Featured & New Tasting Notes

This tea is great! Off the nose, I am getting a muscatel & vegetal aroma with a hint of cherry. It’s a full bodied green tea that lingers little and offers a very light briskness (0.75 out of 5, really that mild). You get a light buttery sweetness on the tongue alongside and a milder vegetal than you would get with a Sencha (the Shincha is the first month’s/Spring harvest of Sencha). I definitely recommend this tea. Not horribly complex, but a lovely tea!

(Caution: brew at 60°C/140°F)

Oh my Steepster account, I hearts you like air. And like tea. And like my LJ account. Which says a LOT. You inspire me to do experiments with long forgotten samples like today, which is loads of fun, even when largely unsuccessful in finding undiscovered diamonds. And on top of that I get to babble about each one at length which makes it even more fun. Never leave me.

Right, so I’ve made an emergency pot of Lapsang Souchong. I need it on top of all this experimenting. Especially that last one there which I think must have been the worst of the lot. (Especially because it could have been avoided if I had not stupidly decided reading the info on the package regarding contents was unnecessary)

This is a stable. This is always a great cup of tea. Smokey and rough and JUST right. Enough experiments for me. I’ll stick to this for the rest of the evening.

I’m not sure how to enter the temperature. I poured the water into the cup just after boiling (about 200°) but it quickly dropped to around 180° and stayed there. Anyway, It was pleasant start to the morning. I still smell more than I taste in this tea.

This is the first time I have tried this tea thanks to MandyB. This tea is a wonderful rarity because the name ORANGE Dulce makes me think pure Orange Black Tea but it’s very different because it’s floral and sweet, too…it’s not overly orange nor is it a BOLD Black Tea Flavor. It seems to be a nice happy medium of everything! Very Nice!

Ending the work week on an almond-y note. I love this tea. It smells so good. This tea makes me want to bake goodies and fill my house with this smell. There are so many almond slivers in this tea that when it’s super hot, you can see little oil globules on the surface. Mmmm…globules.

Oh yeah, if anyone is interested in a tea swap, let me know. I have several greens that I’d like to give to a good home.

I normally don’t like fruit flavored green teas, because the tea can’t stand up to the fruit, but this tea has a nice balance of strong sencha and cherry flavors.

Desperately needed something for chapped lips and cold hands. My choices are limited these days. I accidentally spilt all my Earl Grey. The Yunnan Noir is past it’s due date. I’m not in the mood for Jasmine tea. Blood Orange tea is too sour for right now. The others were all samples and have been summarily drank. That’s really okay, because Gunpowder shines in moments like these.

I’m going to break a precedent and try and analyze Gunpowder’s character. The liquor is Orange-Red. Smells like good tobacco, smoked herbs and orange peels. It has a thirsty smoke taste. The slight vegetable notes that you can catch are very dry. It feels fantastic on chapped lips, I can tell you that. Has almost a scotchy taste. Yep, yep, that’s it, I’m done. I’m comparing it to scotch… And you have to understand that this cup of tea is so perfect right now, that I really don’t care. Regards.

My first experience in Pu-erh, and definitely not a bad choice for a beginners Pu-ehr.
This tea is great for it’s modest level of complexity. Change steep times by 30 seconds, and find entirely new flavors.
The downside to this tea is that it IS a beginners tea, and as such lacks some of the maturity of other aged Pu-erhs, but still a great introductory Pu-erh.
I find that this tea brings me to a plateau, so it’s a great “long day working” tea.

I love this tea! Trilogy, Grape, and Passionberry Bliss are my favorite flavors :D Great after a big meal :) Grape tastes like Grape Soda!

I got this tea in one of the steepster selects. It came in a sampler pack. It was really good. It was a nice black tea with just the right amount of orange and cranberry without being too “fakey”.

I was craving a dirty chai misto, so I grabbed my chocolate chai.

3oz double strength premade coffee, boiled used to steep 2.25 g of tea for 5 min. Instead of placing my ingenuiTEA right on top of the cup I was going to drink out of, I placed the tea concentrate in a pan, added 3oz cold fat free milk and heated it up again and then poured the dirty chai misto in my cup and enjoyed!

This is quite nice – White Peony with a kick.
Smokey, with a hint of spices but still on the mellow side.
Holds two infusions easily.

Got 2 steeps out of this at about 2 and 3 minutes. I didn’t really know what to expect here, thought it would be sort of boring but it’s definitely not. Both infusions are really good – slightly vegetal and slightly fruity. The leaves are very good quality with lots of golden tips.

Does anyone else like to drink this only as iced tea? When I first bought some I made it hot and I couldn’t stand the taste. My next batch was made as sun tea and it was really good. Like it was a whole new taste.

I like the mild flavor of the tea. It’s forgiving if you brew it too long, but flavorful and not overpowering.

