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I am up early today before the alarm even went off, so thought I would just get out of bed and have some tea. I bought this a few weeks ago as I remembered it had some positive reviews on Steepster.

This might be better as an afternoon tea, as I’m finding it pretty sweet for the morning time. There is rock sugar in it. It’s a mix of cocoa flavor, pecan and coconut. Something about it is kind of thick and cloudy. The flavor is better with soymilk so I can see how this would be good as a latte and that might cut down on some of the sweetness too. I felt this left a bit of a weird aftertaste in my mouth. So… I’m finding it merely ok for now. I wish there was a little less sugar in it…. after all you can always add your own.

Sipdown…

Finished this decaf off as a cold brew today. It wasn’t too bad for a decaf but not something I will need more of, now that my supply is gone.

This came in the YS tea of the month club recently. I’ve been a little remiss in writing tasting notes for all the teas I have gotten through the tea club.

This tea says it was dry stored, but to me it tastes a little murky. I was thinking it was a wet stored tea. After two steepings I am just finding this a little off in taste. It has a nice, creamy mouthfeel but I am not too impressed with the flavor. A bit barnyardish and musty for my tastes. If anyone else would like to try it I would be glad to send the rest of the sample your way!

Hi Steepster folks,
I’ve been a bit absent recently with reviewing teas. Also I haven’t been buying that much new stuff, trying to drink more of what I have. The tea pile still seems neverending!

This was a sample I got with my last Tao Tea Leaf order. I’m no a big fan of jasmine teas but if I’m in the right mood, they can be quite nice. I decided to steep this one Western style for 2 minutes and it became more full-bodied than I thought it would. The silver needle has a nice sweetness to it, also I am getting almond-y and hay type notes. The jasmine is clearly present but it isn’t overwhelmingly strong.

I feel this may have been better prepared in the gong fu style. I steeped mine Western style for 2 minutes and felt like some of the delicate white tea flavor got really lost. This is a pretty nice afternoon tea for me today but probably not something I will need to repurchase. I have one jasmine pearl tea in my cupboard and don’t think I need any more jasmines.

Picked this up at David’s recently, it is ok if you like a bit of mint in your tea. I like the way they described it with the coconut. Made it sound like it would be really creamy.

I don’t detect a lot of coconut and the black tea blend is a bit on the light side for me. It was good with some soymilk and a touch of sugar. Eh, this stuff is ok and I will probably finish it but it isn’t knocking me over with being fabulous. ;) Might try it as an iced tea someday, that would be really refreshing.

Bleah, I am not feeling too great today for some reason. Woke up with big allergy face and also taking an antibiotic for an unrelated condition. Seems like a good day to focus on green tea and eating fruit.

So this is another sample shincha I got from Yunomi. By the way I noticed they are doing a free shipping deal on shincha this weekend if you spend $40 and with the discount code of KEY05. I just ordered from them (and have plenty of green tea too) but I don’t know if I can pass this deal up. I’ve been giving away some green tea to my BF because he likes it too. ;)

This is another good shincha, very vivid green in color and fresh tasting. You can get at least 2-3 decent steeps out of these teas. I feel like this is a little more bitter than the last one I tried from them. Maybe more of an asparagus flavor than spinach and definitely less on the sweet side. tasty though. I definitely feel healthy when I drink these teas but I don’t know if it’s the placebo effect.

Afternoon tea that I got at local company T-We tea in San Francisco. I wasn’t expecting too much from this blend but it’s really good in my opinion. Of course, I love ginger and that is the predominant flavor of this blend: ginger with a slight hint of orange. There’s white tea in it too but it’s actually hard to find to detect the white tea in it. I might have to go back and get some more of this next week. If you don’t like ginger I wouldn’t bother though.

I definitely felt this was warming, invigorating and SPICY! I also found if you buy a glass tumbler from them they will give you a free cup of tea every time you go in. Pretty good deal if you’re in the area, the tumbler would pay for itself in a little over 10 visits. I think I will be doing that more often :)

Just a short tasting note here. I honestly didn’t know what this was and thought it was a black tea so I used boiling water with it. It still came out fine though, just reminds me of genmaicha. I don’t think I am picking up the black soybean flavor… it is nutty and rice-y though. Not a bad morning cuppa, I don’t think I need to get any more though.

One of a few shincha samples I purchased from Yunomi this spring. I hope I am not going to regret this caffeine later but I seem to do ok with Japanese green teas in the afternoon and the theanine helps me relax this as well.

A lovely shincha from Yunomi. Couldn’t grab the photo off their site, so sorry about that. I am drinking it in my new clay kyusu though which came from Japantown. Here’s the photo on IG: https://instagram.com/p/2mgX4JILZD

Anyway this is a really nice shincha. I did one 90 sec steep and one 60 sec steep and found I liked it slightly better at the 60 sec. mark. It has a lot of flavor, brothy with spinach type notes, a nice sweetness and a slight bitter finish. It seems very clean and fresh but it’s not the sweetest shincha I’ve tried. I might try steeping this at 30 seconds too. Pretty happy with it though, definitely a tasty tea and gives a nice relaxing energy :)

Backlog – I had this Sunday, just one cup made for me at the David’s tea store. I wasn’t too impressed with this. It tasted like watery pineapple juice and I could barely detect any oolong at all. Won’t be a repurchase for me, sorry David’s!