Lupicia

Alphakitty thanks so much for a bit of this!

At first sip it was sweet and almost like a candied-flower if that makes sense. The end sip on to the aftertaste doesn’t taste ‘sweet’ more floral and as it cools or gets to almost cold the floral aftertaste does morph to a bit of a bitter-floral aftertaste…but nothing I can’t handle.

This is lovely! LOVE the color! Neat Morphing Flavors, too!

Listening to: Crass- Bloody Revolutions

So I had this tea again today, aboout a week since my initial tasting. It is a tea I went halfsies on with History Laced, but she didn’t like it and gave me the entire packet.

It was prepared by my boyfriend again. This time we were at home, so we used an infuser. He also let the kettle cool a few minutes before steeping as usual.

Wow! What a big difference. I think the water was too hot during our initial test, which made the tea a bit astringent. This time it was very smooth with fruity and floral at the same time, I am in love. I’m not sure quite what I think about it as an oolong yet; I am still learning about oolongs, but definitely a very yummy tea. I will definitely be buying this again, but I have a good 50 g of it to myself so it may be a while! <3

Listening to: Crass- Banned From the Roxy

It’s one of those nights. Apparently I more than woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I kind of woke up nearly glued to the wall. So its been a blargh day. I have tried this tea twice so far, this first post will be my detailed review from the other day and then I will post another on my thoughts on this tea today. :)

Observation 1:
The boyfriend made the tea. He steeped loose leaves for 2 minutes in boiling water. The liquor is a very bright yellow and there is a fruity scent about the tea.
Observation 2:
Tea without additives: The tea has a very clean bright taste. Not like any other oolong I have tried thus far.
Observation 3:
Tea with sugar to taste: Its kind of nutty and fruity. This tea is very easy to sweeten. I am reminded of fruitcake.
Observation 4: I hate fruitcake.
Observation 5: Considering the delicateness of this blend, I decided that milk was absolutely out of the question.

Overall, a very bright fruity tasting tea that I would like to try as an iced tea, I think it would really shine in that spotlight.

Boyfriend remarks:
“Blardablarg.”

Thank you for the great sample and the funny Christmas card, History Laced. It really brightened up my day! Lupicia is a place that would have otherwise been off my radar if not for you!

The dry leaves of Momoko smell near the same as fuzzy peaches: sour and peach-like with a dash of vanilla. Already we are off to a good start; I do not pass up fuzzy peaches. Steeped, the wet leaves gain a salty seaweed scent that is not unpleasant and not as overly present in the liquor. Isn’t that usually a characteristic of Sencha?

The green is more astringently vegetal than buttery mellow to start but it picks up more of those latter qualities near the finish and as it cools down. It starts strongly green that transitions down into sour, then sweet, vanilla peach.Ten minutes later and it’s almost all creamy soft peaches with a floral streak. There are some very subtle notes of sour and salt that creep in too.

Sipping this makes me think of sandy beaches, sun tan lotion, and tropical fruits. It’s amazing it can transport me somewhere like that when frosty patches of snow on the ground are visible from my window.

This is the first time I’ve had peach tea with a green base. Peaches are usually one of my least favourite fruits in yoghurt, juice drinks, etc. but I’ve loved almost all the peach infused teas that have stumbled my way!

Before steeping:
Scent- Very strong stawberries, sweet and a hint of chocolate

After Steeping:
Scent- Chocolate with an undertone of strawberries
Color- Dark Aubern

Taste:
Nude-Black tea, hint of strawberries, very smooth with a hint of a chocolate after tast
With sugar- Chocolate and black tea, still smoth and a heavy strawberry taste
with cream- Black tea, slight strawberry taste—Lots of flavor
with Cream and sugar- STRAWBERRY!!!! with a slight after taste of chocolate
*prefered nude, there it is light and tasteful

First attempt, apparently I didn’t wash the teapot all the way through, there was still some tealeaves init So i had to throw ot the water, and filled the teapot 1/2 full and boil another pot of water….so here we go…
Before steeping:
Scent- Carmel and sugar along with black tea

After Steeping:
Scent- sugar-fresh cookies
Color-Dark Aburn

Taste:
Nude: watery-slight sugary taste
with sugar: sugar water
with milk tastes like nothing
with milk and sugar: sweet cinimon, and sugary, nice and clming. A tasty treat

*I have come to the conclusion, that I just can make tea right, and it sadens me, I will try it again and hopefully it shall be mor tastey.

