New Tasting Notes

Lords Day Nov. 28, 2010 2nd Steep of the Day.
Needed a ChocoLatte Pick-me-Up
after a Long Drive from Church.
Great Soothing Drink after Long (150 mile) Drive.
Ready for a Good Nights rest.

Lords Day Nov. 28, 2010
Started the day out with a Road cup of Passion to Virginia.
Lasted All the Way to Church SLOW SIPPER, GREAT DRINK.
Bold Black Tea Good Fruit Flavor

A while ago, one of the local tea shops had a little class/preview session of the Tea Forte mixology set. You get 2-3 bags of each of their mixology teabags, two little steeping containers, and a recipe book.

I couldn’t resist. Booze + Tea? YAY!!!

My favorite of the set is the silk road chai – which I use to make white Russian chai drinks. Take the chai bag, steep in vodka, then mix with simple syrup and a milk product. Tres YUM.

Since I got this set, I’ve been experimenting with making a Earl Grey white Russian (and the testing process has been lovely) using other brands of tea. You can use any teabag to infuse in the liquor. And, if you go with Tea Forte, their teabags are strong enough to infuse multiple times (their literature leads you to think otherwise).

If you do not shun liquor, this may be something interesting to try. Their set is a nice way to start, but not necessary. Cheers!

I am new to the oolong world,and I am loving it! This is my first experience with Big Red Robe. It’s a blacker oolong with a looong after taste. Chestnut and hazelnut like. Roasted pungency.

It’s interesting its claim is this tea “heals stomach ailments”. I had the tea with a greasy gyro. Usually, I have a little upset stomach but nothing. No tums needed! There might be something to this claim.

At first sip, I didn’t know what to think. After my second brew, I became a fan. It needs to win you over.

So I finally dug back into my Golden Moon samples. I’ve had the family stomach bug that 15/17 of us got and wanted some ginger something to sip on. And now, halfway through the cup, I’m seconding everyone else’s comments. I don’t get a lot of ginger here. It’s a decent cup, not something I’d avoid, but it’s also not something that I’d choose if looking for ginger in the future.

Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren_pressley/tags/whiteginger/

Ooh, this smells nice. It’s an Earl Grey, but there’s something distinctly floral in the aroma. Jasmine, I think. (The official description concurs – jasmine). It seems to go well with the bergamot though. It’s a bit strong to drink plain, but there’s also a lingering sweetness – from the jasmine and the Chinese black, I would guess. Adding milk made this taste more like a traditional EG to me; I can still smell the jasmine, and it dominates the aftertaste, but it tastes like bergamot and black tea.

I would drink this in the morning, when I want a slightly sweet kick to start the day.

Thank you to LiberTEAS and TeaEqualsBliss! This is from a prize I won over at their SororiTEA Sisters’ blog!

2.6g, 8oz, 2 steeps at 3:15, 5:15

hello added flavors. organic is no excuse for too much. I don’t like when the actual plant material, be it tea leaf or herb, is completely masked by added flavors, and this one is a classic example of it. I taste the flavors of honey, lemon and chamomile, not the actual honey, chamomile or lemon. Does that make sense?

For the preparation and consumption of this tea, I used a small, 6 oz. gaiwan and boiled water.

What struck me concerning the leaves of this particular pu’erh was that some are whole, while others are chopped, ripped, and torn. This typically is not a good sign, as ripped and chopped leaves tend to “steep-out” faster. The smell of the dried leaf is vegetal and green…a leafy smell, not grassy. A bit loamy.

The first thirty second steep produced a medium brown liquor, with a soft smell. The earthy flavour bursts in the mouth, but it brings with it some distinctly rough edges. The aftertaste of this first steep is strong, but the but it has a weak forward taste.

The second thirty second steep brings with it an earthier smell that is also smooth and deep. The tea bites a bit on the aftertaste leaves a hard flavour under the tongue. The flavour of the tea is still full, but not strong. One feels that this steeping is relatively light.

On the third steeping of the same time as the others, the smell is “dirtier” now. The colour is a golden brown, and that bite has almost completely gone away. The flavour is smooth, but a bit weaker than before. This tea certainly lacks forward flavours and much “personality.”

I go on to steep it three more times. The fourth is much thinner and lighter; the fifth is no different; and the sixth, which I left sit for multiple minutes, barely changed anything.

I would give this tea an 88/100 on my personal enjoyment scale. The aftertaste really was quite pleasant. A tea such as this goes to show that age is not everything in a pu’erh.

This was not what I was expecting.

I have to admit, I was expecting a much more robust nutty flavour from this tea. Instead, I can’t put my finger (or my taste buds, rather) on what I’m tasting. A little bit of fruityness here, a little bit of green tea there.

In short, it’s a good tea. Not quite what I was expecting, but I wouldn’t mind drinking this to take a break from my regular black teas.

Backlog: This was a real disappointment to drink. Gaiwan brewing. Perhaps next time I’ll try something different. More details will be forthcoming then.

When asked what kind of tea he would like after we came back from our walkies (took him up a steep hill, omg, my left lung collapsed half way up and I’ve had a bit of a cough since!) the boyfriend replied, “What have you got in the green department these days?”

Green department. Not a lot, really. It’s all sample-sized (which I’d rather save so I could put some thought into it and post about it) or flavoured (which he wasn’t that interested in). He’s relatively new in green tea and have become rather hooked on sencha recently after having tried the Bolivian green I had, which was sencha-like in presentation, and all I had that wasn’t just samples were Chinese. I didn’t want to get him something radically different from what he had discovered he liked, but I didn’t really have a choice.

