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Woah, this tastes like a spa. It is pretty tasty (but medicinal). Coconut and lemongrass are prominent at first, and then some herbs like eucalyptus, ginger, cardamom, and mint come out in the aftertaste. Great hot or iced.

If you like smokey teas, chai, petricor, and baked bread, you will like this tea.

-cedar
-campfire/smoke
-sweet and spicy chai spices
-lots of delicious tea flavour still comes through.

Hot water (not boiling), 4g leaf, gong-fu brewed

Steep 1: 2 min – cocoa,chocolate, sweetness at the beginning of the sip

Steep 2: 3 min – fruity, orange, chocolate, cocoa nibs

Steep 3: 3 min – a little bit less rich and desserty, a bit more classic Ceylon

Steeps 4-5: Tastes like a high quality Ceylon black. Honestly, I didn’t find this tastes like an oolong at all, however I was very pleased with the delicious dark chocolate notes at the beginning

2 tsp, hot water (under boiling), 300 mL gong-fu teapot

Steep 1: 50 seconds: vegetal, spicy (like how green peppers aren’t hot spicy but sort of have that edge to them)
Steep 2: 2 min – bamboo, spicy, tender wood
Steep 3: 3 min – wood chips, grass seed, Earthy
Steep 4: 5 min – peat, cedar wood, cleaner flavour now
Steep 5: 3 min – less generic woody and more like dry cedar shavings, dark raisins (like the small brown kind), a certain vegetal quality (Earthy?), and something that reminds me of resin/sap

It was an interesting tea, but not really my thing.

Thank you to LST for this free sample! This is an unbiased review of one of their teas called “Kind Green” (queued tasting notes from yesterday)

One sampler package (~5g?) and 600 mL cold water in a gravity steeper for 12 minutes.

-Notable aroma of tropical fruits
-I can taste a smooth green tea base, not overly vegetal but a well-balanced green
-Flavours of tropical fruits (papaya is the strongest, followed by pineapple, apricot, pomegranate)
-honey note in the aroma

I enjoyed this coldbrewed. I imagine it would be good hot, but the flavours would be overpowered by adding anything like milk. This gets quite bitter and unpleasant if you brew it very long. I find this green does not do well if coldbrewed more than 10-15 minutes.

Thank you to India’s Tea for the free sample of this. I have been enjoying coldbrewing it through the summer. Yesterday morning I did a hardcore caffeinated tea day, and I wrote down reviews as I was drinking them (my friend and I brewed at her house). So, this is a queued tasting note from yesterday.

2 tsp, a full mug of hot water, ~3-4 minutes (until it smelled of fruit and was aromatic)

-I can really taste the acai flavour, but can not make out any mango
-some generic fruity flavour, as well as a few distinct fruits (blueberry, pear)
-a bit bitter and tannic, but would be nice as a coconut milk latte (or brewed cold with a touch of lemon nad sweetener)
-the black taste is unremarkable, it tastes like a generic Indian black tea (no interesting tasting notes in the base other than something a bit floral)
-floral in the aftertaste (persimmon flower, orchid, peony)

Overall, it wasn’t a bad cup. I preferred it coldbrewed to prevent the bitterness coming out. It had a nice acai berry flavour, but this isn’t a tea I would buy for myself or tell someone they need in their cupboard.

Full review still to come, but this is super buttery. It reminds me a lot of movie theatre buttered popcorn. I can definitely see where the sticky rice association comes from. This herb definitely has that sort of flavour.