Teafreak

Simply put, this is the most delicious tea I have ever had. I’ll update later with a more detailed post

Received this in a tea swap from Tabby!

This is a nice black tea that has light smoky notes that hit the tip of your tongue, but a very smooth fruity finish that lingers on the palette until the next sip. Reading other reviews on adagio’s website I got the impression that this would be a very smoky tea, but the flavor is much more subdued and mild than, for example, a lapsang souchong or a rock oolong. I also wouldn’t necessarily call this a breakfast tea as many reviewers do, but rather perhaps a mid morning/early afternoon tea that gives a jolt of energy and flavor to help you get through the middle part of the day.

Overall, very tasty!

Wow, this oolong is delicious! The first few steepings deliver a rich buttery taste and aroma that, like cheesecake, almost becomes difficult to continue drinking. After the first three steepings it mellows out into a nice sweet, relaxing drink. While this comes from Taiwan, it reminds me of a high quality green tieguanyin.

I highly recommend this tea, but I also recommend not to expect this to be a daily tea, but rather a special treat.

This tastes like a very light rock oolong with some slight floral overtones. The body has a very nutty taste, but as others have noted, the aftertaste is sweet and not at all bitter.

After tasting all three, I think that I’d currently rank all three varieties:

1. Pure
2. Dark
3. Aromatic

But this is subject to change, because I plan to give more thought to these reviews the second time around.

Very delicious, but it seems to be lacking something. When I try it again, I’ll give a more detailed review

Sweet, buttery, slightly floral taste that is delicious!

No notes yet.

First of all, I’m really excited to be heading to Las Vegas this evening for the World Tea Expo! I’ll be volunteering and helping out with a few of the sessions while I am there, should be fun!

This is the second shincha that I purchased recently from Yuuki-Cha. For this one I used 4 grams of fresh leaf in my 4 oz Kyusu, and I brewed 5 steepings increasing the temperature from about 140 fahrenheit to around 190 by the 5th steeping and I tended to steep between 20-60 seconds.

The first thing that I noticed was how wonderful the fresh leaves smelled, just pure sweetness and grassy freshness. The first two steepings of this shincha were delicious. They were a little more vegetal than the tenryu shincha that I reviewed a couple days ago and just a tad bit stronger, but this shincha still didn’t have that grassy/sweet punch that I tend to find in the yuuki-cha green teas. After the first two steepings though this tea quickly lost flavor and turned very astringent and bitter. Perhaps next time I will keep the temperature down on the later steepings!

Dragonwell is probably my favorite tea to drink, and this one from Red Blossom Tea is delicious. The dry leaves have a wonderful and fresh aroma that you would expect to find in a 2010 pick.

The first 3 steepings had a wonderful buttery/chestnutty taste that was very rich, yet also very mild and delicate at the same time.

3 steepings however was about all that this tea could handle and the 4th and 5th steepings that are made tasted like lightly flavored water.

I enjoyed this tea and can’t wait to make it again!

This is my very first experience with Shincha! I ordered two Shinchas from Yuuki-Cha, this one and also an Uji Gokujo Shincha (which I will be reviewing when I try it).

I brewed this Shincha in my 5 oz Kyusu following the instructions that I was given by Yuuki-Cha. They recommended 5 steepings, with increasing steep temperature and time.

The first steeping surprised me because it was very mild. There were some hints of umami and sweetness in the tea, but it wasn’t as strong as I thought it was going to be.

As I steeped this tea a few more times, I tasted a little more astringency, but it continued to be a mild tea with a kick of sweetness as it hit the tongue. Very good!

This yerba mate is one of the best that I have had, when made properly. It is shade grown which brings out a much smoother taste that most of the farm grown mates. I steeped this about 10-15 times in a traditional Argentinian gourd

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

This is the third of the three teas that I recently purchased from Den’s tea and this is by far my favorite of the three. Of course that is a slightly unfair comparison because the other two were senchas, and I am a much bigger fan of gyokuro, but I felt that the two senchas really did not have that much flavor.

Regardless, this gyokuro has the sweet/bitter combination that you expect out of a gyokuro, but it also has an interesting note of pine tree after the initial burst of flavor.