Wake up, self. Look alive. Have only just done barely 300 words on NaNoWriMo today. As previously mentioned work was particularly tiring today. I hate meetings, I do. I much prefer to just zombie about in the lab and get the daily specimens out of the way.

I need to get some more words down, just half an hour more of writing would be acceptable.

So we took a black one because blacks always feel like they have more caffeine in them (even if they don’t really) and I went for this one, because I felt like something flavoured. One of my extravagant Adagio teas. I wish I could afford to shop there regularly. (I’ve seen a cucumber(!!!) thing among others that I’m absolutely desperate to try!)

It’s sweet without actually being sweet-sweet. It sort of tastes like vanilla smells instead of tasting OF vanilla. Hard to explain, but I’ve found that I rather like it a lot.

I’m still carrying around some tentative chai-inspiration from the chai-cino experiment of the other day, so I’ve tried a cup with a bit of milk. Not a lot, just exactly enough to cover the bottom of the cup (mind you, my current cup have a fairly wide bottom (snicker) and it’s not really working. Possibly it should have had a bit more milk, because somehow it’s like the watery-ness of the tea is all the more obvious. I think it’s because of the colour. You expect something with milky viscosity and don’t get it. It’s odd and sort of distracts the mind so you forget to pay attention to the flavour.

So, closing my eyes and taking another sip. Weirdly, this actually does help on the viscosity issue! It’s all in your mind, apparently. I wouldn’t say the milk really brings the best out in the tea here. On the contrary, the milk seems to get a kind of semi-sour sort of note to it. You know like milk that hasn’t actually gone off but has lost the sweetness and has just started to taste of fridge. I have to say that I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t work with milk. It sounds like something that would have been lovely with a bit of milk.

This tea’s definitely interesting. I don’t really know how to describe it yet. Kind of mellow, a little bit sweet, but that’s all I’ve been able to come up with so far. Rishi recommends using twice as many leaves for the same amount of water than you normally would, and also steeping it for 8 minutes. I need to try some other times to see what the difference is. Until then, verdict’s still out on this one…

This is my current favorite 2nd flush Darjeeling. As with most of the teas I get from Tao of Tea, this one is an excellent quality tea. The muscatel flavor and aroma from this organic tea is very good and I enjoy sipping it this morning.

For $4 you get 80 organic black tea bags. That alone makes this a steal. It is very nice tea though. I tweeted Whole foods about where the teas come from and I believe they told me China, Kenya, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). I drink it mostly hot with a little milk and sugar. I use it as a breakfast tea. Not a heavy hit of caffeine. Very good value.

I initially avoided this tea, thinking it would be like Celestial Seasoning’s “Blow Your Head Off” Peppermint. But I read Jillian’s suggestion to try this tea. I’m so glad I did. It’s now become one of the daily after dinner teas Mom and I drink. It’s sweet, minty, doesn’t rev you up and soothes the digestive tract. Thanks again, Jillian.

I have discovered something. This is my “frumpy” tea. I’ve noticed that when I drink this tea, it’s usually on a blah day. And yes, I’m wearing another hoodie. (Green Bay Packers if you want to know.) Drinking this tea hot = frumpy. Drinking this tea iced in the Summer = good times and fun outside. Pretty drastic difference, yet still enjoyable either way. I didn’t have any dried blueberries in this cup, so I’m not tempted with eating them this time.

Do you guys have a mood tea? I have days where the tea kind of decides my mood…and other days where my mood decides the tea. Yes, very prophetic, I know.

Definitely one of my favorite teas- I come back to it over and over. The flavor is kind of sweet and toasty. It reminds me a little bit of the flavor of honey. My husband thinks it tastes like brussell sprouts, which I think is kind of strange. It’s an easy one to brew- temp and steep time will not adversely affect the brew. Good for me, the tea killer.

While this is currently not available on their web site, this SpecialTeas tea is a favorite assam I have found that is excellent value. I look for malty assams that are bold but not astringent. I steep for 2 min to avoid bitterness. I drink it without milk or cream usually.

WOW…what a flavor. I read the description on Adagio and had to give it a try, and I’m glad I did. I just got this in the mail today. I opened the container and instantly smelled tropics. It’s a light amber brew, naturally sweet, slightly astringent in a pleasant way, light on the mouth feel, but with a great unique flavor and a hint of malt. I find that the flavors are more pronounced once it cools down a bit. The flavors in the description are quite accurate: “The one we have chosen intrigued us with its hypnotic orchid notes and lingering honey sweetness.” I’m already partial to oolongs, but the unique flavor in this one made me do a “double take,” if you will. This is only my first cup, and it came out pretty much perfect, but I imagine that too long of a steep time with water that’s any hotter than 200F will result in it being overly bitter.

UPDATE: A purposefully overbrewed cup the following day wasn’t any more bitter.