Luka Te m.m.

After all these experiments with questionable tea bags (I said three out of five, earlier but it’s really just four) I still have one left, the supposedly plain white (Ha!) but I’m going to save that for later. I’m in bad need of some proper tea. One that I can drink more than a cup of.

So I turn to this new discovery of mine. Yes. It’s still awesome.

First of all, this is NOT to be confused with Gunpowder as we know it, as in the green tea. While it does contain green tea and the green leaves are easily recognisable, they don’t look like Gunpowder to me. The name has more to do with the nature and taste of the blend. (Also, I’ve translated the name from danish, in which the tea Gunpowder is never mentioned)

This is supposedly a secret blend. I suppose that’s why on the shop’s website it says what it contains. English breakfast, a green tea and lapsang souchong. So apparently it’s only the identity of the green tea that is so sooper seekrit. My wild guess would be Chun Mee since that’s a strong enough green to do well in blends and the green leaves definitely look like they’ve been twisted.

Since it has green tea in it, I thought it best to let the water breathe for a couple of minutes before pouring it on. In the meantime, all you can smell on the dry leaves is the lapsang souchong, but it’s got a milder sort of smell with something sweet too, which I expect must be the seeeeeekrit green tea.

Considering that two thirds of this, at LEAST, is black tea and one of those is lapsang souchong, this has a very light colour. It smells really good though! The lapsang souchong isn’t at all as overpowering in the brew as it is in the dry leaves. It sort of reminds me of a wet cat who has just come in from the rain, and I’m showing my colours as a cat person when I say that I kind of like that smell. It was just the first thing that popped into my head when I smelled it. A normal person would probably describe it as a full sweet smell with a note of smoke.

This is really great! I could definitely get used to this. It’s like a very mild lapsang souchong that has been given just a little bit of sugar. At first you think you might as well have been drinking a weak lapsang souchong, but then the rest of the flavour comes out. The sweetness of the green tea and the fullness of the english breakfast and then the sharpness on top of it all.

If you don’t like lapsang souchong’s smokey flavour, I would suggest trying a blend of just the english breakfast and a green tea.

Tin liberation! Yay! Second tin freed in two days.

Good morning Steepsterites.

I made this extra strong this morning (so as to use the rest of the leaves), added some of Adagio’s cinnamon and a good splash of milk.

I must be sleepier than I thought because when I took the first sip, I was honestly surprised to discover it wasn’t coffee…

Also, I’ve docked a lot of points from this one. It’s time to stop kidding myself. I just really really wanted to like it better than I actually did, and I was trying to convince myself that I did by cheating the brain with more points than it was worth. Obviously, it didn’t really work.

All those chores I mentioned this morning? Yeah uh… um…. uh….

In other news, I’ve made me a pot of this aniseed tea that I had nearly forgotten I had. I tried to clean up the table in the kitchen where tins migrate to as I use them, and I got distracted. I tried, though. Isn’t that good enough?

It’s the closest thing I’ve got to the Black Satin from 52teas. Maybe I can make do with this when the Black Satin runs out. Maybe. It’s not as good.

On a whim today I added a pinch of peppermint to the pot. It’s both good and bad. I can’t actually decide if the peppermint taste doesn’t fit in at all, or if I think it’s really nice. I’m leaning towards a nice addition that doesn’t fit in. The aniseed and peppermint are sort of competing for attention on the tongue which brings about a pretty strange result.

Well, we’ve tried that. Next time I think I’ll leave out the peppermint. Strange idea to add it anyway.

A setting is being demanded of me, so here I am (I quote) with my delightful boyfriend (who’s really putting up nicely with all this abuse) on a sunday afternoon. I had some of this this morning and discovered that I liked it a lot cold too, so I made a pitcher of it and put it in the fridge for later. It is now later.

For experimental reasons I added just a pinch of peppermint to it, because I was reminded of that peppermint/liquorice root herbal stuff that two of my colleagues favour. That one is I think about two thirds peppermint and one third liquorice root, and I find it far too pepperminty for me, which is why I only added a pinch of it to this.

I think it turned out very nice. It’s like it’s sweet, but it’s not sugar-sweet. Another time though I think I’ll add a little more peppermint to the mix because I can’t really pick up what I added to this one. Obviously I haven’t found the golden middle road yet.

When one of the first things you see after having woken up is annoying, then you need a tea to match. Not an annoying tea, just one that matches. This is mine. It’s my “HA! IN YOUR FACE, ANNOYANCE!”-tea. Which I suppose is interesting considering I gave it a mediocre rating the first time around. But there you are.

Ah yes, that’s better. The aniseed first and then the liquoriceroot at the back of the mouth after. A sweet tea that makes me feel like my mouth is turning black. It reminds me of the strong liquorice that we like here in Scandinavia but which my boyfriend, who’s english, claims is nearly inedible and at the very least shouldn’t be sold as ‘sweets’.

There might be a yo-yo rating on this one. For a first sip, I feel like it’s set really low, but that might change later on.

ETA:
I forgot half a cup and it got cold. Hey, this is almost better when cold. Rating is going up a notch.

What’s this? A new addition to the collection? “But Angrboda,” I hear you say, “we thought you said you were on a fairly strict weekly budget this month and that it was Stingy-Month?”
Erm, yes. Yes, I did. And it still is. Just with the exception of the hour it took to walk down to the little local shop (and it’s the same shop, btw, it just changed it’s name), pick out *cough*five*cough* new teas and walk back again. AHEM!

