20 Tasting Notes

66
drank Australian Shincha by Ito En
20 tasting notes

hypem.com is down right now. I have exhausted all avenues to cool-ness. Thus, I sit here writing about tea.

This tea tastes like a mediocre life. Having just seen the enigmatic yet transformative Iggy Azalea at Atlanta’s recent music festival, I feel like I have some authority on the matter.

Leading an unfulfilling life scares me. The scariest part being everyone with the wool over their eyes being led hand-in-hand into the slaughterhouse, singing kumbaya and cooking quiche. Shakespeare could not have imagined a more sardonic future. I haven’t seen RoboCop. Maybe I’m a PU$$Y.

“Pus pus pus!”

Luckily, we have mavens like IGGY to stave off our ever-quiescent society. The true madonna of our times, Iggy, not only exposes us to the truth (in warning us against falling into a mediocre life) but also fights against a heathen robotic uprising that seeks to prey on our youth!

Just take a peek at Iggy’s unparalleled PU$$Y linked below. The predatory robotic voice emphatically belts out “Pussy. Pussy. Pussy.” A cold, driven emotion lies underneath his articulate facade. What are his motivations? Clearly, Iggy is lashing out against the over-sexualization in society. What long term effects must we suffer before we see how our fleshy fetish will condemn us?

I can’t speak for her, but I believe that Iggy isn’t trying to shelter our children per say, but she does try to protect the collective innocence. Unfortunately, there are the unenlightened among us that clearly misunderstand Iggy’s artistic virtues. Below is an excerpt from saboteur365’s April 27th blog post:

“The one thing these Illuminati creations all have in common, whether they be Iggy, Gaga, Paris, Kim, or others, is their Satanic lifestyles, which they promote through video, music, TV, and film. The message is clear and it’s aimed at children: Worship Satan. Satan will reward you. It’s the Illuminati at work, doing what they do, which is enslaving humanity in its Satanic grip.”

But I don’t want to let some radical fundamentalist nonsense derail my tea review! The Australian(s) is great – it has a dry grass, almost zucchini taste to it, with inviting whiffs akin to boiling spaghetti.

No Mediocre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdsTUfDTEhQ
PU$$Y (listen for the Pus Pus Pus!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-05Gnihcw
saboteur365’s April Post: http://saboteur365.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/iggy-azalea-a-great-message-for-little-girls-says-good-morning-america/

Flavors: Dry Grass, Spinach, Zucchini

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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86

Pure Whimsy!

Cantaloupe & Cream is a winner. I luckily picked it up as my second free sample from Butiki.

Brewed with exacting precision, I heated water to precisely 180 degrees Farenheit; poured said heated water into a measuring cup; measured exactly 8oz of piping hot (180 degrees Farenheit, mind you!) water into my Perfect Tea Maker. The results were extraordinary: the tea tasted exactly like melons! Huge, juicy tracts of …err- melons!

From the bouquet alone, notes of tree-sap and bug-juice alight upon the heavy tone of cantaloupey-honeydewey-melony madness. Madness. Why, in sooth, such a tea transports me to happier times of lincoln and green. Merry it would be time join a happy band and form an outlawed rebel guerrilla army, do you not think it so?

No, I’d rather just sing! And such a sweet tune Cantaloupe & Cream sings. A merry melody of melons mashed upon another merely making me mad for another cuppa. The first cup was a delight. The second one too. And the third, it was a pleasure as well. But the fourth-one! That fourth one stayed up.

That doesn’t make very much sense. Madness. Back to the tea, however, there is a certain…special…somethin’ about it that completes the experience. The heart-warming, time-traveling aroma is not let down by the taste, and although sweet, it does not overpower and actually rounds off with a comforting tart sensation through the aftertaste. Keep in mind that this is how it might taste hot:

I can’t wait to ice it. Gets down on one knee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3YiPC91QUk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Robin_Hood_(film)

Flavors: Brown Sugar, Honeydew, Melon

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML
Krystal

I thought this might hold up to a fourth steeping! I’ll have to give it a try

tantonino

Yes! And it shan’t fall into the swamp!

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72

Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?

Boracay Breeze, a thin white tea entwined with chains of flowers, reminds me of Ophelia. Sweet Ophelia. My roommate has a succulent named Ophelia.

A forlorn lover to Hamlet, Ophelia grows mad and wilts. A flower, incapable of her own distress, Ophelia falls to her death into a stormy brook below. Ever-flowing time and the de-flowering of Ophelia departs from the falling, innocent willow.

