SpecialTeas

I tried this in a cold brew. I found it pretty offensive hot, so given the name I decided to give it a go.

It’s not as bad cold is it was hot. In fact, it’s not… anything. I can get some mild hints of fruity flavour, but mostly it’s just brightly red coloured water.

I’m officially considering tossing the rest of it, because I can’t really see myself brewing it again either hot or cold. There’s about a sample size amount left but it’s in a large-ish tin. So if I toss it (or give it away if there are anybody out there who’ll take it off my hands), does it count as a sample or a tin in the Next Order Requirements accounts?

I have to admit that I’m quite wary of this on. It’s so WAY out of my comfort zone you wouldn’t believe it! Maybe Wombatgirl is secretly trying to do me in…

We’re definitely in Tisaneland here. And even that seems a bit far fetched because there aren’t actually any leaves in here. Or flowers for that matter. Well, that’s not true, there are some few leafy things that look sort of like bits of grass. The rest is dried fruit. Dried fruit. I feel like I’m steeping up a health snack bar or something here.

The aroma of it has something in it that is extremely sharp. I don’t know what it is but it’s really really sharp, stabbing at the nostrils and very unpleasant to be honest.

As it’s poured it also takes on a certain specific red colour that all the members of the Anti Hibiscus League out there would be able to spot from a mile away. I’m hoping very much that it’s caused by beetroot here, though. Also, difficult to pour as the fruit bits kept wedging themselves into the spout.

After steeping that stabby sharp note is thankfully gone. It smells sweet and fruity. Like… warm juice. I’m not sure I really want warm juice… whimper

Oh.

Oh dear.

This is tart. But it’s not hibiscus-y tart, but still kind of tart. All I can really taste other than the tart note is apples, and really, apple juice? I prefer that cold thank you very much. I don’t think this blend was invented with me in mind.

I’m very sorry Wombatgirl but this just won’t go down on it’s own. I shall try the remainder of the sample that you sent me as additive to plain black, but as it is, I can’t drink this. My face keeps screwing up. Are you sure you’re not trying to poison me?

The Final Sipdown: Day 6.1

I’m starting day six of TFS on the tail of a sadly empty day. Yesterday I spent the entire day sleeping [or trying to sleep] off a migraine that culminated in a bit of prayer to the porcelain god last night and this morning. Yes, yes, all together unpleasant but I’m feeling quite a bit better today and prepared to make up for yesterday’s lapse.

Hello, Rose Congou. I recall being told that you were “not the best” upon receipt via Auggy and therefore I’ve been unmotivated about trying you out. Today, however, is a day for vanquishing and productivity, and so – here we go.

Oh, and also, I lowered steep time and temperature on this by quite a bit because I used a lot of leaf on this pot.

The dry leaf smells of rose, but I can also smell the black tea and that gives me some hope. I’m not a huge fan of rose anything, and so that has probably added to my trepidation towards trying this guy. Smelling the liquid gives me that mix of rose and black tea again, along with a hint of lychee, so closing my eyes, I tip the cup and go in.

Hmm.

Not unpleasant. The black tea – which lends dark, malty notes and a smidgeon of astringency – is the main flavor until I aerate it a bit, and then the rose comes through, especially in the finish. Lots of sweetness in the front. The aftertaste is pretty light, but I get a hint of…is that dark chocolate? Yes, I think so.

This tea wasn’t nearly as scary as I was making it out to be in my head. It was actually quite pleasant. Is it something I’ll be buying? No, probably not. But that’s mainly because pleasant or not, I still am not a big rose fan. Even though it’s surprisingly close to lychee in flavor. Maybe it’s just a hump I need to get myself over. In the meantime, I’ll finish this pot and enjoy the rest of this episode of Cougar Town.

Teas Downed: 13

MandyB sent me a bit of this! I’m so excite about it too!

It smells just like Lemon Meringue pie or lemon chiffon, yes! It’s creamy lemon at it’s best!

Talk about super yummy and it tastes sweet,lemony, and creamy just as it should. Delicious!

Thanks Doulton for sending this to me. I love it.

I knew this was a first flush when I laid eyes on it. Got this in the mail from SeyKayYay, and while I couldn’t tell from scent alone if I’d like it, I was pretty sure it would be something unique. After a two-and-a-half-minute brew-up, the liquor colored to a pale gold with a spicy-nut nose. Same attributes translated to taste. While I have tasted spicier Darj’s, this had all the wonderful trappings of it’s season. The best bit, though, was the complete and utter lack of astringency. Nothing, not even on a double-timed second steep. Wonderful.

A friend of mine who has her own tea business wanted to find out which Lichee Congou tea that one of her favorite tea rooms uses … so I did a side by side yesterday with this one and the tea she wants to match. This one does not match the Lichee tea that she wants matched, but it is still pretty good.

