New Tasting Notes

I’m considering re-watching Stargate Atlantis very soon! It’s a great cast and I miss the show! This tea helps! :)

This is my first tea from Praise Tea Company, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. The dried leaves had huge pieces of coconut in with them, and nice little chunks of cacao nibs. The leaves smelled powerfully like coconut with chocolate making up the base note. When brewed, the aroma becomes a little more muted; more chocolatey now, with a more subdued coconut. The taste is back to primarily coconut on the tongue, with lightly roasted chocolatey notes rounding it out. As it cools it becomes even more coconutty. No bitterness to this one at 3 minutes; next time I’ll try 4 to see how it fares. This is a really tasty tea, and I like how the chocolate isn’t overly roasted flavored. I can see myself ordering more teas from Praise!

Drinking this again this morning….hoping the peppermint can help me jump start my day. It’s very strong so I tend to add in some Silver Needle (also a Teavana tea) and 2 or 3 sugar cubes. This morning it’s all about the peppermint, with a cube of sugar….yeah it’s going to be one of those days!

I really liked it, I found it a nice change from the whites and greens I’ve been drinking. The chocloatley notes are quite in your face but for the price a nice cuppa.

Genmaicha must be an aquired taste. This was horrible. Maybe I have to keep trying this and I’ll learn to drink it.

Sipping on this now…previously reviewed here…
http://sororiteasisters.com/2011/03/29/kama-sutra-revitalising-tea-from-the-east-india-company/
YUM!!!

My stash didn’t last long…it was tasty…it will be missed…see previous notes…

I don’t have time for a proper tasting note on this one right now, but I will update later. This is SO GOOD!

Thanks Ellen!

This smells divine – quite light and fruity, with the strawberry and lychee easily identifiable. I love watching this one steep – the leaves open up to be large, whole leaves. The steeped leaves smell moslty of tea, with inly hints of flavours in the background, but the taste of the tea is very well balanced – again, the strawberry and lychee are good and identifiable but they don’t overshadow the green tea, which I can taste mostly at the end of the sip.

A nice, sweet flavoured green tea which is capable of a very flavourful second steep.

This a pleasant Assam. The packages I have bought are marked organic. I have bought it several times, and the flavor and quality have been consistent.

This is not a complex tea. It is smooth, hint of maltiness, a lovely dark, rich taste. Takes milk very well. Would be pleasant mixed with another smooth, more complex tea.

I really enjoy this one. Has a bit of a splurge taste, a thickness that I find very nice.

If I remember correctly it was $9.50 per pound, plus taxes.

I use two rounded teaspoons of tea for just under four cups of filtered, purified water. Water is boiled in stainless steel over gas flame. Steeping time: 4:30. It might hold up to a tad longer steeping time.

To me, this one is good enough to give as a present, if the other person knows it is a daily, or almost daily tea, not an extraordinary tea. It is very nice to have an inexpensive Assam available at a place where one buys the weekly groceries. (I wouldn’t drive across town merely for the tea.)

ETA on August 26, 2011: This tea leaves a residue, not only in the teapot and tea cups, but on my teeth. As nice as it is to drink, I have stopped drinking it, because it is so hard to clean the tea stains off my teeth.

This is a clean-tasting tea, bit of almost citrus-like layer on top of the taste. It is nice with a tiny bit of lemon juice in it. To me, it doesn’t have enough body or strong undertones for milk. It isn’t good enough to savor plain.

The flavor is not multi-faceted. It is enjoyable, for what it is.

The bulk teas at DeKalb Farmer’s Market are packed in plastic containers, exposed to light. Plastic is permeable, so the flavor of the tea is continually lost through the plastic, and other smells get in. I put their teas into glass jars stored in a cupboard, immediately.

The price is comparable to loose Lipton at a grocery store. The quality of the tea is only a tiny bit higher.

It is a pleasant, useful, ordinary tea.

I use filtered, purified water. Boiled in stainless steel over gas flame. Two, rounded teaspoons of tea leaves for just under four cups of water. Steeping time: 4:30. I preheat two pots. One for the steeping, and then strain it into the pot I use for serving.

I like that I am not paying for a brand name or expensive packaging. The quality and taste have been consistent over the last six months.

It is an enjoyable tea, if one knows that it is basically a grocery-store tea. Much nicer than the store-brand, tea bags on the lower shelves at grocery stores, but nothing really special.

Editing to add, on August 26, 2011: Have been drinking this tea black as a substitute for the Assam. I use circa 1.5 tsps. for 3.5 cups water. It is pleasant and smooth, and it doesn’t stain my teeth like the Assam does.