Boracay Breeze is a tea for the heartbroken. It’s sweet, it’s inviting and captivating, but it’s lost. The over-powering perfume aroma (the tea was created as a request to be modeled after a subscriber’s perfume!) overshadows the tricky taste. The poetic taste entertains but leaves an emptiness that can’t be described. A lingering aftertaste warns you that you may have lost something that you’ll never be able to get back.

Scoffed at, ignored, suspected, disbelieved, commanded to distrust her own feelings, thoughts and desires, Ophelia is fragmented by contradictory messages … Seeming to absorb the general absence of belief in her own intelligence, virtue, and autonomy, Ophelia is left with an identity osmotically open to external suggestion; that is, she appears to lack clear psychic boundaries … Ophelia appears never to have [been] allowed to develop a discrete sense of self apart from those others (father and brother, then later, Hamlet) who fashioned her identity to suit their needs.
– Reading Ophelia’s Madness

Here’s a listening companion —
Sweet Ophelia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWpMFF5rxTo
Four Walls: https://soundcloud.com/broods/four-walls

There’s rue for you and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” O’ Sundays

Flavors: Almond, Hot Hay, Perfume

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML
Tabby

Hey, thanks for the add! Always cool to find someone here who’s from the A!

tantonino

If my memory serves true, they say it is “where the players play”!

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80

Today is a special day. “Wet Friday”. Yet, I sit here with a cup of freshly brewed Pistachio Ice Cream on my cream white sofa in front of my TV about to start the first episode of The Wire.

Amazon is amazing. I bought the Fire TV a few weeks back and I don’t have enough good things to say about it. I don’t know how many good things it deserves, but I’ll say this: it’s great. I’ve actually been watching a lot of content on Prime – The Wire, Nathan For You, and Battlestar Galactica.

I haven’t started Battlestar Galactica yet, but I hear oh-so-positive things about it. Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, let’s talk about Nathan For You. Wow – I’ll post a sample below. It is the funniest show I have seen on TV since The Office. And I loved The Office.

A natural segue, Butiki Tea’s Pistachio Ice Cream does not live up to its billing for me. I love pistachios, and just last night I walked over to Atlanta’s own Honey Bubble and got a Pistachio-Almond bubble tea with a green tea base and lychee pearls. It tasted exactly like pistachios – moreso than just the pistachio bubble tea alone! Pistachio Ice Cream burns with a little too strong green tea/seaweed taste. Perhaps the green Mao Jian base was a little too oxidized in the batch as it borders more on an oolong-y flavor profile. The desired vanilla undertones are overpowered by a vegetal, roasted smell.

However, icing the tea is sublime. A little crazy-random-happenstance and I ended up with an iced tea version of Pistachio Ice Cream, and its creamy base bloomed. As a note, I brewed the ice tea as a pour over rather than my typical cold brew variant.

I recommend Pistachio Ice Cream as an iced tea. One day you might just want to splash in some milk, a little honey, and put some bubbles at the bottom and call it a day.

Nathan For You – http://youtu.be/Y4KrdjAPohc

Flavors: Roast Nuts, Seaweed, Vegetable Broth

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 2 min, 45 sec 3 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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81
drank Hello Sweetie by Butiki Teas
20 tasting notes

As I sit here, watching Ricky Gervais’ An Idiot Abroad and drinking Hello Sweetie, questions pour into my head.

Hello Sweetie is a blend created by Stacy from Butiki Tea and fellow Steepsterite JustJames! I received Hello Sweetie as a requested sample from Butiki, and let me just say what a fantastic buying experience Stacy provides – from requesting samples to getting a handwritten note in the mail along with your tea – it is a pleasure.

Thus, using the 2 teaspoon sample and 500mL of boiling water, I tried Hello Sweetie for the first time. A sweet, caramely black tea, Hello Sweetie has no astringency at all and instead allows for a smooth, creamy sip. I pick up on the banana and (perceived) candied-apple undertones from the scent of the tea, but my cup lacks a bit of staying power and taste. I did, however, only steep for the lower bound of 3 minutes and my next steep will be longer. In addition, I added a bit of rock sugar which only compounds the sweetie-nees to propagate an even more serene ride down the esophagus.

