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The Lord looks after fools and drunkards. I guess I was a fool.

I saw a coupon code for a Golden Moon sampler and tried to order it. I couldn’t find a place to put in the code so I quit trying, but I did comment on the company Facebook post that it wasn’t working for me and I really wanted to try their Keemun.

Big dope slap to myself at lunch when I pulled this off the shelf and realized I already own it. To be fair to myself, it was a gift, so I wasn’t the one who placed the order with the company. I still should have known I had it since I have almost finished the tin, though!

This was served with a tea lunch with egg salad sandwiches and thin potato wedges. It is a great tea sweetened or unsweetened, and I went with “un.” It is good hot or cold. It has a touch of fruitiness but still that lovely light scrape of dry cocoa I like.

A quick cup for a pick me up this afternoon. Two scoops, paste made with cold water, 160F water added and whisked, three chocolate squares consumed. And I made it! Trip to grocery, post office, bank, and….ahem….the liquor store, for vodka that I use to clean the chicken coop, preserve my homemade juju, and make vanilla extract. Yes, really. I don’t drink the stuff! It seems quite horrible to me, honestly.

This is a very drinkable matcha, though it doesn’t hold a candle to the now defunct KaiMatcha Premium. I miss you, KMP!

This is an oldie but goodie. This sample has been languishing in my big chest of tea, I have no idea for how long. I served it yesterday with breakfast and again today with Hungarian Apple Soup.

Husband doesn’t like black tea except with milk and sugar so he likes for me to make other types of tea when he is joining me. Breakfast would normally be a black tea for me or when my kids join me, but I have to find something he will Iike that still goes well with breakfast food.

This one fit the bill. The baked fruit and nut flavors gave it the strength I want in the morning, especially with scrambled eggs and cheese, toast and cherry preserves, while the smoothness satisfied hubby and kept him out of the sugar bowl.

We had a guest for lunch and served it with the soup and cheese sandwiches made with Dubliner by Kerrygold, followed by chocolate cookies, and my friend said she enjoyed it. A former coffee drinker, she is now more fond of white and green teas but she still liked the lightly roasted goodness.

I am going to miss this one, but not for long. I am running low on oolong tea so I see a Teavivre order in my future.

Our postwoman was stung by a bee or wasp today and had a bad reaction. I waited for the ambulance to come for her and called the office she works from to let them know and then waited for them to come get her truck.

Naturally, neighbors saw and were curious so I let them know what had happened and one joined me on the porch to wait. Since she was only home for lunch hour, I made tomato sandwiches with our fresh garden tomatoes and served a pitcher of this, iced and unsweetened.

It was hot outside but low humidity for once so it was pretty pleasant in the shade on the porch. I was so pleased that my neighbor LOVED the tea, because she had professed to loving sweet Southern style black tea with lots of sugar but wanted to learn to like unsweetened drinks. When she took a good gulp of this one and professed it to be tasty, I informed her that it was free of sweetener. The mint is so refreshing and lends enough of its own kind of sweetness such that I personally would never consider adding sugar to it. I think I like this as well as Moroccan Mint from Tin Roof Tea! Both have spearmint. Yum.

It was four hours before the relief postman showed up for the truck, so I am glad I went back in the house and made a lemon pound cake.

Now, truthfully, can this story get any more Southern? Tomato sandwiches, front porches, iced tea, bees, and pound cake. Good stuff.

I can’t believe I haven’t reviewed this one, as I have had it quite a few times.

Yesterday I saw a video on Facebook of a tea master making Matcha. He used cold water to make the paste and it said you didn’t need to sift if you do this. I do always begin with a paste using sifted matcha, but always the same water I am making the matcha with – around 160F. I decided to give his method a try.

I consider it a success. At first I thought I was going to have some clumps but they dissolved well. I probably used a little more cold water than I should have. Next time I will make a thicker paste. I added two scoops of powder because I have a headache and a lot left to do today.

I really believe this is the thickest, loveliest froth I have ever seen for this matcha. As sticky and muggy as it is outside, I do not mourn the loss of a degree or two of temperature in the cha wan.

