1353 Tasting Notes

93

Making tea is a good excuse to look out of the kitchen window and try to see what the landlord is doing in the other half of the building. Fact about this house: It was built in the 20s if I recall correctly and the flat that I live in used to be a grocery shop. Upstairs, I imagine is where the grocer lived with his family and downstairs is the cellar. Adjacant to the building there is this empty space, also separated into two or three floors. I’m not sure, I haven’t actually explored it all that much. I assume it has been storage facilities or possibly stables originally. Fact about my landlord: He’s a builder. Lately there has been a lot of noise from the other side of my wall, so clearly his working on doing something with that empty space. Right now I think he’s been taking out the concrete flooring. I wonder if he’s converting it into more flats perhaps? So yeah, any excuse to peek out the window while pretending I’m not actually super curious, I’ll take it. :)

Perhaps this is the reason why I’m stupid! No really, any person who can’t tell seconds from minutes can’t possibly have that many brain cells to rub together, can they? That person, ladies and gentlemen, is your very own Ang. How hard can it be to set a timer? Very.

This tea was another one that Spoonvonstrup shared with me, writing something along the lines of ‘I know greens aren’t really your thing, but I thought I would share it anyway’. Funny really, considering I had just got a bout of green tea inspiration only a few days before the package arrived. Certainly it must have been after it was sent.

It was a generously sized sample, enough for two rounds, so I thought I would try to do it once in the western style and once in a more gong-fu-ish method (to the best of my abilities). Deciding to start with ten seconds, I… yeah, see above. It took nearly six minutes before it occurred to me that something wasn’t right. I can’t even save it by calling this the western style attempt because the leaf to water ratio is all stupid for that. I only use half the amount of water to the same amount of leaf when I attempt these short steeps.

So obviously the first steep yielded a very strong cup, but surprisingly not a ruined one. There is evidence in the flavour of it having gone rather wrong, but it’s by no means undrinkable. Just… strong. It’s got a silky soft and very fat flavour, kind of buttery but not completely. There is a vegetal note to both the aroma and the flavour which reminds me of a bit of cooked spinach. And then of course a bit of a prickly ‘you-got-me-wrong’ reminder behind it all, which I get a clear impression shouldn’t have been there. “Idiot proof” Spoonvonstrup’s post say. Well, then I came along…

But! All is not lost, so let’s try again and see if we can’t get it right, yes? This time I succesfully differentiate my seconds from my minutes and the aroma is a lot crisper. It still has that spinach note but there is also an additional note of something kind of citrus-y. I’m thinking lime, mostly because that’s the colour association I’m getting with this aroma. That colour is more or less the same colour Chinese green teas tend to give me. Japanese greens are much darker in hue in my head.

The flavour is more crisp as well. Not so fat and butter-y, but still with the spinach-y note and a whole lot of citrus. There were no citrus whatsoever in the first botched steep. Interesting, this citrus note. It’s all refreshing and nice tasting and it doesn’t give me that sour aftertaste that green teas sometimes do.

How enjoyable this second cup is! I really like this citrus aspect.

I thought the third cup would be the same as the second, but it appears my initial whoopsie has taken its toll on the leaves because already now they appear to be fading. It is more or less the same as the second cup, same spinach and same citrus, but it’s somehow diminished. More transparant.

I say ‘more or less’, but actually there is some difference in the spinach notes. It seems to be going faster than the citrus-y note, so it appears like the citrus is stronger this time. I don’t think it is, I think it’s just more on its own this time.

This diminishing of flavour shouldn’t happen so quickly in a green tea, I don’t think. I can only imagine that it’s the initial very long steep that has been at play.

It’s still quite an enjoyable cup, though. I just rather miss the spinach.

Unpertubed however, I continue. Weirdly this seems to smell like the second cup. I would have expected it to be even more transparant and for that to only get worse from now on. There is a thick butteryness to it now which I don’t really feel was there before.

The flavour solves the puzzle. It’s not that the spinach has come back like it was in the second cup. It’s that with the further increase in steeping time, the spinach and the citrus is once more in that same balance. The increased steeping time have then given it time to get a little stronger than it was in the third. Even though the third cup was increased with five seconds and this cup has been increased by a further five seconds, so logically it still ought to have been more of the same.

I shan’t complain, though. This is like a rerun of the second cu- oh dear, mental image. Unfortunate phrasing. Let’s call it a do-over rather than a rerun, shall we.

This is going rather well! Let’s do another.

Normally at this point I would start thinking the flavours were fading and I would be getting bored. This particular tea, however, appears to be surprisingly entertaining. I was hoping for another cup like the second and fourth, with a nice spinach and citrus balance in it, but now it seems the citrus-y bit has taken a step back. It’s still there, it’s just hanging out in the background this time. There’s something else, though. Something sweet. Just a smidge of it. It’s not sugar, it’s more like fruit sweetness. Hmm… interesting. Nah, I think I prefer the citrus/spinach balance.

Perhaps that’s an every other steep sort of thing? Let’s try again!

Nope, this is the nearly the same as the previous. Strong on the spinach note and a non-fruity fruit-like sweetness. Hm. Does that mean that the citrus note is completely finished? That’s the only difference. The citrus-y note has changed characteristics and now comes over more like a green apple of some sort of tart variety. Granny Smith perhaps, or similar. There is an apple-y aftertaste at this point as well.

And I think that will be the last cup, unless I decide to do another one later tonight, but although I should have liked to explore that nice apple-y note that has come out, frankly this is doubtful. I’m not bored with it, and I’m sure there is lots more life in the leaf, but I’m full. I can’t drink any more.

Scott B

I am anxious to try this myself even though I am not a big green tea drinker myself. Thanks for the thorough review.

MegWesley

I really enjoy reading these steeping notes. These are the type of notes that inspire me to try to get re-steepable tea. Very entertaining.

Azzrian

Exactly! I feel the same way Meg! I mean sometimes you can steep a tea so many times I never get the FULL benefit from the tea lol but I try to dry it back out and save it for the next day but I always want something different! I go about three steeps maybe four before Im done but it is nice to have that option!!!

