Featured & New Tasting Notes

Another I finished off. Possibly my personal favorite of flavored matcha I have tried. Tastes just like French Vanilla should.

Really cool wrapper on this cake! This sheng is on the light and sweet side, with notes of moss, linen, straw, hay, and floral. I found it quite gentle with a thick mouth feel. A nice light bit of dryness and bitterness that many pu newbies would like.

2015 Pin is quite different compared to 2015 2Late or Poundcake as it’s lighter. I got this tea with November 2015 White2tea club, and it says to try this cake again in a few months once the excess water in it goes away. That said, these tasting notes may change.

Full review on Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/november-white2tea-club-2015-pin-tea-review/

My second craving of the day.
You know when you don’t feel like trying a new tea because you want some kind of certainty in your cup? I’ve been taking all kinds of foolish chances on unknown teas this Black Friday weekend. Ok, maybe foolish, maybe curious, maybe thrill-seeking. Maybe it’ll pay off. Whatever.
Today, I wanted something I could depend on. The moment came for flannel pajamas and this. And to hell with the world for now. And my credit rating.

The first steep of this was amazing. Very vegetal, buttery, and mildly floral. I really don’t like florals at all and barely noticed it so that was fine by me!
The buttery part does lend itself to “popcorn” but I would never have picked out that descriptor without looking at the notes above. I consider Genmaicha to be closer, but in a different way of course. If you could combine the two, you’d definitely have a great snack alternative. And since popcorn IS my fave indulgence, well I’d be in heaven.
Also, first steep was rather drying. The second was less so, but then I found it to be more flowery, so not as tasty IMO. Even still, I really enjoyed it overall. Very tasty! Too bad I only had a sample. I may see if they have any next time I’m at the shop.

Yummy yum yum.

But seriously, who tasted cannabis in this?!

From the aged oolong group buy.

I am starting to love aged oolong. I usually steep oolongs with 3 grams in 6 oz with 1-minute steeps, but started out with a 20 second steep after Liquid Proust’s warning about the strength of the tea. I didn’t find it at all strong and after this first steep went back to my usual 1 minute steeps. I think it’s just that LP is a green tea drinker and I prefer blacks, though we both love puerh and oolongs.

The first steep started toasty, ended grassy, with a very long finish. 2nd (60 s): Back to my normal steep routine. Not at all overpowering. Nutty aroma, medium roast flavor with hints of nut and tropical fruit. Good finish. As the tea cooled it became much less interesting. Just a plain medium roast. 3rd (60s): This time the roast is a bit too powerful, smothering the fruit. Later steeps smoothed out, showing rich, complex flavors without the roasted component (other than a bit in the nose).

Usually oolongs peak for me in the second or third steep, but this tea just kept getting better. The early steeps had sharply defined flavors that sometimes seemed at odds with each other. The later steeps were much more integrated, with the rough edges all smoothed off. I drank this over a period of two days, with other teas in between, so lost track of the number of steeps. I think i’m on about the 6th or 7th steep and the tea shows no sign of fading, even though I’m still only doing 60 second steeps. It is just a pleasure to drink.

So, as some may have already read, I hate cherries! However, my mom really likes cherries and keeps asking me to make a cherry tea and I’m like: “heck no mom, I have no idea how cherry could taste good so I’m not going to try to make something I dislike”

So thankfully this was made and I was able to make my mom a cup…. like a huge 16 ounce full. Upon seeing the brew of the liquid and aroma, I had to try it because I figured a cherry oolong with some coffee bean would smell much stronger and be a bit darker than it was. The taste came out as smooth and balanced, but that is all I will say.

From my perspective: The mixture is 95% in contact/full. That speaks volumes in regards to tea blends because the majority are around 75% that I’ve noticed. I’m just picky because I hate flavors being added to leaf of low quality to offset the actually leaf taste. The oolong used in this blend is nice so that makes me happy.

I’ll get to my teas from Q2T soon and should have more positive remarks.

if you’re going to drink one JW tea in the morning, you might as well drink two! haha. Not much to say on this one beyond the fact that it’s still delicious and still one that i’m glad is in my cupboard.

This is a tasty black tea. There is little malt, bitterness, or astringency. It’s got a nice somewhat sweet, barely perceptible spicy note to it. I’m not sure what to call the sweet note. The website just describes it as mild and fragrant. This is accurate but I’m not sure how to describe the fragrance involved. The dry leaves had an odd smell to them but I didn’t get any of that in the brew.

