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Waiting for the little Yixing to finish its tea bath and wimp that I am, it’s now 9 p.m. so I’m switching to decaf. I came very close to having a rooibos but then I remembered I had this and hadn’t had a straight mint for a while.

It was the right choice. This is a nice peppermint with a fresh taste and a peppery minty aftertaste that lasts and lasts. Certainly doesn’t taste like dirt, and isn’t really earthy at all. It’s making the backs of my teeth feel clean, too.

It’s a nice relaxing flavor to start the transition to sleepy time.

Sipdown no. 108 of the year 2014.

The peachy note came out really nicely tonight, during multiple short steeps in the gaiwan. I did the first three at 30 seconds and the rest at 45 while watching the David Duckler video on how to season a Yixing over and over.

The pot’s on to boil now and I’m gonna give it a try. Wish me luck!

I’m worried because in the container the dry leaves smells an awful lot like White Tropics from Adagio. I really didn’t like that one at all.

I went low on temp and steeping time despite the instructions because 175 for a minute has worked v. well for some other flavored whites I’ve had recently.

I get a lot of coconut from the steeped aroma, and it’s a really good one. Deep and rich and not fakey or cloying. I don’t get a lot of pineapple though. The liquor is a clear, light yellow color.

Yay! This is not tasting like White Tropics. It’s very coconutty, in a green coconut as opposed to toasted coconut way, but only slightly sweet. Thankfully, it doesn’t remind me of cut flower stems that have been in water too long like the Adagio did. I’m not really tasting any pineapple, I don’t think. Maybe just a hint.

It’s a good flavored white tea, and if the idea of a green coconut flavored white tea appeals to you, you would likely be happy with this.

But I’m not really hopping up and down at the thought of having a coconut white tea in my cupboard. It doesn’t seem like something I’d pick to drink often. Who am I kidding, I doubt I’d ever pick it. The coconuts I tend to like are in flavored blacks and usually accompanied by another flavor, like chocolate.

It may find itself being my commuting tea as I seem to have quite a bit of it. Sometimes I look at the things I bought and the quantities in which I bought them and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

But at least I finished phase one of the redoing the drawers project for today, and I’m happy with that progress. I did not get to the garage yet. We’ll be going on the baseball trouser excursion in about half an hour so that will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

Maybe tonight I can sneak in some time to season the little Yixing…..

Sipdown no. 107 of the year 2014. I barely had enough left in this sample for a single cup.

I’m liking this again today, enough to put on the list in case I ever get out of lockdown and order from Shanti again. It’s different from other green teas I’ve had and fills a nice gap in the green tea flavor gamut.

Another LeafSpa tea I’m pretty sure I bought because of the name. I thought it was cute. And the tea itself is cute, too. Like little twisty sticks of tea. Unicorn horns of tea.

I steeped it like any other green tea, and I don’t get the honey color that other notes have described. I get a standard issue pale yellow with green tinge green tea liquor with a vegetal aroma and a light, buttery vegetal taste. Lighter even than the bi luo chun of yesterday. It’s pleasant, but not terribly distinctive or interesting.

Just for laughs I think I’ll steep it longer and hotter net time and see if it produces a honey color in the cup.

I decided to look through my tea collection and see whether any of the other companies I bought from have gone out of business besides SpecialTeas, Andao and LeafSpa.

I found one more, The Simple Leaf, a much beloved company here on Steepster years ago for its Dawn, Mountain Malt, and other teas. I think everything else is still standing, though. That makes me happy.

Today’s first tea to see what it’s like not following an Earl Grey.

It’s definitely the way to go with this one, not having an echo of anything on your tongue already when you drink it. I’m getting much more chocolate flavor today, so it’s much more like chocolate covered raisins than generic fruity, black tea with a cocoa note.

And it’s not bad with a chocolate almond biscotti from Trader Joe’s (my breakfast). But the flavors do become a little confused.

Well, we’re off to start the insanity that is our Saturday. Breakfast on the go for the kids, kung fu and then shopping for baseball trousers (no. 1 gets a free pair and no. 2 gets 10% off at a local store). Then I have grand plans for rearranging and revitalizing the way my drawers are set up in the dresser and chest of drawers in the bedroom, and decluttering the garage. As I type this, I’m thinking maybe a nap instead…

I ate too much tonight at the Italian place we went to. Ugh. Still, I am celebrating a 10 lb weight loss as of yesterday, and I don’t think one night is going to be enough to sabotage it completely. I’m also feeling pretty good because I finished a pro bono project today and turned in my research. And I’m looking forward to going to sleep as soon as I say that I had sort of been hoarding this, which is the last of the Adagio herbal samples, and now I remember why.

It deserves a higher rating and I’m giving it a bump. It’s a very gentle, almost vague, herbally lemon, not a fruity one, but it doesn’t push any of my buttons. No bitterness, no soapiness, no unmitigated tartness, no random un-named unpleasantness.

In the grand scheme of things it’s something I wouldn’t mind having in my cupboard, but not until I’ve determined there isn’t a pure lemongrass I like better from another vendor. (Perhaps lemongrass is lemongrass is lemongrass, but how will I know unless I try ALL THE LEMONGRASS?)

Sipdown no. 106 of the year 2014.

Although I have to give it props for living up to its name, on balance I prefer plain genmaicha. Still, it wasn’t hard to sip down.

Please forgive any typos. Typing this on the ipad while waiting in line for dinner at an Italian place.

Last time I made this in the Breville and tossed it into the Timolino and never really saw the liquor or smelled the aroma of the tea.

The liquor is actually pretty shocking. It’s a very deep, almost golden yellow and clear, but it really made me think of melted butter. The aroma made me think of baked bread in the same way the Irish Breakfast did the other day.

And the flavor today was very much liked baked bread, which is pretty amazing for a green tea. The dry leaves are also quite pretty, a dark tangly nesty looking mess. Maybe that’s how it got part of its name?

It was yum today on a rainy, rainy afternoon before no. 1’s piano lesson.

Bumping the rating. Still not sure I would really buy this again (even if LeafSpa was still around) because it’s more like black tea than a green, but I can’t penalize it for my buying decisions.

I went to go enter this into the database and I couldn’t find Andao online. From which I conclude that this is another now-defunct tea company.

I’m pretty amazed. I didn’t think I was out of the tea loop that long.

But that means there’s no picture and no real description of this that I can upload. I did find out by looking at Wikipedia that the name means Green Snail Spring and it’s because the leaves are rolled into a snail-like spiral.

I didn’t have much time to pay attention to the leaves when I made this this morning. I just steeped it, poured it into the Timolino, and jumped in the car.

This is a light but flavorful, buttery, vegetal green tea. It’s more “green” and less vegetable in flavor, lighter on the vegetable side than the mao feng and the mao jian I’ve had recently. I can’t say I like it more or less than those. It’s about the same in terms of how much I like it, just different in flavor.

I think I’ll have to rejigger the ratings on all of these as I see I rated the mao jian a 78 and yet I like it better than some of the black teas I’ve rated the same. For now, though, keeping this the same as the mao jian. I’ll fix them all later.