger whole, with nothing else; they might want something a little stronger than this).

I’m glad it doesn’t taste gingeraleish. Hurray! I’m glad she gave me a sample of this, because I like it but I don’t love it, but I’m glad I got to try it (I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I wanted to try a ginger tea). Mmm, there’s actually a spicyness developing in the back of my throat now from drinking this. It’s a nice, subtle flavour that sort of develops as you drink it. Yup, I can definitely taste the ginger when I breath out now.

I’ve got a few teaspoons of this left, and I’m going to enjoy using them up another day. I think I’m going to attempt a second steep of the leaves right now though, to see if the ginger will be weaker or if it’ll get stronger.

I keep smelling the ginger I grated and wondering how easily I could add it to some black tea and make my own ginger tea. It’s certainly fresher, so it should make a strong cup. From what I know of spices, ginger starts to lose its strength pretty quickly (most spices do; dried spices are like tea—their greatest enemies are light, moisture and air, and most are only ACTUALLY good for about two months, and yet we store them in clear containers, and keep them from years on end, and still use them after that—go figure).

Second steep was for six minutes, fifteen seconds. The colour’s about the same as the first steep—maybe very slightly lighter. Hmm… Smells just as strong as before, although I think the ginger is (slightly?) clearer—not stronger, just clearer.

More of just a tea taste this time, but the ginger’s in my nose and on the tip of my tongue. Yup, the ginger’s still there. Mm.

Overall I like this tea, and the only ‘downside’ is that it’s got that dried ginger taste and smell (if you don’t know what I mean, if you have any dried ground ginger in your spice cabinet [I do!], go and smell it) instead of that ‘fresh’ ginger taste and smell. But that can’t really be helped because it contains dried ginger, obviously. Fresh ginger only stays fresh so long, and is moist. I think the only way you COULD get a ‘fresh’ ginger tea taste (other than loading the tea up with preservatives to keep it ‘fresh’, or artificial flavours to get the taste) would be if you just grated fresh ginger right into your tea leaves right before you steeped (which I have always thought about doing, hmm).

Of course I only vaguely know what I’m talking about when it comes to dried/fresh ginger. Just thoughts and opinions!

Trying this again, different steep temperature and time! At first I tried to measure the temperature, but couldn’t seem to get anything over 170 even for freshly boiled, and the needle started going down so QUICKLY (I blame Canada and our temperatures, for some reason), that I just, instead, boiled water fresh, living it only enough time to STOP boiling before pouring it (I’m hoping that’s somewhere over 185, I was hoping for 200). Steeped for five minutes.

It only smells MORE green (and floral jasminy). About the same temperature of the first steep last time.

Huh. This is definitely more pleasant, somehow. Vegetable and greenish, but also sort of milky, I think.

That peppery taste in the back of my throat after the first steep is back. I’m describing it as a sort of harsh grassy taste. Or feel. Hm.

The smell’s not as veggie-like. In fact, I can’t really smell it at all… But that might just be my younger brother making scrambled eggs in the kitchen.

Buttery taste, I think. Lot less veggie tasting too. Last few drops are more vegetable tasting (due to the piece of leaf and leaf dust at the bottom of my cup). Didn’t really consider this one as closely as the first steep because I was talking to my brother as I sipped it. Sweet butteryness. Hmm.

Free pop tart from my sister’s boyfriend! SCORE.

Third steep—the colour’s not getting any lighter (in fact, it’s been identical all three steeps so far) but I’ve got more tea particles in this one. I smell… Ehr. Nothing. Hm.

Wow veggie taste. And not green tea veggie taste. Just VEGGIE taste. Wonder if it has anything to do with the poptart I just ate. That probably wasn’t a very good idea in terms of timing. The other tastes sat sort of in the middle-to-pack of the tongue, but this one’s mostly at the front, reaching towards the middle. It’s… acidic, but not at all sour. Metallic, I guess. Yeah, I’m getting metallic.

Rinsed my mouth out, but still getting the same taste. A normal sort of grassyness returns too—the metallic taste has sort of faded.

Fourth steep—again with the sharp green metallic taste on the tip of my tongue. Curse you poptart! I somehow know this is all your doing. I think I’ve pinned down this kind of vegetable taste as a sort of spinach taste. With almost slight butter. Butter’s getting slightly stronger. Spinach green taste… butteryness is gone again. Hmm. I don’t think I’m going to steep this a fifth time. Seriously drank too much tea at one in the bloody morning. Hmm… It’s sort of a slightly sweet spinach taste. Butteryness comes and goes.

I don’t dislike or like it, but I have so little experience with oolongs that I still don’t feel right attempting to give this a rating. I think I just like babbling about flavours.

No notes yet.

I would really rather my first oolong NOT have been scented, but the lady at Murchie’s gifted me a sample of this “On The House” because it was apparently top-rated and one of the best sellers last year. Very nice of her.