I brewed this once in a Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 2 min.

Breaking in to the distressingly dwindling hoarded stash this morning: can now find PG Tips bagged locally, but not loose leaf. But some cold mornings, strong, sharp, stout builders tea is the only thing that will do. Like when it’s your week to teach seventeen fifth and sixth graders who are post-Thanksgiving sated, have been cooped up inside during a four-day weekend because of a multi-day deluge, and pre-Christmas hepped. Praying for grace and a sense of humor!

This tea is really quite good. It’s roast profile is really light which in my opinion is good. There was no unpleasant roast flavor. The tea had a nice sweet flavor to it, not sure what to call the note. I ordered the GABA sampler from Taiwan Sourcing and this is the first I’m trying. I can’t say I felt any effect from the GABA though. That is somewhat disappointing. I did steep this gongfu style and ten steeps so I drank enough tea. This order has also left a sour taste in my mouth. A tea that I ordered 75g of was not sent in the proper quantity, a 25g sample was sent in it’s place. We will see if Scott at Yunnan Sourcing does the right thing and ships a replacement. The 25g sample portion was actually marked 75g. Most annoying. This tea however was what I can only call steller. The fact that it tasted so sweet to me and I added no sugar to it is a testament to the processing skills of the tea maker in Taiwan.

I steeped this tea ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 7.1g leaf and 190 degree water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min.

noms. Enjoying this one again today since i need to get to 100 if i want any orders this weekend AND because it’s close enough to LB that it’s like a treat today. I need enjoyable drinking things since it’s operation “tear the house apart.” We’ve been putting off going through things in the house with the intent of getting rid of things we haven’t used in years and i’ve put a deadline for us of Dec 15 – when we start dog sitting for three weeks. So everything is going in to piles – keep, donate and trash. 900 CD’s? DONATE! (after making digital copies of them all…) etc.

I’m starting to pull out all the good stuff from storage, and this was on the list. I’m going to be getting a little more of this, so I decided to try this, so I know what I’ll be getting. The leaves are massive, dark, and I can spot some lengthy stems. They carry a dry wood and some spicy aroma. I warmed up my jianshui and placed them inside. I gave the pot a shake and took in this unique aroma. The scent was very light and subtle. I was picking up some slight fruit mixed with tobacco. The background scents were of decayed wood and some peat moss. The aromas were so subtle that I had to sit for a bit and try to pick them up. I washed the leaves once and prepared for brewing. The steeped leaves gave off some much more prominent notes of tobacco, leather, fruit, and some cherry wood. The first taste was intense, yet it was also incredibly light bodied. The initial sip was syrupy sweet and juicy with some underlying oak tone. The brew gave a gummy feeling in the mouth. The brew develops to a maple candy succulency (east coast people and Canadians might know about these candies). The aftertaste consists of a brown sugar sweetness. I detected no astringency in the brew, and I only tasted a very slight bitterness. I pushed the brew after a little bit to try and extract some more intense flavors. The brew was a nice bright orange, and I was getting more leather tastes in the later steeping sessions. The sweet tones faded for most of the session and were replaced by maple wood and leather. The taste also drift towards the pleasant sour side. However, in the final steeping session, the brew came back with a sugarcane sweetness mixed with the maple wood. The huigan is very delayed, but is extremely thick. The back of my throat had nice maple syrup taste that followed after the session was finished. The leaves are mostly intact and massive. The qi is not all that powerful, but it is intensely warming. I had to change out of my sweater in the middle of session, for I began to feel like a furnace. This is a very nice tea, but isn’t my favorite offering from YGH. I think this needs a little more storage, but it’s still really tasty.

https://www.instagram.com/p/-ojCjWzGQf/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

This is the kind of review that I write once every two months or so and I really don’t like them.
I always try to add positive notes about a tea I have drank along with the crowd that would enjoy it. Unfortunately, sometimes there are products that don’t get recommended such as fish at McDonalds.

