Angrboda Send Message

STEEPSTER! You are BACK! Never leave me again! cries, cuddles

This is the fifth steep of these leaves, the same leaves that I started last night. I’ve been so panicky about Steepster not working that I kept forgetting to make tea. I boiled water for these leaves several times and then forgot to use it so the water got way too cold. You would think this downtime would mean that I’d be getting my chores done instead, but uh… Let’s talk about something else.

But we’re back in business (I hope), although I’ll probably be pressing post with my fingers crossed.

For four steeps now, and one of them a bit overdone, I’ve used these leaves with success and lots of flavour. No crutches this time at all. They fade a little but it’s not really noticeable. If you served fourth steep of this and didn’t tell me it was a resteep, I’d never catch on.

The thing with steeping in the cup instead of the pot though, is that in the cup I feel like I get the best result if I give it just a little stir before drinking so that the concentration of extract from the leaves is the same all over the cup, or the top ‘layer’ is just warm water. This happens automatically when pouring from the pot.

I’ve kicked the rating the rest of the way up and am making myself a sixth steep now (still without crutches) in celebration of Steepster coming back to me after several hours (so many hours!) apart.

Yeah, I know I just said ‘Pai Mu Tan for the rest of the evening’ a little while ago. But then Mike went and logged that caramel tea of his, and whenever he does that, I want a cup of mine. It NEVER fails, it’s totally contagious right out through the internet and the monitor and everything.

And the weird thing is, mine really just kind of mediocre… Yeah, I don’t get it either but there you are.

I think I’ve managed to make it a wee bit better today than usual though. I just made a little cup, but there is some more caramelly flavour than usual on top of the tea flavour, so I gave the rating a notch upwards.

Celebration/Comfort tea.

Celebration: New dashboard FTW!!!! That’s pretty much how I imagined it once people started suggesting tabs. I’m especially in love with the tab about notices about posts that I made. No more having to scroll through tons of notifications, keeping an eye out for my name. YAY!

Comfort: Taxes FTL! >:( Long story involving own stupidity and unexpected december expense. BOO!

Needless to say there was only one tea I could possibly drink today.

It doesn’t really work very well when the cup isn’t big enough that I can drain my small pot in one go, so for the next steeps I’m just going to transfer some of the leaves directly to my little cup and hope I can get it right. I don’t usually use these little cups… Eh well, I can add more from the pot and I can take some out of the cup. How hard can it be?

So yeah, this last bit of the first steep is a bit over-done. It’s got a slightly dry quality to it and the flavour doesn’t win from being somewhat stewed.

It’s a bad day when you need a comfort tea after having had celebratory tea! O.o

Luckily, the second cup brewed directly in the cup is more up to par with previous experience with this tea. It’s a bit strong, so I’ll have to remove a few of the leaves, but it’s definitely better. Much nicer and sweeter, even after leftovers of last night’s slightly spicy dinner. This tea works remarkably well as a dessert, actually. It can’t completely replace a good cake or ice cream or pudding or what have you, but it’s a nice after-meal tea.

I think I’ll stick to this for the rest of the evening.

Tonight I am absolutely for absolute certain going to bed at a decent hour! And I refuse to lie awake until half past 1 too.

So tonight I’m having just-before-bedtime chai. Tea before bed isn’t usually a problem for me sleep-wise, so what I’m really looking for here is the warm milk aspect to hopefully help me fall asleep afterwards.

Of course… There is a fairly good chance that this is going to be pretty awful, due to getting sidetracked and the whole thing boiling over. Gah! Yay for ceramic cooktop scraping things. grumble

The taste is a bit… concentrated. Especially in the sugar department. Probably due to having overdone it a bit on all the boiling steps, but it’s totally drinkable and the flavour hasn’t been significantly changed. It doesn’t taste burned or anything. There’s just less of it this time than there was the first time I tried it.

The fact that it’s sweeter this time helps with the pepper taste too. But I could still have lived without the black pepper. Easily.

And this me now going to bed at a decent hour. Goodnight steepsterites. (<—-and thank you Takgoti for this awesomesauce word)

Travelling Teabox planning in second stage now, as in taking addresses of participants and people (hopefully) signing up and stuff. So far this stuff is way easier to organise than I had imagined.

