639 Tasting Notes

91
drank Pumpkin Chai by DAVIDsTEA
639 tasting notes

I inadvertently steeped the first cup for about 8 minutes and the second for 20+. Yeah, I totally forgot about this tea during both infusions. And yet, both cups were amazingly delicious!! How is that possible?!

Preparation
Boiling 8 min or more

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96
drank Organic Houjicha by Hibiki-an
639 tasting notes

Sipdown #28

I saved the best for last. :) I have had my eye on this tea for a while, like around 6 months I think. Houjicha is one of my favorite teas, so I’m really looking forward to trying this one from a new-to-me tea company. This is grown right in Japan! It doesn’t get any better than that. Thank you to Sil for sharing this sample!

Ohhhh, yes! The brewed tea aroma is intoxicating and instantly made my mouth water. The taste is a perfect roasted green tea flavor. It’s roasty toasty and delicious! I’ve had several different types of houjicha, and this one is particularly buttery. I don’t think I’ve encountered a buttery houjicha before. It’s really interesting and complements the roasted notes nicer than I would have thought.

I love the description of this tea: “Houjicha is a source of health for farmers, and Japanese farmers are well-known for their good health.” LOL! I didn’t know that! :P If you’ve never tried houjicha before, this is an excellent one to try. Its buttery notes are unique, but it still maintains the prefect roasted flavor that I would expect.

Houjicha is nothing like unroasted green tea (sencha, matcha, gunpowder, dragonwell, etc). It’s not grassy at all and instead can be quite nutty. I think this particular tea is less nutty because of the added buttery notes. Nevertheless, it’s a great representation of what roasted green tea has to offer: a tasty warming cuppa!

This is truly a delicious and special tea. I’m savoring every sip. Mmmm, yum! And now I know that Hibiki-an offers excellent quality teas. I’ll have to check them out further, and I’ll probably pick up more of this while I’m at it. ;) Thanks again, Sil!!!

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec
Sil

Awesome! Well you can thank halieod for sending me such a. Large quantity :) I had plenty to try and im glad you loved it.

CHAroma

Definitely, thank you to Hallieod too! This really is so delicious. :)

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71

Sipdown #29

Another sipdown made possible by Sil. Yay! Oooh, I love white peony! The brewed tea aroma is white peony and juicy pear. The initial flavor is the lovely white base. The aftertaste is thickly pear and a little weird. I think it actually tastes more like blue raspberry than pear. The best part of this tea is definitely the base. Thank you Sil!!!

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 30 sec
Sil

nice glad you enjoyed it

CHAroma

Yeah, thank you again! :)

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70

Sipdown #30

The dry leaf aroma is chocolate. The brewed tea aroma is chocolate. The taste? Chocolate. What a surprise. ;)

The black tea base is a little bitter. I added Truvia and skim milk, but it’s still fairly bitter. If you like dark chocolate, I think you’d probably really enjoy this tea. I’ve always been more of a milk chocolate kind of gal myself. Although the older I get, the more dark chocolate grows on me.

I’m really getting nothing in the way of almond here though. I LOVE almond, but I can’t detect any of that lovely flavor in this cup. As a chocolate tea, it’s pretty good. As an almond truffle tea, I think it leaves something to be desired. Nonetheless, I always enjoy trying something new! So thank you to Sil for providing this sample!

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec
Sil

one more off the list haha

Fjellrev

Perfect timing for this review! I was contemplating making an order and had this on my list too. Methinks we may be dealing with mega price inflation and it’s not worth it.

Sil

incendiare – i can send some your way to try if you like just poke me

Fjellrev

Haha oh Sil, you’re always generously offering to pass stuff down to me. Thanks. :) Someday I’ll get off my butt and find the time to swap with people!

Sil

just send me your address and a list of 3-4 things you wanna try. seriously.

CHAroma

Other people have found almond flavor in this one, so it might just be me. It’s hard to find a better almond tea than Butiki’s Almond Indulgence. If I’m hankering for almond, that’s the tea I turn to.

And Sil is very generous. :)

Sil

CHAroma – haha and see stacy’s almond tea is the one almond tea i can’t handle…reminds me too much of what drinking almond extract would taste like :)

CHAroma

Wow, really? That’s so funny. It’s my favorite almond tea and one of my favorite teas period. I’ve always found it interesting that people can eat or drink the same thing and interpret the taste so differently.

Shmiracles

well, I just added Almond Indulgence to MY shopping list hah.
thanks ladies!

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81
drank Joy by Tazo
639 tasting notes

I received this sample teabag from a co-worker. Don’t you love when people give you free tea just because they know you like it? Big thanks to my awesome co-worker!

The dry leaf aroma is floral but not recognizably jasmine. The taste? Hmm, it kind of just tastes like a generic black bagged tea. Weird. Isn’t this a green/black/oolong/jasmine blend? Why doesn’t it taste like any of those things? Well, besides black tea that is. Anything blended with black tea always seems to end up tasting like black tea. Why do people bother blending it with greens and oolongs?

Oh, this has Darjeeling in it. I can definitely taste that. It’s smooth and has a nice muscatel. It’s not bitter or astringent. Mmm, yum! For a bagged Darjeeling tea, this is pretty tasty! But I can’t say that it tastes like anything else. Overall, I like it! I definitely wouldn’t turn it down in the future.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec
JustJames

um, last year i was in starbuck’s and i asked about it…. i think i actually my have had the box in my had and the manager came over over, took it away from me and said ‘oh will you just stop it?!’ lol.