Spoonvonstup

So glad you enjoyed!! :)

Angrboda

Scott, Neither am I, and I was totally won over. I think perhaps with green teas I just really like them better with the multiple small short steeps as opposed to western style. If this botched first cup was akin to a western style result, then I’m not likely to like that very much.

MegWesley, thank you. :)

Azzrian, yes, I know what you mean. It bothers me a little sometimes that I don’t do it more often, but on the other hand, I prefer to drink the tea I want rather than the tea I think I ought to drink.

Spoonvonstrup, I did! Much more than I had anticipated. Especially after the first steep went wrong.

Scott B

I only do Western-style steeping, but for me finding a green tea I like has just been trying various types and seeing what I like.

Angrboda

I only did Western style as well. That will have to change, if it can put other types other than just blacks into my regular rotation.

Thomas Smith

I just pulled the same timer mistake when making tea the other day using the timer on my new oven, but mixed minutes with hours…

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drank Jin Jun Mei by Unknown
1353 tasting notes

I have sent the birthday boy off to a whisky related event with a crisp banknote and instructions to ‘buy himself something pretty. Or something wet if he prefers’. Meanwhile I’m celebrating his birthday in absentia at home with some more the Jin Jun Mei that Spoonvonstrup sent me, while laying wicked, wicked plans for an attempt at lemon surprise pudding. (If I can pull that off, I’m going to earn myself soooo many gold stars! :D) I may have to get a little creative with available crockery, but how hard can it be?

Now. This JJM is also one that doesn’t have a brand as such on it, but like the previous one, it came out of a red foil wrapper. Different from the last red foil wrapper though. Let’s just quickly, for comparison purposes, sum up what I concluded on the first one. It had a rather grainy sort of flavour and a late-comer note of smoke. Not much in the way of fruity sweetness I otherwise associate with LS, so it was a different experience than LS. In a whole other box in my brain. So this is what I’m expecting out of this one too.

The aroma is definitely grainy, but also remarkably malty-sweet. I didn’t remember that maltiness from the first JJM. Was it there? I don’t think it was. This note is so big that it would have been impossible not to notice. Again, however, there isn’t much in the way of smoke on the aroma.

The flavour is much the same as the first JJM I tried, although this one appears to just be larger somehow. It also has the smoke note showing up a lot sooner than the first one, almost at the very beginning of the sip. At first there is the grain, not as malty-sweet as the aroma, but there is definitely some of that in it, and then the touch of smoke hits. It sort of arrives in a pointed arrow-like shape and unfolds over the rest of the flavour. (Here we go with my cross-wired brain again!) Bright white against brown.

The first one had a bit of astringency to it, which the boyfriend told me was right on his border for astringency tolerance. After which he told me that a couple of the other blacks I sometimes serve have a little too much astringency for his tastes too. Apparently there is a huge difference between working this out for himself and telling me which ones it is he doesn’t care for, so that I don’t give them to him in the future. But I shouldn’t talk really. It took me a very long time indeed to drum up the courage to tell him that I don’t actually much like celery, and instead developed a technique of eating all the celery bits first, quickly without tasting them too much. Based on this and the memory of that first one, I doubt he would have enjoyed this one very much, because that too is just much larger in this sample.

I wonder if perhaps this wrapper had a lot more leaf in it than the other one did. It is a very strong cup. Perhaps even a little too strong for me. I think I liked the first one I tried better. Not because of the difference in strength only but also because this one seems a little too forceful.

And it has occurred to me that putting a rating on unknown brands is totally useless as most posts will be about different batches entirely. Therefore I have removed it and moved the amount of points into the body of the post instead.

Points: 82

Azzrian

“‘buy himself something pretty. Or something wet if he prefers”
LOL sorry my mind went a bad place on this.

Ninavampi Oh Azzrian… Hahaha…
Angrboda

Well he is going to a whisky event. I figured perhaps he could buy himself that bottle on his wishlist. I gave up almost immediately when it was explained to me that it had to be this particular bottling out of this particular cask… I swear whisky is way worse than tea when it comes to all the finicky details!

Indigobloom

now I’m curious, how did the pudding turn out?? and wet things… Azzrian I won’t ever read those words the same again :P

Angrboda

Indigobloom, as it’s only 4pm, I don’t know that yet. I shall return with an answer after I’ve made it. :) It’s meant to be served warm, you see.

Indigobloom

ah, well I look forward to it!!
In my head, I had forgotten about the time difference…

Angrboda

Well, these things happen. He’ll be home in about 25 minutes and then I’ll probably start making dinner right away then.

Angrboda

Indigobloom, I can now report back and say it went awesomely! I’m extremely pleased with myself and it was totally easy to make it. I followed this recipe http://jessicascakespot.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/lemon-surprise-pudding-1950/ but I will say that it does NOT serve 4. We’re only two and we polished it off easily. There would probably be enough for 3, but 4 people would only get a small helping of pudding each.

Indigobloom

Oh wow that does look amazing! yummmmm. So glad it worked out. Brownie points for you!!

Spoonvonstup

Note on astringency and JJM: One of the difficulties I’ve found with JJM is that it can be so expensive, but unless you get into stratosphere prices, the astringency creeps up so easily on you. There’s always using less leaf, etc etc, but it’s one reason I have never really bought a ton of legit JJM. Thus, my friends take it as a challenge to help me fall in love with it.. thus, so many samples to send to you. After drinking through all of the ones I sent, you’ll be a veritable JJM master taster! The best JJM’s I’ve found have a certain taste to them that I can’t put my finger on.. it’s the taste of a place more than anything (just like Yunnan teas /tastes like Yunnan/, so JJM’s teas /tastes like some other place/ that I haven’t found elsewhere. Maybe you’ll see what I mean, but maybe you’ll find I’m crazy. Either way, really enjoying your notes!

