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Considering my packet of this is opened, I’m surprised that I don’t have a tasting note of this on here.

In my new trial of my teas in an additive free way (at least the green and white ones), I chose this one as my first try because it’s so so nice. Made in a Finium brew basket instead of my Breville for a smaller amount of tea.

Drinking this hot, there’s a tiny amount of bitterness that’s still attacking my throat, but the upfront taste is what I expected from this Dragonwell with all the nice vegetable beaniness that I remembered from earlier tries. This tea is old now, from the June 2013 Reserve box but it is still very good. I am trying to drink up my opened greens since I learned recently that they have a much shorter shelf life than my favourite black tea.

This is a very pleasant cup, even without additives, even to me who is a supertaster of bitterness of the highest degree. I am so so so very sensitive to it and there is hardly any here. Amazing. I can see why high quality dragonwells are so highly prized.

It is less yummy when it cools, which is a reminder to drink this one quickly. Second steep was 1.5 minutes and has a stronger and slightly more bitter flavour. I’m going to end this review now, but not stop steeping. I want to get all of this tea gone before I go to bed because I hear it’s not good to keep wet leaves overnight in a brew basket and I just had to clean out a cloud of mold from my Breville the other day from leaving tea in it for too long. Blech.

This one was a sad sipdown. I’d been hoarding this but it was time to let go. Not enough leaf for normal so it’s considerably underleafed but it still tastes good. I’ll miss it and I might think about getting more when I’m ready to buy from this company again.

You know, I keep making this and thinking as I smell it “I think I’m finally sick of this and should give the rest away.” And then I change my mind by the bottom of the cup. I don’t know what’s up with that.

Put in a bit more than usual, almost a full teaspoon. Added a bit of sugar to the hot latte and it seems to have worked out well. More matcha means more foam.

Decided I wanted minty matcha but wanted something else to go with it so this one has the normal amount of mint matcha and then added to that a normal-ish amount of berry matcha since I have a bunch of that still. The mint sort of overpowers the berry and it tastes much more like matcha than usual but I like it, it’s pretty good. A little more bitter than normal but otherwise okay.

I’m not quite sure what to do about this tea. I went through my tea this weekend and came up with a more complete (though still not fully, I haven’t cleaned out the boxes in the spare room and I KNOW that there’s at least one Verdant and Amoda box in there hiding) list of my teas. 487 for those who don’t want to check. But this one…in addition to the mostly full packet I have at work, I have two sample packets at home…those will go in my swap tub I think. I stand by my previous note about how this just tastes muddled though I’m getting a weird taste in the middle of the sip and the back of my throat that is putting me off. I put the normal amount of sugar I usually do for a black tea these days and it’s coming off almost sickly sweet. I have one more cup of this in the pot so I’ll try that one with less sweetener.

In other news, I need some recommendations for a good hand cream because my building is SO DRY, 22% humidity according to my desk thing and I keep putting lotion on and it isn’t helping. Not to mention that I’m having an allergic reaction to something that manifests itself as lumps along my joints that make them hurt to bend. The dryness doesn’t help. Arg.

Last of my January Steepster box! Woohoo! And I beat the deadline too.

This green tea is a dragonwell and is a little similar to previous dragonwell teas that I have drunk. It is very vegetal in the aroma and a bit less so but still strongly present in the taste of the first steep. I thought the sips from this steep ended on something of a mineral note. This is pleasant, but only that. I prefer Verdant’s Dragonwells much better from the ones that I have had. This smells like the lovely soy beans that I enjoy tasting in these types of teas but the taste is more grassy than soy bean and as the cup cools farther, the grass comes out and the vegetables retreat, though the mineral note is still there.

ETA Second steep is much better. The vegetativeness (is that a word?) is much stronger. I think I’m tasting the nutty notes near the middle to end of a sip, masking the mineral notes a bit.

Second January Steepster tea of the day. Hopefully I can do it justice. I’m trying this one unsweetened to start with. Sometimes I can get away with that for really nice greens. I don’t have a lot of experience with Japanese greens like this but the last sencha I had, a cupping class at the JusTea headquarters, I really liked it and that obviously didn’t have sugar in it. Thankfully this experience won’t involve so much slurping.

This smells very much a very vegetal green. As soon as it cools down a bit, I’m looking forward to drinking.

First steep (1 minute), very very GREEN. All the things are muddled together and it isn’t as clear tasting as the sencha I had before. It tastes darker if that’s possible. Not sure what to make of it.

Will be edited if other infusions are different.

Brewed up a cup of this according to the instructions on the packet. Used 14 oz of water to the packet of oolong and added a little less than a teaspoon of sugar because unsweetened oolongs of any type make me do the shudder and face and I hate that and I’d rather taste the actual tea than just BITTER because I am super oversensitive to bitter.

Waiting for this to cool a little while I clear my palate from the muffin I ate earlier and another cup of the Razzleberry Iced Tea from Frank. Still good. The cup is still too hot to hold so I think I have enough time to finish my glass.

The tea for this first steep (2 minutes) is very much green oolong. I don’t have great oolong tastebuds so that’s all I’m going to get until I taste it I think. There’s a certain suggestion of forests and if I breathe the aroma in deeply several times, I get a sharp spice note in the back of my throat.

Tasted warm, this is a very nice delicate green oolong. I get more flavour along the back of my tongue and aftertaste than I do upfront. It tastes pretty floral, though I couldn’t tell you what flower. I don’t have a lot of experience with flowered teas except when they overwhelm me or there are a lot of them in the blend.

This tea suffers from my lack of absolute love and experience with oolong. If the next few steepings change anything, I’ll be sure to update this note.

ETA: Second steep brings out even more floral and even a bit of fruit. This has gotten a bit too floral for me so that’s the end.

Haaa, finally an iced tea that I manage to not screw up, even though I tried my hardest. First I forgot that it was steeping in the fridge so it steeped for..I dunno 48 hours? I added sugar, not sweet enough. Added more sugar, barely too sweet. Hopefully on the second steep I can get the sugar right and hopefully remember that it’s in the fridge, though it’ll probably take a few days to get through 2 quarts of the first steep all by myself in the middle of winter. Nice break from hot tea and I just need something cold sometimes that isn’t as boring as water.

So yeah, this is really nice and I like it. Good to be able to try it in it’s original form for once when I love it so much as a Genmaicha.

Wow, this really isn’t getting good reviews, is it? I steeped mine to the suggested parameters, also added milk and sugar (I know I know). I let it cool down a bunch because I lost track of time.

It smells like a nice assamica black tea, though I can’t really see the colour of the tea liquor. I pick up a bit of the Darjeeling flavour that I hate so that’s not so good. And there’s definitely something spicy on the back end of the sip that makes the aftertaste a bit strange as it fades. A bit of astringency as well.

I can’t say I like this one nearly as much as other black teas in my collection. Perhaps those looking for the spice should let theirs cool down a bit? First steep is too much spice for me. Let’s see about the second steep with some dinner and sweet iced tea in between.

ETA: Way more spice on the second steep. Still no mint but I could mistake this for very weak chai if I wasn’t careful. But then, I’m very sensitive to spices, usually in a bad way as they overwhelm me. 3:30 minutes.

ETA2: 3rd steep, 4 minutes. I think this tea is running out of steam. It has lost most of the spiciness that made it unique and has started tasting like just a slightly bready black tea. I actually like this type of tea so I’m going to enjoy this mug but I think this is the end of it. This is a 3 steep tea for me.

If someone likes the spiciness and can pick it up, I imagine they’d like this tea a great deal but it’s not my cup of tea. And I never did pick up any mint from it.