New Tasting Notes

I enjoy jasmine tea, however, once again, I get snagged into buying it after trying the samples. Even though I purchased every type of product pushed to me from this store, I can’t get my tea to taste anything like the samples they had there. Makes me upset.

My issue with this tea, is that I had an amazing sample in the store, which lead to me purchasing both blends of teas in seperate containers, a measuring spoon, kettle, and so on, spent a lot of money, even on the exact sugar they use. I followed the directions on the sticker, and still can’t get it to taste anything like the in store sample. Very irritating.

When I am running late, sometimes things get messed up. This tea, for instance. I’m not sure exactly what I did wrong – too much leaf? no sugar? too much milk? – but something happened that made this tea not as happy today. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It was still good. Reminded me of Golden Moon’s Vanilla Jasmine actually. But normally this tea is better than GM’s Vanilla Jasmine. And when a little milk and sugar is added, it makes me think of chocolate and vanilla, swirled together. But today, it was just a little flat and a little more cream soda vanilla than chocolate vanilla.

Ah well. Maybe I need to get up earlier so I have more time to properly make my tea.

I think I may have steeped all the honkin’ huge currants in this blend already…but…here-goes…

It’s still good but less Currant…still yummers tho!

Strawberries + chocolate + tea = yes please.

got a sudden urge for this after reading about PG tips vs. Builders tea. This is just my fave black tea blend (I didn’t drink much black tea until recently). I just love how the hint of floral sweetness blends with the brisk maltiness into a more complex blend than I expected from these teabags. If I could handle the caffeine I’d probably drink this every morning.

This is my 2nd cup (2nd tea, that is) of the day! Juuuuuust finishing the infusion…After this one I only have 1 more cup’s-worth left. That seems to be the ‘thing’ with me lately…I’m just at the end of a bunch of my teas…eeek!

Anyhow…
This one is more smooth this time around and I can taste just hints of both the coconut as well as a creaminess accompanying the black tea taste.

+1 on the rating…because I seem to be going back to this one often…

Tried this again this morning, brewed very quickly, about two minutes and added a few crystals of Rock Sugar. Still not where I want to be with this tea, still a little too bitter, still no notes of peach or cucumber. Going to have to keep playing with brew times and additives to get this right I think.

I know green and black blends can be very good, I am just hoping I can get this one to be where I really truly enjoy it.

I’m getting mostly mint and black tea today…still nice tho. Only have one more serving left after this…sigh…it will be missed…

Wow! I don’t think I ever had a tea quite like this! It was STRANGE and DELICIOUS! I felt as if I was having an exotic treat from a far off land…in the middle of my parlor in New Jersey! The pear really did taste like a perfectly ripe pear – I loved the taste!! and the honey was really flavorful in almost a musky sort of way, and I didn’t find it overly sweet. It’s certainly not something that I’d want every day, but when I’m in the mood for something unusual, this would be a perfect one! I would purchase a full size of this tea for when the mood struck.

As you can probably tell, my Golden Moon sampler came yesterday :) I ordered it on Monday afternoon and it arrived on Wednesday – excellent turnaround! The ordering process was painless, and I was updated with a tracking number when it shipped.

This is one of my favorite green teas. Not cheap but worth it for special mornings (like today). I steep it a little longer than some of my other greens without any detriment which is really nice. This morning, I notice that the liquor has a wonderful straw yellow color, a nice rounded fullness in the mouth, and there is an excellent balance of vanilla head notes with a soft maltiness that just lingers on forever. Mmmm…so good.

I like oolong. I enjoy Jasmine. For some reason this morning this combo isn’t working for me today. Maybe I will like it better on the second, third and fourth infusions.

This is another of the samples I purchased from SanTion, think I’ll be going back for more. Beautiful dry leaves, thick with golden buds and some smaller dark leaves, finely twisted. The dry leaves smell of dark caramel, milk chocolate and hints of something musky like rose. The wet leaves are kind of malty, burnt caramel possibly? The liquor doesn’t have a strong aroma but is an awesome dark amber colour, like maple syrup. The flavour is slightly burnt and bitter, in a good/chocolate kind of way; I’ve read that some people find molasses-y tastes in Yunnan and I see how that could be one way of describing this flavour. Medium body I think, and slightly astringent with a bit of malt. I liked this so much I drank the whole sample (4 single-cup pots’ worth – 2.5g at a time, 2 steepings) this afternoon. The second infusion had good colour and the same but slightly less flavour, although it was pretty good considering that I steeped the leaves for about 4 minutes each time.

While a little awkward, due to the fact that if I close my eyes it tastes exactly how I sense a warmed lime Perrier would taste, I think I may end up enjoying this unique sample of green tea. The citrus flavor, while obvious and strong gives this green an otherwise surprisingly refreshing finish. The second steep (3 minutes) was just right and diluted the punch to the face that the first steep gives. Not my favorite, but enjoyable none the less.

Yesterday evening, it started snowing. I am no stranger to snow, but it’s been noticeably absent from these parts for the past number of years. We’ll get one, maybe two inches – barely enough to cover the ground. When I was in high school, we’d hope against hope that the school board would take pity on us and cancel school for the day [and since we usually don’t get much they typically would, even though it was definitely drivable].

