TeaGschwendner

Does it count as a sipdown if you are probably going to go and get more of it?

Sipdown no. 61 of 2018 (no. 417 total).

It made an okay cold brew, but it was better hot. So after a couple of cold brew pitchers it went back into the Saturday hot tea rotation.

I like the idea better than the tea. If it had lived up to its name, it would have been awesome.

I liked this one more than I expected to from the smell of the dry leaf.

It has a strange, papery smell in the tin, but that doesn’t carry over (much) into the steeped tea, which is a reddish brown and translucent.

The flavor is rather more subtle than I would like, but it’s tasty. I get a nutty, caramel/toffee flavor from this that approaches, but doesn’t quite become brittle. There’s not enough nut, and not enough overall oomph to get it there.

I generally count lots of points off for teas that don’t live up to their names, so I feel constrained to do that here. But like the Leland Pear Caramel, the tea is better in an absolute sense than my rating suggests. It’s totally pleasant to drink, it just doesn’t taste like Cream and Nut Brittle to me.

I experimented quite a bit with different temperatures and water to leaf ratios. Higher temperatures (82°C/ 180°F) bring forward the dark and woody side of the tea and kill off the flowery notes, whilst lower temperatures (75°C/ 170°F) make the tea appear more flowery (roses and other flowers) and sweet with just an undertone of darker notes. Personally I prefer lower temperatures and 3g of leaves per 75ml water in a gong fu style session.

This is the first Pai Mu Tan I am reviewing but in comparison to other white teas (silver needle, blends of different white teas) I enjoy the stronger woodsy notes mixed with honey and flowers.

Bought this to see if it was as good as the Teavana Mango Black tea. The best I can say is it is different. The Teavana tea was a lighter colored brew with more mango flavor to it. This has a stronger black tea element and a nice mango taste. I think it will be good iced too. I was curious to see if Starbucks would be selling anything from the now defunct Teavana as they still own the rights. Currently they are only selling prepared tea under the Teavana name, a few pre bottled as iced teas and a few hot that I think they make from a tea bag. I don’t think Starbucks being a coffee company ever understood tea and the tea markets around this country and abroad. I had hoped they might carry the rock sugar but so far no dice.

This is overall a fairly nice tea, but the flavors are a little weak, both the cream flavor and the nut flavor.

While this is a fairly nice tea, neither the strawberry flavor or the cream flavor is very strong. Will try it as a cold brewed iced tea and see what I get.

Sipdown no. 25 of 2018 (no. 381 total). A sample.

The packet only contained enough for about 500 ml of tea, the lowest amount I can make in my Breville.

I wasn’t paying attention (I was talking to No. 1 about why he should not eat an entire box of Girl Scout cookies before breakfast), and so didn’t focus on sniffing the packet before steeping. I can’t talk about details, but there was a general fruitiness that wafted from the packet when I opened it.

The steeped tea smells heavily of vanilla. The creamy kind, not the beany kind. There is also a sort of generic fruitiness and an undercurrent of malty black tea. It’s a dark copper color, and clear.

To be honest I’m not sure I could describe the flavor of rhubarb. I know I’ve had it in pies and such, but it’s not like it’s a staple around my house. So I can’t say that this tastes like rhubarb or not.

I can say that the creamy taste is mellower in the sip than in the sniff. It isn’t overpowering, and the underlying tea and fruit flavor are evenly balanced and quite pleasant.

Real big question mark for me as to how to rate this, since I rate flavored teas in part based upon whether they capture the flavor they claim to capture and I am at sea with regard to a taste memory of rhubarb. So I’ll give it low excellent.

This is a wonderful dessert or afternoon tea. If you’re looking to cut back on sweets and desserts, this should be your go-to tea. It’s tastes like apple pie, but on the sweeter end. I don’t need any sugar or milk, it is very nice without anything added. I find that it cannot be over-steeped as well. I’ll need to go back to my local shop and pick up more before they sell out!

I got a pot-sized bag of this tea in the mail with a tea cozy someone made for me so I made it even though I wasn’t very excited about it. It’s very bitter and needed a lot of milk to make it drinkable but was otherwise not very outstanding in any manner.

This was a bit of a disappointment.
I bought a 50 g bag, first the provider from the city where I bought it from, I guess he didn’t know how to pack tea as he used the smallest bag and crunched the tea the bag was about to explode.

