Life In Teacup

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Recent Tasting Notes

73

Soft mocha sweetness and subtle spice open a rustic Wuyi which balances its smokiness and juiciness quite well.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 30 sec

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71

Hmm. This tea smelled intriguingly nutty, but it tasted very weak. When I tried steeping it longer, it got distressingly bitter without getting any more flavorful. Probably I made it too weak — I’m still figuring out the best way to judge proportions. I will definitely try it again, because a tea which tasted the way this smelled would be fantastic.

(Backlogged from Saturday.)

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 30 sec

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75

Light mocha and muscatel sweetness and mild toasted almond character round out a thin base of warm vegetation.

What some may perceive as mundane and uncomely is, in this tea, revealed as inviting and understated. (Welcome home.)

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 4 min, 30 sec

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88

Has a slight earthy taste I have found common in Pu-Ur Teas. There is nice sweetness to taste as Gingko describes. Very warming taste.

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85

Ah! A cup of real tea!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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85

I tried this with short steeps, but the resulting tea was barely there (despite turning a beautiful deep golden color almost immediately). So I steeped the third time for two minutes, and what a change! This tea isn’t sweet, per se, but there’s a hint of burnt sugar around the edges; there’s still not a lot up front, but the back of it hits almost immediately with a savory grilled flavor that just keeps going.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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88

This is wonderful stuff! The best Jasmine I’ve had. The second steep is absolutely exquisite!

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 1 min, 15 sec
LiberTEAS

Sounds like one I definitely need to try! I love Jasmine!

I ♥ NewYorkCiTEA

This is the first jasmine tea I’ve tried. I thought it was awesome. But I have nothing to compare it too. I’m happy to hear that it compares favorably to the others you’ve had.

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99

Dear Tie Guan Yin from Life in Teacup,

You are a fine grade of tea,
Grade II in fact,
O fare Tea,
Green thumb in picking,
Green tongue in tasting,
Unfurl and steep,
Unfurl and steep,
I got like, 5 infusions
Whhoooooooooooo

Sincerely,
I want to sip you

CMT 雲 山 茶

Not the same batch I think.

Tea Love and Care

well there goes my tea poem RIGHT OUT the window

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99

Thick lush water-filled spring fresh orchid petals. That is what this tea tastes and smells like. It’s unbelievable. I am absolutely buying this.

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97

2010: A Tea Odyssey. This tea is full of stars! Its like drinking a garden bouquet. I am completely in this tea’s awe. If this grade II blows my mind I can only imagine the Euphoria of the higher grades.

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67
drank gunpowder by Life In Teacup
788 tasting notes

this time did the rest of my sample in zarafina green-loose-medium
light, sweet, delicious, slightly vegetal, slightly astringent
no bitterness

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67
drank gunpowder by Life In Teacup
788 tasting notes

Steep Information:
Amount: a bit under 1 tsp
Additives: none
Water: 6 ounces / 8 ounces boiling filtered water let cool to 175 then steeped in cup with mesh basket
Steep Time: a little over 2 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: AmazonV: Nothing / MilitiaJim: Faint green tea
Steeped Tea Smell: green tea (slightly vegetal)
Flavor: green tea (slightly vegetal)
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: sweet
Liquor: translucent green (MilitiaJim: de-neon-ed mountain dew)

This was a sample from Life in Teacup

I was very pleased that this tea is not bitter! I tend to over heat or steep greens and get bitter tea. This is a nice mellow green tea and I am enjoying it. I wouldn’t mind getting it again, although I know I am more a black tea / red tea person than green.

Post-Steep Additives: honey = sweetened green tea

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/03/life-in-teacup-loose-leaf-green-tea.html

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 2 min, 0 sec
AmazonV

Resteep: 2 minutes, with honey, was similar to first steep only had more particulate (i don’t mind) and slightly more astringent and bitter (briefly) at the end.

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70

Very unusual tasting green. I drank this first thing in the morning and perhaps my nose was still blocked but it seemed to smell of Turkey dinner. Not in a unpleasant way. Not something I would drink daily but enjoyable.

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67

I tried a shorter steep this time, and the tea was a bit different — it tasted strongly and smelled even more strongly of raisins! I’d heard people describe tea as tasting of raisins before and always wondered what that would be like, since I’d never found it before. Well, here it is, and unfortunately it’s reminded me that I don’t like raisins. Alas!

