20 Tasting Notes

86
drank Paris by Harney & Sons
20 tasting notes

It’s just a fantasy, taking over like a disease.

Le Corbusier lived from 1887 to 1965. Le Corbusier was a Swiss-French architect. Le Corbusier dedicated himself to the modern city, urban planning.

It’s funny how art takes a life of its own. For a little while.

I saw some art house film Provenance at the Met last year while traveling alone. The film by Amie Siegel portrays the life and death of Le Corbusier’s chairs of the planned city Chandigarh in India. Le Corbusier planned that city. The city lives on in entropy, a posthumous daze that you’d have to be pulled out of as you wouldn’t be able to breath.

Paris by Harney and Sons harkens back to the very personification of the city of light brought about in Magic Man’s homonymic song. Licorice, Burnt Sugar, a full body burning through the chest.

I have to go to class :/
-
Magic Man – Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yteXdnQQSUc
Amie Siegel’s Provenance: http://amiesiegel.net/project/provenance
Serendipity: http://hypem.com/track/28rzv

Flavors: Burnt Sugar, Licorice, Rhubarb

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 4 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML
tantonino

“Death, Divorce, Debt” – how art comes to auction.
Marketplace from APM 1/20/15

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74

Been a while since the last post. Hoping to get back in the rhythm this week.

A memory from Steepster Select’s first shipment, Iron Goddess Dark Roast sips harmlessly. But there’s a protective malice behind its stone-faced facade. Steam rises up. The water poured torments the tightly curled leaves. Bring your face close to the heat and divine steep. Little hands with tiny palms and grey fingers tear at your nose, seeking refuge and a home. Recoiling, grasp the mug with both of your cold, hardened hands. It’s searing – the emanating heat pierces your hands like tiny spears that soon withdraw. “Poor heat insulation!”, you decry.

The little fortress that is this Iron Goddess Dark Roast places divine emphasis on the procedure that is tea drinking. It reminds us why this little ritual is so important to our rote lives. A little respite that wakes us up: but truly awakens our eyes with those unconscious lids. Give Life Back to Music! Neglected by the world, Franz Schubert died at 31 with only a few close friends that were able to see his genius emerge and depart from that world. Romanticism is dead.

Schubert is not the only genius of our time to have died impoverished and neglected. Some crackpot Van Gogh of post-impressionism fame (not of the chocolate, cafe liquor variety) only sold 1 painting before he shot himself in 1890. Kafka wished for his ill popular work to be burned at his death. Jodorowsky’s Dune. I’m not sure who Emily Dickinson is so I’m going to skip that one.

What’s the point of immortality that is posthumous? Can art only achieve fame when it has laid down and died? With little, groping hands does living art rise up and try and wrest open our minds, yet we struggle, we instead almost unconsciously fight back with fists tender yet firm. After the work cools down, however, anyone can begin to consume the precious fluid that the Goddess had protected.

Iron Goddess Dark Roast is a thing of intrigue. Nutty to the scent yet sweet to the palette. Sometimes paradoxes are only truths that we have yet to comprehend.

As a caution, I wrote this while baking a sweet potato so I’m not sure how it will read in totality.

Franz Schubert: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/arts/music/23composers.html?pagewanted=all
9th Symphony, 1st Movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRdWV-E-pSo
Beethoven’s String Quartet #14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW8wdpfkpM0
Posthumous Immortality is a funny thing. : http://mic.com/articles/58657/6-posthumous-discoveries-of-art-literature-and-music

Flavors: Apple Candy, Nutmeg, Seaweed

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 2 min, 30 sec 1 tsp 12 OZ / 354 ML
tea-sipper

just read Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ the other day. I started grinning in glee when the bug started climbing the walls.

tea-sipper

…but then the rest gets very sad.

tantonino

If you liked that, you should check out the Hunger Artist (not of the popular childrens book series)

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84

Everybody in the club!

How is your tea journey? I just discovered a great tea class from Adagio (http://www.teaclass.com/) that has been helping me get perspective and insight into how tea is made and what differentiates different types of tea. I’ve also been taking notes, so if you don’t want to go through all the lessons you can take a look at my cheat sheet – www.bit.ly/1ESq0yP

I’ve reinforced how important water quality is, and I’m looking forward to expanding my palette/training my smell and taste. I’ll need a cupping set at some point as those seem pretty nifty. Very happy with the Breville, however, it’s sometimes hard to finish 500mL in a sitting each time. What say you, fellow Steepsterites? Any experience with more formal tea tasting?