I mention this only because before I started doing this taste comparison… I thought that all Lichee (Lychee) Congou’s were the same. But they aren’t. There are very subtle differences. And… something else that I’ve learned (but with a different side-by-side that did not involve lichee tea) is that even the SAME tea from the SAME company can taste different depending upon the batch. There are even subtle differences there.

OK… I digress. Back to the tea in front of me now. Before I move on in my taste comparison, I wanted to review this tea in depth, which I am now doing for the Tea Review Blog.

It’s actually quite nice. I have really gained an appreciation for Lichee, even though I have yet to taste the actual fruit… I guess I should say that I have really gained an appreciation for lichee tea. It seems to me to be a fruit that is perfectly paired with tea, as it has such a unique flavor profile that is sweet, floral and fruity.

And this one possesses all three of those characteristics. The black tea is very pleasant, bold and bright in flavor. There is a nice balance of flavor. A very nice tea with which to start the day.

This is the tea that was calling out to me today. I wanted something bold and brisk… this one certainly is!

Very rich, brisk, and malty! It is enough to get me to shake the sleepy and that overwhelming desire for me to crawl back into my warm bed and even powerful enough to get me to compose a review for it – which I just submitted to the Tea Review Blog. It should publish within the next day or two!

A fantastic Yunnan. Peppery and brisk! Full-flavored.

Deliciously rich – I am enjoying this!

Delicious! A beautiful flavor, I can taste notes of fruit and even a hint of spice in this. Very smooth and well-rounded. I love it!

not a fan. it looks much better than it tastes.

This tea is phenomenal. It tastes exactly the way it sounds. Kind of like a vanilla earl Grey. I sell it with my own tea company- http://www.tiestatea.com/collections/slenderizer/products/earl-grey-de-la-creme

I sampled this tea, and I was not very impressed with its taste… the smell and appearance are exhilarating, but the taste does not translate… not enough almond taste to it

Oh wow! This smells so delicious. I can smell the chai spices, but I can also smell the coconut and the pineapple.

The chai is more cinnamon than anything else. It’s kind of like a tropical red hot candy! Yummmmmmy! I love it!

I’m off to write a review of it for Tea Review Blog!

Ok, I’ve confirmed that if you pick out the rose petals it again tastes pretty good. I can still taste a little rose but it’s not overwhelming. I cannot give it a better rating though because of the stupid rose petals.

I’ve been thinking about this tea since I had it at the tea shop and I finally had some money in the budget to order it. I went to specialteas.com to get it and it was gone. I was sad so I went to my local tea shop to see if they had some left (they charge 2x as much). They did but when I mentioned that it was gone from SpecialTeas, they told me that SpecialTeas is closing shop!

Anyway, I brewed some when I got home last night and the rose petals overwhelmed everything. It was awful. Why do tea makers put rose petals in tea to make it pretty? Bleah. Perhaps the pot I had in the tea shop happened to not have any/many of the rose petals in it? I’m going to try it again but I am going to pick out the rose petals before I brew it and see if that makes a difference. I guess I am not as sad about not being able to get more of this when my tea shop runs out. I’ll post again about this tea sans rose petals.

Lowering the rating for stupid rose petals.

I had a pot of this today at our new local tea shop (Yay, we finally got a tea shop here). All of the teas at the shop looked to be from SpecialTeas so I checked when I got home and sure enough, they are (but the prices are almost double at the tea shop, so I’ll still order from SpecialTeas).

This tea is new at SpecialTeas and I remember reading about it a few days ago when I was ordering tea. I was thinking that I wasn’t in the mood for chocolate and the rose petals in the ingredients really scared me off. But, in the tea shop today, they had a smelling station to smell all of the teas and this one smelled great. It also tasted pretty yummy. The chocolate is not very strong, the mint is there just enough to provide cooling on the finish, and it has an excellent nuttiness to it. I think I’ll be ordering some of this at some point in the near future.

*Update – lowered rating after I got some of this at home and the rose petals took over *

This is really nice… I enjoyed it better than a more expensive Ti Kuan Yin tea I tried from the Chicago Tea Garden. It has an amazing floral scent to it, especially in the first steep. The overall flavor was kind of weak though. Slight sweet aftertaste, somewhat vegetable. Overall, this is an enjoyable cup of tea.

Aha! This one came from Wombatgirl (who hasn’t been around here lately, what’s up with that?) and I know this because I have posted about it before.

I went and asked He Who Was Foolish Enough To Propose how traditional he was feeling this morning, tea-wise. He looked at me funny and asked me if I was planning something crazy, to which I could only reply yes. I would have preferred to take him by surprise, but he made me tell him what the crazy was before he would give me an answer. Where’s his sense of adventure?