Going to brew this in my Libre because it’s glass, and I wanted to watch the leaves unfurl. I plan, once it’s done steeping, to pour all of the tea out into a teacup (I’m not making very much).

Water is cooling… I have no idea what temperature to brew this at. I tried to look it up, but oolongs are quite variable anyways, and I was getting results anywhere from 180-boiling. So I went “screw it, 180 it is”. Or, rather, slightly under 180. Nevermind. Steep Time was another issue, so I’m going to do four minutes.

The dry leaves are a sort of milky green jasmine maybe? The milky smell was more evident in the bag, but I transferred them to a small tin. Slightly floral sort of smell too, that reminds me a bit of Andrews and Dunham’s jasmine green.

This is very pale. Sort of a tinge of green. Light a light green tea. Dunno how it should look—the tea leaves themselves did look fairly ‘green’, so.

No milkyness in the taste. Very… green. That’s really all I’m getting. It was interesting to watch the leaves, though. They didn’t open up as quickly as I thought they would. Slightly sweet. As I continued drinking it started to get sort’ve astringent. I always figured that I would enjoy a “blacK” oolong more. This hasn’t changed that opinion. Although this is only the first steep.

Wet leaves smell… vegetal, green. Something else, which I want to say is nutty, but it’s not.

Oooh leaves are huge now. Got this water closer to 180. Going to steep this one for four minutes too. While waiting for the second steep, I noticed a weird taste in the back of my throat… Uh. Peppery, maybe?

Second one is darker, probably because the leaves were already open for this steep. Only slightly, though. Stronger smell, but still just green. More strongly vegetal than before. That almost maybe? Not quite pepper taste is back, stronger. Don’t know. Still don’t really like it. Floral jasminy smell’s still there. Oh! Buttery! I got a buttery taste for a moment there. Like a watery, milky buttery taste. I’m not sure.

Not liking this one again. Ehrck.

Third steep smells… Sweeter? Tastes sweeter too. This one’s actually kind of pleasant. When I breath out there’s a butteryness. Vegetal pepperyness.

I’d go for a fourth steep (I hear good things about fourth steeps!),but I’m too full of tea now.

Don’t know how to rate this. Hrm.

No notes yet.

Having this in between class. I was carrying three tins on me today—Earl Grey, 1001 Nights, and this. My travel tin of Lapsang is almost empty, oh no! I need to go home and refill it.

My Libre has been on and off temperamental today. It leaked the first time, not the second or third, and then I flip it for my smoky tea, and it leaks ALL over the place (and usually it only leaks when it’s on its side, and if you wipe the inside rim before you screw the parts together, it prevents this!). It stopped quickly enough, flipped it back rightside up and it was fine, but then I went and opened it (I waited a few seconds and gave it a few shakes to get rid of water that may have collected in the rim) and it EXPLODED water everywhere. Not a good thing to have near a laptop.

So I LOST some water in the process, but there’s still a drinkable amount here. Baaah.

The cafeteria at my college gives you water at 190 degrees (I know, I checked—got weird looks the whole time standing there with a thermometer in a weird glass travel mug).

Even after this I can’t hate Libre; I just keep blaming the leaks on myself. I probably didn’t wipe the inside enough, or screw the pieces together tight enough, or shake the water out of the cap well enough. I still love you, Libre.

Hmm tea came out a bit watery (funny, considering how much water I lost in the process of making it), but still deep and smoky pine tasting (I love that pineness—it’s weird and sweet), and seriously warming to the soul. The Libre container keeps my hands pleasantly warm and the smokyness of the tea keeps my insides pleasantly warm, and now it’s almost a bad thing because I’m feeling somewhat sleepy as a result, and I want to climb into a sleeping back outside in the fresh air and take a nap.

If I wasn’t so impossibly busy with class and work, I would go camping, I think.

There’s a slight, weird aftertaste in the back of the throat—it’s not bad or good, and I can’t really tell what it is (or if it’s due to the tea, or if it had already been there and I just hadn’t noticed it until now). Barky, I think. Maybe it’s the pine taste.

Also, mmmm smoky breath. My favourite part.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

Ooookay! Steeped this one to taste, which was somewhere between thirty seconds and forty-five. I knew any longer than that and I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I used the still-hot water from the rooibos, and it was at a drinkable temperature already, so it probably wasn’t very hot at all.

First thing first, I reeeeeally haaaate mint. Mint gum, ew. After-dinner mints make my skin crawl. I don’t like the artificial cold feeling. Bleeeech. I’ve only ever liked spearmint, in that pink gum. Which probably isn’t actually what spearmint TASTES like.

This is okay at thirty-seconds in warm, almost-hot water. It smells STRONGLY of peppermint (I know, I’ve had that stuff growing in my garden for years). I think I can make out the tarragon. Liquorishy. Which actually doesn’t go too bad. Faint.

