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Sipdown no. 129 of 2018 (no. 485 total). A sample.

This sample packet contained only enough for a single tasting in the gaiwan. Dry, the leaves are green and rolled into the typical balls. The dry tea has a green, floral fragrance, that is pleasant but not exceptional.

Rinsed, steeped at 195F starting at 15 seconds and adding 5 seconds each subsequent steep.

It tastes a lot like it smells, and I don’t notice much change from steep to steep (I went for five) — which really does make me wonder whether my taster is off today. There’s a sharp note as well that I’m not loving, though it seems to mellow out around the third steep.

There’s a slightly sugary character to smell in the cup once the tea is gone, but not as sweet or floral as that of some others.

Good, but not a favorite tie guan yin.

Very dark brown, long, twisty leaves. In the tin, they smell so roasty as to smell burnt.

I steeped in the gaiwan at 195F after a rinse, starting at 15 seconds and adding 5 seconds in each subsequent steep.

The tea is dark, a sort of copper-dark amber. It smells smoky, with a curious and elusive floral note that swims in and out. Flavor-wise it is also quite smoky, with a mineral/stonefruit pit flavor.

I took this through five steeps and didn’t notice much change from steep to steep.

Maybe I don’t have my tea tasting legs back quite yet. I like this, but I don’t love it. Maybe because the smoke is a bit heavier than I was expecting to start my morning with.

Sipdown no. 128 of 2018 (no. 484 total).

I’m back from my business and pleasure trip to Sweden, which was both very interesting and very dark this time of year.

This tea had the distinction of being the lowest rated cold brew eligible tea in my cupboard (I can’t face the idea of cold chamomile), and so that is how I enjoyed it until it was gone.

Greener oolongs make unexpectedly good, unusual, cold brews in my experience. I enjoyed this as a cold tea.

Sipdown no. 127 of 2018 (no. 483 total).

This one found itself at the bottom of the ratings and so became my take it to work tea until it was no more.

I feel like I just wrote the initial note on this the other day so I don’t really have anything to add, except that because its problem (at least for me) was that it was neither fish nor fowl — it wasn’t really fruit and it wasn’t really floral, but was trying to do both — I noticed that when I was taking it to work and not focusing on the warring fruit v. floral or indeed anything else really, I enjoyed it a lot more.

Sipdown no. 126 of 2018 (no. 482 total). A sample.

I need to keep plugging away at the sipdown efforts, so for the last caffeine of the day I picked this to sip down. It’s the lowest rated of my remaining black tea samples, all of which are fairly high rated. So that’s sort of sad.

When it is gone, there won’t be more at least from American Tea Room. So I’m even sadder about having to say goodbye. But I need to be somewhat ruthless if I’m ever to get my stash under control.

It’s a really nice Assam. I must remember to look for others from this estate when I come out of lockdown.

I bought this more for the novelty than anything else, and I am not sure I have the guts to steep for a full 3 minutes — I’ve never steeped a green tea that long and been happy with how it tasted.

In the tin, it smells subtly of jasmine — a nice fragrance, not overpowering, not artificial.

At 1:30, the liquor is almost the color of water, that is to say, virtually colorless. The jasmine flavor, though, is delicate and enjoyable.

I’ll try another steep at 3 minutes and see what happens.

After 3 minutes, the tea is a little darker, but barely. The jasmine aroma and flavor is no more intense than it was after the first steep. Fortunately, the tea isn’t bitter after this length.

I suspect I’ll hang on to these flowers longer than most teas of this rating mostly because the flowers are visually pretty.

Now for some exciting news: I counted wrong with regard to the green teas I have left to write notes about. I had a Den’s kukicha in my cupboard, but I looked through my entire stash twice and can’t find it. So I conclude I sipped it down and failed to record the sipdown.

After removing that from the cupboard and discovering that one of the jasmine teas I thought was a green was a white, I have the following left to taste and write an initial note about:

Matcha: 2
Green tea: 3
White tea: 3

Progress!

4 oz water at 175F, 2 spoons matcha, whisk.

I’ve gotten my mojo back for sure. I’m getting a nice froth even in a matcha bowl that I’d thought might have become jinxed.

This tastes a lot like what I think of when I think of matcha. It’s mostly seaweed, umami, not particularly sweet or vegetal, note even very grassy. The mouthfeel is full but not overly thick, and a little effervescent because of the froth.

