Bonnie Send Message

Thank you Bo from The Tea Spot for this Sample!

When I tasted this Coconut Oolong I was expecting a ‘taste sensation’! (I am a lover of coconut and to pair the flavor with Oolong is just the best combination!)
When I poured the liquor it was clear and not cloudy like some Milky Oolongs.
There were bits of natural coconut in the brew basket mixed with the dark green tea… and the scent of coconut and flowers was steaming hot from the light yellow liquor in my cup.

The flavor was definately coconut! Good,good,good!

I tasted a little vegital background…ok… and to be expected with an Oolong. The vegital taste was covered well enough by the milky smooth, floral creaminess of the tea.
There was a good deal of astringency biting at my tongue. A tiny sourness too. Hum. It didn’t annoy me really. The flavor was too good for anything to be annoying!

I added sweetening. Come on, of course I added sweetening. This is a tea that cries for elevation to sublime dessertness!

Aha! That was more like it and took that sour/astringent edge almost all the way gone!

Natural coconut makes such a difference in the flavor. It’s much nuttier.
I used to make a Puerto Rican dessert called Love Powder (Polvo de Amor) using very very finely grated fresh coconut (no milk added)which was toasted in a pan with lots of sugar added to it. So good!

That’s the way I like this tea…like the Love Powder! SWEET

Thank you Roughage for this Sample Tea!

I keep apologizing for my lack of knowledge about darjeelings. Like the clumsy schoolgirl I was at my first 6th grade dance, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. At age 11 and 5’9" there’s no way I was letting a short stubby boy even think of SLOW dancing with me (which they all wanted to do with their evil grins)!

Darjeelings grin their evil grins at me too. They all look the same to me. I don’t know why. I’M NOT A DARGEELING BIGOT!

Roughage was so kind to send me this tea. I need to buck up and slow dance with it. Sigh….

So…I smoothed out my dress, looked at my dance card and there were no instructions on brewing this tea. Oh great! What was I to do? No chit chat on the dance floor to get me going.
I had to duck in a corner to look up the instructions under another First Flush Darjeeling and just wing it.
(My cheeks were turning pink)
Ok, deep breath…I took the recommended steps to brew the tea and waited.
Everything stopped for 4 minutes. So long a wait.

The liquor was floral and golden amber. This was expected. I had seen this before.
What would make this different or special?

I went to a corner chair and sat down, putting my hands in my lap and looked down at my knees. “I must be stupid!”, I said…“I never can understand this type of tea.” And I sighed again. Then I just sat.

After a time, I walked back to my cup of tea and looked into it. I took a big sip and thought how it tasted a little like grape skins and peaches. It smelled like warm flowers but not orchids. I was about to say PASTRY but out of fear of being mocked…changed my mind (pastry ha ha ha)! There was a short biting bit of astringency that I didn’t mind. Instead of being too brisk there was balanced smoothness. Good flavor!

It appears that I had slow danced after all!
I’m sure I stepped on toes.

Either I’ll grow to be more elegant and refined a dancer or you’ll grow taller and able to match with me and be my teacher. I need all the help I can get.

(Hope none of you Darjeeling lovers mind my liberties…I mean no disrespect to the tea…I mean it when I say I am a Darjeeling idiot!)

Thank you Dhart1214 for this Sample tea!

I just had my first taste of Yerba Mate yesterday from another steepster and liked it. I’m aware that there is a punch of caffeine, so today…I told myself that I’d better be careful and not wait too late to taste and review this Yerba Mate blend or I’d be wired!

One of the things I wish tea companies would do a better job of, is labeling what’s in the blend on the packet of tea. Herbs and flavors might be something that a person is allergic to! I couldn’t drink this blend before going to the Tea Spot website to look up the ingredients. There are 19 listed in this one blend! (Thankfully none I’m allergic to!)