Angrboda

Oh gosh I have confession and it’s really really embarrasing! That bit where I thought ‘did this wrapper contain more leaf than the first one?’ right? Well, no, I don’t think it did. As I wasn’t sharing it with the boyfriend, it was the pot that was much smaller and therefore naturally contained less water. I can’t believe it took me this long to work that out. Rookie mistake. headdesk

Spoonvonstrup, I totally understand what you mean about stuff tasting like a place. I think I’ve mentioned finding ‘Fujian-ness’ in teas before. :)

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77

Suddenly we now have a large chunk of this here wedding malarky sorted satisfactoraly. We had a meeting with the restaurant this morning and the battle plan for the day has taken shape. Now all we actually need is just invitations and our own outfits.

This totally calls for celebratory tea. I’m also celebrating with some chocolate cake so I chose a fruity one that might go well with it.

What I have actually ended up with, though is a rather curious blend, because it wasn’t until after I had almost poured a full cup and the contents of the pot suddenly didn’t fit, which it usually does, that I realised that I had about a third cup left from this morning. That was The du Tigres (or whatever. In this house goes by the name of Tigger Tea), also from LPdT. That one is smoky.

I think I’m about to discover what a flavoured Lapsang Souchong might be like. (Seriously, have either of you ever seen that? And I mean flavoured, not just blended into something flavoured. I would seriously like to know what that could result in)

My accidental blend of strawberry black and some cold half-day old Tigger Tea is actually surprisingly good. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve really managed to nail the strawberry on this pot. So it’s very strawberry-like and then I get some of the smoke coming in on top and near the end of the sip.

It sounds bizarre, I know, but it actually strikes me as a really interesting flavour. It makes me actually want to try and experiment a bit with smoky tea and fruit flavoured tea. Just the regular LS, though. The Jin Jun Mei that Spoonvonstrup sent me is obviously way too valuable for that sort of fooling about, and the Tigger Tea is getting a little low and the boyfriend has become very fond of it.

Spoonvonstup

Congrats on the malarky sorting!

Angrboda

Thank you. Weight off my mind! I hate this organising stuff.

Bonnie

I have one mixed with dry jasmine’s that is more mellow and good. I mixed Oh Canada. by DavidsTea (use any Maple) some Lapsang Souchong and a pinch of Applewood Smoked Salt (really good) . I was going to toy with how to get natural flavor like applewood on the Lapsang to blend with maple. I can imagine chili and chocolate too.

Angrboda

I lean more towards fruit flavours myself. And vanilla and sweets obviously. I’ve never really had much luck with chocolate, though. It never seems to want to come out properly for me. I have tried adding a little maple syrup to a cup of LS before which turned out relatively okay. I’m not used to sweetening my tea at all, so it got a little too much in the end.

Bonnie

I often put a pinch in my floral tea’s like Czar Nikolas Renaissance and my local shop has Lapsang Souchong Earl Grey.

cteresa

flavoured LS? what a good idea, this sounds very interesting indeed.

Dylan Oxford

Oooh… wedding malarky. Part of the reason Missy and I are still just engaged ;)

Angrboda

Bonnie, I’ve never considered doing that before, but I’ll definitely experiment with it now. What I would like though is a fruit flavoured tea where the entire base is LS. If it’s a fairly mildmannered LS, I can’t see why it shouldn’t work.

Cteresa, I know! I’ve been sceptic about flavouring green, oolong and pu-erh when first I encountered those, wondering how it was at all possible. But it was and it’s good, so why shouldn’t this work?

Dylan, my advice is that when you decide to marry, make sure you’re well on the way with preparations before you tell anybody. I think that would really keep a lot of the stress down. There have been times where I’ve wished we could have done that.

Bonnie

I’d love a LS and melon or pear if the fruit would stand up to the LS. No heavy hand!

CHAroma

Oooh, so exciting!! I wish I was as far along as you in wedding plans. I’m at the very beginning, taking a trip at the end of the month to check out possible venues. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten the dress yet. That’s one of the best parts!

Angrboda

Oh there’s no rush with that, but it will be the next thing on the agenda. I need to consult with my mother about it first though, because I want to take her along to help me. (and drive me) We’ve been looking at some windows and some websites though, so I do have a few candidates that I’d like to have a closer look at. Since ours will be a civil ceremony, which in Denmark is literally just the two questions and takes all of five minutes (no seriously. Our time is 11:05 and the couple before us is at 11) I don’t need the whole shebang of veils and a dress that looks more like a dessert than anything, and if it should happen that I can’t find a white dress that suits my demands, I could happily go with a different colour. I’ve been thinking actually if it might not be fun to have coloured shoes instead of white shoes. I saw some bright blue ones yesterday, same blue as in my icon.

cteresa

Colored shoes are a great idea, seen lots of those lately, specially with knee length dresses and colorful flowers, it is so cute – go for something you love and reflects your style!

CHAroma

And then you’ll have your something blue!! :)

Angrboda

I’m not paying super-much attention to that particular tradition, but the thought did cross my mind, yes. :)

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drank Jin Jun Mei by Unknown
1353 tasting notes

I have never had this before! Spoonvonstrup has begifted me with a whole little treasure trove. The whole swap got on the way because of two teas. One was the TGY from Verdant which it was deemed necessary for me to also attempt some gong-fu-ing of and this one which Spoonvonstrup thought I would be likely to enjoy. There are several different samples of JJM and most of them are brandless. I’m documenting them anyway, so that I can remember what I thought of the type later on. This one came out of a red wrapper.

Apparently, this is a type of Lapsang Souchong. I didn’t know that. Or I did, but had temporarily forgotten and was just reminded of it now. Based on that I was expecting something kinda smoky and I was surprised when the aroma showed up to be decidedly non so. It was grainy, primarily, but not really smoky at all. I found that a bit odd. I don’t think I’ve ever met an LS that didn’t smell smoky. My mind slipped to the unsmoked LS that LiberTEAs tried the other day and wondered if this was something of the same sort.

