Featured & New Tasting Notes

This has a nice strawberry candy flavor, balanced perfectly with the matcha. With some sugar to bring out the sweetness of the strawberry, this is quite tasty and refreshing. I only had the advent sample, but I’d totally drink this again. One of my favorite DT matchas for sure.

Hello everyone! Oof, June was a wash in terms of me writing tasting notes. It was a busy month. (The anniversary of the death of my father, both of my far-flung siblings being in town, preparing for my boss to go on paternity leave, auditions and early rehersal for a play, and coming off a week where the low temp was 103 all week).
I shall try to be here more. I do love it so.
So I ordered this tea from Curiosa society, which is a shop full of “extraordinary goods”. I’ve ordered cool cards and gifts from them before, and when I saw they were selling teas, well, I jumped.
This is a strawberries and cream type blend, which always sound so lovely, but this came out a touch bitter to me. What is the steeping secret for this sort of blend? Further experimentation is needed.
On a heat related note- what is everyones preferred method for making iced tea? I have decided this is the year I really get the hang of it, but advice would be appriciated!

This is from Tiffany :).  Thank you!  I really tried with this one and I just am not a fan of Dessert By Deb’s bergamot.  To my tastebuds, honestly, sad to say, it tastes like bug spray.  I’m not sure if these other garden elements are enhancing that bug spray flavor or being overpowered by it.  Such a shame as I really wanted to like these blends.  Luckily Tiffany only sent me two Earls by Dessert By Deb so that was enough for me to try them and say I will pass on Dessert By Deb’s other Earls.  So now I know. At least the black tea is dark enough and offers some sort of caffeine.   But I couldn’t even boil a second steep of this, which is rare for me.  It’s a pretty gardeny looking blend anyway. 
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 30 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep

Do you ever have one of those moments where you are so engrossed in reading that you completely forget you are steeping tea? I have no idea of how long it was sitting in my gong fu but despite that this brew has turned out well. Soft mouth feel. A bit of minerality in the finish. Tropical florals in the aroma. Orchid, plumeria, a bit of jasmine. It very much reminds me if the air in Kauai. The flavor is subtle. Softwoods. Melon bits. Cantaloupe. The floral notes dance around like a slow tango.

Steeping the last bit that Vallhallow gave me. The first sip is very herbaceous. Thyme, oregano, Greek Mountain tea. About 3-4 minutes in the herbecous starts to dissipate and you find soft floral notes. Summer flowers in the dry field.

A July scavenger hunt checkoff and I wasn’t even trying! This has been hanging around in my kitchen so long I had to check to see if Turyaga was still around (it is). Not all the varieties in the gift assortment from which this came were notable, but I think the Ginger Peach was the best of the bunch. Nondescript black tea base holds up the flavoring, a nice even 50-50 on the peach and the spice. Very good iced.

Still in my cold foam kick and the best pairing is mint tea and white chocolate cold foam. Thanks Roswell Strange for the suggestion!

I’m running low on Candy Cane Crush but i have this tea which fits the profile. This is a touch too medicinal/strong so CCC is better but it still works really nicely.

I thought I would hate this since I don’t love smoky teas, but actually, I’m finding this to be quite delicious. The flavor is mild, but also complex. I wouldn’t necessarily even call this flavor smoky…I wouldn’t know what to call it! It’s almost lightly desserty, but it’s difficult to describe. I may taste a hint of mint? The black tea doesn’t show up too much. I enjoy it sweetened with a little milk. I left this to steep for almost an hour by accident, and it was super forgiving. Probably my favorite find from the most recent TTB. The resteep is lighter, but still worth it.

[Spring 2016 harvest]

A good yan cha whose aftertaste is the most intense and memorable aspect. Unfortunately, it only lasts for 6 infusions.

It has an aroma with notes of vanilla pudding, chocolate cookies, and cherries. Taste-wise it reminds me of tobacco, sweet wood, blood, and black currants. The finish is savoury at first, then turning more sweet and woody with a buttery flavour. The body is light and the cha qi mild and warming.

I mostly just taste oolong, which isn’t my preferred tea base. After refrigerating this, more fruit flavor comes out, and I like it a little more. I’m not sure it’s distinctly cranberry, but it’s close enough. I don’t really taste any chestnut. I prefer fruity teas on an herbal or green base, so this one isn’t really for me, but it’s not bad. If you go in expecting an oolong with some subtle fruitiness, you won’t be too disappointed.