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 1 min, 30 sec
__Morgana__

Interesting! I didn’t get raisins at all. Now that I’m alerted to your tasting of them I’ll see if I can find them as well. (I do like raisins, so it wouldn’t bother me to taste them and might be kind of cool…)

Cait

Good luck in your raisin quest! :)

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67

Hmm. I used the brew-in-mug method here again, with cooler water, and this tea began and ended very strong, although it was smoother in the middle. Oddly, the leaves never floated at all, but only unrolled slowly at the bottom of the mug. I was liking it in the middle, for the second steep and around the edges into the first and third steeps, but there’s a bitter aftertaste lingering from the third steep.

Still, many thanks to Gingko for letting me try it! (I feel more than a little embarrassed to have forgot to actually, y’know, sample this for several weeks! All the excitement of the very first tea of the year — and then I let it go to the end of March.)

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 6 min, 0 sec

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90

You know, I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t do something wrong in storing this — I put it in a tin, but it’s a biggish tin for a small sample. This pot, like the previous one, is just not as flowery as the very first one. I mean, on any other tea I’d be calling this flowery, but here? Only barely.

Well, I’ve already ordered a bit more. I’ll have to see if I can treat the next batch better!

Mmm, flowers.

JK Tea Shop

Yes, Tie Guan Yin is famous for its exquisite light orchid aroma, which is the aroma I like the most. Prefer smelling the aorma than drinking the tea. haha .

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90

Interesting! I made this in my larger pot this morning because I wanted to take a full-sized mug and go, and I don’t know if it’s that I got the proportions different or that the bigger pot is making the water temperature change or what, but this is a much less flowery tea this time! It still tastes of orchids and sugar, but they’re much farther back and the tea taste is much thicker now.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 30 sec

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90

My god, it’s full of stars flowers!

When I ripped open the little sample foil packet, I couldn’t smell much of anything, but when I gave the leaves a rinse and set the pot back on the counter, I turned around going, “Wait, why does it smell like flowers in here? Is that coming from outside…but it’s not spring flowers…it’s more like orchids…wait just a moment!” And yes, it was the tea leaves.

So I poured myself a fifteen-second steep in my teeny-tiny pot and promptly burned my tongue trying to discover if it tasted like flowers. One glass of cold water and a cautious two-minute wait later, I can tell you this: it doesn’t taste like flowers. It tastes like candied flowers. It tastes like someone dipped orchid petals in sugar. It tastes like spun sugar in a field of orchids. I didn’t know tea could do this.

Fifteen-second steep number two: still full of flowers! It’s getting a little bit rounder, but this is still the sweetest airy-fairy-flowery tea I’ve ever tasted. I can’t believe there’s caffeine in this.

Twenty-second steep number three: the flowers may have come down to earth now, but this tea is still best described as “flowers flowers flowers flowers flowers flowers flowers!”

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 15 sec

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89

Raisin hunt unsuccessful. Ah well. I still like this one an awful lot.

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89

For the record, it’s not asparagus I’m tasting… I had asparagus for dinner tonight and drank a cup of this right afterward. Maybe it’s bok choy?

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89

I was one of those fortunate to get a free sample of this through Ginkgo’s generosity. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have a great deal of green tea experience which is one of the reasons I wanted to give this a try. In fact, it’s my first loose leaf green. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let that bias what I said here, but I didn’t have to worry. I think it is wonderful!

The dry leaves are, overall, a deep green color with variations in the individual leaves ranging from slightly brownish to bright, silvery flecks. They’re a medium length and generally straight, or with a tiny bit of curl. There’s a gently vegetal smell about them; I’m going to say asparagus, so Jacqueline probably wouldn’t go for it. ;-)

The liquor is tinged with light green, but otherwise almost clear. It smells much like the dry leaves, but rounder. The taste is quite sweet and vegetal, with something of a nutty undercurrent. It has a buttery feel to it, as though it is melting in my mouth. Very smooth and reminiscent of spring without being grassy, great for a day like today. I’m not getting smokiness, but I wouldn’t mind if I did.

The leaves unfurl prettily, and carry their smell with them post-steeping. The second steep worked reasonably well, too, though I can see that significantly lengthening steeping time could yield some bitterness. I went 90 seconds on the resteep and there was just a tad of bitterness in the aftertaste, but it was just enough to make things interesting rather than unpleasant.

This is going on my shopping list. I can see myself becoming fond of greens! I should add that I didn’t read the notes on how to prepare this until after I’d made it but that obviously didn’t hamper my enjoyment. I just wonder how different it would have been had I heeded them.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 1 min, 0 sec

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87

Oh so pretty!

I would post a picture, but my new glass mug has my company logo on the side and I’d rather not post that on the ‘net, so you’ll just have to take my word for it!

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