I thought ok, I can still work with it as it was my first time buying silver needle and wanted to have an introduction to it. I opened the bag and started inspecting the tea. Some of the tea leaves looked like they’ve been roasted as some of them were black, I decided to make my first steep and used 3 g for 300 ml. Used an 80 C water and steeped for 3 min.

The tea tasted okayishhhhh…. but nothing out of the extraordinary. My second steep was disappointing as the tea became astringent and started tasting bitter.

Overall no I won’t buy this again or better said not from the provider from my city as I know there might be a variation from city to city. Probably will try ordering some of it online I might have better luck but for now, it’s a no for me.

This is a nice, basic EG. The base is smooth, the bergamot’s not too aggressive (not that I’d mind if it were!). I don’t like it as much as Lupcia’s, my current go-to, but it’s very pleasant.

This tea is very grapefruit, no denying that. It pops, I think the pink peppercorn was an awesome addition to this tea, gives it a warm note. Has a nice light sweetness.

I absolutely loved drinking this tea iced. I got two hot brews, along with one cold brew. Flavor held up well throughout the multiple brews. I don’t know if I would like this hot. I bought this for the purpose to make iced.

During the first couple of sips, my tastebuds were confused by, to me, the conflicting flavours of caramel, coffee, ginger, and orange. It seemed too much and too distracting. Too all over the place. Perhaps I feel this way because there is the slightest bit of a relationship to my beloved Coffee Caramel and then suddenly not. A few sips in though, I am quite enjoying this. Now on the second steep and I am quite enjoying this too.

Thanks for this, Sil. I appreciate having a chance to try this.

I think I’m just about ready to give up on my quest for a great (or even good) rhubarb tea. I tried this one hot and cold-steeped, and in neither iteration could I taste anything really identifiable as rhubarb, raspberry, or vanilla—just some vague fruity/sweet notes piled on top of a rather vegetal base. There was an unpleasant chemical note to it, as well, which reminded me of my unfortunate run-in with DF’s The des Marquises recently.

Interestingly, when I forgot to take my brew basket out of the cold steep and accidentally let it go for 12+ hours, the chemical taste was much reduced (as opposed to the 6-hour mark, when it was still going strong). I still got an odd combination of vegetal base plus muddled fruits, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

I think this was my first blend from TeaG—my parents went to Chicago a few weeks back and were kind enough to pick it up for me—and I can’t say it was everything I’d hoped for. Still, their Earl Grey, which my parents also brought back, is nice enough that I’m still looking forward to trying some more of their stuff in the future.

After trying almost all this Assams, I see why this one is the most popular. It has a nice calming, rich taste to it. Low level of maltiness, gets better when it cools down.

When I brew this, I brew it strong to really get the flavors. If you only do 1 teaspoon, it will come off weak. Also, pay attention to how long you brew, it can bitter really quick. I brew it 2 minutes, sometimes 3, never more.

I think I have almost tried all of TeaGschwendner’s Assam teas. This one I got as a sample in my order.

I put this one on par with their number one selling Assam Mokalbari. It’s rich, layered, and multi-dimensional. I have had their other assams, where they are one note, and just blah.

This one is Second Flush FTGOP1. I like it better than the others since it does have the maltiness I look for in an Assam. Low level of astringency. Just a perfect cup of black tea one would want.

This is my first Japanese tea so I don’t have a lot of experience with them yet, however it’s a really nice tea. At first I thought that rice and tea wouldn’t work out as a flavour but it really does. The smell of the dry leaves is nothing special so at first I was concerned it won’t taste of rice at all, but it does. This tea has a very strong rice aroma and taste when brewed which doesn’t fade away to quickly. In the first few steepings, the rice flavour is dominent, but after a while the green tea flavour comes through

I got this as a sample with my order. This tea does not agree with me. I brewed it at 180 F (recommended on package is 194F!) for one minute. It is very astringent. I am not a fan of anything with chestnut flavor profile, this tea just made me more realize that. It reminds me of Dragonwell because of that. And I am not a fan of Dragonwell. It does have a greener Oolong flavor like the other reviewer stated. But that astringency is too much! I would brew it at 165F-170F if I had more to play with.