Genmai = love. Perfect for anytime of day on any day. Today the high will be 32 C. Iced tea afternoon. This makes quite a pleasant tea when iced. Okay, I lie. It’s not iced. I just put cold tap water in the cup and off we went. The umami and grassiness perfectly complements the brown rice. The dusting of matcha on the rice and tea was the right amount and the coloring was an eye pleaser. Now I’m going to sit here on the grass and enjoy it while reading Infused by Henrietta Lovell. I’d love to drink tea with her someday. Also have tried it hot and it is as good as many I have tried but it is not the best.

Has anyone else ever left fruit teas sitting in an infuser after steeping, for so long that they go moldy? (2 days is all it takes in the summer.) It gets this unmistakeable, rotty smell. Quite gross. Same smell happens if you have a matcha latte in your travel mug and forget to wash it for a day or so. All this to say… this tea very very unfortunately smells exactly like the aforementioned smell. Immediately when opening the packet, I was hit with it and it made me quite sad. I think it’s the sarsaparilla root? And I think I’ve had 1 or 2 DavidsTeas with a similar resulting aroma (and gave them very negative ratings).

Decided to be brave and brew it up. Now my house house smells gross :/ Also braved a sample, and while it does taste better than it smells – kind of creamy with the same flavour, though muted – I cannot get over the fact that it smells like decomposition to me. Blech.

This can be a little tart and bitter, but with enough sugar it’s decent. The orange is pretty authentic, but it’s not really something I would reach for over an herbal orange tea. This just doesn’t have a place in my cupboard. I shared it with someone, who wasn’t able to taste the orange and found the floral flavors to be much too strong. I shared it with someone else who loved the orange flavor and didn’t notice the bergamot. My final cup of this I drank cold, and I thought the orange and bergamot complemented each other very well. The bergamot definitely shows up in a very floral way, but it sort of works. I guess my opinions have evolved slightly over the course of my 2 oz bag.

Wonder why they decided to call this faintly roasted instead of lightly roasted… My guess is that there is a percentage of roastedness. A percentage of roast that made this below lightly. Then again their website does say lightly roasted so…. marketing. The roast is indeed light. You can barely perceive the charcoal. At least at first; it comes more in the aftertaste. STOP! If you are drinking oolong and you have yet to pull apart your leaves do it now. How many leaves are on the stem? Is it twisted, curled, rolled? What colors? Okay. Continue your steep. The aroma is slightly buttered biscuit. The flavor is delicate. It has a small amount of minerality, a bit of grassiness when it oversteeps, floral notes.

Iced tea with salted caramel cold foam sipdown (215)

The cold foam really highlighted the caramel element here and of course boosted the creaminess to sell custard. Otherwise, the rooibos in this unsettled me as it seemed to be strong in scent. I’m glad it didn’t come through strongly in taste. I don’t know if I would have liked this without the cold foam but with it, it was a lovely way to send this off.

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – June Tea #1: – An orange tea

This tea, bleh, glad it’s gone now.
2022 sipdowns: 70
I’m back from visiting family. It was… rough. The most bizarre thing happened. My aunt is around my grandmother all the time so she would know… my aunt thinks something happened to my grandmother and it seems she had overnight Alzheimer’s and the sad part is, it seems to be focused on her direct family members. Like she has no map of her family tree at this point. She asked who my aunt was the day before we went for the visit, her main caregiver, then she didn’t recognize three others of her closest family, including me. The last time I saw her I distinctly remember her saying to me “I’ll never forget this lady.” She thinks we are all hired caregivers or long lost children she didn’t know she had. It’s terrible and hard to process. Not sure if it was consistent the entire time we were there for three weeks. She might have been embarrassed to say she didn’t know who we were, so she could have been pretending to know most of the time. I just kept pointing to the quick dial numbers on her phone. It was all of us on the top row. :( She did just recently survive covid so we are all hoping it is a temporary covid fog. I have heard covid ages everyone 20 years, so there you go. But to survive covid and then a month or two later this happens? uh. So sad. Watching someone go through memory loss has always been one of my greatest dreaded fears.

Made this iced and topped it with a white chocolate cold foam. It is delicious. A candy cane and white chocolate cold foam really is the perfect Christmas drink for those celebrating Christmas in July…or in my case, June. Just a classic Christmas flavor profile but cold and refreshing.