As for the matcha itself, it was a super economical buy and tastes good enough to drink as a daily drinker. It still doesn’t beat D25 or KaiMatcha Premium, which sadly seems to have gone out of business. But for the price and for a quick afternoon bowl of sustaining matcha, I’ll take it! Grassy, not sour, sweet and smooth enough to stand above culinary grade.

I haven’t had this in a while. I go through streaks of drinking certain types of tea. Does anyone else do that? Somehow I never added it to my cupboard and I am about to finish it off, so no need now.

Although this is a black tea, I get the most out of it when I use a lower temperature and a shorter steep time. Today this was 200F and just under four minutes because I was having it with breakfast, but you could go with even more conservative parameters.

The number one word that comes to me with this is…FRUITY. Big time. Darjeeling level fruity. Rich aroma. High notes galore. Somewhat brisk but not nearly enough to make me want to add milk., or maybe the fruitiness just makes it seem lightly brisk. (I almost never never ever add milk or sweetener of any kind to my teas.)

The high fruity notes are followed by a lingering taste of walnut, specifically the papery bit that has a light bitterness that you find on walnuts you have cracked yourself, not the shelled kind in bags. But when I search for it, the high note is still there, a wisp of a ghost at the back of the palate.

We started drinking this late last night. We are moving youngest into her own room this week and it involves painting (including the ceiling – what a pain in the neck!) and finding a home for all my crafting supplies. (Gulp. I buy those like I buy tea.)

Last night’s four steeps were all Western style and combined two at a time. The predominant aroma was mushroom. Or maybe I should say MUSHROOM. I haven’t had a powerfully mushroom pu in a while, so this was a refreshing change.

This morning as we have it with breakfast, i am struck by how creamy this is. This is smooth and mild and has a silky mouth feel.

I need to do a gong fu session with it sometime, but it has been great by the (large) pot. I think six steeps are the limit on this one for me. The final one took a while to color up but had nice flavor when it did.

This is a great daily drinker and an excellent re-steeper. While it isn’t a puerh that I stop everything for and light candles and put on music, it is really great for gatherings and game nights and parties. And I am almost out of this huge cake! One little chunk still rests in the wrapper.

The dry leaf has a definite barn yard vibe. I like that aroma. It isn’t enough to turn off puerh newbies, though.

I served this a week ago as a cold steeped ice tea, unsweetened. My neighbor isn’t a big tea drinker but I asked her to try it after our walk in the sweltering heat since she didn’t take a water bottle and I wanted her to hydrate before doing yoga with me. She was shocked to find that she liked this even though it was unsweetened. She said she braced herself for the bitterness of unsweetened black tea and was immediately captured by the smooth and refreshing taste. Since she is trying to improve her health – hence the walk – she wants to get some puerh of her own to replace sweet tea and cut sugar in her diet.

I love sharing tea with people. I love watching them discover that there is a lot of tea out there that is nothing like what they have tried before.

I am drinking this one with youngest today and marveling at how my family has become hooked on puerh teas. I was afraid to try the stuff in the beginning! Now it is the tea most enjoyed by guests and especially by coffee lovers.

This one is very different from our usual. We stick to mostly unflavored, unadultered shu.

I used two sachets in a 17 ounce pot. I didn’t time it, just kept an eye on it to see when the color looked good. I expect it steeped for about a minute and a half to two minutes.

I taste very little puerh. I can’t say that it is heavily woodsy, mushroomy, or horsey. It is very very fragrant with spices rose, though. I like it as a rose tea more than as a puerh tea. I have had rose scented puerh that was so lightly rose scented as to merely have a whiff and a sweetness. This one is ROSE.

I made a second steep. Now I taste a bit of puerh and still have a really nice level of rose. Nice!

Here I sit, drinking black tea after 11 pm. Why would anyone do that? Because they are covered in poison ivy and have been for almost three weeks and new patches are still appearing and pretty soon a Benadryl is going to send them to LaLa Land regardless of how much caffeine has been consumed.

I am glad it is a really good black tea. I need something to pay attention to other than the infuriating itching of my arm.

I really get strong honey notes this time. An earlier tasting of a previous harvest (I think it was a different year!) had molasses notes to me, but this is strong honey. There is a high baked fruit flavor that is making me crave some baked peach dumplings right now. I made this western style but I think the rest of the leaves are going to get the grand treatment tomorrow, with a full on gong fu session.