Lapsang Suochong is a black tea originating from the Wuyi region of China’s Fujian province. After frying and rolling, the tea is placed into bamboo baskets hanging over smoking pine fires. It’s really amazing how so much of that smoky flavor is absorbed into the leaves themselves and are capable of being transferred back to the boiling water that we use in our homes halfway around the world.

If you’ve never tried a Lapsang Souchong, I do encourage picking up a sample, but be warned. They are not a typical tea. It really is more of a smoked bacon beverage.

And again, check out my notes @ www.bit.ly/1ESq0yP

Flavors: Pine, Smoked, Tobacco

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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89
drank Buddha's Blend by DAVIDsTEA
20 tasting notes

I just watched a religious social experiment documentary called Kumare. Vikram, an Indian-New Jerseyean dipped his toes back into his childhood faith, travelled to India, and started to film a documentary about yogis and babas in India. Vikram observed these “spiritual leaders”, followed them, lived with them, but couldn’t find any real substance to any. He asked, “Is there anything really to these gurus? If it seems so easy, why wouldn’t he be able to do it?”

Vikram turned around and flew back to America. Vikram transformed, with a full beard and put-on Indian accent, into Kumare. Kumare began teaching Arizonans about illusion, mirrors, and the true self. Kumare’s only tenet was that the external guru (effectively Kumare) was fake – an illusion – and that the true guru was inside oneself (for self transformation).

At one point, a psychic relayed to Kumare that Buddha had once said: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” This tale reinforces Kumare’s teaching that the guru is no different than oneself and not to attach to any specific person or symbol other than one’s own self.

Infused with supernatural energy, Davids Tea’s Buddhas Blend is sweet and croppy. The bright, creamy mouthfeel slides into a warming fullness towards the end.

A preparation note: The Steepster averages seem quite extreme (77oz!), but the staff in the NYC storefront specifically warned against oversteeping, going as far as crossing out the 2min steep time in favor of a single minute. I’ve been brewing 2.5 tsps in 500mL at 175F for 1-2 minute to great delight.

Flavors: Almond, Cream, Geranium

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 1 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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86

I’ve never seen Enter The Dragon but I figure it’s a lot like this tea. Probably not, though.

One time, my English teacher got high and did a figurative dance of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album.

Standing in front of the tea counter at Harney & Sons, I knew I wanted a Jasmine tea. Having been only properly introduced to Jasmine teas a few months prior, I was surprised and drawn in by the tea’s light-footed attack and sweet, tumble-dried finish. The New York Harney & Sons tea store is really something special. Walls lined with premium tea and crafted blends, there’s something for each taste but it’s easy to get lost. Within the Jasmine tea selection alone, there are 3 unique approaches albeit differentiated by price.

I went middle-of-the-road with the Dragon Pearl Jasmine. There’s a “lesser quality” Jasmine not furled into succulent lilliputian balls like these, and there’s a forbidden, secretive greater-treasure out there as well. Pack 2 teaspoons into your tea-maker and watch the leaves thrash and unravel to produce a mystical mellow Jasmine blend.

I find the Dragon Pearl to be quite relaxing with a little bit of kick right before you swallow. This tea has quite a lot of caffeine, so use sparing sample sizes during the right hour of the day, or as so required. I’ve also found that water quality is the single most important factor to maintaining the integrity of the tea. You may go with 175F (as suggested) or 180F (Steepster average) with varying amounts of steep time and water volume, but the quality of your water is critical. Having previously gone with water straight out of the tap in my 100-year old retrofitted-factory building, the tea had a distinctly dirty taste. However, after installing a Culligan faucet filter, I’ve once again captured the purity of the taste.

If you don’t believe me, see for yourself.

Who is Bolo Yeung?

Enter the Dragon in 2 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es9L7OlMFAE
Corrosive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGrOK8oZG8
Water quality is important!

Flavors: Bok Choy, Char, Cloves

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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83
drank Black Cloud by Silk Road Teas
20 tasting notes

My recent, themed overly pretentious posts seem to have not resonated with the Steepster community. Therefore, back to the basics I go.

Black Cloud – what a smooth, only slightly sweet black tea! It is really pleasant. I brewed this particular Steepster Select tea with one of the included tea filters in a standard 8oz mug at 212F for 3 minutes. All standard as indicated by Steepster’s included instructions. The only pain I encounter is when I try to find a place to put my tea bag down in between steeps. Right now I’ve just placed in on top of a napkin-covered leather coaster, and its messy and damp all over.