I’m making a pot of this here apricot tea because apricots are yummy and so by extension so should apricot tea be. I refuse to accept the rating I’ve already given it as truth. (And kindly don’t point out that peaches and pears are also yummy but just not in tea.) Secondly, I’m feeling like this sample has been kind of neglected. I can’t remember when the last time I had any of it was, and I’m frankly puzzled as to how there can only be about a fifth left of the sample tin. If I hardly ever drink this, then where did the rest go??? O.o

It tastes a bit watery… On the other hand I did just have dinner and it involved a lightly spicy sauce which may have affected my tastebuds somewhat. With my tongue in this state, it doesn’t even taste that apricotty. Looks like it won’t be today that I can shift the rating on this one. How sad. :(

Kitch3ntools inspired me to make me a little pot of this. It’s yummy! I’ve checked my local shop and they don’t seem to have any blueberry tea at the moment. There is a shop in the city where I work where they might have some. I don’t like their coffee grinders in the shop, though. I can’t actually taste the coffee pollution, but it’s enough that I know they ideally shouldn’t be there. It’s a snob thing.

So I’m drinking this while working out some guidelines and tentative travelling teabox planning (and wondering if maybe, just maybe, I’ve lost my mind). I’ve got nearly ten people so far, myself included, so that should be enough for it to be fun. Once I’ve got the guidelines worked out, I’ll start collecting addresses and plan the final route.

In my organisational eagerness, I oversteeped the tea though, and now it’s got a slightly bitter finish note. It’s still good, though. Just a little… drier.

So I wasn’t around all day yesterday. And when I came home I just tried to check the dashboard, and quickly gave up. I left a comment or two at the boards, but that was it. I’d rather go to bed, so I did. This morning I just took the first page of the dashboard.
If anybody replied to comments I may have left, or if anybody wrote a review that I should totally see, or if you just think you wrote a cool review, or if you reviewed an awesome tea, or if someone else wrote something cool, could you link me, please? Yeah, it’s lazy but… Please?

This morning, uh, okay it’s nearly noon, I’m having a lazy resteep of this from yesterday. It’s the third infusion actually, so it’s gone a bit dull. It’s drinkable, but compared to the first two steeps, it’s just not really holding its own. I’m not giving it a fourth go, but I might just make me a fresh pot of this. I can’t get over how yummy this blend is. It’s just perfect in every way and I wish I could share it with you.

Hey Steepster Peeps and those who decided to follow Lexitus in particular? Did you know that apparently we are the Steepster Mafia? ;p It made me LOL. Does that make me Godfa- er… Godmother?

4th steep actually, with a crutch (as in a pinch of fresh leaves). I didn’t actually need any tea tonight after the pot of sodding Earl Grey earlier, but then Denisend made a forum thread about honey in tea and… I got inspired.

And for some weird reason this Gunpowder was my first thought. Sweetening a green tea, and a naturally sweet one at that. I’m nuts, obviously. This will either be spectacularly spectacular or spectacularly dreadful.

Yup. It’s actually spectacularly indifferent.

Gunpowder tends to have a sweet note naturally and the honey just added a little bit to it. Granted I didn’t add very much, but it still didn’t really swing it either way.

Editing: Done! Just dropping in my notes on the tea made during the day before going to bed. Didn’t make nearly as many infusions as I had thought I would.

2nd infusion much like 1st, in spit of being forgotten, oversteeped and lukewarm. Completely drinkable, shockingly enough. Would probably have been a different story had it been the first steep

3rd same as the others. More or less. One note has come out of it here and it reminds me of popcorn. I think my gunpowder thinks it’s genmaicha… At least now I know what to do in a pinch when I run out of genmaicha.

This would be the tea for the day, chosen because I want something that I can just recycle. I have Writing Ambitions today, so I’m going to be lazy about tea and try not to spend too much time on Steepster either reading or writing. (snort as IF! And while I’m dreaming I would also like a billion kroner.)

I haven’t steeped it more than two-three minutes here in the first go. It has a rather soapy smell today. Well, not really soap as such, I don’t really know how to describe it but soap is as close as I can get. This isn’t really surprising since I don’t know what the quality of this stuff is, but it came in an ordinary clear plastic bag without even a brand name on it and ‘Gunpowder green tea’ or something like that stamped directly on the plastic bag, so I’m inclined to think it’s probably not top quality.

The taste is strong and spicy and I can see why some would call it bitter. I don’t think it’s bitter, but it has potential to become so if oversteeped. It tastes like it would be good with a bit of mint in it, but I’ve tried that before, and I didn’t really think it worked as well as I had hoped. It might have been better with further experimentation, but the result wasn’t interesting enough that I’ve ever bothered trying again.

So, this is the tea for the day. We’ll see how much I can get out of these leaves.

And now you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got stuff to edit.