Before steeping:
Scent- Dark chocolate and chesnut

After Steeping:
Color- Honey
Scent- Nutella and black tea and a hiny of Vanilla

Taste:
Nude- Rich hazelnut, very strong flavoring, though I wish it was a bit thicker, almost like a coffee
With sugar- very chocolaty, with a vauge hnt of vanilla

*Marron Chocolat has a extreamly rich flavor, vry warm and delicious

Before Steeping:
Scent- Very sweet, smells like Jucyfruit gum

After Steeping:
Color- Bight yellow
scent- a little less Jucyfruitish

Taste:
Nude- Jucyfruit, very strongtaste, it’s more of a melon-like tea
With sugar- just very wrong, like jucyfruit on a sugar high

*in all a calming tea, Not necessarily a fan of it, but I don’t like Jucyfruit gum

I wondering why all of the Lupicia teas I got, they all state boiling water to steep. To make it easy to steep?

I tried this tea at 190, and the oolong base is much nicer here – light, silky and not grassy, with a light peach and rose background. Though, I think I could steep this longer than the 3 minutes I did – I got really impatient for breakfast and tea.

I need a good tea to start my week off – and get ready for a couple days of busting my butt at brazilian jiu jitsu before the school is closed for the holidays. Figure it was time to try this peachy tea from my recent Lupicia order!

DRY LEAF: smells like peach gummies that fell on the grass.
STEEPED: Wow, very fragrant tea! Rosey floral and slightly sweet smell.

TASTE: After I took a sip, I had to stop everything. Slightly naturally sweet white peach upfront, with a delicious floral base and light juicy oolong.

MMMM! Very good! I’m a sucker for good floral and fruity! This is just delicious! I was hoping this would taste more like peachy gummies, but maybe I’d need to sugar this tea – but Momo Super grade is good as is!

Before I get into my tasting notes, I would like to thank my good friend History Laced for going halfsies on tea with me! This is my first puer. It was a freebie given to us for making a purchase over $30 at the Lupicia tea store near us. I also want to publicly thank her for very cool journal she bought me for Christmas to write my tea notes in; I never get anything for Christmas, so I am super giddy about this. :D

Observation 1: As usual, I am at the kitchen table gossiping shamelessly as my boyfriend prepares the tea. He steeped the tea for 2 minutes in boiling water. The tea was not placed in an infuser, we used a tea strainer instead. It is a very pretty deep amber liquor.

Observation 2: The tea straight is very light flavor that I am assuming is the puer with the merest hints of a strawberry aftertaste. I do not taste any of the black tea in this blend, nor do I taste any chocolate.

Observation 3: With sugar to taste, I now begin to notice chocolate notes in the forefront. To me, it tastes as though I just had a cup of chocolate milk and followed it with a cup of strawberry milk.

Observation 4: With milk only, the chocolate and strawberry flavors are very muted; I only taste what I my brain is logically deducing as the puer.

Observation 5: With milk and sugar, there is a very light taste of chocolate with a much stronger strawberry presence. It is very smooth with no bitterness detected.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. A fan of boisterous flavors, I am not sure whether or not the delicate notes of a puer is really my cup of tea. Next, I think I would like to try a puer without any extra bells and whistles and really figure out what puer itself tastes like. There’s still so much to learn and try and with my handy dandy journal, I should be belting these out like rapid fire, that is unless I end up turning it into a rant-book like I do every other miscellaneous scrap of paper that accidentally crosses my path. :)

Boyfriend review: Goes good with milk and sugar, it is very light otherwise.

‘Full-bodied’ certainly describes this sencha, almost to the point where ‘heavy’ might be the more accurate adjective for it. The finish lingers well beyond the point where most types of sencha fade, and this may be off-putting to those who prefer a brighter, sharper note to their Japanese green teas. However, it stands up well as a wintertime tea, strong enough to hold its own against even the sweetest cake or bun.