This year, we got dumped with 14-16 inches during the big east coast snowfall. In between then and now, we received a few more inches. Yesterday evening, the weather graced us with another 4-6. This has prompted a number of silly hash tags on twitter, like #snOMG, #snowpocalypse, and #precipageddon [that last one may be my favorite].

Last night’s snow was packing snow. For those who might not be familiar, that means it was coming down in big, airy flakes that are optimal for creating those spherical orbs of crystallized H20 that people sometimes like to chuck at each other or stack into vaguely humanoid forms. This was the kind of snow that used to get me crazy excited as a child, because I knew I’d be decking a few kids in my neighborhood before someone got hurt and we all got yelled at. [Ah, childhood.] Even now, it’s the snow that I find the prettiest. There’s something romantic about it, and it demands a tea with a hazy warmth about it.

Deciding to chance it on something new, I brewed up a cup of Vanilla Dian Hong while I watched the flakes float silently down outside in between physics problems. [I should add at this point that this is one of my favorite contemplative “it’s snowing outside” songs ever – http://bit.ly/c5811d – should you need/want one.] So I sat there, working through problems, watching the snow, and smelling the tea while I waited for it to cool.

It smelled like vanilla, unsurprisingly, but with an edge. It almost smelled…malty. Maybe earthy? It reminded me a bit of pu-erh, actually, and I did find that surprising. Once I thought it had cooled enough to sip without fear of scalding, I went ahead and slurped in a bit.

I’m not sure how to describe what transpired, but it resulted in one of the more interesting mouthfeels I’ve had in a while. It was as though the outside borders of the liquid was watery; tiptoeing on but not quite breaking ground into bitter. It was a little metallic, in a way, almost…coppery? The center of tea, however, was rich and flavorful. This was all in one mouthful, and all when it was held in place without swallowing, and unfortunately that’s the best I can do to explain it.

The center of the tea didn’t have a lot of vanilla taste to me, which was maybe a little disappointing, but it did taste like something good. Part of it was malt. That was unmistakable to me, but it took me a long time to place what the other thing was. Once I did, it was one of those things that made me “D’oh” out loud. It tasted like graham cracker. I haven’t had graham crackers in a long time. Realizing that this is what I was tasting almost instantly transported me back to when I was little and my brother would fight at the end of lunch over who got to split the cracker down its perforated seam. I used to like to dunk my sections of cracker in my apple juice. [Don’t make that face at me; it’s good! Seven-year-old me promises. Cross her heart!]

As the tea cooled down to lukewarm, the vanilla came out of hiding and was much more present in the tea, which made me smile. Sometimes, when the sweetness would fade away at the tip of my tongue, I could taste a spicy puff of black pepper. When I exhaled, I could taste the vanilla on my breath, and the scent rising out of my cup began to remind me of pipe tobacco.

This tea was best to me at a bit below hot to lukewarm. It’s something that I’m looking forward to trying again, because I found it to be pretty complex. It lent itself very well to homework and snow, and since we’re supposed to be getting more snow in soon [and I doubt my load of homework’s going to lighten before the semester’s over], I may find myself in another opportune setting this weekend.

Steepsterites, I started going through my dashboard, realized that I have way too much to catch up on, then realized that I have a lot of tea to log, and then realized that I have email from a week ago that I still needed to respond to, and then realized that it was already 1:30 AM.

When did that happen? It was 11:00 PM two minutes ago! I demand to know where all that time slipped away to. Probably somewhere on the island with Jack and Sawyer and Kate and Desmond. Mm…Desmond. But I digress. [Again.]

Anyhow, you’ll have to bear with me as I slowly, slowly, [or maybe not so much, because 14-odd days of logs is really daunting] try and catch up with what’s been going on in the Steepster-verse. I feel like I’ve finally nailed a decent rhythm so far as school goes, but I’ve got a bit of crazy week coming up and so I’m just letting you know I might be fading in and out a bit [not unlike AT&T’s wireless signal – I’m sorry but I couldn’t help it; their commercials have been driving me crazy]. Okay, on to the tea.

I’ve had some pretty bad Earl Grey in the span of my tea drinking experience. For me, most Earl Greys tend to fall in the middling to bleh range. Andrews and Dunham’s definitely doesn’t land with the majority.

Is this the best Earl Grey I’ve had? No. But it’s solid. The bergamot is visible, but not overwhelming, and I found the finish to be sweet. Overall, it was a very smooth tea, though I did notice it getting a little bitter as it cooled.

I don’t think that this is going to be an Earl Grey that knocks people over with wow factor [especially those drinkers that are more discerning in their Earl Grey tastes than I], but I also don’t think it would be disappointing. It’s one of those teas that I’ll enjoy drinking until it’s gone, but doesn’t scream for a re-order.

MMMMMMM!!!

This Earl Grey is the BEST tea to make a latte/milk tea out of. It has plenty of body and flavor to stand up against the milk and sugar, yet still soothes the tongue with bergamont in a pleasant non-citrusy way. (That makes the tea sound heroic, don’t you thinkk?)

This is basically the gateway tea for me in Art of Tea’s other loose leaf. I CANNOT WAIT until I get my dessert tea sampler set.