The first steep offered only glancing insights into the core of the tea. Light chocolatey notes could be heard around the tea, but with a sip, nothing more than a generic sweetness arose. The second steep did little to help unravel the Black Cloud, but the sweetness began to fade. There is little exotic or exciting about Black Cloud from Silk Road Teas, but it is a basic black tea with a tinge of chocolate and a blanket of gentle sweetness.

News! I just got a nice faucet mount filter from Culligan, and it works like a charm. No more ewy, chewy tap water from this 100 year old factory that I live in. And it honestly has improved the quality of my tea-making.

Flavors: Anise, Kettle Corn, White Chocolate

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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85
drank Boston by Harney & Sons
20 tasting notes

http://youtu.be/4ASJBXu8tNo?list=RD4ASJBXu8tNo

I never realized how much this song was about rebirth and transformation, but aren’t all soft rock songs? I’m not actively seeking to reinvent myself right now, but Boston by Augustana just seems to fit Harney & Sons’ Boston Blend.

Now, there’s one line in the song that is completely out of place. Let me transcribe a few lines for you:

I think I’ll start it over, where no one knows my name,
I’ll get out of California, I’m tired of the weather,
I think I’ll get a lover and fly him out to Spain…
Oh yeah and I think I’ll go to Boston,

Did you see it? It’s just barely audible, but apparently Augustana couldn’t find any adequate rhymes for name – except Spain. And how does everyone associate with the Spanish? Well, clearly lust and escape and sex and gigolos and the sexual revolution of the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the boys seem oblivious of their own city’s claim to fame on the erotica game: “Banned in Boston”. Indeed, the fabled city on a hill and critically acclaimed Protestant haven, Boston has tirelessly defended against the ever-increasing lewd and licentious dangers plaguing modern society. Much like our aforementioned guardian, Iggy Azalea, of sexual purity, Boston’s long-standing Watch and Ward Society censored the likes of the evil Upton Sinclair, Faulkner, HG Wells, and Ernest Hemingway. Thank gourd Harry Potter wasn’t around to plague the youth of Boston!

Thus, adding another page to our Caulfield-like repertoire, we see the boys of Augustana desire to return to a period of innocence since lost. See no evil.

Here’s a Creed song: http://youtu.be/iBBqjGd3fHQ

Flavors: Bergamot, Burnt Sugar, Vanilla

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 22 OZ / 650 ML

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90
drank Blue Eyes by McNulty's
20 tasting notes

Do you like adventure?

McNulty’s Tea & Coffee Co, Inc. was established in 1895. I’m not quite sure what to make of it including Co. and Inc. in their name, but don’t let their redundancy and antiquity fool you.

McNulty’s is an adventure.

Nested within New York City’s labyrinth of concrete and corporate-life is a little tea shop that sticks up to the big man. Walk into McNulty’s and be overwhelmed with the striking tones of different coffees and varieties of tea. You can inspect the tea yourself and when you’re ready to pack it up and go home, a few fellows come and bag your tea for you.

I’ve never had a Blue Eyes blend before, but immediately after taking the first whiff of Blue Eyes in McNulty’s wooded floors and wall-lined tea containers, I knew this was the one. Blue Eyes blend is ravishingly sweet. The tea unfurls and really comes alive upon your palette. The flavors of different fruits and spices dance across the tongue, and spark a dragoon of curiosity.

Blue Eyes blend is a spectacle. McNulty’s is an adventure. Highly recommended.

Flavors: Dried Fruit, Goji, Hibiscus

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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81

October 3, 2014 – Yom Kippur

What’s in a Monk’s blend? Surely a blend by any other name would taste as sweet?

Bad paraphrasing aside, this ’Monk’s Blend’ by Alice’s Tea Cup – a wonderfully tragic consortium of myth and whimsy sheathed within the monolith that is New York City – just doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t taste like the Monk’s Blends I’ve had before: those that were infused with the supernatural energy of the earth, wind, and well you get the rest.

Can an object truly be labeled as such if it does not wholly understand and represent the very attributes that make it said object? An example only appropriate for the holiest of days, does the crying girl lamenting about the current state of high school in Mean Girls truly understand the sentiments of the high school and thus represents a student thereof? The fact that she doesn’t even go there probably doesn’t help.

O.K. bad example – wrong holiday. Instead, let us look to the wandering Jew who is doomed to walk the earth until the second coming of Jesus. The story goes that when Jesus was resting on a Jerusalem man’s doorstep, a man drove him away, and so Jesus replied, “I go but you will walk until I come again!” The legend posits that the Jew’s rudeness towards Jesus as a traveller is the reason for his punishment of endless walking.

