New Tasting Notes

Trying a new brewing method for oolongs.

First brew was 15 seconds and dumped.

Drinking second brew at 30 seconds.

There are only 2 ratings on this one…both really low. One of them…short, but sweet – they didn’t feel it was for them. Fine. I get that. The other…someone said it was a good black tea and it was great to dunk biscuits in BUT gave it a 29…so I am a little confused by that rating…I’m not being picky or negatively commenting on someone else’s tastes – I would never do that! Just noticed/observed that.

Anyways…

I can smell a bit of chocolate and it brews into a nice dark brown liquid. I agree with that same person who rated it a 29 in saying that it isn’t overly chocolaty-sweet. Or “Sickly Sweet” like they mentioned in the description. It’s a bit sweet but it’s also a little bitter – but in a good way – maybe to tone done the overall sweetness. The flavor isn’t overly so – so it’s pretty good but not intense chocolate – if that is what you are specifically looking for.

This pu-erh is probably the least exciting non-tou-cha pu-erh I’ve had.

“But you gave it a 94”.

Yeah. Pu-erh is THAT good.

Backlogging. Had this Tea on Monday. There is something almost obscene about these tea leaves, both dry and wet. I really like the cup, but I find myself avoiding this tea because the leaves kind of freak me out.

Backlog from yesterday. First steep was too long and took all the good stuff. Second steep was thus too thin. Sad.

Made a small pot of this to follow up my English muffin and get me kick started out the door to the gym. I added milk and sugar, because that is how Malachi himself would have drunk this! Aaaaaah. This was just what I needed this morning. Very similar to a good breakfast tea, strong enough with maybe only the barest hint of smoke if it is there at all. Maybe it is just the body of the tea that I am tasting. Good stuff!

This is very gently scented – but still pleasant.

When I took my first sip…I was thinking “YUM…but…this doesn’t taste like key lime!”

I continued to sip and noticed after it cools for a few minutes it starts tasting more and more like Lime…I’m assuming that this would be ever better iced and will have to try at some point.

This isn’t overly flavored but it sure is yummy!

Backlogging HOT…not too sure with the hot – had last night and will try again soon. It seemed very floral to me. I was alright…very different but I am thinking I will like this one cold instead. 70-75 hot…cold review coming soon…

backlogging…see other review…

Reached the last of my small supply of this, so brewing a bit weaker than I normally would and it started losing flavor about a quarter the number of infusions I would get using 8-9g.

5.75g with 225ml in a seasoned squat shi piao style duan ni yixing teapot. Single rinse. Start off using 83 degree C water and a 15, 30, then 45 second steep but moved on to a minute for the 4th-8th infusions and 2 minutes with 87 degree C water for the 9th.

Leaves are in many different sizes and shapes, ranging from broken down bits the size of small Keemun leaves to leaf sets larger than most whole-leaf oolongs. Smells like opening a bag of dry potting soil or an old but well cleaned barn. Wet leaves release the same clay-loam aroma, but also wet river rock crispness, stripped willow bark sweet vegetal aroma, and a bit of oven-dried orange peel woody citrus. Beech wood and unground nutmeg and pepper spice aromas. The leaves look an awful lot like spent leaves of Oriental Beauty Oolong (Dong Feng Mei Ren/Bai Hao Oolong) leaves, but a little darker green. Liquor is clear orange-amber with a reddish tint (infusions beyond the 4th brew are just clear amber, but stay richly hued). Liquor aroma does not convey the soil characteristics and incorporates more of a bisque-fired clay note and crushed walnut meaty nuttiness.