Now back to those questions. On An Idiot Abroad, Karl and Warwick are traveling through India and stop at a village that houses a pair of conjoined twins colloquially known as the spider girls. They walk parallel to the ground using their feet and two pairs of hands, giving reason for the name. Upon this visit, Karl meets with the girls while Warwick stays outside, refusing to meet with them as the desire to seek them out for being different touches an ethical cord within Warwick. As he stays outside, however, he is pursued by a parade of villagers only to watch and observe his actions (as the venerable actor comes in only at 3’ 6’’). Such irony only reserved to British Travel Documentaries, raises deep questions about moral relativism, the categorical imperative, and sheer cultural differences, but I am ill-equipped to handle such questions.

Instead, I look to another part of the show a little later where Warwick is pressured into appearing on-stage with Karl and the spider twins to be watched. The show flirts with the ethical issues of side-shows, but the pervasive theme at play here is really the story of bullying. Throughout the third season many measures are taken to ensure that the lovable, idiotic Karl does not bully Warwick for his physical stature, but in doing so we gloss over the bullying that Karl has endured since the beginning of the show. Therefore, the “bullying” goes both ways, in part, and plays upon the irony and moral dichotomies within the show and the characters themselves.

Moving away from this again, and returning to the issue of cultural differences, I have a question for the steepster community: Do you ever use sugar in your teas or do you find adding sugar to be sacrilege to the sanctity of tea? Also, for which teas and how much sugar do you typically use (.5 tsps)?

Many thanks!

Flavors: Apple Candy, Caramel

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML
Butiki Teas

So glad you are happy with our service! :) I think I know why the tea didn’t have much staying power. We usually recommend 2 teaspoons for just under 250 ml of water.

I personally don’t use sugar but I always offer it for my guests. Sugar really brings out the flavorings, so I often recommend it for flavored teas. When I serve tea with sugar, I use just under a tablespoon of brown crystal sugar (that sugar is much less sweet than cane sugar).

tantonino

Aha! Thank you, Stacy. Wasn’t sure how much water to use for the sample. The Breville has a 500mL min so that’s my usual default. This tea is so well received within the steepster community that I will definitely give it another try, and I’m looking forward to the Pistachio and Boracay Breeze that I must sample soon as well!

Krystal

I use honey now but at first I used rock sugar and now only use it occasionally.

tantonino

A delight! I have tried honey at a local tea shop (Dr. Bombay’s Underwater Tea Party), also a great charity for education in India, but I have yet to apply it to mine own western steeps.

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82

As I sit here in my whitewashed four-walled apartment listening to Geto Boys’ perennial classic “Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta” and drinking Stacy’s Lemon French Macaron, everything seems right in the world. A perfect pairing it seems – oh how tea and music is bound together so exquisitely!

This tea is a smelling-tea. The bouquet screams of sweetness and fresh-clipped roses. A single sniff shall send you, smothered in blankets, to your childhood once again.

The taste is not quite as strong as the smell, but is still pleasant. A note to the wise here, though – it is AWFULLY difficult to measure out the teaspoons of this wonderfully tippy tea. A bunch of silver needle-esque leaves there are in there! I tried my best to carefully measure out 4 teaspoons into 500mL of water, but I feel like I got most of the thin almond slices and other garnish in my infuser rather than the tea itself.

Thus, be prepared to experiment with the time and amount of tea/water you steep!

In sooth, the tea soothes. A natural transition into a little Pharoahe Monch after you get a little buzz going from that Geto Boys song.

Flavors: Almond, Champagne, Cream

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 4 min, 30 sec 4 tsp 17 OZ / 500 ML

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74

Oolong literally translates to ‘black dragon’. Who knew!

Oolong teas, typically from China, are semi-oxidized teas meaning that after the tea leaves are picked, they are rolled and allowed to wither in the sun and thus oxidize in the aire libre. Oxidization produces the floral notes that characterize many oolongs. Se Chung Oolongs are oxidized for a shorter time than most other oolongs, thus lending itself more to a green tea style than a black tea.

The tea pours a golden yellow, constant throughout with grains of sediment collecting at the bottom of the cup. The tea shields its aroma through a floral coat like Poison Ivy, impenetrable yet irresistible to the casual tea purveyor. If you were to place the unfurled leaves onto a table and then roll your face in the leaves as if you were engaging with intimate areas of the temptatious super villain, you could better interact with the malty, almost caramel smells layered within the leaves themselves. Not that I would know, though.

Raising the mug to your speech-hole, you let the tainted water penetrate the cavity that is your mouth. The perverse liquid teases your taste receptors but, as the droplets trickles down the back of your throat, your buds on the tongue are left feeling unsatisfied. It has yet to be known whether this tea can finish or not. This is a sexual tea. Music pairing suggestion: the Yeezus album by Sir Kanye West.

