Whispering Pines Tea Company

EW…backlog from last night.

This smelled alright dry, then I poured water over it and immediately it smelled like I was having dead fish shoved up my nose. I’ve never really noticed “fishy” smells to puerh, soooo I guess I’ve been pretty lucky. Something called Camel’s Breath probably should never be consumed. EVER.

I tasted it, which was a horrible move. It tasted bitter and quite honestly like what I would imagine dead fish and camel dung taste like together.

So threw it out, and went to rinse the infuser. One of my friends was two rooms down from the kitchen and asked why the house suddenly smelled like dead fish.

Please, save yourself and your friends, and never buy something called Camel’s Breath. It’s as horrid as it sounds.

P.S. – my infuser has been washed 4 times and soaked in baking powder/vinegar for a few hours and it still smells like death.

Raising the rating…better than I remember it now that I’ve forgotten about the hype…still not a tea I’d drink every day but at least pretty enjoyable! :)

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Okay…

I’ve waited about 6 months to buy this tea. I’ve wanted it the whole time, and the raving was driving me crazy, so I finally broke down and bought 4oz of it.

It arrived on Thursday and I opened the bag up to the smell is chocolate brownies! :D

Steeped my first pot the same way I steep all of my black teas at first – 2 level teaspoons, 14oz of boiling water (boiling is 203ºF here in Prescott, AZ) for 3 minutes. Immediately after pouring the water over the leaves the smell vanished and became a much deeper melting chocolate aroma.

The first taste was exceedingly disappointing. No chocolate, no caramel, no brownies, not much of anything really. I tasted wood and graininess, very similar to a dark oolong. Near the bottom of the pot I began to taste a hint of milk chocolate, but definitely not dark chocolate.

So I decided that I did something wrong and steeped it with a tablespoon of leaves in 8oz of water for 3 minutes (verdant tea’s recommended western style steeping). Same thing. Was beginning to feel quite confused and VERY disappointed. So I went on a steeping rampage and tried every method of infusion I could think of and still got nothing. Tried gongfu style brewing as outlined on the verdant site and still the tea was boring and unflavorful.

So I’ve gone through about 2 of my 4oz and just am not feeling it, sadface. I was expecting way more from a tea with so much hype, but I guess it’s just me.

I’ve been working on this one for about 4 months on and off and yesterday the final recipe was established! :)

I’m drinking it chilled right now, which I prefer over hot — the tart notes are less puckery in the chilled version. I actually never thought I’d get this excited over a tea with hibiscus but this is so refreshing!

The ginger is perfectly ‘there’ without being in-your-face spicy, it plays much more of a background note than anything but really makes the cup. Hibiscus and elder berries are equally recognizable as well, and the orange peel throws in just the lightest hint of citrus to the overall blend.

It’s sweet, tart, and soothing and the color is a lovely vibrant cerise.

Omnomnomz :)

http://whisperingpinestea.com/gingerade.html

I’m quite glad that I finished this blend a few days ago. It’s been in the works for a bit over a month now.
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Serenity on the summit — the perfect every-day, anytime, smooth, brisk, citrusy-sweet black tea made for the adventurist.

Imagine a high-elevation desert mountaintop shortly after sunset. A storm rolling across the Western horizon and a warm, humid breeze blowing the sweet scent of agave and wild bergamot across the starlit granite. This tea perfectly embodies that blissful perfection.

Cradle the breeze in your hands and feel the warmth of the desert sky, the milky way, and the sweet nectar of life.

Namaste.
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So this blend was inspired by the desert. I wanted a bold and invigorating yet smooth and sweet blend. I started with the feeling of warmth and the scent of all the sweet flowers and plantlife on the mountainside. For that I used a yunnan black with a warm peppery touch and notes of orange blossom honey. I needed depth and boldness with citrus notes along with a malty background, so I blended that with a high-elevation Nilgiri black tea from the rich soils of the Blue Mountains. With these two smooth and sweet black teas, I eventually reached the memory of the summit of Prescott, Arizona, with sweet winds and endless adventure.

You can see the memory that inspired the blend here:
http://whisperingpinestea.com/mountainnectar.html

I decided to make a Peanut-Butter-Puerh Milkshake. It was pretty good, but I may have used too much milk.

Steeped 1 toucha in 3oz of boiling water for 10 minutes. Tasted a sip afterwards – absolutely no bitterness! Awesome :)

Then I added 4oz of milk and 2oz of peanut butter, blended, and drank. It was pretty good!

Omnomnom :D

WOW! This tea is the essence of a chilly autumn morning, waking up to mommas fresh apple cobbler and the dazzle of the sunrise over your oak-frame bed. Crisp, smooth, and refreshing, we’ve blended cinnamon pieces with a highly oxidized Indonesian o’olong with unbelievably strong all-natural notes of Washington red apples! This is a tea you just have to indulge in to believe!