Makes my breath feel cool and minty like mouthwash, but not TOO bad. I doubt I’d be able to drink this if it were any stronger. At any rate, since I dislike mint so strongly (although this tea’s okay—brisk), I don’t think it proper that I give this a rating. I’m too strongly biased.

I needed something hot to sip on to keep me up while I worked on a geomorphology program, but not tea because I didn’t want to be AWAKE the whole night after I finished. I pulled this out of my mother’s freezer and made a cup. The bag smelt… woody with a faint berry. The tea itself smelt MUCH more like some form of berry.

It’s got a very silky mouth-feel (hey look! I use that word now too!). It’s got a berry…ness, but I wouldn’t really call it a taste. A tangyness at the back of my throat as well—unrelated, though. And then a mild woody (but not barky; somehow, there is a difference) rooibos taste. It’s okay. Didn’t wow me or anything, but I’ll probably drink it again sometime, come another late-night college project.

can’t remember the temperature… just under boiling I guess, and steeped around fourish minutes by the time I started sipping it, but left the bag in as I sipped a while longer before removing it.

Mmm still very delicious and just green enough for me to stand—more in the scent and initial taste, but it quickly fades into an unbitter black, with a floral aftertaste of rose, and slight jasmine. It smells like a dessert tea, but it’s not. It’s not really that sweet. Just… nice. And smooth.

Yiiiick, I just made the mistake of throwing two teabags of this into a too-small pot. I thought it was big enough for two, but apparently I was wrong. The tea got bitter FAST (four minutes!?), and it was STRONG. Very bitter and too strong, and yuck—even with milk and honey, there was nothing I could do. Never again shall I use more than one teabag. Not unless the pot exceeds four cups capacity at LEAST.

No notes yet.

Just used up the rest of this. I don’t think I’ll be getting anymore… I’ve got a lot of teas that I prefer in the morning. I’ll decide once I run out of those ones.

I was afraid I was going to brew this tea and my poor palette would be unable to tell it from Caravan. They certainly smell quite similar. But lapsang smells VERY different once brewed. You can definitely tell that it was smoked over pine. The pine is there. Mmm, campfire. Mostly because pine’s often what we end up throwing on it. I can’t stop sniffing it. It’s very nice.

The taste is definitely weaker than caravan. But I can’t remember—maybe I steeped that one longer. Taste’s quite different. Sweeter. The pine, maybe. Still savoury. When I purchased this, the lady gave me an odd look and asked if I had ever had it before. I suppose I should have seen it coming—people either love or hate this tea. I explained that I had been meaning to try it (she let me sniff it, and it smelt as expected). Mm, I like it. I think I like Russian Caravan more, but maybe I should have just steeped this one longer. It’s got a… deeper flavour though, I think. Tasty.

I wasn’t sure how to steep this. It’s my first green-black blend (and you can most certainly SMELL it—the green and the black tea, I mean). So I went 180 degrees, at around three (ish?) minutes, just to be safe. The colour came out quite light for a black tea (as expected, I guess).

Here goes! I was kind of nervous about this one. I’ve never purchased a tea I had ABSOLUTELY no idea about. But I am a risk taker! And where better to try a tea I’d been meaning to try, than with a company I had ALSO been meaning to try!

It tastes like black tea and green tea, but I can’t really taste any of the fruity spiceness that was also mixed in there. Although I can smell it in the dry leaves, wet leaves and (to a lesser extent) in the tea. Oh, wait—I can taste the jasmine, mildly I believe. It was a good idea that I tried jasmine green tea before hand, so I can actually pick that taste out. I would steep this for longer to see what I get, but the green is JUST strong enough for me.

I get a sweetness when I sip and then breathe out. No marshmallows, but it sort of REMINDS me of marshmallows. In a weird way. I’m sure it’s just my underdeveloped palette that’s keeping me from tasting things, but somehow… this is very nice. Maybe it’s the rose that I’m tasting a bit when I breathe out. That sweetness. Ah yes, it’s a bit stronger now. Definitely there. Mm, it’s quite nice. I’m starting to become rather fond of this tea. I think I’ll try a second steep and bring that to work with me.

I think I like this one! I’ll probably keep drinking it to see what I can get out of it. It smells so pleasant and sweet, and the taste is there, I’m just not the best person to give a very accurate description of it.

I decided to try steeping this for two minutes first (I mean, I can always just put the teaball back IN), because I remember a few steepsters saying that assam teas can be very picky, and will turn bitter much faster than others. It was in for two, maybe two and a half minutes, and it already is fairly strong, surprisingly. A bit astringent, but not right out bitter. There’s a somewhat tangy, berry taste at the very back of the mouth when I sip it and let it sit for a moment.

I’m sure this could hold milk very well. I think I found my new morning tea! Except that I only got an ounce of this (just to try), so I’ll have to go back for more.

I can still taste it. Aftertaste. Very nice. Yeah, this really doesn’t need any more than two minutes.