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I think this is the first tea that I’ve almost exclusively cold steeped. I find that I actually prefer roasted oolongs this way. It brings out more of their sweetness and caramelized flavors and less of the roast.

For a budget tea, this one really impressed me with its depth of flavor. Elegant, brown sugar sweetness with notes of marzipan, raisin, and crème caramel. It’s fine hot steeped, but the roast is a little more assertive and loses its subtleties.

I tried the green version of this tea a few years ago and it was okay. The roasting takes it to a whole new level, unveiling real complexity and nuance.

First tea from the Georgian tea group buy.

Dark green strands resembling Huangshan Mao Feng. Dry leaf is fairly odorless until dropped in a heated vessel where it emits a faint green bean aroma.

This one tastes more like sheng puerh than a green tea to me. Golden yellow liquor with hay and straw flavors and a light fruitiness. Has that earthy-woodsy sheng type flavor going on. Ordinarily not a flavor profile I’m fond of – I prefer fresh tasting green tea – but here it’s fairly enjoyable because the earthiness is soft and doesn’t have the bitterness and smokey flavor often found in puerh.

Shincha 2022.

This was a challenging tea. I waited for a while to rate it as I’ve been trying to make it work to no avail. Now that I’m down to the last few grams of the 100g bag, I’m convinced that the problem is not me but the tea.

Despite playing around with different temperatures and times, the tea remains stubbornly bitter. Once you get past the bitterness, there is umami mingled with spinach, an oceanic saltiness, and fatty tuna. It lacks the freshness of new spring tea and just seems flat to me.

O-Cha is one of the OG online Japanese tea shops and usually has good quality teas but this was a rare miss for me.

Not sure if it’s just me or whether this is what the combination of rooibos and Earl grey is supposed to taste like, but I just couldn’t get into this tea. The aromatics were certainly inviting. Potent aromas of cinnamon bark, lemon peel, and orange from the leaf. I steeped this in a tea bag as Rooibos isn’t easy to strain well. The brewed tea was far from enjoyable. It tasted medicinal with a strong star anise like flavor accompanied by notes of clove, root beer, and menthol. All flavors which I otherwise enjoy but here it just tasted weird. I may need to try this with a little milk and sweetener as it’s just not doing it for me on it’s own.

Didn’t love this one as much as previous Kamairichas I’ve had. This one tasted like a middle of the road Laoshan green tea. It’s heavy on the grain and bean flavors. Notes of soymilk, chestnut, lima bean, and corn silk. While not a bad tea by any means, I miss the fruitiness and fresh flavor of better Kamairichas.

One of the teas I brought back from Canada. This one is unbelievably good. The smell alone is just divine. Like a freshly baked cinnamon roll. Brewed at boiling for 5 minutes. On it’s own, it’s cinnamon forward but not offensively so. More like cinnamon spice oatmeal. A touch of sweetener however transforms it into something like cinnamon buns or an apple fritter donut. Would have never expected something this mouth wateringly good from a fast food chain.

Another humble bagged tea that far exceeded my expectations. At $1.49 for a box of 30 teabags, it’s some of cheapest tea I’ve ever bought yet surprisingly good and a better value than similarly flavored loose leaf teas. Very tropical tasting with notes of honeyed peaches, mango, and papaya. The fruitiness is reminiscent of an old Teavana favorite, Fruta Bomba. Don’t taste the green base but for a tea at this price point, that’s probably a good thing. Can’t wait to try it iced.

Sipdown. A wonderful session marred only by my pocket pipe kyusu slipping from my hand during cleaning and shattering. Sigh. I love mini teaware for solo sessions especially with pricier tea like gaoshan. Luckily I have my 50ml shibo to fall back on which I’ll now need to be extra careful with.

This was the last tea from my Wang Family Tea order. I have to say, I‘ve really enjoyed all of the high mountain oolongs I tried from Wang. Not only were they all good but I noticed their tea didn’t go stale as quickly. Green oolongs usually deteriorate within a few weeks. I took me nearly 3 months to get through this one and it suffered only minimal loss of freshness.

Dry leaf smelled like pear and lily. Upon placing in a warmed gaiwan, kettle corn and magnolia aromas appeared. More florals and a scent of honeycomb following a rinse.

The tea starts off light and fresh, building body as it progresses through steeps. Luscious spring flowers with notes of orchid and daffodils. Not too thick texture or heavy body but elegant and understated.

It’s best when gongfu steeped but is also nice western style or when all of the infusions are combined.

Ran out of loose tea while visiting family in Canada last month and they offered me their stash of bagged tea. This was a massive collection of random teas and tissanes ranging from plain commodity tea like Pukka to exotic Arabic Wild Thyme tea. I sampled a bunch of them and this flavored tea from Tapal, a Pakistani brand, was one of the ones I enjoyed most. It has a light but natural Alphonso mango flavor, my favorite kind of mango. It’s not as intense or juicy as higher end flavored teas however the subtle sweetness and flavoring is really nice and leaves you wanting more.

Shincha 2022.

This has been my go-to for iced sencha all summer long. It’s refreshing and tastes reasonably good iced. But truthfully, the reason I started having it iced is because I didn’t know how to properly steep it hot. The steeping instructions from O-Cha resulted in a murky brew with a generic, salted grass flavor. I couldn’t taste any of those sweet grass and umami notes from the leaf aroma.

After some Googling and thanks to the tasting notes on this site, I was finally able to have a good session with it. Used 4g of leaf for 100ml and steeped 3 times: 1m @ 155 F, 20s @ 160 F, and 45s @ 165 F. Keeping the temperature low and leaf quantity high is the key here. The resulting brew had a sugar pea sweetness mingled with spring grass and pronounced umami. It has a mildly bitter but pleasant edge to it and the umami lingers into the aftertaste.