I’ve been drinking this nonstop for like a week, and I can’t wrap my head around how perfect it is. :)

Infuses 5+ times!

The Perfect Cup
Infuse 1 tsp of tea leaves in 8 oz of boiling water for 2 minutes

Infusion #2: 2 minutes
Infusion #3: 3 minutes
Infusion #4: 4 minutes
Infusion #5: 5 minutes

Ingredients: O’olong tea, cinnamon

http://whisperingpinestea.com/applecinnamonoolong.html

Steeped this western style with maybe 1tsp leaves, 4 minutes in 16oz boiling water.

I’ve been using my newleaf tea set a lot – love a BIG cup of tea. I had been using the bodum tea-for-one but it took forever for black teas to be cool enough to drink and I didn’t like the plastic infuser. I love how this one is glass and metal – no flavor changes from the materials, which I MIGHT have noticed on the bodum one, not sure. You can check out the newleaf set here: http://whisperingpinestea.com/newleafset.html as well as a ton of different teaware in the ‘forlife teaware’ section of the accessories tab.

The tea! It’s pretty delicious, it has the woody-sweet taste I love in dan cong oolongs and also a flavorful body for how light it is. Lightly floral qualities and a hint of smoke perhaps. Very mildly astringent – but it makes me want to keep drinking it all day.

Will be trying in the gaiwan later today.

Have a good morning, all! :)

Alrighty, I’ve waited far too long to review this tea.

Being Whispering Pines, there’s a lotta smokeyness in my teas. Clearly I enjoy smokey teas :)

This is a daily thing. I wake up and I make a 7oz cup of this, steeping 1tsp of leaves for 5.5 minutes, and it’s beautiful.

So smooth and intoxicating. This is the high-school crush that you couldn’t keep your eyes off of. A homecoming bonfire love story in every sip. You can barely breathe before you want another kiss of this beautiful love. I find perfection in her sweet breath meeting my lips and the heat of her smooth body makes me never want to let go.

I may be offering this soon. Would anyone be interested? Great prices, as always. :)

Usually when I feel a cold coming on, I can attack it with raw foods and this tea…last night I wasn’t so lucky. I started getting a runny rose at around 10pm so I threw together a cup of this…I usually steep it for 8-10 minutes when I just want to enjoy it but when I’m all-out attack-mode on a cold, I make this BOLD.

I steeped 2 tablespoons in 8 oz of water for 25 minutes – perfectly suitable for a Bacteria Holocaust. The post-infusion color was puerh-purple and the taste was intense enough to make me feel like a total BA just by drinking it. Well…turns out I was too late and the cold had launched a full-fledged attack on me at that point.

Decided to take a hot shower with a netipot while steeping another cup. I coughed in the middle of draining my sinuses, causing me to choke and because both of my nostrils were blocked off – whatever fluid was in my nose/sinus area went straight to my inner ear. My ears felt like a bass drum went off inside them, I dropped the netipot, completely lost my equilibrium and fell over. After that I got up and finished the shower, feeling okay. Drank my second cup of Clari Tea as well as a chamomile honey and ginger tea I threw together and went to sleep. It was 1am at this point. Well…I fell asleep really fast, but work up at around 3:30 with the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my ears. They were ringing and I had no hearing. Got up to get a drink of water and couldn’t walk. I’m quite certain I blew my eardrums.

So I’ve been up since 3:30 with 2.5 hours of sleep listening to ringing in my right ear and silence in my left with searing pain in both. I still can’t walk very well.

Hopefully I get to see a doctor today. :/

Sipping on the final product is WAY better than I had expected! So fresh, smooth, and sweet! Available now on the site and BOTH of the new puerh touchas are in stock! http://whisperingpinestea.com/riverrain.html

Okay, I’m doing some testing with this gunpowder to see how it stands up to boiling water (usually, I use 180ºF). I’ll be going through 3 or 4 infusions – using 1 teaspoon of tea and 8oz of boiling water for each infusion.

I’m a huge fan of gunpowder green tea – despite it being the lowest grade of green tea, I find it remarkably flavorful and delicious. I enjoy the smokey notes a lot that I usually get out of the first infusion, but definitely enjoy the 2nd and 3rd infusions better in all cases. Here goes!

Infusion #1: 30 seconds

Strange at first because I’ve never drank green tea that was this hot. After it cooled a bit, I taste much less smoke, a deep vegetal flavor, and a brothy sweetness. Theres a bit of dryness at the end of the sip and a definite slight sweetness too. I’m quite surprised that there is absolutely no bitterness! Very interesting!

Infusion #2: 35 seconds

Once again, no bitterness and still a tad bit of dryness. There’s a sweet pine flavor that I’m loving in this one and strangely I taste more smoke in this infusion! Very woodsy and earthy, nice and smooth with a nice toasty aftertaste. Theres some sort of wildness to it, too. Theres something about this one that is BEGGING me to put a splash of lemon juice in it. I will pour it off and do so later. On to the third.