The flavour reveals that it isn’t. It’s definitely smoky now. At first when it was warmest I got a mostly grainy flavour again, sort of like the aroma and then smoke showed up as an afterthought. There is a fair bit of astringency as well, as the boyfriend pointed out and then proceeded to tell me that he thought some of my unflavoured blacks were a little too astringent for his tastes. When asked for further details he couldn’t tell me which ones they were. Apparently it’s something of a surprise that I need to know this stuff so that I can not continue to give them to him.

As I’m trying to type and drink tea around a sleepy but social cat (what do you mean make her go away??? I can’t! She’s cute!) the cup has cooled somewhat before I got very far drinking it. At this point the smoke comes out a lot more and a lot sooner in the sip. It’s quite smoky now and also somewhat grainy. The grain now merely forms a base where before it was more or less the primary note.

In LSs I like there to be a certain sweetness and fruityness to complement the smoke. That aspect is as much a requirement for the perfect LS as the smoke is. I would like to be able to say that this aspect is present in this tea. Alas, this is not the case. I’m getting a little of it out of the grainy-ness but not really to the same extent as I have come to prefer.

However, all is not lost. I don’t usually get grain-y flavours from LS in a quantity that has made me notice and remember them, and to my surprise I find that this good amount of grain in the flavour works in much the same way as that fruity sweetness. It provides a balance with the smoke, preventing the smoky note from getting too harsh and prickly. And you know, it’s quite good at it too.

Not all teas have genders, but LS is one of the few types that does. It’s male to me. I’ve always thought of it as very much towards the alpha-male end of the spectrum as well. This one is even male-r than that, somehow. If regular LS is the sort of tea that buys a motorcycle and plays rugby, then JJM is the sort of tea that travels to the moon. For fun.

Before I find myself stuck in a quagmire of gender stereotypes, I shall end the post. I really enjoyed this one. Good call, Spoonvonstrup!

Points: 90

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38

Another Mystery Tea that we’ve never had before, and yet another free sample received with my massive order earlier this year. This one has apple, almonds, cinnamon and a little bit of ginger in it, and I chose something green for the Mystery Tea based on the inspiration in the wake of Genmaicha earlier today. (The boyfriend wasn’t too keen on that one, by the way)

I’m not too interested in the cinnamon aspect of this one. Cinnamon is great in food, but I’m not very fond of it in tea. And ginger… well, I don’t like ginger. As a matter of fact we got to test a theory the other day while on our outing and no, I definitely do NOT like ginger beer. I looked a bit like the red face on the Steepster rating scale. Blech!

The apple and almond, however, now those are things that sound interesting to me. On the other hand, apple and cinnamon is a pretty classic combination.

In the dry leaves I could detect apple and spices, but no almonds and not really anything in the way of the base. After steeping it’s just spices with something sort of juicy underneath that I choose to interpret as apple.

The first impression I get on the sip is the bite of ginger. sigh I could really have lived without the ginger here. It’s the very first note I get and after that it sort of hangs like a cloud over all the rest of the sip.

Second up, following immediately after the first ginger spike, there is some apple and some cinnamon in what feels like more or less equal amounts.

It’s not until the end of the sip and the aftertaste that I really feel like I’m getting some almond. It’s not a lot and it’s not something I can really say for certain is almond. It’s more sort of the way my mouth feels after I’ve eaten them.

The green tea itself feels a little drowned out here. I couldn’t tell you anything about it if I tried.

I kind of like the idea of this blend, actually, with some reservations regarding the spices. I like the idea of the apples and almonds in a green tea together and I would really have liked to have tried that out without the cinnamon and especially without the ginger. As it is it’s rather too ginger-y for me.

cteresa

this does not sound like a good idea. Ginger, I would guess, would overpower everything, and sounds like it might.

I got an interesting blend, Wanderlust, which is precisely green tea (sencha, they do not say, but it is), with almond, apple and cinnamon http://steepster.com/teas/yumchaa/18634-wanderlust and it is one of those things I am loving more and more as I have it. (though it is dried apple taste, not a fresh, i.e. probably artificial, apple. It works wonderfully. And LOL; I keep saying this, but I do mean it honestly if you want to try, I would be glad to send you a sample!

Angrboda

Sounds like more or less the same, only without the ginger. I might be interested in trying that out. (Oh look, those yumchaa people again!) How strong is the cinnamon? I thought this one was relatively strong on cinnamon and would have liked it to be a bit less so.

cteresa

The cinnamon is very light, I might not have even noticed it, if I did not knew it had it. It is a dried apple taste though – but I think it is the sencha which really shines, it all seems to add to the tea rather than disguising it.

SuperHrefna

This sounds really delicious, I must keep an eye out for it! (I love ginger, though I’m with you on being dubious about cinnamon tea)

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80
drank Genmaicha Japan 655 by SpecialTeas
1353 tasting notes

Aha! This one came from Wombatgirl (who hasn’t been around here lately, what’s up with that?) and I know this because I have posted about it before.

I went and asked He Who Was Foolish Enough To Propose how traditional he was feeling this morning, tea-wise. He looked at me funny and asked me if I was planning something crazy, to which I could only reply yes. I would have preferred to take him by surprise, but he made me tell him what the crazy was before he would give me an answer. Where’s his sense of adventure?

Anyway, the crazy was brought on by a flash of inspiration caused by the first post I saw this morning being from Dylan Oxford who was enjoying his favourite genmaicha. This was shortly after I had breakfast and aforementioned male occupant of the household hadn’t got up yet.

It gave me that cereal association that I sometimes used to get with genmaicha. I used to rather like that stuff. I used to think of it as breakfast-y because of that cereal association. I knew I had some lying around, ancient stuff and not stored very well for its age.

Why not?

The first time I had this I said that it was all rice and not so much leaf. Actually I don’t know if it’s the ever on-going practise that has changed my mind or if it has just deteriorated a bit due to age and haphazard storage.