I love liquorice and if you ask my boyfriend, who’s english, he’ll tell you that us danes have a weird taste in liquorice. But anyway, this was too interesting to pass by. Smell and visual tells me that they’re not lying about what it contains. I can see lots of bits of liquorice root and it smells a LOT of the aniseed oil.

Anybody here who have ever tried making a pure liquorice root tisane? Then you’ll know that it gives off a lot of flavour immediately after getting in contact with the water, so I’m not worried that it’ll be overpowered by the heavy aniseed.

I was expecting a darker brew, but this is a sort of vaguely reddish light brown colour. It still smells rather a lot of aniseed but the liquorice root is definitely coming after it.

Interesting flavour! Or rather, double flavour. You get first the aniseed in the middle of the tongue and then as you swallow the liquorice root appears along the sides of the tongue. Instead of getting two flavours in combination, you get one flavour sort of taking over from the other. It’s quite nice, but I can’t really find much tea flavour underneath. I can only find a very vague astringency as a proof that it’s there underneath.

ETA: Wow, a little bit of cane sugar really brings out the liquorice root here!
ETA again: Toned the rating down quite a bit because even the small pot is enough. More than enough actually.

A blend from my local shop. And I don’t know why I initially added and put unknown as the brand, since it’s a perfectly normal shop that actually has a name. I don’t know who their wholeseller is, but that’s a detail. Anywho. It’s actually called ‘Isabella blend’ but they renamed it since. I don’t know, I preferred the first name, as I quite like Princess Isabella. She’s cute and she was born on my birthday. :)

I’m probably only borderline in on the Vanilla Vogue with this one, but I wanted something else than plain vanilla. And the description does say ‘notes of raspberry and vanilla’. Judging from the very strong raspberry aroma that it has, I would say that it has more than notes. There has definitely been raspberry aroma added to this and although I can’t immediately find any vanilla in the smell, I think it would be a relatively safe bet that it has been added too.

This is, with rose petals, jasmine, raspberries, vanilla and something called ‘pink sweethearts’, possibly the single most girly tea I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know what the sweethearts are supposed to be. I remember trying to eat one and getting zero flavour out of it, so I’m guessing maybe they’re responsible for the vanilla/raspberry aroma.

I’m on my very last bits of this. I’m making it in my smallest pot and even then I probably shouldn’t fill it all the way up. Just the one cup then. That’s kind of sad, really.

Dark in colour and with a rather odd aroma that sort of reminds me of raspberries what have been baked. And hey, the sweetness of vanilla!

The tea itself is a bit bland when it comes to the fruit and the vanilla, although it may be because, with the limited supply of leaves, it’s been brewed a wee bit on the weak side. It makes me wish I could have made it properly. It tastes mostly like a fairly bland and faded mix of the teas and then the sweetness comes through in the aftertaste.

No real vanilla coming through except in the aroma, although, with the description I’m wondering if that might actually be the way it’s supposed to be. You know, it does say ‘notes’, not ‘flavours’. So it could be that it’s supposed to be tasted as a combination of flavour and aroma. Rather complicated, but there you are.

Or maybe, it’s just old. Still I’m finding myself wishing that I had stocked up on this when I was buying the other day.

This is now sold as Princess Blend, but when I bought it was called the Isabella Blend, named after the youngest of the danish princesses (turning 2 later this month). It’s a nice, fairly sweet tea, and I’m even able, with some concentration, to find the vanilla and raspberry notes. They’re very subtle though, I think. It’s a pretty girly sort of tea.

I only bought this because they were out of regular strawberry and I wanted some strawberry tea. I have a strong dislike of cream in tea (Milk! ALWAYS milk! Never cream! Milk!) but I was desperate enough to try it on the promise that it was supposedly sweet and summerly. The leaves smell lovely but all I can taste in the cup is the black tea and the cream. No berries of any kind. It’s drinkable, but I won’t be buying this again.

I’ve been modifying all my previously logged teas and I got inspired. Inspired, but not able to make any sort of decision, so I closed my eyes, stuck my hand in the tea cabinet and picked a tin at random. And this is what I “won”.

Not a bad pick. Another tea I’d forgotten I still had.

I noticed today that the leaves are broken. I’d say it’s because I’m at the bottom of the tin, but when I bought it, it was taken out of the middle-ish of the tin in the shop, so I don’t think tin-bottom is the reason. There are too many broken leaves for the middle of a big tin for that, if you know what I mean. It just goes to prove the fact that teas with additives and flavouring is probably a lower quality tea than what is used for the plain teas.

Also, I managed to oversteep it just a little bit, because I momentarily forgot about it. It didn’t turn bitter though, just full flavoured. To be honest it kind of tastes more green than white to me and the fruit additives are nothing special.

But I’m chalking all that up to slight oversteeping and having acquired a snot-nose and therefore somewhat reduced sense of taste. I stand by it being an otherwise lovely tea.

When I bought this I wondered how it was possible to make a white fruit blend without overpowering the white tea. It is, however, entirely possible. I wouldn’t say it tasted particularly fruity. Most of what I can taste is the white tea, but it’s got a fruity sort of after-taste instead which I find much more pleasant than had it been a stronger more full-bodied fruit flavour.