Rich body. Not super thick, but feels kind of “sticky” – the lower end of chewy full body. Light acidity and faint astringency along margins. Similar tactile impression to whole/4% milk. Mouthwatering with balanced umami, sweet, light sour, and faint bitterness. Usually I shy away from mentioning sour or bitter when talking about a tea I love, but these qualities are present to varying degrees in most teas whether we decide to call attention to them or not and here they really help tie the flavor and tactile impression together in a rich flavor. Most puerh I drink may have some complexity in the aroma and provides a good base flavor, but this guy actually moves through a good range of progressive tastes as well. Base is a vegetal-wood flavor – again, reminding me of stripped willow bark or the smell of sapling trees. Moist leaf litter, but no mustiness. Paprika, almond, terra cotta, mild unground peppercorns, apricot, bittersweet chocolate peanut shell, old redwood planks, cattail, a touch of prune and chipotle all move through in the flavor and nose. It is much more like a rush of people getting on a train than a dance in terms of flavor progression – the flavors present, then merge and change instead of flitting in and out as they tend to in more delicate teas. The body really does seem a conduit for the flavors. When slurped, more of the apricot and wet wood-cocoa character is present (and a sort of legume/cooked beans flavor not noticable in the draught) but the many other flavors are relegated to aftertaste. Aftertaste is crisp, slightly corn-and-rice sweet, and mouthwatering.

Lasts much shorter than the 20+ infusions I got off this using 12g in the same amount of water, but first 6 infusions are really good and disappear altogether too quickly.

Really yummy tea at a steal for the price. That said, I would not want to drink this every day. While it could hold its own against food, I feel I need to drink this on its own to give it the attention it deserves. Livelier than you may expect a tea with this level of body.

I’m drinking this right now. A good morning tea. The smell (pre-brewing) really reminds me of Earl Grey but the bergamot is not nearly as strong of a flavour as most Earl Greys I’ve drank.
A bit bitter, I think I’ll brew it a little less next time. Or I might just add some milk as another taster mentioned. (I don’t drink tea with milk often so I can’t (yet!) tell right off if a tea would be good with it.) Added a little honey.

I love this tea lately. I haven’t been posting any ’what’s in your cup’ things because this is all I’ve been drinking.
I like it with a little milk (I don’t know how much I kind of wing it) and some, more often than not, some honey (also unmeasured). I skip on the honey if I’m not wanting something too sweet. I don’t really taste the coconut much but my sister who doesn’t like coconut says she can taste it quite well.

Another decupboarding. Soon I’ll have nothing left at all! I am SO allowed to shop tea when I come home from the England trip of DOOM.

(And a completely unrelated note to those who have in the past contacted me via gmail chat. This should (hopefully) no longer be possible. See my bio section for new contact info if you feel so inclined.)

A while ago I was complaining about Darjeelings all tasting the same and how Indians just weren’t doing anything for me, and Thomas Smith suggested that I try a Nilgiri. I said that I didn’t think there was one included in my sampler box, but closer inspection has prooved me wrong. There was one after all. So I decided to try it out.

It has a funny sort of aroma. It’s very spicy, and maybe even a little bit burnt. Or a very dark sort of caramel-y thing. I believe I’ve heard people mention burnt sugar before, although I think it was about a different tea. But I’m sort of getting that in the aroma here. On top of that there is a funny sort of Ceylon-ness about. Overdone Ceylon, actually, which has me a little concerned.

Gosh! Astringent! Astringency times whoa! O.O It only steeped for a minute, how can it be this dry?

It rather tastes like an overdone Ceylon too except without the bitterness. The idea of a slightly-too-strong-Ceylon, more than actual ruined Ceylon itself. This is a strong tea, and it’s got a LOT of flavour. Without actually tasting like coffee (thankfully! Certain things just shouldn’t mix. Ever.) that’s the direction it takes my mind in. Allow me to go a little out on a very abstract tangent here. It tastes like the bushes were grown in a field that used to have coffee plants (trees? bushes?) in it.

Apart from that astringent coffee-esque sort of flavour there, I’m still getting a lot of spicyness, but the burnt sugar has diminished a lot. Oh there’s still burntness (which shouldn’t be confused with smokyness), but the sugar-y aspect is gone. This leads me to believe that adding a little sugar might be good here. So I tried that, but it didn’t really give me any sort of burnt sugar-y aspect after all. The flavour profile of the tea stayed the same and then just a hint of an aftertaste of sugar. I might as well not have added anything, because it made absolutely zero difference.

Underneath it all there’s a fruity note, but not a sweet fruit. A darker-flavoured fruit. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what, but it’s definitely something fruit-like. Sour cherries, maybe. It doesn’t realy matter what sort of fruit either, becuase the two other layers of flavour are dominating it so much.