The flavour is very rice-y and starchy with a touch of salt, but underneath that I can definitely pick out some green tea. There’s a strong note of something vegetal and relatively darkish. It doesn’t quite have that vibrant dark green hue that I get from Sencha but it’s leaning towards that side of the spectrum. It’s like, I know there is that colour in my head, but somebody dimmed the lights so I can’t quite see it.

This makes me want to get back into green teas that aren’t flavoured with something else. That, Steepsterites, is HUGE! I’m a black tea drinker all the way, but right now? This stuff is inspiring.

Blake

Inspiring indeed. The recent ratings from you, Dylan, and Azzrian have inspired me to order some for myself.

alaudacorax

Congratulations on his foolishness. Condolences on his lack of craziness.

But rice?! IN TEA?!!!

alaudacorax

I’ve been looking up genmaichas on line. I suppose I must be a bit lacking in craziness, too – because I ain’t trying it. If we put up with things like this, next thing you know, some daft person will be trying to add bergamot to their tea.

Reminds me of the time I tried muesli – took me till lunchtime to chew my way through it, made my jaw-muscles ache – and then I dawned on me that the breakfast-cereal makers had conned me into eating the same stuff as I was feeding my parrot.

TheTeaFairy

You have made references to tea genders in previous post, genmaicha feels like a man tea to me! love how it picks me up in the morning (ok, too much information!). The male of our house also likes it a lot, so I hope your soon to be hubby enjoyed your «crazy choice»
Have a great green tea phase!

Angrboda

Blake, I hope you enjoy it.

Alaudacorax, oh genmaicha is quite common actually. :) My boyfriend didn’t care for the toasted rice either. I think I’ve also got a toucha of sticky rice pu-erh lying around. I suspect he wouldn’t care for that one either. As for the muesli, you DID put milk on it, right? Anyway, I feel the same way about raw carrot and most nuts. It’s like eating a stick.

TheTeaFairy, this one doesn’t have a gender to me, but it did have a colour. Of sorts. I find that most of the time if a flavour has a gender or a colour, it’s usually one or the other. I won’t say it’s never both, but it’s more rare that it’s both. My boyfriend didn’t much care for the rice.

Dylan Oxford

I’m glad I could be inspiring! I think I owe you an apology, it wasn’t until this morning that I realized I wasn’t following you! Not sure what happened there, but I’ve definitely been missing out.

@Blake – if you haven’t actually committed to that order yet, I’d be happy to send you a sample.

Angrboda

Dylan, that’s fine with me. I’ve stopped paying attention to who’s following or not following me, and I’m paying even less attention to who I’m following these days, until such time as I need to send them a PM. :)
I never really read from the dashboard page at all, apart from the notifications. I prefer to use the all recent page. That way I can stick my nose into keep up with everything :)

Blake

@Dylan – That would be wonderful man. I was planning to order some today, but I had to cancel the debit card I would have used (fraud is fun), so it’ll likely be a week or so before I’m ordering anything. Check out my cupboard and see if there’s anything you and Missy would like to try.

Fjellrev

Genmaicha is the bomb. Glad you’re looking into trying out them green teas again.

Angrboda

Incendiare, I’m currently talking my way out of running out and buying a load of greens. Partly, as mentioned before, I’m sure, I’m not allowed until the other side of the wedding, and also partly because I’ll just wind up with a lot of stuff left over when the interest wears off. I’ll definitely have to dive deep in the sample box though. I know there’s a ton of stuff gathering dust down there.

Fjellrev

Ah, well that’s smart. I’m sure you have some good samples that can tide you over until later on.

Angrboda

That was supposed to be talking myself out of etc. and so on, actually…

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69
drank Kuai by Palais des Thés
1353 tasting notes

First, YES! New icon. Same little ol’ Ang.

Second, another Mystery Tea, meaning something we’ve never tried before.

Third, I thought an oolong would be fairly certain to be something well-known and familiar. I hadn’t noticed that it was scented until after I had poured the leaves into the pot. It was a free sample I had received with my LPdT order.

It has cinnamon flower pollen and orchid pistils. Does cinnamon flower pollen taste like cinnamon? And what are pistils? These are rather more technical things than I can be bothered with right now, so let’s just simplify it a bit, shall we? It’s scented with flower bits.

There.

Not surprisingly the aroma is quite floral, and it does actually have a fair bit of cinnamon notes in it. I can also detect the base oolong underneath, with something smooth and sort of thick smelling. This one is 50-60% fermented, so it would probably have been quite floral on the aroma even if it hadn’t been scented, so I can’t actually tell how much is natural and how much is due to the scenting process.

The flavour is surprisingly toasty and ever so very slightly astringent. It’s funny because I thought it rather smelled like something that should be smooth and slippery. It doesn’t actually taste at all like it smells. Yeah, the cinnamon notes are there in the flavour as well as the aroma and so is the floral aspect, but other than that, the feel of it in the mouth is completely different from what the aroma led me to expect.

I find this rather confusing to be honest.

The scenting seems to be rather mild. I can detect, as mentioned, something vaguely cinnamon-y but other than that I can’t tell how much of a difference scenting with anything at all has made to the base tea. This tastes very natural, so unless the base tea was really almost flavourless to begin with, scenting strikes me as rather a waste of time and money. I’m fairly certain it would be possible to find an oolong which naturally tastes something along the lines of this. Rou Gui, for example, springs to mind.

It’s pleasant enough, I suppose, but not one I would purchase.

Fjellrev

Orchid pistils in tea. That’s a new one for me.

And the new icon looks fabulous!

Jillian

*puts on her plant geek hat * Pistiles are the female reproductive parts of the flower. I’m a bit surprised about the cinnamon pollen as cinnamon flowers are quite small and you likely wouldn’t ge much pollen from them.

Kittenna

A pistil is the female part of the flower that accepts pollen. Presumably they are rather large and fragrant in orchids, otherwise I would think it rather silly to use them in tea! :D They were probably just trying to seem fancy though.