I just really like Den’s matcha. I don’t know whether it is qualitatively better than others, in fact it’s possible it isn’t and it just appeals to me.

Also, I’m very excited to be drinking this before noon. I thought I would never get to sleep last night. I have a ton of shopping to do this afternoon, so I’m excited to have gotten my tea notes done (for the most part) early. One more new tea after this, and then a surprise!

BTW, the only other person to write a note about this was Cofftea. Anyone know how she is doing?

This is a sample I’ve had for a really long time, but never opened. I am really pleased that I finally did.

This is unlike any pu-erh I have had to date, and in a very good way. I rinsed twice and then steeped in the gaiwan with boiling water for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 60, 120, 240, 260 and 480 seconds. And for once, I didn’t feel in a rush to get through the steeps.

Because this tastes more like a Yunnan black to me than a pu erh. Yes, it has something of an earthiness to it that makes me know it is pu erh. But unlike other shus I have had recently, this one’s primary flavor profile isn’t earth, leather, and mushrooms.

Instead, this has a sugary sweetness to it. The note starts as a dark and heavy one, like molasses and evolves into brown sugar by around the sixth steep. Around the second steep, I even got something a little like cocoa. I hesitate to call this malty, because it doesn’t have the sort of depth I associate with maltiness, but it is mild and smooth.

There was a slight fishiness coming from the packet, but it washed completely away in the rinse. The liquor started very dark, like bourbon, and over time lightened up to a more medium amber.

While the tea didn’t undergo a dramatic transformation, it was sweetly delicious throughout.

I’m a little afraid I liked it because it wasn’t like pu erh. But who’s counting?

Adventures in pu-erh, day 2.

This one came loose. It has big, coarse, dark leaves that look rather like the leaves of a Big Red Robe oolong. They don’t smell at all fishy, for once. They smell of earth, soil, and something aromatically volatile, like resin.

I rinsed twice and steeped in the gaiwan with boiling water. I went 10, 10, 20, 40 (an accident, I meant to do 30), 40, 60, 120, 240, 360, and 480. My attention span being what it is, I wanted to stop around steep four. But nevertheless, I persisted.

And I’m glad I did because somewhere around the four minute steep, the tea changed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The tea started with a medium copper liquor (the run off looks pink, as I’ve experienced before and find interesting), which got darker through the first four or so steeps to a cognac color and then lightened up again.

Through the entire experience, I was very conscious of drinking something that came from plants. The early steeps were heavy on the leather, earth, and mushroom notes, but then became more woody. Like sticks. The leather notes faded away as did the mushroom ones. The tea became milder and almost sweet.

Around steep four, it became something different, very mild, with a flavor of its own that I’m having trouble defining. The character was like cocoa to me, but the flavor wasn’t quite that. I also want to say it reminded me of whisky, but not in an alcohol sense if that makes sense — there wasn’t anything chemical about the flavor. Maybe it’s tobacco and I’m getting it confused with those other smells that come out of mens’ clubs with heavy wood furniture and red leather upholstery.

Yeah, I’m going with tobacco.

Anyway, it’s a really interesting tea that is worth hanging with. If I’d continued, so would it have.

This is a never before opened sample that I got when I bought some yixing pots from Essence of Tea.

The leaves are big and dark and twisty. On first sniff, I didn’t get much out of them at all, but sitting with my nose in the packet for a while, I get a mild smell of earth and trees. Not toasty roasty or sharp at all.

Four steeps in gaiwan after rinsing, in 5 second increments starting with 15.

The tea is golden yellow, maybe a bit darker than that. I want to say bronze yellow. The color got a bit lighter by the fourth steep.

As with the scent of the dry leaf, I didn’t get a ton of aroma out of this on the initial steep. As I got more attuned to the tea, I started to get a smell reminiscent of walnuts. Sometimes it is more the bitter, shell scent. Sometimes and more often, the meaty mild nutty scent. I could go so far as to liken it to stonefruit pits.

By the second steep, a sweetness started to emerge. Again, nothing roasty or toasty or smoky, but a sort of raisin or honey smell and flavor.

It doesn’t do a lot for me, unfortunately. It is tasty enough, and it gets high marks for not being overly roasty. But It’s not bowling me over.