The flavor was tasty…mellow, not too spicy or herby.
If I hadn’t read the ingredients, I would never have known there were 19 flavors present.
I could taste cinnamon, licorice, a bit of ginger, cooling tulsi and yerba mate. The vanilla was almost lost as well as the other flavors. What I tasted was very muted, in a gentle way that was not unpleasent. (I don’t always want a tea to knock me down with strong flavor.)
This was an appealing high caffeine comfort tea.

I could picture this tea in a pouch added to a backpack stash for a hiking trip. A morning tea before skiing or biking. A tea to begin the day at the office or school. No milk is needed and the tea is sweet enough not to add anything to it. (I did add sweetening…I like my tea that way).

Energy! Caffeine! Mellow flavor and tastes pretty good.

Yes, I drank my bean toxic tea too. Lesson for tea companies would be that it’s important to label ingredients please. In the future, I don’ t want to be this violently ill from unlabeled tea!
I had to look on the website for ingredient information before knowing about the licorice so the fact that I drank the tea is not the fault of The Tea Spot.

Drank this again today at H.L. with Granddaughter Megan and
had the awesome Ginger Cookies!!!
As always the companionship of Megan was the best…and her reaction to the malty tea without sugar paired with the soft ginger cookie was
such a treat to see. “Wow, this is sooooo goood!”
“I know, I know!”
“Who would have thunk that the tea without sweetening and the cookie would be heaven?!”
“Wow, grandma…this is great!”

And the experiences keep racking up. The lessons of life that a little pot of tea can cheer the heart and warm up a conversation.

I introduced her to all the tea Pro’s at Happy Lucky’s. Me beaming with pride of course.

I know that I’ve written about this Shu before. It has been one great friend in my Puer collection.
Today, I was able to share this tea with my granddaughter Megan who has been staying with me for a few days.
This was a symphony of love between a grandmother that she refers to as a ‘young soul’ and herself the ‘old soul’.
We are cool and can talk about music, books, ethics and boys. I show her how to put on make-up and she shares her secret thoughts with me. Is there anything better?!
I was the tea conductor today. I told Megan how to prepare this Shu. First, she looked up the Peacock Village Puer on the Verdant website for brewing instructions, then in my Gaiwan rinsed the leaves and steeped.
Our experience together:
The scent…like bread baking and sweet in the wet dark mulch.
The liquor golden and also was light like bread still waiting to emerge.

Again a second steep..darker and more brothy and thick. The taste was dry cedar with a linen feel across the top of the tongue. Salty. Smooth.

The third steep leaves were almost black and smelled of fine wet leather. We poked the leaves and noticed how much life was left to extract. Megan was surprised. I took one leaf and opened it up so that it was very large. We talked a minute about how Puer is prepared. The immense amount of work it takes to become the Puer that we were now drinking so casually.

There wasn’t any breadiness left in this darkest liquor. None.
There was cedar and clove. Juice, salt with juniper berry faintly in the background.
I pointed out an interesting thing you can do with a salty Puer. Add a little sugar which will enhance the flavor. (This is something a cook knows)

When we did this addition of sugar…Megan was wow’d!

She had a different wonderful taste experience that she can discribe in her review (don’t want to spoil it).
I tasted caramelized peach.
Yes! Puer is amazing.

It would be a great and awesome thing if younger people drank tea and learned to discribe flavor and experience. We are so out of touch with being present in the moment and in connecting with people without devices in the way.

Today Megan and I did not text each other. We drank tea! We had the best time. Some day, I hope she blogs about tea with me as a good memory in the same way I am writing about my time with her.

Thank you hannaspring for this Sample Herb Tea!

Never in a zillion years would you believe it…but this is my very first Yerba Mate!
Not only did I get a SAMPLE from hannaspring, but a whole 500grams!
Like a zillion cups of Yerba Mate! Wow!
I was kinda hoping I would like it since I recieved so much…..