This cake can be broken with the pressed of one finger and I’m not exaggerated. I can send a video to demonstrate if you’d like, though that isn’t an issue for me because I’m after taste and feel from a tea.
I pulled out four cups to try different timing with this tea at 100c which is what I always use for ripe. Every single cup to the 8th steep (where I stopped) had a grainy texture to the taste with a little musk. The fermentation flavor is here for sure, but has a lot of friends that I do not like. This mouth feel after is a medium dryness which I can’t get over. It’s about the same as drinking 16ounces of roasted green tea, but all of that into 2 ounces of liquid.

Honestly, the 2015 Green Miracle is a cake everyone should buy because it is absolutely amazing for being such a young little guy but this Hui Run isn’t something I can imagine drinking a year from now… though it will be next year when I open it back up to try again.

If anyone has any previous year to swap I would love to see if this is the same qualities of the other ones and maybe realize some people enjoy these tasting notes.

Enjoying the last cup of this, finally, so that’s another sipdown. Wouldn’t buy more since the base can easily go bitter, but if you get it right, it’s sweet, creamy, and slightly nutty.

Under 70 teas now! Yes! It makes me feel better about going semi-crazy on BF sales today. I haven’t made any online tea orders since the spring so I’d like to think my actions are justified. And hey, yes BF makes people spend more money, but in a way, I’d like to think it’s helping me save money since I made orders to places that I put off ordering since the spring anyway. So there.

The cake is a tightly compressed mass of dark green, with strands of silver, beige, khaki and white interspersed throughout. The dry leaf smells smoky and slightly fruity — pretty typical for a younger sheng.

I broke off 5.85 grams of dry leaf and gave the tea a quick rinse in 90°C water in my medium-sized gaiwan (about 130 mL). After the rinse, the smell of the leaf transformed from slightly smoky and fruity to intensely fermented — it was sour and reminded me of yogurt. I don’t mind this smell, but it was a surprise.

The first steep was very clear and had an amber tint to it like beer. The taste was refreshing: clear, smooth, with no sharpness or astringency. I noticed a slight bitter aftertaste.

The second steep was bitter and some smoke started to creep in. It’s possible I oversteeped this one, though, as I was slow to pour the liquid out of the gaiwan. Because of this, I noticed some astringency along with the bitterness. I took care during the third steep and was rewarded with liquid that was lighter in both colour and flavour – the bitterness hadn’t disappeared, but the fruitiness of the leaf came out to play. Despite the presence of fruit, though, the tea was still relatively herbal in flavour, with a bitter aftertaste.

The flavour stayed pretty consistent from here until the seventh steep. One thing I noticed about this tea is that its bitterness has a quality I feel on the middle and sides of my tongue, rather than the back of it. The mouthfeel and the flavour are both thin — this tea washes over my mouth smoothly, coats my tongue, and recedes quickly, leaving no trace. The colour lightened over time as well, becoming a pale gold rather than the amber it was at the beginning.

C’mon guys, read the full review. It’s got cat photos! http://booksandtea.ca/2015/11/white2tea-november-2015-subscription-box-2015-pin-raw-puerh/

Sad day. Finished the last of this one up today minus the little bit that is in a blend i’m experimenting with. this is one of my favourite vanilla teas from MF, though maybe not THE most favourite…but i’d be hard pressed to decide between the couple that i love.

I last had this tea about a year ago, and it’s amazing how much a year of difference makes when you start to learn more about puerh. I know by now that I definitely prefer the fruitier, grassier, apricottier ones. However, this one still has quite a bit of depth and nuance. Before I noticed tobacco notes. Now, to me, they’re still smoky, but have more of a “forest floor” tinge to them.

Drinking this at work, bastardized gongfu style. Decent. I’m glad to have a chance to finish this one off.

I had this one the other day and it was still tasty. Sort of an apple/lime delicious goodness. I don’t think i need to pick this one up again, but i do enjoy this when i have a cup.

Sipdown (121)!

First to review? I can’t believe no one else was drawn in my Cranberry Almond Scone! Back when I was picking my first three samples, this is one I was very close to asking for but instead I went for the Sangria.

I cold brewed this sample; the dry aroma was just so much more cranberry than almond and I really quite like drinking cranberry teas cold over hot normally so I thought this suited my tastes better. If the aroma had been more of an almond than cranberry I would have made it hot though. Steeped, the liquor was very, very cloudy/foggy but it was also this lovely kind of silver/moonlight colour too so while normally such a cloudy liquor would have aesthetically been a turn off I didn’t mind it here. It was honestly a little pretty.