Kittenna

Hahahaha, apologies, I had typed out my message a few hours ago and neglected to hit enter, so did so when I came back to my computer, but I guess I’m a bit slow :P

Angrboda

Incendiare, yes, I’m quite pleased with it. It’s a detail on a replica of a stave church at our local archeological museum. I had Dr Hobby Photographer take some photos of it for me for this specific purpose. There was another one that I would have really liked to have used, but it got too squiggly looking in the smaller sizes. It wasn’t until after we got home and I was playing with the photos, making my icons that I realised that I should have made him take a photo of the whole church as well.

Jillian, thank you, I knew someone would now! The pollen thing though… Well it IS very hard to tell how much is scenting and how much is natural so perhaps they were just trying to emphasize an exsisting note of cinnamon?

Krystaleyn, Oh, no worries. I’ve done that a few times as well. :) Typed up a post in the morning and then actually posting it before bedtime. It happens over at LJ all the time. :p

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86
drank Kukicha by Mountain Rose Herbs
1353 tasting notes

I have decided that today is the day for Mystery Tea. That means simply tea we haven’t had before. So I’ve been looking at the very tail-end of my Steepster cupboard and discovered a couple of things I didn’t know I had.

This one for example. Would you believe I’ve been going around for ages being intrigued by this type and wondering if it was one I should try to invest in when next I can allow myself an order, and I had it the whole time?!

That’s fairly typical of me, actually.14444444444444444 Oh look a cat has been by in my absence… (Heavily abridged by cat’s owner so as to avoid horizontal scrollbars)

Anyway, this is one of the samples that I don’t know where came from. It’s from before I started my numbering system so it’s getting on in age a bit.

Let’s start with a little introductory ramble on two things here.

First of all, green tea. For me to be intrigued by a green tea at all is kind of remarkable. I enjoy it when it is served to me, but I rarely make it for myself. It has to come with a certain sort of mood, because for most of the time I’d rather have a black tea, flavoured or au naturel.

Which leads to the second things, which is roasting. Roasting tea is one of those things about the processing that I just can’t get my head around. It’s so amazing that it can be done, really, because inside my head it just ought not logically work. My brain will simply not allow for the possibility for some reason, even though I’ve got the very proof of it right here in front of me. (Well. Slightly to the left, but still)

Therefore roasted tea is extremely fascinating to me, although I haven’t yet had enough experience with it yet to be actively seeking it out.

LiberTEAS posted about an unsmoked LS yesterday, I think it was, and that tea was as I understand made like a regular LS only it had been roasted instead of smoked. She found that more pleasant than the regular smoked variety and therein stems some of my fascination.

Now, I like smoky teas. I have a specific balance of smokiness that I prefer, but once in a while it just can’t get smoky enough. Those are the times when, it has occurred to me, it’s not smoky tea I want. It’s roasted tea. From what I have seen here and there on Steepster when people have been posting about smoked teas and/or roasted teas, that smoked tea is generally considered a harsher sort of flavour than roasted tea. For me it’s the other way around.

Smoke comes in a bit prickly and sort of surrounds the flavour in a haze of smoky aroma, whereas roasting tends to be a full-on attack of the tastebuds with pricklyness and charcoal and burnt toast. Roasted tea, for me, is much more violent than smoky tea.

So this is really what I’m expecting. An onslaught of charcoal and some sweetly green vegetation underneath. Like something that has been burnt down and grass and things are just starting to grow back.

This tea brews as dark as any black tea and the aroma is definitely one of burnt stuff. Charcoal and something sweet. Like sugar spilled on a hot plate. So far we’re keeping pretty close to that expectation, there, aren’t we? I quite like this aroma. The more I smell it, the more pleasant I think it is, and the more I smell it the more I also think there’s a note of honey in that sweetness. It’s all dark smelling and brown, but it definitely reminds me a little of liquid honey. Or perhaps more of something which has been honey-glazed.

GOSH! I was not expecting this flavour! It so sweet and sugary and more honey! That’s the first thing I get. The next thing is a sort of cereal-ness. It makes me think of Cheerios. It’s the combination of the grainy notes and honey notes that does it. I can actually even imagine that I can taste milk as well, probably since, if you think about it, milk has a pretty sweet flavour as well. Finally there is something vegetal in it that reveals the green origins. I can’t quite put my finger on that note, but I get a random association to spinach. There that’s because I actually taste spinach in it or whether it’s because spinach is one of the things I just generally connect with green tea flavours, I couldn’t tell.

All in all, this roasting was not at all as harsh as I had expected. I found it quite enjoyable, and I think it’s definitely a type of tea that I need to look into more. I think I rather need this in my life. (Should have a closer look at hojicha as well, actually.)

Roughage

I really like that your cat wants to be a part of the Steepster experience. Mine tries to stop me posting by sitting in front of the computer screen.

I am now intrigued by this tea too. I am undecided about roasted teas because I have found them intriguing but I need to be in the right mood to properly enjoy them. I shall have to check this one out when next I have the money to order tea. After all, I like spinach! :-)

Kittenna

Ahahaha, I so love your posts. You and Bonnie consistently get me smiling :) I also love that your cat feels the need to contribute.

You speak of a numbering system – do you give your teas a number as they enter your cupboard, to keep track of age or something? That sounds like a really clever idea.

Angrboda

Roughage, yes I tend to let it stand when they do. :) I don’t know, I think it’s fun. :)

If you try it, it will be itneresting to see if you get the same spinach association as me. :)

Krystaleyn, as you can see some of the samples I have, I can’t remember where they came from. At one point I had a whole lot of them and didn’t know who sent me any of them. I just couldn’t keep track. I then thought up the numbering system. Everytime I receive samples from someone in a swap I give them a number and write down where they came from. This way I can see that all the samples numbered with 7, for example came from Infusin_Susan and all the ones with 8 on them came from Ninavampi. And so on and so forth.