Then it turns out that my three tins with plain greens were all nearing empty. None of them had enough for a whole large pot. This did not really make things easier.

So it was either asking him to pick something else or getting creative. I chose creative thinking that if he didn’t like it then at least we had tried it and we could make something else instead. And also I’d be rid of that last bit of ancient Gunpowder of dubious quality at last!

So I took the rest of that and added the same amount of the TeaSpring Long Jing or as close an approximation of the same amount that I could get. I did consider chugging the last bit of the Bi Luo Chun in there as well, but decided not to overdo it. So Dragonwell + Gunpowder = Dragon Powder. Naturally.

Dragonwell is a type that for me has a very distinctive kind of flavour. It’s got that thick, heavy sort of cat-breath-y quality and it can get a bit overwhelming. I was expecting that to come through here as the primary flavour. Especially also considering the fact that the Gunpowder in question was several years old and somewhat faded.

What actually happened was that the Gunpowder really stepped up to the challenge, masking almost all of the cat-breath-y thickness of the Dragonwell, and for the first time in my life I finally got what people mean when they designate Gunpowder as a smoky. I have never been able to find that before.

So the result here worked really well. The Gunpowder got to shine, boosted upwards by the Dragonwell laying a foundation for what little the Gunpowder had left in it. Smooth and somewhat sweet, not really salty and not at all fishy.

I was surprisingly pleased with this.

This new tea shop opened up in Raleigh. It’s a small storefront, and apparently has existed for some time on the internet. My favorite part is the phone number: tea-yall. This was one of the samples they had out. It was iced and surprisingly flavorful. I’m not a huge herbal fan, so I didn’t get any to take home, but did enjoy the sample.

White Mao Feng tea, blackberry pieces, raspberry pieces, peach pieces and mint. (ingredients for this tea from Teavana’s website… when I read the description for this tea on steepster it differed from just strawberries and white tea)
It is a nice light white tea. The fruit and mint are nicely balanced with neither being too overpowering. Great for multiple infusions!

Today is my family’s thanksgiving, so I’m going crazy in the kitchen. The teas that I’ll be reaching for today are some tried and true favorites like this one – ones that I’ve already tasted, enjoyed, and about which I’ve already shared my thoughts.

I did want to make one note on this one, though… I read mrawlins2’s tasting note on this one where she indicated a similarity to Dawn… and I want to say that I can taste that as well. There are some definite cocoa notes… this one isn’t as bold or chewy as Dawn, but there are definitely some similarities.

Delicious!

I really like this tea. It’s my morning standard. As an English tea-drinker abroad I tried a lot of breakfast blends that just didn’t cut it. Then I had to give up dairy, and even PG Tips didn’t seem right. This tea got me back to tea drinking. It’s robust, malty, coppery, and tastes of Essence-of-Tea. It’s great even without milk. The leaves are gorgeous. I resteep at least twice, so this is reasonable in cost.

I am so glad that the weather is cooler. I was so tired of 100+ temps. PG Tips this AM. Tastes like morning to me. Simple. Just good tea.

Chai is always good…. yuummmm
I made this using the stove method since I was home. There were some minor mishaps since I’m not a cook but it came out nice! =)

I’ve had this twice now, and am surprised at how much I like it since I generally don’t care for cinnamon in teas. I bought this bag as a gift for my mother (at the MD Renaissance Festival of all places) because she loves cinnamon spice blends (Harney’s Hot Cinnamon Spice and Bigelow’s Cinnamon Stick are probably her faves). Anyway, she gave me a couple serving back in t-sacs so I could try it too. It smells like a bowl of potpourri when dry, but when brewed it mellows out a bit and the apricot and cinnamon are well-balanced and compliment each other nicely to make a soothing fall tea. The apricot floor is not very strong, or particularly “fresh” tasting, but neither is it overwhelmingly fake.

Eastern Shore has quite a range of blends. Maybe I’ll pick another one up from Herbalist’s Delight next time I’m at the fest (I go maybe every 2-3 years now).

The Final Sipdown: Day 16
Decupboarding Total: 31

And it’s another sample gone! I really like this tea – it’s got the sweetness and smoothness of a yunnan but there’s a little bright Darjeeling-like kick to the end of it that shows up sometimes. It’s a nice tea to drink straight, which can be a challenge for non-Chinese blacks (at least for me). If I had a larger container of this it would be very easy for me to drink though it is missing just a little something that would push it into the ‘must run out and get more of this!’ category. Still, a good tea that is definitely worth a try!

Drunk bare, no milk or sweetener.

I steep around. An intense affair with Captain Assam’s High Seas Elixir now just a happy memory, I come back to my old standby, this particular organic and fair trade English Breakfast blend from my local teashop, Britannia Teas and Gifts.

This tea will gently but definitely wake you up. Pretty sure Assam’s in the blend, but I taste much more Keemun this morning, and that beautiful winey-ness is so civilized, almost decadent on a lazy Sunday morning. I ate too much salt and sugar yesterday, and I’m sure I can feel the tea (and my rooibos chaser) balancing out my electrolytes. I did steep this morning’s brew maybe a minute too long — somewhere around 6 minutes, I recalled I hadn’t set the time — and it’s slightly bitter on the aftertaste. But that’s okay. My own fault. This tea can do no wrong, so long as you treat it right.

This is a full leaf blend that is also a real reat to watch infuse through clear glass.

started my day with this…only one bag left. Still amazed at how bold this is for a bagged