There was a kind note that said “he” (hannaspring) mixed his with Black Tea in the morning to start the day.
Hum. Interesting idea.
I wanted to try the herbal tea straight first though. I was not able to read all the instructions in tiny, tiny Spanish…so I winged it using my Finum and a mug. (The servings on the package in Spanish were for a large pot using 50grams of Mate).
The flavor was smoky and quite nice and smooth. I gave some to my granddaughter who also liked the taste.
I think I was expecting a grassy flavor. Instead, this reminded me of some of the background earthiness of younger Pu-erh’s I’ve tasted.

Next I experimented by blending half very good Black Tea leaves and half Yerba Mate. I steeped the combination as I would for Black Tea and was surprised at how the Black Tea flavor dominated. I expected to taste more of the smoky Yerba Mate but it seemed to have bowed out and receeded into the shadows. What a surprise.

I think I’ll have to play around some more with this herbal to find out how it stands up to other blending experiments.
My first impression was quite tasty and better than I expected which was a treat.

Thanks for the 500 grams for me to play with hannaspring!

Thank you Will Work For Tea for this Sample!

Tonight granddaughter Megan (OldSoul on Steepster) and I are trying a couple of Oolongs and I’ve started a box of tea samples to get her started with her Steepster reviews.

This was our first tasting.

I tried to brew this Pineapple Oolong in a small pot which became a disaster. Too much water to Oolong tea produced a weak liquor. Bleh.
This would be part of this evenings learning experience! I wasn’t going to quit!
Reaching for my 4oz Gaiwan, I transfered the wet leaves and began steeping in the Gaiwan for 2 minutes.
Now the liquor was rich and yellow, full of orchid and pineapple scent.
This was what I had hoped for.
Megan smiled.
We added a little sweetening and sipped the smooth, pineapple flavored tea.
One of the things I pointed out to her was the change in texture as the tea cooled. The discovery of butteriness was something new for Megan. She was surprised at how floral the tea became as the cooling increased and how sweet the tea was without hardly any sugar.
Ah…
This was what I had hoped for.
What a delight to drink tea with Megan.

Although the Oolong orchid flavor is quite tasty, the pineapple is not nearly as good and pronounced as the Butiki Oolong which I prefer.

Thank you Bo at the Tea Spot for this Sample Tea

One of the first tea’s I loved was a Rose tea. It surprised me that I didn’t gag like I was drinking perfume…. even though it smelled like cologne.
I never liked the Bottled Rose Syrup my Nephew David slathered on pancakes or favored in Baklava (a taste he came to love on Cyprus where he was born).
Tea was different somehow. The flavor was always sweet but more like soft floral honey.

When I opened this tea packet from The Tea Spot the whole top half was pretty packed with pretty Rose Buds.
I dug around looking for the Jasmine tea strands to gather bits for a good cup to brew. It was hard to control the amount considering the size of the flowers and white leaves so I used a large mug and finum basket with a little more leaf and water.
The temperature is suggested 176F for 2-4 minutes. (I would go for the full 4 minutes!)

The flavor was a good balance of Jasmine and Rose. Very floral and not very astringent at all, (I think that’s what other reviews referred to as harshness).
To get the most out of the beautiful floral flavor I would add sweetening. There’s no way I would drink this without sweetness to make the flowers nectar. Even honey would be an acceptable addition, especially a very mild wildflower honey.

A calming tea that is exactly as the name implies…good for quiet time and relaxation.

This weekend I stopped at my tea pub to specifically pick up this Moroccan Mint tea as a base for my own homegrown mint that I have in pots on my patio.
I love to fix the traditional Middle Eastern sweet, hot brew now and then if someone drops by.
While in the shop I taste tested a pot. The mint was just right and minty enough to drink when my own stock of fresh mint runs low. Furthermore, the mint isn’t bitter (mint can be bitter if dried incorrectly or if the blend is not the right type of mint) and the gunpowder is mildly smoky.