So my wonderful wife, who is as brilliant as she is creative, made me a tea-drinking game for my birthday! I roll two D10s, and drink whatever tea matches the two numbers. If I roll doubles, I get to use one of the ADORABLE cards she made to determine which tea to drink. Squee! Best wife ever, y’all.

So, my first official use of the game was this morning, and this is what I rolled. Mmmmm…this was a very good place to start. I love vanilla and this was just what the doctor ordered.

Ok, so I knew it was going to be intense, but wow… I got a whole tin because I really want to give this one a good chance to grow on me. A lot of people are saying it takes them some time before they can appreciate it. For now, the flavour profile includes my grandparents’ wood stove. I’m sure I’ll get back with more later..

Backlogged from late last night … what’s nice about tea is I find it can help you stay awake but it doesn’t keep you up if you don’t want to be – for me, anyway. Does that make sense?

Made a pot of this for breakfast tea. Last night I was floating around on the Harney and Sons website, resisting the urge to order more tea. Luckily, there wasn’t a specific flavour that I wanted from them, it was just a generic tea urge. I’m also still a little annoyed with the shipping debacle from my pound of vanilla comoro.

Anyway, that web surfing must have inspired me, because I knew that I wanted vanilla comoro this morning. Usually we go through the torture of the beau asking me what tea I want, and me saying I don’t know. I rarely know. I have to think about it. Today, we skipped straight to the good stuff.

This pot had that lovely vanilla caramel edge that I so love…It almost reminds me of Sawadee’s Monk’s Blend which I find to be caramelly. This was just a great cuppa. The beau said his was a little bitter, but he always gets the last of the pot. : )

Nice, so nice, now a staple for me. Though admittedly I also love the original Thé sur le Nil. Description is rooibos with citrus, lemongrass, “oriental” spices and marigold petals. I am not so sure I detect the spices or any flavour from the petals, so a citrusy lemongrass-y good rooibos. Very good and pleasant, I love rooibos with citrus and this is so very good.

This tea has really grown on me. Which is weird, because usually I buy a bag and near the end I actually start to get bored with it. Here, I was put off by the intense malty flavor. Now that I’m half way through the bag, I’m used to the strong flavors.

I prefer Lapsang Souchong over this, but I enjoyed trying out this tea for a different smoky experience. I recommend this tea to people that share the same love of smoky teas. It’s “sold out” at the moment, but if you see it pop up again it is worth a try.

Lowest rating on this one is 84 points! GOSH! This must be some pretty awesome stuff then.

I will admit, it had me at the word ‘honey’. If I sweeten my tea at all, which is rare, liquid honey is usually one of my first thoughts. Especially if the tea itself already has a natural honey note to it.

Orchid… Not so much. I don’t really do floral. I’ve found some things in which it works, but I’m quite picky about it and it tends to be a detractor for me.

So I’m left with a cup of equal parts ‘Oooh!’ and ‘Meh…’ I wonder if it’ll come out neutral, then?

I’m sorry to say it does rather. The aroma is all thick honey and delicate flowers, but the flavour is… well… to be honest, it’s a bit weak, really.

It’s sort of top-flavoured. Imagine the sip of tea being layered on the tongue. Then the bottom layer is just water, the middle honey and the top tea. And that’s it.

Thin and watery, no substance that I can find. Considering the other posts about it, I have to say I’m disappointed. And surprised. How can my experience be so different from theirs? I used plenty of leaf, probably could have steeped it longer, but again, plenty of leaf, so longer than 1 minutes steeping is almost always bound to end badly.

As it cools a bit to a more drinkable temperature and the cup develops a little, the orchid comes out more, and it’s reminding me of the floral aspect of the orange pu-erh from Chi of Tea which also has some sort of flower in it. Floral works for me in that one, and now that I’ve found it here, it also works for me here. Surprisingly, considering my troubles with the other flavours of the blend.

The honey is putting in a proper appearance here as well, and it doesn’t feel so layered anymore. Or at least, we’re down to two layers. The actual tea itself still keeps to the top layer. It feels a little less weak and thin at this point, but I’m still nowhere near the experience everybody else has had with it.

Further development sees the honey and orchid take a step back again and the tea really come out. It tastes like a Chinese or south Indian type with a wooden note and some strong cocoa as well, but then that may just be the flavouring masking the base. I didn’t really find any of these notes in the beginnin when it was so top flavoured.

I don’t know… I’m definitely not seeing the same things in this one that others were, so I suppose I’ll have to resign myself to being contrary here and providing the lowest yet amount of points for it.

I have used the pyramid infuser and only steeped it for a little less than 2 minutes, I think it was enough as the color is not pale and the taste is not weak, but I need to concentrate on my sip completely if I want to find out the ingredients mentioned on the packaging, a part from citrus.