Daisy Chubb

Really great idea!
I’ll have to invest in little stickers when I get sett;ed and start swapping again :)

Angrboda

DaisyChubb, yes, it works really well. I’ve got a little notebook that I keep at Tea Corner. Right now I’ve only noted down name and number, but I’ve considered if it might not be a good idea in the future to also write a list of what each person sent me and when I received it.

Azzrian

Interesting – I buy my peppercorns, cinnamon and a few other select items from Mountain Rose! I have never tried their teas.

Angrboda

I think I’ve tried a few others of theirs. I seem to recall there having been more than one. I just can’t think which ones, or what I thought of them. This one is quite good, though.

Azzrian

Next time I order my regular stuff I am going to grab this and a couple others – yes they actually had a lot of tea on the site today when I looked :) I don’t know how I ever missed it lol.

Angrboda

I can sort of understand how. I haven’t been to the site, mind, so I don’t know how it looks, but if you’re used to shopping for one thing there and another thing another place, sometimes it just not occur to you that one or both places might stock both things. :) I had a look at what else they have in the Steepster database. I haven’t looked at everything, but it would appear that I enjoyed their Ancient Forest a great deal as well.

Kittenna

Your labelling idea is great! At this point, I only have samples from a few different people, and they’re labelled distinctly so I can tell who sent what (they’re also in separate piles in my room), but I probably should start some system like that soon! I have also thought of noting the date I purchased teas, so that I could keep track of their ages and whatnot.

Thomas Smith

If you buy unroasted kukicha or karigane, you can heat it in either a small dry skillet one very low heat on a burner or over a tea light candle in a metal dish (you can buy these for heating scented oil in bed & Bath stores) and it makes for a wonderful deodorizer for a room and you get a relaxing tea to drink once the twigs and few leaf fragments have browned. I generally do this while making dinner or conducting a tasting since you just need to tie the leaves every once and a while with a spoon or chopstick. I then prepare the resulting kukicha/houjicha at the end of the meal or as a finishing tea after guests have tasted a bunch and pair it with sesame or rice crackers. This tea works well:
http://www.hibiki-an.com/product_info.php/cPath/21/products_id/32

Thomas Smith

Dunno how I get away typing “karigane”, “kukicha”, and “houjicha” just fine while autocorrect changes “stir the leaves” into “tie the leaves”

Azzrian

LOL yeah spell check often faiils me as well.

Angrboda

Krystaleyn, it was like that in the beginning for me as well. I had only a few that people had sent me and I could remember which one’s I had bought. I could tell from the handwriting on the labels where each sample came from. Then Pamela Dax Dean be-gifted me with a HUGE box of samples. Seriously, it was MASSIVE! And all of them had different handwriting on them and different wrapping style, and then I got in other swaps as well, and it was simply impossible to remember anymore. I just gave up trying.
For my purchases, I can usually remember sort of in general how old-ish it is. Typically if something gets really really old here, it’s something I don’t really have much interest in drinking anyway.

Thomas, hee, maybe I have to try it in order to understand it.

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84

Inspired by Indigobloom who enjoyed a Tanzanian black the other day, I decided to start the day with a cup of my own. As I mentioned in my comment to Indigobloom, tasting this one for the first time was a sort of ‘hey this is strong, no wait, this is lovely!’ experience. It’s so honey-sweet! With this particular pot, I have somehow really managed to hit that point where nice turns into lovely. I remember the first time I ordered it, half for work and half for home because the boss was uncertain about whether she would enjoy it. It’s not possible to get less than 100g from ACP’s webshop, so no samples.

This particular cup comes from when I bought another portion of it for home and that’s nearly gone as well. Although I am quite enjoying it, I’m not sure if I’ll buy it one more time (when, after July, I may) though. Maybe I’ll give that one a little break and use the space to try out something else. I have my sights on a Nothing But Tea order when that time comes, I believe. And Teavivre, I think. Although… with tax, customs and import fees being a constant threat on anything coming in from outside the EU, that’s a bit uncertain. It depends on how large an order I want to make. For smaller orders, it’s just not worth taking the risk these days.

Indigobloom

customs fees, blegh!
hehe I inspired a tea review!! :P

Angrboda

And why shouldn’t you. :)

Kittenna

You clearly need to acquire more North American friends who frequently travel to Europe and are willing to receive orders and bring them out to you! :P (Not that I have any suggestions, but fees are a huge deterrent to making online purchases, and although living in Canada sucks for many companies, I’ve gathered that it’s far worse where you are!)

Angrboda

Yes, because so many companies ship from America and weirdly enough it’s generally much cheaper to get stuff sent from China. With the few American companies that were available to me before, I’ve more or less given up for the time being, at least with any sort of regular purchase, but with those who can ship from China, I’m much more likely to gamble because the shipping fee is generally that much cheaper. Maybe it has something to do with middle men and such before it reaches the consumer.

Scott B

My shipping from China (TeaVivre) is cheaper or comparable than a lot of American-based companies.

Angrboda

Yeah, it’s the same thing with TeaSpring. Their shipping is almost free as well.

ashmanra

I agree about the shipping and such. My daughter knew she was going to Ireland so she ordered some Dammann Freres for me for my birthday and had it shipped to her boyfriend’s house in N. Ireland then brought it with her when she flew home. She said it saves a bit of $$$.

Angrboda

Yes, shipping from America to Europe is often ridiculous and I’m not surprised that it’s the same thing going to other way. I’ve set myself a shipping expense limit of how much I’m willing to pay for shipping and if it’s more than that, then tough, that shop is out of bounds for me. It’s sufficiently difficult to find shipping for under $15 that I’ve just stopped looking if I think something is an American shop. Therefore it also takes me years, sometimes, to work out that something is actually a UK shop…

Scott B

I’m in the States, so when shipping from China is cheaper, that is really saying something. TeaVivre has FREE shipping on $30 US order. Of course that takes up to 3 weeks to arrive. You can get Airmail (6-9 days to USA) for only $5.90 though. Most US companies require orders of $50-$100 before you get free shipping-which is why I often only order during free shipping promotions.