Tangerine Blossom is a black tea that is made from Shang’s white tea leaves and scented with tangerine blossoms during the oxidation.

This is a pretty good tea, although it leaves something to be desired. Certainly it has one of the most rich, tangy, and citrus filled aromas that I have ever encountered, however the taste falls a few steps below the aroma. Certainly it is still very good, but disappointing based on the aroma.

I steeped this 6 times with 4 g of tea per cup of water.

Here’s the second of three teas that I recently purchased when Den had a sale of a few of his teas. I brewed this in a 4 oz Kyusu that I purchased from Yuuki-Cha, and I followed Den’s instructions for the first steeping (160 degrees, 30 seconds, 1 teaspoon or 3 grams for me).

As with the sencha that I had yesterday, I really don’t feel like I’m getting the full array of vegetal and seaweed tones that I typically get from my other senchas. This certainly isn’t a bad tea per se, but there is nothing special about it. I did enjoy this one a little bit more than the sencha-ryoku I had yesterday, and this tea also had a beautiful emerald green brew.

Next time I think I am going to try steeping perhaps with 4 g of tea for the 4 oz of water. Den recommends a teaspoon (I’m guessing 2-3 g here), but perhaps i need to try a little more and see if that gives me the taste I’m looking for.

Den’s Tea recently had a discount on a bunch of his teas so I thought I’d give some a try.

This one tastes like a typical sencha, it is grassy with a hint of sweetness. It tastes pretty good, but I don’t taste anything very distinct about this particular tea.

One herbal tea that I rarely see reviewed on steepster is yerba mate. Perhaps the taste of yerba is so radically different from actual tea that most people just don’t drink much of it.

Anyway, before I started drinking tea, I drank a lot of yerba. I was introduced to the fantastic beverage by an Argentinian counselor at a spanish camp I attended in Bemidji, Minnesota. The counselors and the campers would often drink a round of yerba (as is customary in many Latin American countries) during the day to enjoy each others company and feel the soothing and uniting effects of the yerba.

I tried all types of different brands of yerba during this time, canarias, cruz de malta, rosamonte, amanda, la hoja, taragui, la merced, guayaki, etc. In particular, I enjoyed cruz de malta and rosamonte.

I also found a site called aviva. Whereas most yerba is grown on farms, aviva’s main yerba mate product is harvested from the forest where it grows in the shade. This gives it a much smoother taste without as much of an aftertaste that most people do not enjoy when they first try yerba.

Recently Aviva also began selling this product that I am reviewing today, an unsmoked yerba mate. In the traditional preparation of yerba mate it is typically exposed to some smoke and fire while deactivating the enzymes. In this one though they avoid that exposure giving this yerba a much less smoky taste and also a smaller after taste. It still has a very grassy taste like all yerba, but the flavor is more consistent and smooth.

I typically steep my yerba in a traditional gourd because I think it has the best taste. In a gourd I can typically resteep my yerba 15-20 times before it loses most of the flavor.

I’ve never really liked jasmine because I always felt that the jasmine was too overpowering and completely ruined the gentle nature of the underlying teas that I was drinking.

Then I actually found some good jasmine tea that is scented properly and enhances rather than detracts from the overall taste and quality. This jasmine is created with silver needle tea buds and has a very consistent light flavor that reaches a peak by the 2nd-3rd steeping.

I highly recommend this tea!

Steeped this one six times today, and it was delicious every time!

A clean and crisp taste, this is the best white tea that I have ever tasted. What’s even better is that it can be steeped 5+ times easily. Today I steeped 6 times, starting at 30 seconds and eventually working my way up to 6 minutes. The complexity of the taste changed, but I never felt like I wasn’t getting a good cup.

Anyway, this is the first and possibly the only tea that I will give a perfect rating.

This is a full bodied long jing that tastes great!

I was never a fan of scented teas until I tried this white tea from Shang. Pao Blossom is probably the best floral scent and taste that I have experienced. Shang makes this using his silver needle king grade leaves and the pao blossom is allowed to infuse into the leaves about 3-4 times over the course of the tea making process.

This tea has a nice bold, nutty taste to it.