Anyway, the crazy was brought on by a flash of inspiration caused by the first post I saw this morning being from Dylan Oxford who was enjoying his favourite genmaicha. This was shortly after I had breakfast and aforementioned male occupant of the household hadn’t got up yet.

It gave me that cereal association that I sometimes used to get with genmaicha. I used to rather like that stuff. I used to think of it as breakfast-y because of that cereal association. I knew I had some lying around, ancient stuff and not stored very well for its age.

Why not?

The first time I had this I said that it was all rice and not so much leaf. Actually I don’t know if it’s the ever on-going practise that has changed my mind or if it has just deteriorated a bit due to age and haphazard storage.

The flavour is very rice-y and starchy with a touch of salt, but underneath that I can definitely pick out some green tea. There’s a strong note of something vegetal and relatively darkish. It doesn’t quite have that vibrant dark green hue that I get from Sencha but it’s leaning towards that side of the spectrum. It’s like, I know there is that colour in my head, but somebody dimmed the lights so I can’t quite see it.

This makes me want to get back into green teas that aren’t flavoured with something else. That, Steepsterites, is HUGE! I’m a black tea drinker all the way, but right now? This stuff is inspiring.

Good morning Steepsterites.

I jumped back into the box of surprises I received from Wombatgirl recently, and this is the one that spoke to me today. I’ve only been up about half an hour or so and I’m still pretty sleepy. Maybe that’s the reason I chose this one. Genmaichas have always rather struck me as breakfast-y teas. I think it’s because the flavour of the rice reminds me of cereal.

This one seemed to have a serious lot of rice in it and not so much actual leaves, and the leaves that were there were broken and itty bitty. Seems this is the norm. I can’t remember ever having met a genmaicha were the leaves were of a decent size and two thirds of it didn’t look like it was rice.

But then again it’s been a while since I’ve had any at all. The last one I had was the malted one from 52teas where I didn’t really like the malted flavour much. Coincidentally that’s also the only time I’ve ever seen a flavoured genmaicha.

Anyway part of this choice is the cereal aspect and part of it was the realisation last night that when it comes to green my tastes seem to lean mostly towards Japan. I have some excellent chinese greens, but somehow the japanese ones just strike me as more interesting, without that necessarily having anything to do with the actual flavour of them, if you know what I mean. It’s a little difficult to explain.

And now that I have explained in great excruciating detail why I chose this particular one to start the day, let’s move on to the actual purpose of the post.

I have to admit I didn’t bother smellling the leaves. I could smell the rice already when I opened it, and it was rice and rice and rice and rice all the way through, so I think I’d be able to stell anything else anyway. After steeping it’s pretty much the same story. I’m picking up a lot of rice and a lot of the cereal quality, but the green tea isn’t really coming through much at all. It never does with these.

Quite cereal-y, very rice-y. A little salty too, but not hugely so. I figure it’s the rice that creates the salty flavour. There isn’t really a lot all else to say about it. I find it difficult to write extensive posts about these things because the primary flavour is just the roasted rice and that is a fairly consistent flavour.

I like genmaichas generally, but their individual ratings depend more on how I’m liking genmaicha in general on that particular day than it does on one being preferable to others. I’m liking it quite a lot today. :)

this tea is quite good, but i’ve tasted definitely much better oolongs, the smell is very flower like and calm. edit: the oolong kwai flower changed my mind about this one. I am not into oolongs anyhow, but kwai flower tastes much better.

Having your knee in a splint sucks. This tea makes it better. I had to add milk, I usually love tea naked, but no, not this tea. It just adds to the luxury creaminess. This is a diabetic/gluten free’s dream! I like how others describe it doughy, perfect word for this tea. It has a slight Fruit Loops smell and taste, as if this tea could be any better! I love teas that are called something, and they are exactly that. This is that. Thank you wombat for a sample! This is on my Shopping List.

I received this tea from Doulton. I too am not much a fan chamomile. I can have a tea with chamomile if it’s barely there. This one had too much for me. It was nice iced, I still drank it all, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. I’m burned out of lemongrass in herbals, so that might also be why I am not in love or lust over this tea, too. I have some mint tea laying around, I might brew them together.

It seems like a great tea for people who are feeling fluish, since you got your citrus and rosehips in there. Lemongrass, we need a break. I still love you…trust me, I’ll come back.

Hmmm… I took my time drinking this before reviewing. First couple of cups were weak so I decided to actually measure a whole tsp plus added another pinch. I got a real dark copper colored tea with a great smokey scent. I keep taking sniffs before each sip. Kind of reminds be of a fireplace that’s just gone out. This will be great when it gets colder out. The smoky flavor is more mild than it smells, which is probably a good thing. It’s got a slight malt flavor to it as well. Definitely a solid tea to pick me up in the afternoon at work.