Check out the pic here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfUh5RouNu-/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The flavor is mostly a pleasant rooibos, but I get some strawberry in there too. It’s good warm or cold with sugar and milk. It doesn’t really remind me of a milkshake, but it’s probably the best strawberry rooibos I’ve had. The flavors go together really nicely. I had a quite milky last cold resteep of this and finally saw the milkshake idea. This is another one I wouldn’t mind a bigger bag of.

Putting a QR code on a tea package is an awesome idea! The initial aroma was bursting with longgon and woody notes. Bits of lychee too. Now I really want a longgon. The first steep started with minerality and fruity longgon notes but as the steep went on it changed to heavier wood notes with the longgon taking a back seat. Second steep held up nicely. There is a flavor in there I can’t quite pin down. I find it in other oolongs from China the mix of fruity, woody, and minerality brings it on and my palate doesn’t quite know where to put it. I brought this one to Greece with me but I think I brought too much tea with. Just didn’t have the time to get to all of it and there were some mornings we woke up too enjoy a good gong fu session. You don’t rush gong fu. Third steep is losing flavor but if steeped longer than five minutes it gains some nice dry wood flavors.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: Waited for this one to cool off before I started sipping. The oolong has a little tiny bit of roasty notes but it is mostly pretty mild. It almost reminds me of a light black tea but without the astringency or heavy body. There isn’t a significant amount of creaminess or mango, I am getting as a flavor so I think this tea is stronger than those flavors and they may be doing more to mild out the base.

I think I will have to try some different brew methods and see what I get.

This had a subtle candy raspberry flavor in the first sip or two. Later, it faded and I really only tasted mild, sweet matcha. It was pleasant, but it didn’t have much character beside some other delicious matchas I’ve had recently. The flavoring needs to be much stronger, but it’s not a bad matcha.

Thank you Adhara! This is a gooood Tie Guanyin. Heavy into orchid florals, some honeysuckle, and hints of other flowers like lilac and hyacinth. It’s also more floral than grassy, but green and fresh. It’s a softer green bean overall in flavor, and continues to be floral after each steep. Definitely better than some Taiwanese oolongs I’ve had of late, and somewhat similar to a Baozhong.

5 oz, 5 grams 10 sec, 15, 20, 35, 45 175-195 F.

Using this for the prompt “an African tea” (for the honeybush base).

I’ve never had a kumquat, so I don’t really have any knowledge to compare the flavor to… but what I got was a citrusy flavor that was also slightly melony? Like a cross between an orange and honeydew, with a touch of citric sharpness. The honeybush itself was very smooth for me… Usually I get strong peppery notes from it, but there were none this time, instead it was quite woody with a cinnamon sort of edge to it.

A nice cuppa on a (surprising!) rainy evening. I have hardly touched a hot cup of tea in weeks, as coldbrew season has fallen upon me, and it was warm and comforting and hit the spot as I provided my lap as a heated bed for the Chiya cat.

I was reaaaalllyyyyy craving this tea tonight but now that I’m sipping on it I’m finding it’s not totally agreeing with me tonight. The nuttier dark roast notes of the oolong are quite nice and there’s an almost maple tasting pecan finish that’s quite delicious too, but the flavours of the various fruits are building on my palate in a sort of aggressive way. They started out fine; a bit of a boozier lean to them with cherry and orange coming through the most clear. However, as I sip it just feels like coat after coat of some kind of intense brandy been lacquered over my tongue, and it’s just unfortunately pretty artificial.

My first take of kombucha, or at least the bottled one… but I really think I haven’t got any before.

I saw the bottles, and I knew right away I need to bring some home to try it. I wasn’t paying much attention to the ingredients, just picked original flavour and raspberry one. The last one was ginger/lemon which I wasn’t looking forward as it’s quite hot today and I prefer refreshing flavours.

When I arrived home with those two bottles (0.4 L each) I put them in fridge to cool them down a bit. They weren’t in fridges in the store!

When I have opened the bottle not so long ago, a strong vinegar aroma popped out. I spilled it to my favourite glass cup and I got nice golden fizzy drink. I started to read the ingredients, where among tea stuff were bacteria listed and cane sugar. And sadly, stevia! However, I took a sip, because I never spill the tea based on the ingredients only and I have to say it is quite pleasant. Sweet? Yes, quite a lot. Floral somehow. Stevia isn’t noticeable in taste. And in the end there is some flavour which I know, but can’t put my finger on. Something that reminds me Villa drink from Norway?