Kaylee Send Message

I bought a pouch of this because I enjoyed it so much in the Steepster advent calendar swap from Kelmishka. I made this as a latte tonight after not being able to smell/taste the Anhui green root tea from the Kiani advent bummed me out a bit. So the good news is that I was able to pick up the flavors here, though I don’t know if I’m getting everything. Definitely roasty hojicha, candy-like maple, and a touch of clove. Not really picking up on any other spices – that might be sensory failure or the oat milk obscuring more subtle flavoring, not sure which. A soothing and enjoyable cuppa tonight. Leaving the rating the same.

I thought my smell/taste was sufficiently recovered to circle back to unflavored teas, but maybe not? I’ve been enjoying the occasional favorite oolong and plenty of flavored teas, so it seemed like today was a good day to chip away at the Kiani advent calendar. Day 19 was a bamboo matcha scoop. Day 20 was hiding when I was looking through the box so I thought I had already drunk it and went right to Day 21, which is this tea. I’ll have to circle back to Day 20!

The dry leaf smelled like fresh cucumber and honeydew. Once I brewed it up Western style, though, I couldn’t smell or taste much of anything except to note that it had a medium mouthfeel and a slight dryness to it. Maybe it was because there were only 3 grams of leaf in the pouch and I used too much water (though I specifically didn’t fill my mug all the way because of that). Maybe it’s because this advent calendar is now 7 months old and the leaf is starting to show its age (though I have green teas that are even older and typically still have some kind of flavor). Or maybe, even though I’m mostly recovered, I haven’t gotten back the full sensitivity that I had before. Alas.

Truly bummed I didn’t get more of this one before it sold out! This might be one of the best DavidsTeas I’ve ever had, right up there with Gold Rush, which I still long for. I was really craving a maple blend today for some reason, so I decided to use some of my precious remaining leaf for a nice midday Sunday cuppa. It’s a nice creamy maple with a touch of sweet blueberry (no tartness) and roasty undertones. That creamy maple flavor really lingers beautifully after the sip. The mouthfeel is great too, thick and silky, almost like what you get from marshmallow root, with just a touch of dryness at the end of the sip. If anyone happens to have some they’re not excited about, I’d love to swap for it!

Second sipdown of the day! After the relative delicateness of the Butiki, this one feels like drinking syrup by comparison. But I know that it’s not, and that the effect is only because they’re such different teas. This one does have a heavier, jammier mouthfeel. Between that and the tartness of the raspberry flavor, the cream note also has to be heavier in order to register at all. It’s tasty, just a very different blend than the one I was drinking immediately before.

I think we can safely say this is a true sipdown tea for ashmanra’s sipdown challenge, but I sure did give it the send-off a Butiki deserves. I paired this with our very last pineapple cake from Taiwan for the first steep and my last Te Company lemon linzer cookie for the second steep. Both complemented the tea beautifully while I settled in and had a listening party for one for the new Janelle Monae album. It’s a pretty on-the-nose pairing – there’s a song on the album with champagne in the title – but ultimately I felt like the flirty-but-grounded mood of the tea actually paired well with the album’s style.

It’s actually shocking how well the tea has held up after all these years. I got three very good steeps out of it and only had to stop because it got to be too late for caffeine – I have a fourth steeping overnight to see if I can get anything else out of it. The rose is floral but not perfumey, robust without being overpowering in both aroma and flavor. It’s complemented by a beautiful creaminess that’s stronger when the brew is warm. The base tea has that savoriness that white teas sometimes do – Stacy called it maltiness and that’s as good a word here as any. As the tea cools, the creaminess and malt gives way a bit to a sparkling quality, complete with a tingling on the tongue. Truly an epic blend that I will miss! I’m so grateful that I was able to give it a proper sendoff.

I dunno, my impression of this blend seems pretty different from other folks’. Possibly my smell/taste isn’t fully back yet, or the smoke in the air was already stronger than I realized when I had this yesterday. A loose leaf sample of this came with my recent Adagio order. I brewed it up yesterday afternoon and was thoroughly underwhelmed. It primarily tasted like orange oil on a vegetal green tea base. Not a fake orange taste per se, but an extremely overdone one that tipped over into feeling like I was drinking the rind (in a bad way). Not really something I feel the need to keep around. Sipdown!

My apologies to Canadian Steepsterites – I honestly had not known about the hundreds of wildfires you’re dealing with until the smoke started wafting its way down the east coast. So, first and foremost, sending wishes for your health and safety and that of your loved ones!

Even with the windows closed and a filter on, the smoke is getting notably stronger, so hot tea doesn’t feel particularly desirable at the moment. Thankfully, I had this cold brew going in the fridge. I’m not sure whether I’ve ever cold-brewed it before, but it works well. Three teabags in a large pitcher turned out to be the right ratio for a roasty, almost toasted buckwheat-esque tea with a delicate pineapple flavor.

Sipdown, and a favorite bagged tea for ashmanra’s sipdown challenge! Made this as an oat milk latte while I got started on my Taiwan scrapbook. I’m not generally a scrapbook person but am making an effort for this trip so we’ll have something special to treasure and remember it by. Plus, since the trip was so heavily tea-themed, I get to use one of my Tea Thoughts journals for it and a lot of my extremely specific washi tape. The whole concept is just very cutesy but it pleases me. Tea itself remains delicious – creamy vanilla to the last drop, both hot when I started and cold by the time I finished.

Huge thanks to Courtney for sending me a sample of this! I absolutely love it. This blend reminds me, favorably, of Alice’s Tea Cup Alice’s Tea. That blend is black tea, green tea, vanilla, and rose petals, and one of my all-time favorites. The differentiator here is the bergamot. While I’m not generally a big fan of Earl Grey, I don’t mind the bergamot here because it’s noticeable but not a prima donna. Rather, it’s a team player that shares the stage with the vanilla and rose, for an overall well-balanced cup. Halfway through I added about half a teaspoon of sugar just to really give the flavors some extra oomph, but this is a very solid cuppa without sweetener too. I believe this is my first tea from Østerlandsk and it’s a favorable first impression!

We rode the Maokong gondola up to the top of the mountain for treats, tea, and gorgeous views. A personal favorite is the oolong soft serve on offer, served with a cat-shaped cookie (“mao” means cat). I was dreaming of this stuff before we even arrived in Taiwan and it did not disappoint. I regret only that I didn’t get to try the baozhong flavor or the swirl. I didn’t see that option until later, so I had the tie guan yin – which was perfect for cooling off and rejuvenating on a hot day.

Memory is a funny thing; one never quite knows how accurate it truly is. But I was last there in June 2018 and it seems like even in just those five years some things have changed, becoming even more tourist-oriented/Westerner-friendly. At least some of that impression is verifiable – I compared photos and the cat cookies have definitely gotten bigger, and I think it’s safe to say that the tea producer I get tie guan yin from didn’t used to have QR codes on their packages linking to a multi-lingual website (though part of that can be chalked up, I think, to the especially massive growth in popularity of QR codes here and to his English-fluent son returning to the family business after university). I won’t pretend to have the answers about whether these changes are good or bad, and for whom – I know just enough about history, philosophy, economics, and geopolitics to know that it’s complicated and there’s a lot that I don’t know. They just seem… notable.