I’m drinking some of this tea with my lunch (a kale and brussels sprouts salad).

I couldn’t resist a tin of it this year. It’s a black tea with mild flavoring, I get the white chocolate today and apricot today and it also reminds me of a cookie. This seems sweet without putting any sugar in, maybe it’s pre-sweetened? This is fairly enjoyable with soymilk in it, great afternoon tea. I am liking this much better than the Joyeux Noel…

This teabag came as a free sample in the Lupicia newsletter. I was expecting it to be a white tea like the Harney version, but it’s a flavored black tea.

This is a fairly likeable tea in my opinion, though the other reviews are not stellar. This is a lighter black tea base and the flavor notes of white chocolate and apricot are subtle but present. I don’t drink a lot of black teas without additions, but this is very good plain and would also be good with additions.

I would be tempted to buy more of this but I really do not need any more tea and hope to spend 2013 paring down some of my collection. We’ll see! hee hee.

Busy weekend with setting up the in law’s tree. I still need to set up my tree, once I find space for it. I’m still knitting more ornaments, sigh. Never ending! They take 1 to 2 hours each, but I have so many to do!

DRY LEAF: Smells like sweet sweet strawberries and candy!

STEEPED: Green tea smell, little bitter smell.

TASTE: Good strawberry flavor and creamy vanilla. Grassy base from the sencha and hint of matcha. A little bitter, but I think that’s my fault.
I actually made this tea yesterday as a latte (not really following the recipe card it came with) and it was very berry, vanillay and not grassy at all. It tasted just like strawberry bubble tea!

COMMENTS: Next time I make this tea I’m not following their suggested boil + 2 min steep and doing a lower temperature like I did last time.

Also, sneaking in some RLT’s Strawberry matcha would be a good fit for this tea!

I bought this tea after finishing my stash of “Blueberry Fields” from TeaSource. Figured it couldn’t hurt to try a similar tea from a different vendor. This tea smells like blueberry, without a doubt. It’s a wonderful smell.

Once brewed, the tea still smells like blueberry, but the black tea base is also present. The same can be said for the taste. I’m picking up a nice, soft sweetness from the blueberry, and the blueberry taste is just where it should be; it’s not too strong (artificial), but it also isn’t weak and under the radar. The black tea base is actually nice and smooth (this may have to do with my low steeping time), and meshes incredibly well with the blueberry taste. It’s more of an earthy black tea than an astringent one.

Overall, this is a nice, simple, flavored black tea. There isn’t anything extra special about it, and it isn’t exactly what I’d call a “wow factor” tea, but it’s exactly what I was expecting and I think Lupicia did well on this one. It’s a nice blueberry tea, and holds up to what I remember the “Blueberry Fields” tasting like. I may order it again in the future.

I drank this one earlier today while doing some work. I wanted to try this one (and once again, Alphakitty was willing to oblige… thanks so much!) because I love nutty flavored things and nutty flavored teas. I wasn’t totally sure about chestnut because I didn’t grow up eating roasted chestnuts or anything so I am not super familiar with the taste of them. I do love chestnut-filled mochi that I buy at the asian grocer, so I figured that there would be a good chance I would like this.

To me, this is like you took some of the buttery, nutty, and what I call cookie-ish notes that are naturally present in some awesome straight green teas and turned them up to 11. I was never able to properly identify those notes in those teas, but now I know they are chestnut notes. I would assume that the base teas contain some of these notes to start, but they have just added to them in such a way that it makes it seem like it is totally natural. Really, quite a delicious tea and one that I could definitely see getting more of.

Bought this one as a chance-buy. The dry tea smells strongly of the honeybush/rooibos, with a little of a cream scent. The orange is not very detectable.
The same can be said about the brewed tea, except the cream is a little less present.
This tea, unfortunately, holds little if any orange flavor for me, something I was quite looking forward to. The cream flavor is also less pronounced than I was hoping. It is mostly honeybush/rooibos, which I don’t mind the taste of too much, but I am disappointed that this is pretty much the only taste I’m getting. The time I’ve let it steep has kept the honeybush/rooibos from being too strong/spicey, and maybe the cream flavor is helping make it smoother than either of the two usually are alone; either way, the tea is suprisingly smooth.
Overall, I’m not sure I’d purchase this again. It’s not exactly what I was expecting, and while it’s not bad, it isn’t great.