EDIT: After doing so, I figured out why I wanted to put lemon juice in. The tea was sweet enough that with the lemon it tasted like green tea lemonade! Delicious!

Infusion #3: 40 seconds
WOAH! Is that a nutty aroma? Nutty in gunpowder?! No way. Letting it cool for a few minutes while I let the dogs out…back! Okay, still too hot, but anyway, it’s got a very nutty/toasty aroma that reminds me a lot of genmaicha. The taste is really different from anything I’ve gotten out of gunpowder before. It’s definitely a nutty/toasty taste! There are still deep vegetal notes at the beginning and a wild sweet pine flavor in the middle of the sip, but between those two I am getting toasty and right before the end I get a moment of nuttyness. There is still the dryness and again, NO bitterness, woot! Very smooth and sweet. A very unique experience.

I didn’t expect the outcome at all. I had expected them all to taste bitter and gross but in the end I got a completely enjoyable experience from all 3 infusions, in particular the 3rd!

Cheers!

Woot! Back home and made a pot of this for breakfast! :) Perrrrfection! It’s now available!

I tried really hard not to spill the beans about the new stuff I picked up on my trip…clearly I failed. Haha. China might need to be an annual trip. This one will need further ratio changes but is by far the greatest green tea blend I’ve come up with.

I searched high and low to build a tea around the description (which I wrote about 6 months ago). This has been one of my longest projects – and I’m VERY excited about the outcome!

Estimated by the 15th. :) So excited – Back to the grind on Saturday!

I’m absurdly excited to have gotten my hands on this stuff. It’s by far the best puerh I’ve tasted. China is awesome! :D

I love this tea. It’s not even slightly purple, so I think art of tea may have gotten too artsy with some filters and forgot to look at the real tea, but that doesn’t change my opinion on it.

Definitely hints of sweet cinnamon, quite musky too. I prefer the 2nd and 3rd infusions over the 1st, and have made up to 8 cups with one teaspoon, which is nice. I’d recommend a 3 minute infusion first, then a 4 minute infusion. The second steeping always seems very smooth compared to the first.

This would go perfectly with a cinnamon-raisin bagel.

:)

EDIT: It does take a cup or two to get used to it because it IS very confusing and different. I think I threw my first cup out when I first tried this.

I don’t know. I can’t force myself to enjoy this as much as other Yunnan’s i’ve tried. I like that it’s a tad smoky and earthy, but there’s the bit of sweetness I love about Yunnan’s that that pepperyness covers up. Still a good tea, but so far this is my least favorite Yunnan.

What? Reviewing my own tea? Isn’t that…biased?

No way! =D

See, I make my teas for me. I work on the perfect flavor for me – and that’s when they go retail. So here’s what I like about this lemon green :)

It’s buttery. I just have some sort of addiction to light, sweet, buttery green teas.

The body is a nice meduim-green with some pine notes here and there.

As for the lemon – it’s a really ideal amount of lemongrass that mixed with the buttery bancha perfectly. It lingers for a few seconds along with the sweetness of the base greens, which is very nice. It’s the last flavor to leave my tongue.

The aroma is of herbally-lemon and buttery-green tea.

This tea is INCREDIBLE cold-brewed. I stick two tablespoons in 40 oz of water in the fridge for 9 hours and out comes the most perfectly cold buttery-sweet lemon green tea you’ll ever have. I also grab a second infusion with the same two tablespoons for 10 hours. Love this stuff!

This tasted like soap. Very bitter soap, at that. It was the first tea I’ve not been able to drink. I almost gagged and threw it away. Absolutely terrible.

A nice fragrant, sweet, buttery-citrusy vegetal green tea.

One of my favorite smells in the world, and my favorite green tea.

The dry leaf has a very buttery aroma, and they are TINY!

I prefer to steep all green teas nowadays at 160ºF for 2.5 minutes for the first infusion, so I did that.

The color is medium yellow-green. more of a clear murky yellow when held up to the sunlight.

There’s something about this tea that I just obsess over. I take the smallest sips and just hold it in my mouth for a while before swallowing it. Then I wait till the flavor fades and do it again. It’s awesome – a cup of this lasts me a good 30 minutes.

It’s nice and sweet, definitely some citrus notes – I’d on the lemon side more than orange.

Nutty and smooth – probably chestnut-like but I don’t actually recall what a chestnut tastes like (I know, I’m nut deprived).

Infuses 4-5 times without any issues. Good stuff.

I’ve been drinking this tea for a few months now, and I dare say it’s my second favorite green tea. First is Xin Yang Mao Jian green from www.drinkyourtea.com, a friend’s website, and followed shortly by my third, a good dragonwell.

I love green teas that brew very light and sweet cups. This one is just beautiful. Very vegetal aroma and taste, along with the extremely nice sweetness. I also enjoy that this can be brewed upward of 8 times and still produce a nice cup.

A solid green tea. I just bought 1/4 lb of it :)