Taste wise, the best word to describe the overall experience would be ‘intense’. It’s a good mix of sweeter almond notes and juicy, tangy cranberries. The cherry/marzipan like flavours from the almond really balance out the otherwise tart tendencies of the cranberry. I will say, it was kind of artificial tasting. I know the blend definitely had actual almonds in it (probably why the liquor was so foggy) but I was getting an artificial almond extract kind of taste as well. Artificial doesn’t necessarily mean bad/chemical but it did lessen the experience a bit for me.

The other problem I encountered was that there wasn’t really a whole lot here to nail the “scone” aspect of the tea. Had there been notes of butter, cream, or baked bread I think that could have tied it in but mostly this was just cranberry and almond. Maybe if I’d brewed this hot the balance of flavours would’ve been different and the white tea itself could have contributed some of those notes I was looking for, but this way didn’t do that for me.

Overall, I still really enjoyed this blend! It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting or looking for but I think if I was drinking it again knowing this is what it’d taste like I’d be much more satisfied ’cause the flavours that are here are quite yummy.

Clean, creamy and sweet are the operating terms here. This one, in addition to the Huang Shan, reminds me of Mengku terroir, with its cool frosting-like bite and pungent floral profile. There is bitterness here, but it comes on only as the briefest of afterthoughts once the sweet creamyness peaks. The soup feels heavy and spicey , in fact its brewing orange, but maybe I’m just pushing it too hard… The leaves do look pretty dark though. This one might be a good example of a young sheng thats actually good in cold weather. There’s plenty of huigan and kuwei…. at 52 dollars, the cake seems like a really good value. If you’re building a collection, I’d advise you to sample it.

A spicy chocolate tea! I love hot food and this tea has firey bite at the end. The flavor is chocolate with cinnamon over a light malty roasty base. The spice peaks at the end for a nice chili finish. It’s a medium hot tea, a good one for heat lovers or people who want more kick to their chai. If I had more I would of made it as a latte, I think this tea would of been even better!

Full review on Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/spumoni-green-tea-and-mexican-hot-chocolate-from-a-quarter-to-tea-tea-review/

With all the crazy sipdowns lately, I thought it would be appropriate to start something new.

I don’t feel like writing much on this tea because I feel like I’ve had this over and over again from them. Both Carol and Rose Royal have the same strawberry candy flavouring in it, and although the latter at least had an interesting additional grape note, they all seem repetitive.

So I’m left with a classic Lupicia slightly astringent black base with melted strawberry hard candy in my mug. It’s nothing to write home about, unfortunately. Maybe it’ll fare better as a cold brew.

So, it was Lala’s review of this tea that made me take notice of it, and my interest in this tea in particular was the tipping point for my placing that last sample order…

Originally, when I was looking at Lauren’s blends I skipped over this one preciously because it was an Earl Grey and I hadn’t realized what was “special” about it. I don’t personally drink a lot of Earl Grey so I’m at a point where, unless there’s something unique to an EG, I’m not interested in trying it. But currants!? I had to try that. Especially since Lala hadn’t described it as tasting medicinal, which is my biggest fear when it comes to currant blends. I still cringe when I think of DT’s Currant Affairs rooibos blend. That is one of the worst teas I’ve ever had.

This was so delightful though! I thought it was pleasantly light, fresh, sweet, and fruity but not in a way where the flavours came off as delicate. I tasted enough bergamot to know I was tasting bergamot and enough red currant to know I was tasting currant. The rosehip flavour was very light to me, any stronger and I think I would have disliked it but in this dosage I thought it provided the perfect amount of perky, sweet fruit flavour to the jammy currants. The whisp of vanilla was a lovely sweet note as well that blended the citrusy bergamot and jammy currants really smoothly. In fact, the whole cup was smooth: no bitterness or astringency throughout. Assam was a lovely base choice, as well.

Overall this is kind of the perfect breakfast EG in my opinion. Pair it was a scone with a little butter? I’d probably just melt. The flavours would be so good. This is definitely in my “Top Three” from A Quarter to Tea. Not totally sure if I like it more than Cherry Chocolate Latte Oolong. The two are just so different. But both are my favourites, so far, that’s for sure! If I find another two or three I like as much I’ll probably buy more of this one. Next year though…

When I’m off haitus.