Last night, my granddaughter Megan needed a break from her 5 brothers. She came to spend the night with buddy Grandma.
This morning was the opportunity I was looking for to try out my Moroccan Mint/home grown mint in a pot with lots of sugar.
(I cut down on the sugar by doing a 50/50 mix of splenda and sugar)

First I placed 2.5 TB tea in my brew basket in a 32oz glass pot. Then while the water was coming to a boil, I went to the garden and broke off 2 long stalks of fresh mint, rinsed, tore it with my hands to release the flavor, then put it in with the tea. The water was poured over the tea and steeped for 3 minutes.

Two mugs of deep golden liquor were poured, steaming with the scent of sweet mint. Megan and I hovered adding lots of sweetening until the right high level of sweetness was reached to balance the mintiness.

This is how this tea is meant to be. Hot,very sweet and sipped slowly on a hot day by the pot.

One of my best tea memories is drinking this tea with my friend Randa in San Francisco for hours and hours. The pot was full of mint leaves, always refilled with more and more water and the bowl was always full of sugar.http://flic.kr/p/cyh4kw

The Moroccan Mint tea was perfect this morning with my granddaughter, providing an experience that I hope will be a special memory for her also.

Megan’s comments:
The tea was sweet before adding sugar but got so much better with the sugar added.
My tongue stung a little but I liked the feeling.
The tea was creamy. (She noticed that and I didn’t…good for her!)

Thank you Roughage for thie big Sample!

Intro:
There’s something really fine about a Gent from the U.K. with the
handle of Roughage on Steepster, sending me a Pu-erh don’t you think so? (Roughage-Pu-erh…get it?)
Especially when the Pu-erh smells like I stepped straight from the garden with a basket of fragrant flowers on my arm into the poo musty barn where the horses are being horsy and curious about what I’m there for.

Big Story Turn:
There was a year and a half before coming to Colorado where I was pretty penniless and transient. I had no real home. My marriage had become abusive, I was sick and I had to leave abruptly with what would fit in my car.
I stayed here and there mostly on charity until I had enough money to move away on my own. This is a humbling way to live.
One place I stayed was in the hills above Cupertino,CA in a converted garage (no heat/air/stove) on my friends property. (I am thankful)
All the houses around me were multi-million dollar mansions on large properties. Right next to the the house was a horse path that everyone used to access open space trails.
My favorite horse buddy was a miniature stallion who lived next door. He was proud. That little guy would come into the yard and kick a ball around and huff and puff at any other big horse that came too close. http://flic.kr/p/cxLJSY (When you read my notes about food, I lived with a microwave and a crockpot for over a year and ate very healthy and organic without a stove!)

Drinking this tea today reminded me of the horses and hay. The smell of flowers growing in a rough English garden outside my front door. The mist coming over the hill from the Pacific in the evening. The smell of roses growing next door in the neighbors vineyard. Keah the husky/wolf dog barked at the deer and coyotes to get away, get away from the house you critters. Keah would wisely allow all the wild turkeys access without a bark though. The property had a gate. I felt safer there.

Taste:
The Pu-erh was smoky flavored and salty. My cup never got bittersweet. I am under-educated about this type of Pu-erh. I wish I knew more. It looks like a Shu Nugget that would be dark and thick when steeped. Instead what happened was a clear light honey broth, sweet, smoky and not earthy in the way I’ve experienced very dark Pu-erhs. The earthiness is like a light clear chicken broth in texture and weight, a little salty and earthy like a shitake (faintly). (HELP!)

Loose Ends:
I’ve gone so many places in my mind with this tea. All over the place. From barns and flowers, escaping from harm and back to the present.
Why?
Not to forget where I’ve come from I suppose. It’s good to enjoy the distance from sorrow, and enjoy the place I am in now.
I am happy with the gift of this Pu-erh from the U.K. and all my new friends on Steepster! What a miracle you all are!

This Pu-erh is young but tastes Ancient.

I somehow feel like I could become wise if I drank enough of it.

Oh my. Wait until it ages I would be able to write a book!

(P.S. that’s me before I lost almost 60 pounds!) BRAG!