However, the imperative of hospitality and the opening of one’s home to those in need is so deeply rooted in Judaism that it seems questionable to really call this man from Jerusalem a true Jew. We see this most prominently in Abraham and Sarah welcoming the three visitors into their camp. Can he be honestly labeled as a Jew if he ignores the very fundamentals and tenets that comprise Judaism? Tying such false labeling back into this tea review for Monk’s Blend from Alice’s Tea Cup, we must look back to Matthew Gregory Lewis’ 1796 gothic novel The Monk.

My boy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, once commented that The Monk was “the offspring of no common genius”. He went on to remark that he had not seen a bolder or more happy conception than that of the burning cross on the forehead of the wandering Jew. However, Coleridge had his concerns of his own! Coleridge criticizes the plight of Ambrosio, the devout monk, in that he was destroyed by spiritual beings. He says, “no earthly being can sufficiently oppose the power and cunning of supernatural beings.”

Perhaps the same holds true with this earth-bound cup of Monk’s Blend next to us now. How could we mere mortals begin to comprehend the sensation that is the true Monk’s Blend, imbued with the deepest vibrations of truths hidden in the Universe a thousand times over?

Basically, what I’m really trying to say here is that this Monk’s Blend from Alice’s Tea Cup is: Just O.K

A verifiable source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monk

Flavors: Bergamot, Butterscotch, Creamy

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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72

Maman died today.

The postcard came in the mail last night. I was asleep. I saw a man come in, however. He was dressed all in grey. He wore an off-tilted hat with a white ridge around the brim, and then he handed me the letter sealed with a gold wax seal. I thought it was a nice gesture as no one takes the time to put a nice seal on letters anymore. Without thinking, I responded with a “Thank You”, and the man drove away.

Afterwards, it struck me that I needn’t have said that. I had no reason to thank the delivery boy; he was probably getting paid to do it. I thought: how many more letters would he deliver that day? He reminded me of a fellow that I used to know; a friend, even, Raymond was to me. He lived a simple life. In the mornings, Raymond didn’t go out; it was only until the evening that he went out. He always had the company of a young girl, and he even told me one time that he couldn’t go on without them. He was unusual. Or was that Edward?

Regardless, the letter came to me – Maman had wanted that I see it. I peeled back the seal and peeked inside, but there was nothing in it. An empty envelope, inviting yet unsettling. Perhaps she had run out of time to fill it? Perhaps it was a message. A gift, even: hope. Maybe I could become somebody or do something as well. Without an interruption, I would have kept on going without a direction.

As soon as I had grasped these feelings, I began to feel drowsy again. I couldn’t fight back the sensation, so I began to think back to the man with the grey hat. He continued to go on doing his job; continued to go on working towards whatever it was that he was working towards, and went on despite fatigue or hunger. But his task, being so simple, so mundane, surely could not be significant. Rather, looking back down at the now open envelope, I began to feel disappointed. I thought that despite the white hope that Maman gave me, I would lack the ethic and would thus fail. I can’t fail.

I wish I could go on, but I must go to sleep now for the light is blinding.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be

Flavors: Flowers, Medicinal, Peppermint

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 5 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML
tantonino

In the style of Mersault, our boy of the sea and the sun himself, I tried to tackle understanding different ways of life and creating a unique purpose and thus meaning to one’s own life. Rather absurd, isn’t it?

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Profile

Bio

I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

I am a 21 year old student at Georgia Tech studying Business and Computer Science. I enjoy working out, going to local coffee shops, playing board games, reading, and watching film. My brother is studying film in SoCal – you can find his work at my website url. He doesn’t know that I’ve included it, but I’m his biggest fan.

Ratings:

0-59: F
This tea fails me so! O how this does not suit me! A million sighs. Bleghch uchgh

60-69: D
Needs work, son. Not my cup of tea. Will not be trying again, but won’t knock it. Did not enjoy.

70-79: C
Alas! I see how others may enjoy this tea, but mine own taste buds have not come around to the party. Sully were my expectations to not have matched the profile of the tea. Just O.K.

80-89: B
Hey now! Not bad, I actually really like this tea! I did something right here. I must study this. Up my alley.

90-99: A
Goodness me! I love this tea, and I will be purchasing this again.

100: Super-A
Oh Sweet Buttercups! This tea is the belle of the ball! Ecstasy.

The World is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Location

Atlanta, GA

Website

https://www.youtube.com/chann...

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