1/27/14. A tasting of all the Earl Grey’s I have in the cupboard. This was a fun tasting, and very easy to design a standard for. I checked the website for each tea, and they all said pretty much the same thing – 1 teabag or 1 tsp per cup (which none defined), boiling water, steep 3-5 minutes. I chose to use a 6oz pour, and a three steep time, since I was concerned about evoking bitterness from the teabags. All the teas were steeped in a glass 1 cup measure, which let me get a good look at the color of the tea before I poured it into my mug. 2 sugar cubes, equally 1 tsp of sugar, were put in the bottom of the mug before each pour. By not stirring the tea, this allows me to taste first the tea unsweetened, and then progressively sweeter as the sugar dissolves in the bottom of the cup. After each pour, I allowed the tea to cool for three minutes, so I wouldn’t burn my tongue.
The teas I tasted were, in order of tasting:
Bigelow’s decaf Earl Grey http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219340#comments
Earl Greyer, from Republic of Tea. My favorite of the tasting. http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219343#comments
Earl Grey CO2 decaf, from the English Tea Store. http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219344#comments
and Adagio’s Earl Grey Moonlight, a cream earl grey which was my least favorite of the tasting.http://steepster.com/AnnaEA/posts/219346#comments
All in all, a very pleasant way to spend an hour in the evening. It was neat to realize that I process bergamot as a ‘cookie dough’ kind of scent and flavour.
Fun summary. I enjoy doing back to back tastings like this but haven’t done any in a while.