If I were to drink this regularly, I would have to drink really weakling brewings. It seems to me that I frequently find myself complaining that a tea isn’t strong enough, but then when I finally find one that is, that’s wrong too.

And yet, of all the Indians and Ceylons I’ve tried out of this sample box, I thing this is the one that appeals to me the most. It’s got power and strength and a surprisingly complex flavour. It might not be over the top awesome, but it’s interesting. And interesting is definitely worth a lot of points too.

This is another review I’m writing up for Mike of the ’It’s All About the Leaf’ tea blog. Check it out here: http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/

I discovered upon opening the package that the leaves of this tea were considerably larger and more ‘whole’ than the leaves of the First Flush from Goomtee Estate that I also sampled from this same company. These leaves were an interesting and attractive-looking mix of dark green and silver, almost as though they were the buds of a silver needle white tea rather than a black tea. But then supposedly Darjeeling teas get fermented less than most blacks, so it makes sense, I guess.

The smell was sweet and hay-like with some floral notes, though brewed it took on a toastier aroma. It had a more typical Darjeeling flavour than the Goomtee first flush did – resplendent with muscatel flavours, though with considerably less of the drying astringency you’d taste in a later-picked Darjeeling. It was sweeter too, which becomes more noticeable as the tea cooled, and it had a nice, full flavour that lingered in the mouth and kept me from forgetting about it. As it cooled it also took on some fruity characteristics, with an interesting nutty undertone.

Of the two First Flush Darjeelings I’ve tasted now I think this one is my favorite of the two, although in my opinion both are excellent, complex, and interesting teas.

This tea feels like it has a lot of caffeine. On an empty stomach, it makes me shaky and feel very alert. Other than that, I really like it. It’s fantastic iced! Like flowers doing ballet in my mouth which is Antarctica.

I don’t think I steeped this right at all, but it is really good! I can’t taste the citrus much, but the mint is very clean and refreshing. Similar to Tension Tamer, but with less of the lemon taste. I only have one satchet, but would drink again!

Backlogging. Three days ago, late morning Saturday.

Overheated after the farmer’s market, I told myself if I took everything upstairs in two trips (extra exercise) instead of one (killing myself by weighing myself down with too much stuff), I could have a Strawberry Matcha lemonade and a quick cool down before I put all of the stuff away. Cool, refreshing, and thirst-quenching.

I was disappointed in this tea. It was touted by Upton as some fancy high end tea w a price of $20 bucks for 10 g. I was hoping this would have cocoa notes as Upton mentioned instead it is a Lapsang Souchong lite w/mild smoky overtones. Glad that I just bought the 5 dollar sample.

I’m almost ready to decupboard this. Either tonight or tomorrow.

I got the weirdest olfactory flash from this tonight. Are you ready? Bologna! It smelled like bologna! (Thank you, Oscar Meyer song, for teaching me how to spell this.)

Fortunately I didn’t get that in the taste. This is not a favorite and not a restock, though it’s been slightly more even over the course of a few tastings. There’s still a weird vacancy in the middle of the sip, but the chocolate has been more concentrated the last few times. I wonder whether the chips sifted down to the bottom of the tin. In any case, I had some on the bedside table last night and the BF sniffed the air and said “Chocolate?” So there’s an objective verification of its chocolateness.

I think if I want a spicy chocolate flavor, I’m going with Melange de Chamonix from Upton. I realize it’s not caffeine free, but them’s the breaks. It’s just so much nicer in flavor that the chocolate tisanes.

Finishing up this tin of sachets and decupboarding. I am likely to buy this again at some point. Not any time really soon, because it’s not a “can’t live without” thing, but I can imagine myself craving it at some point. Another reason I won’t buy this any time soon is that I found myself craving Teavana’s Caribbean Breeze, so I bought some of that and it’s very very similar to this.

I also want to try the Passion Lemonade at Starbucks sometime between now and the end of the summer. Just have to do it after I’ve been really good so I can justify the calories. ;-)

Anyway, I know this isn’t goodbye forever, so I’m enjoying this last cup.