I might try brewing it longer and see if any of the flavors peep through. I did brew it for a shorter time than suggested. If I find anything new to say, I’ll be back to update this tasting.

Waiting for Verizon all day (9 to 5 window, obviously now closer to 5) as our FIOS box thing is beeping non stop. The beeping is really loud and annoying. Also annoying, waiting for them to come fix it as I can’t work on a few things while I wait.

Need tea to keep cool. This one is super honeydew melony! I took this tea with me to Utah and it preformed very well under unknown water temperature and steep time.

blarrrgggg!
I decided to go nuts with the breadmaker pound cake and totally messed it up. Probably a good idea to follow recipes for breadmakers, not toss in extra liquids. I got a nice undercooked lump of pound cake. I tossed it in the oven and it over baked. Figures.

At least I have good melon tea to wash it down.

Oh man, melon tea!

I love Butiki Tea’s Watermelon Xylophone and Cantaloupe & Cream. With my Lupicia order, I decided to give this melon tea a try, especially with other tea logs saying this was more honeydew in flavor.

DRY: mmm melon scent! Let me at it!

STEEPED: Smells like those asian melon juice drinks. In fact, I have a melon yogurt aloe chunk juice in my fridge!

TASTE: The melon taste comes right through, moreso on the ripe honeydew side, though I get a little cantaloupe too. Very naturally sweet, I do not need sugar at all. If I added sugar, this would totally be like juice!
The white tea here is very light.

I’ll try a resteep later. I’m about to tuck into some kimchi soup and burn out my taste buds.
EDIT: 2nd infusion – less melon taste, but it’s still there and melony but less sweet. The white tea is coming out and is nice and smooth, yum!

COMMENTS: MMMm, this is good! I love the honeydew flavor! This would be a killer iced or cold steep!

I’m wondering.. if I mix the Butiki watermelon, cantaloupe and this tea, would I get a melon fruit salad tea? I’m tempted to try!

Courtesy of Sare – thank you! :) This is my first tea from Lupicia but won’t be my last. I love the blend of jasmine with a hint of grape, just enough so that it’s not artificial. It really is like wine in a cup, and it’s definitely making me feel more mellow. (Placebo effect?) My only hesitation is the smell, as it really does smell like hot wine. I’m not sure I care for that, but I can’t complain too much since it’s true to its name!

It’s also not sweet at all. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I feel like if it was wine, it should be sweet. But since it’s a tea, I appreciate the lack of sweetness. This is one I’ll have to try again in order to properly sort out my feelings.

I did enjoy it, just not sure if I’m in love yet.

EDIT/ADD: I dropped the rating considerably because I ended up dumping it out. I just couldn’t get past the smell. :(

Backlog + Sipdown

Back from my vacation to Utah! Ate lots of food, hiked around Zion national park and went to the Brazilian Jiujitsu school there a couple times (to blow steam off from being stuck with my inlaw family!) Utah is HOT! like 105f / 41c oven dry hot. I thought SoCal was bad!

I took a bunch of tea with me, all friendly to boiling water. Lupicia has lots of boiling water teas, despite being greens, whites and oolongs. I had a number of good rounds of tea and finished off the bag. Very good floral with a plum flavor. The oolong seems too grassy for the combination, but resteeps toned it down.

Uggg, hopefully Oolong Owl blog stuff will resume tomorrow. I’m trying to get my crochet work in order and all post travel stuff done.

I cold steeped this overnight and forgot about it. Now, having kotobuki for dinner with Manhattan clam chowder I made tonight. Ehhh, cold steeps have less caffeine.. maybe?

The long cold steep turned out very well with this tea – the base is grassy and creamy, with lots of floral. There is an aftertaste of sweet, slightly plummy.