CHAroma

LOL! Do you mean you asked about what was in the tea?

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79

Sipdown #31

I saved a tiny bit of this tea for my husband. He tried it last night and said it reminded him of sushi. How is my husband so smart? This tea does have a briny, seaweed taste to it!

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec

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76
drank White Ginger Pear by Tea Forte
639 tasting notes

Sipdown #32

No matter how hard I try, my cupboard always seems to be at 180 teas. *Sigh. Well, all I can do is carry on! This tea is juicy and delicious! It has very little ginger. The aroma is candied pears, but the flavor is more natural pear with a touch of lemon. I think if it had a tiny bit more ginger, it would be much improved.

The ginger is coming out more at the end of the sip now that I’m halfway through the cup. But the predominant flavor is juicy, sweet pear. Like those Dole cups of diced pears in natural juices. No sugar added. ;) I can understand how this won an award. The flavors are delicately balanced. This is super yummy!

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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80

The dry leaf aroma has bite! It’s spicy and pumpkin-y and downright scrumptious smelling! The brewed tea aroma is calmer and the taste is calmer still. Don’t get me wrong; this is tasty! But I wish the taste had the same bite as the dry leaf aroma.

The green base comes through strong and in the forefront of the sip. It’s not thickly grassy as I would expect a dragonwell to be, but that’s actually to my advantage. Next comes the pumpkin spiciness (think Thanksgiving pumpkin pie with nutmeg). And at the end of the sip, there’s a sweet, caramel-like, toffee finish. This is delicious! Not quite as potent as I’d like the flavors to be but delicious nonetheless.

I know this isn’t a cheesecake tea…but I swear I can detect tanginess too. Overall, I’m not floored by this blend as I have been in the past with some 52teas’ creations. However, I’ll happily drink the rest of this and even share it with my husband. I have a feeling this is exactly the type of tea he’d love. Green teas are his favorite. :)

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 3 min, 30 sec
Sil

This was one I was curious about but I’m mostly off of 52 teas now until frank gets back to what hews a producing earlier. Too many disappointments lately :(

CHAroma

Aww, well I’d be happy to send you a sample if you’d like to try it. It’s a lightly flavored tea, similar to the gentle way Stacy from Butiki flavors her teas. The base is really nice too, so at the very least you’ll enjoy a nice cup of green tea. I don’t need anything in return, and I promise I won’t send you a million samples like last time. ;)

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78
drank China Lychee by Upton Tea Imports
639 tasting notes

Sipdown #33

I’ve had this in my cupboard for over 2 years and never written a note about it. Shame on me! Well, it’s time to turn this poor overlooked tea into a sipdown! I originally received this from Camiah who was my first swap partner on Steepster. Thank you, Camiah!!!

The brewed tea aroma is very strong! The base is Chinese, but that’s all I could find about it. It reminds me of a cross between Assam and Keemun. That is to say, this has an odd, pungent, almost smokey aroma that calms as the cup cools.

Upon sipping it, the initial flavor is the base. Again, it’s a bit strange. I can’t figure out what it is. I guess that’s because I just haven’t had it before! The aftertaste is a lovely, sweet lychee flavor. It’s a tad astringent but tolerably so. No bitterness. The lychee here is delicious! It’s not the best I’ve had but that could easily be attributable to age.

Overall, this is a lovely tea. I’m sorry I neglected it for so long. But I am happy to move on to new tea adventures! I never tire of trying new things. After all, isn’t that what life’s about? And now that my husband enjoys tea too, we can share in the exploration and discovery together. :D

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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40
drank White Ambrosia by Tea Forte
639 tasting notes

Sipdown #34

Hmm, this pretty much just tastes like coconut oil. Upon opening the sample, there was some weird golden fuzz on the outside of the teabag. I’m not sure what that’s about. This tea has a slight acrid aftertaste, and each successive sip grows more astringent than the last.

It’s not going to become one of my favorites, but I’m happy I got the chance to try something new. I had higher expectations of something named ambrosia. Sadly, that’s just a fancy name for a mediocre coconut tea.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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Bio

Entering the sweet blissful world of tea aromas!

Having discovered this website at the end of July 2011, I’m so excited to share my tea adventures with all of you! I grew up with my grandmother serving Twining’s English Breakfast with cream and sugar.

But on a trip to Seattle in 2010, I stumbled into a Chinese teashop and tried my first oolong tea. I was forever changed! I embarked on a startling new love for green and white teas.

With a world of teas to discover, I was inspired to keep a tea journal to record my thoughts and new favorites. Let’s get brewing!

My ratings are completely subjective and 100% my opinion. All ratings are given in relation to each other (ie. teas are rated in the order of my enjoyment of them). Therefore, my ratings will constantly change as I try more teas.

I love swapping!!! If you see something in my cupboard you’d like to try, just send me a message. If you’d like to trade, anything on my shopping list will do or feel free to send something else entirely. I’m willing to try almost anything (although I’m not really a fan of honeybush, red rooibos, pu’erh, Lapsang Souchong, & banana-flavored teas).

Location

Maryland, USA

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