Angrboda

Yes, it’s amazing isn’t it? Part of it may be that postage is just generally cheaper in China than it is where you and I live. I mean Denmark is currently one of the countries with the most expensive postage rates in Europe. I don’t know what postage cost in the US, but I imagine you’re probably experiencing the same price increases that we are in Europe, when so many things are handled digitally instead of on paper. Currently a normal class A letter with one or two sheets of paper in it to somewhere else in Denmark costs 8 kr to send. That’s about $1.40.

It’s funny how in many ways the internet has made the world a lot smaller, but when it comes to sending stuff in the mail, the world sometimes seems to have been made much larger.

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73

Very uncharacteristically I felt inspired for a rooibos tonight. It’s been a while since the last one, but some of you may recall my utter shock and surprise when Cteresa shared a rooibos with me that I found really pleasant. In spite of the fact that, by itself, I don’t like rooibos. Enjoying the one that Cteresa sent me so much was really one of those Earth-shaking experiences, and it made the boyfriend suggest that I could try some of the ones that he had brought with him when we moved in together.

I tried one or two and it wasn’t really a huge success. I discovered that it’s entirely possible that not only does it have to be flavoured with something in order to be drinkable to me, but it has to be flavoured with something sweet too. The lemon-y one that he really enjoys didn’t really do the trick for me. There is both a caramel and a vanilla one in stock and I’m sure I’ve tried one of them with modest success, but I can’t remember which one. I don’t appear to have posted about it either.

So I knew it would have to be one of these two and let the boyfriend decide for me. He picked vanilla, which suited me fine. What with my persistent vanilla phase and all. Come to think of it, the one Cteresa shared with me was something vanilla-y as well. I can’t remember what else it had, it was some kind of fruit. But definitely vanilla, which makes me both hopeful and concerned about trying this one.

Please don’t let the perfect vanilla tea be a rooibos. I’m not sure I could bear that.

It smells strongly of both rooibos and vanilla at the same time. The vanilla here is sweet and all creamy so that the aroma leaves an impression of a sort of slightly spiced custard.

The flavour is pretty nice as well, actually. It’s… still rooibos-y and I could probably live with it being a little less so and a little more strongly flavoured, but the vanilla is coming through clearly and very sweetly. I do like the one Cteresa shared with me better, though, with its fruity aspect as well. I’m sort of missing that a little here, even though I can’t even remember what sort of fruit it was. Completely drawing a blank on that one and I can’t, frankly, be bothered to look it up right now. It’s late.

Yeah, this is quite nice. But I am sort of relieved that the quest for the perfect vanilla doesn’t stop here.

Bonnie

To me the vanilla and rooibos is like vanilla wafer cookies kind of dry at first and then it gets better in your mouth.

Angrboda

Yes, I can see what you mean. I think my immediate thought might have been custard because I got a colour association with the flavour that was sort of the same shade as custard. So it was the first thing that occurred to me. Perhaps I actually like your comparison better.

Bonnie

I see what you mean on flavor…and wet…I think of rooibos as kind of dry so I imagined cookie…in my wierd brain. You are the one who actually tasted it!!!

Scott B

I don’t really care for Rooibus either-I think it’s too medcine-y tasting. The only Rooibus I have ever enjoyed was TeaGschwendner’s Winter Magic. TG’s vanilla rooibus was not that good and was medicine-y. Still hoping to find another good Roobius-I need something to drink at night without caffeine.

Angrboda

Bonnie, that is true. :) When I see people talk about how they’re not sure they’re doing it right or something, I always try to make sure to tell them that it’s not actually possible to do it wrong. But sometimes, a little prompt can clear up a lot of things. Like for example your wafers. :)

Scott, I can see what you mean about medicine. For me it’s like chewing a pencil, but apparently when flavoured with something sweet, it becomes manageble. As long as it’s not coffee, I’ve never had much of a problem with caffeine before bedtime though. It’s more because after Cteresa shared that wonderful one with me, I’ve started to wonder if perhaps I’m missing out. :)

cteresa

It was raspberry vanilla (with a hint of rose petals) from yumchaa. Awesome tea IMO!

I think vanilla is pretty good with rooibos, but to be totally honest, rooibos is one of those things where the rooibos has to be GOOD rooibos. Quality of the rooibos is a killer – the flavours help, but if it´s bad rooibos, there will be no miracles. I like Yumchaa and Mariage Freres better for rooibos. though I do warn you off Rouge Bourbon, that is practically plain rooibos, the vanilla is there just as a hint, just a hint of vanilla in a bar of chocolate. And there are some very good random rooibos, no particularly famous blenders, and sometimes there is a lot of very bad rooibos, even from reputable sources.

I love good rooibos, it´ s not just the no.caffeine (though I am sensitive to it), a really nice good cup of rooibos can leave this sort of hum-vibe, a very cozy nice feeling, pretty different from caffeine, but just a really good nice feeling. Like the aftermath of eating a good plate of pasta maybe!

Angrboda

Yeah, I could remember it was from yumchaa because I tried to order some and site broke. I just couldn’t recall which one. I had several of theirs in the basket when I made the attempt actually

cteresa

if you mean to again, try yumchaa.com , I think they have problems with their .co.uk mirror. same price and everything in either

Angrboda

I didn’t know at the time that the co.uk was a mirror site, so I just gave up and ordered something else elsewhere. If memory serves that’s what turned into the massive LPdT order. :) So not a complete loss. :p

cteresa

:) I am considering a massive tea order from them myself!

Angrboda

I wish it was me. I’m so needy for a tea order right now, but I have to wait another three months or so. I really need to get this wedding out of the way first and I prefer to set as much money aside as I can, so no buying of anything at all (not household or wedding related, obviously) until August.

cteresa

Oh, that is an excellent reason! wishing you the best!

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Bio

Introvert, crafter, black tea drinker, cat lover, wife, nerd, occasional curmudgeon.

Contact Angrboda by email: [email protected]

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Bio last updated February 2020

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