New Tasting Notes

Another Tea I won during the Georgia Tea Company Steepster Trivia last month! Woot!
Smells like lightly buttered veggies. Is semi-murky yellowish-green color.
Taste is…pretty yummy. It’s light and green – not grassy but not juicy either. It’s on the verge of sweet but not quite at that finish line. No funky aftertaste – I guess you could say light and fluffy and enjoyable. I like this!

Thanks for the opportunity to try this one RACHEL!!!!

This infuses to a Reddish-Pinkish-Purple type color

This fruity-herbal tisane is full of chunky ingredients that you can clearly see.

I can taste Almond then Apple then cinnamon. It’s more gentle than I thought it would be and I am grateful for that. It’s not something I would buy myself but I am glad I got to try it and it isn’t half bad.

This smells like Chai and Pumpkin prior to steep for some reason…

Almost done with infusion…

My water was a little cooler than I would usually use for a chai but it didn’t seem to hurt the flavors. It’s a nice flavored chai – not overly strong which I appreciate – not overly spicy. I really like this chai!

frou-FROU! frou-FROU! frou-FROU!

If you don’t want a song virus in your head, then please stop reading:
I have We Will Rock You in my head with the chorus of “Cup of, cup of FROU-FROU.” That’s as far as my mind will go this morning except for “you got tea on your face, you big disgrace…”

It’s gonna be a looong day.

Heat advisory continues … still experimenting with what’s good cold. This is, but next round I will double up on tea or steeping time or both to keep the flavor from wimping out.

I tried this tea last night, I have been wanting to try this for a while now and thanks to TeaEqualsBliss I was able to :-D The tea smells pretty sweet, almost like a snickerdoodle cookie! While steeping I noticed that the tea was fairly dark for a white tea, which I thought was a bit odd, but figured it may have been from the spices. Now, when I took my first sip this Immediately reminds me of a sweet, powdered chai mix that you would make at home like a pack of hot chocolate…except it was missing that oomph or perhaps depth, maybe even boldness? After all this is a white tea instead of a black tea so what could I expect? All in all I believe this was a pretty good tea, but not my cup of tea since it reminds me too much of a chai and for me I need a black tea to enjoy a chai…but, putting my biases aside and rating this solely on what this tea brings to the table I would say it is a decent tea and will rate it accordingly.

Single cup, 2 raw sugar

I really need to get some honey in the office. Really prefer this one with honey.

Not really a fan of this…all I can taste is a bitter bergamot. I know some earl grey fans like that type of thing so I am going going to score like I would if I couldn’t finish the cup but I am not going to go real high either.

This is such a nice breakfast tea. Its brisk, robust, chewy, smooth and I am even getting honey nuances this morning. Seeing the list of all the teas in this blend makes me want to try each one of them separately. This tea has a wine like consistency and has an underlying sweetness to it. Its one of the few teas that I have that makes me want to make another cup as soon as it is finished.

In celebration of today, I wrote a haiku about this tea (not real haiku mind you using moras, fake American haiku using syllables) but an attempt nonetheless:

Getting to work
Requires caffeine Green Black
Tazo Does the trick

This tea is simple and it gets the job done.

Yummy with some agave nectar. My cup was extra strawberry delicious! I love the honeybush in it – I kinda wish I could take a magic wand and turn all the rooibos in the various tisane blends in my cupboard into honeybush!!!

The smell of this tea is incredible! Sweet and fruity – and the cherries – oh the cherries! (For those of you who don’t know, cherries are my favorite fruit).

I kept the steeping pretty mild this time so the results were a little weaker in terms of the added flavours – I could taste the honeybush fine though. I can still distinctly pick out the cherry and the pineapple, particularly as the tea cools. The fruit flavours mesh quite nicely with the natural sweetness of the honeybush – I think rooibos would ruin a blend like this but honeybush was an excellent choice for a base.

The rating I’m giving this tea right now is subject to change after I fiddle around with the steeping parameters a bit.

Half a cup of this. Forgotten. Lukewarm now. Not really very nice in this state.

What a shame. What a waste. Bottom’s beginning to show in the tin.

It’s time to start trying to figure out if it’s a restock or not. If I were to restock I would have to order it online and it’s a long wait before it would get here. And then I might as well shop around in some of their other smokies.

I think it’s a bit like the Russian Morning. It’s good, I might get a sample tin now and then, but a full size tin? Not sure. Probably not.

That shop where I got the great big tin of Kusmi’s Caramel…. They had a ton of Kusmi sample tins. I should have a rifle through them one of these days.

(I am turning into SUCH a Kusmi fangirl! I’m getting a little ashamed of myself.)

After the Strawberry Matcha lemonade, I still wanted more green tea. I wasn’t feeling any of my usual green teas so I pulled this one out of the back of the cupboard. I think I could have used more leaf or longer steeping times as it was weaker than I remember. It tasted more of cherries than green tea. I think I just had a odd set of steeps tonight.

2nd steep: 1 min.

Oh no! I only have 2-3 more portions of Strawberry Matcha left. I don’t know what I’ll do then. (Frank, you HAVE to reblend! Or do more matcha blends!)

Made a Strawberry Matcha lemonade after dinner. I use more lemonade than usual and oddly I could taste the matcha and the strawberry more than before. The best one I’ve made yet.

After not acting on my desire for Earl Grey as my morning cup yesterday, I decided to make a London Fog this morning. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that A&D’s Earl Grey doesn’t make a good London Fog. It just doesn’t have a strong enough black tea taste to make the London Fog taste like tea. I used a bit extra leaf and steeped the tea for about 10 minutes today and used only a bit of milk. I got milky vanilla orange water, more vanilla than orange actually.

Yup, having this again. I’m starting to see a pattern developing. Peach Passion followed by Sleepytime Extra. Not a bad pattern, but I wish it was with a yummy loose leaf.

Strong strong vanilla aroma on opening the pouch. Those chunks of real vanilla bean are going strong. However, much less taste on the tongue in the tea. Need to try this with a little milk or kick to see if the fats or alcohol bring out more of the vanilla. The tea itself is standard Rishi black.

I made this tea 3 times, using different amounts of leaves each time (it’s hard to estimate the amount, as it’s packed so tightly), and I found the amount that suits me. I’m no pu erh expert, but this is one excellent cup of tea. It’s woody, but light, and very soothing. I somehow feel stronger and healthier after a few cups of this. Lasted for about 5 infusions. I only ordered a small sample, but now think I need a much larger quantity of this tea.

One’s impression of Liu Bao is a matter of perspective in how it compares to ripe puerh. Personally I love ripe puerh so Liu Bao comes off as a more plain puerh like tea without as much flavor. I have friends who like Liu Bao more than ripe puerh who say that it has a much cleaner taste. Regardless this is a tea worth trying at least once.

I liked this tea a lot, when i first drank it. However I didn’t realize just how much I had liked it, until a few days after my little sample was finished, when I started to really crave more of that gentle smoky taste. I think I need to give it a higher rating that I originally had.

Having another cup of this late at night, and it is excellent as always. Prepared with sweetened condensed milk, this is giving me a Fruit Stripe gum vibe on top of the usual cocoa and chicory notes. Not what I expected, but I’ll take it. In the months since first trying it, I still have not had any other tea like Dawn. It is truly an accomplishment.