Se Chung translates to ‘colorful variety’. How fun!

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 4 min, 30 sec 9 g 32 OZ / 946 ML

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76

No. 1 Tippy Orthodox GFOP Darjeeling. What the hell does that mean?

First, “Tippy”: tips, or buds, are the small unopened leaves of the tea plant – they are considered higher quality than the larger leaves of the plant and thus may be more expensive.

Next, “Orthodox”: recognizing how the tea is picked – either ‘orthodox’ (by hand) or ‘crush-tear-curl/CTC’ (by machine).

Third, “GFOP”: meaning Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. -FOP signifies the highest grade of orthodox tea. The prefix Golden may be swapped with Tippy, Finest Tippy, etc. and usually depends on where the tea was grown.

Lastly, “Darjeeling”: simply a designation that the tea was grown in the Darjeeling district in Northern India. Darjeeling teas are usually, not always, black teas and may be categorized by their ‘flush’, which is determined by when in the year the tea was harvested.

Having said this, the tea pours an amber base with a golden gradient around the rim of the mug – a typical black tea coloring. The tea’s distinctive vegetal aroma reminds the taster of a time before the distractions and responsibilities of technology, a time when we took up our plows and returned to find a pot of this delicate, leafy tea on the woodstove next to the neatly stacked pile of logs from the prior day’s work.

Upon the first sip, the tea glides over the tongue, careful not to injure the tastebuds, and then leaks down the back of the throat. Akin to the popular Samuari chai blend at Teavana, the gentleness of this tea may appeal to a broad range of palates and may be comfortably used as an everyday breakfast tea. Lastly, the tea finishes just as neatly as it enters, providing a satisfying wetting to the mouth, and leaves the taster reaching for his next sip.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 30 sec

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37

I received a free 15g sample from my first order from Upton Tea. Que buenísimo.
Note: I recommend erring on the smaller side of the teaspoons (if you use said units of volume to measure your tea) as the CTC tea is a little more dense than other loose leaf teas. Thus, the Irish Breakfast Blend can quickly become bitter if you are generous with your servings or steep time; furthermore, it may help to let the water cool to about 205F before steeping as this may relieve some pressure on the tea and save it from bitterness towards you!

Drinking the tea neat:
The Irish Breakfast Blend pours a coffee black that emits a golden gradient halo along the concave meniscus of the cup. The tea, neat, produces a defensive odor akin to a lone cactus in the middle of the desert warding off thirst-hungry wanderers. The first sip aggressively fills to the roof of the mouth and seemingly attacks both the front and back of the tongue simultaneously. Waiting a few seconds, you find that the astringency of the tea swells the lips and inner cheeks – leaving you with a finish as if you had suckled on the Gumball seeds from the Sweetgum tree. The tea therefore tastes similar to coffee but with a more watery feel in the mouth. After having cooled down, the tea loses its biting potency and allows for a more gentle swallow.

Adding Milk:
Throw a splash of milk into the Irish tea and watch the thick liquid swirl as clouds do in a lightning storm until the reaction settles into a misty, ubiquitously caramel color. This tea with milk tastes just as coffee does with milk but retains its distinctive punchy smell.

Overall, this filling little tea when drunk neat may overwhelm those unaccustomed to black or assam teas. However, one or two teaspoons of milk helps to neutralize the astringency and bitterness of this tea and allows for a sweeter and calmer experience. Aside, this tea pairs perfectly with thick, creamy sides: I recommend a honey greek yogurt to go along with this breakfast tea for your morning.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec

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72

Short Note: I’ve been drinking teas for a couple years now, but I am just getting into the process of learning and appreciating the subtle tastes and nuances in tea.

Having said this, I do enjoy this robust green tea.

Preparation: As per the suggested instructions from upton, I used water @180F and (using an old teavana 32oz infuser) measured out 4 level teaspoons [2.25gram/cup; 1 level teaspoon, a unit of volume, ~= 2.3 grams, a unit of mass, for this tea; 1 cup = 8oz, therefore, I used 4 level teaspoons for my 32oz pot].

The tea pours a brazen amber-yellow color, and creates an earthy aroma with hints of a floral or vegetal undertone. Taking a quick sip, the tea attacks the front of the tongue but if you were to let it sit for 10 seconds on your tongue you will find that the tea morphs into a blank, viscous substance in your mouth akin to warm salt water. Upon swallowing, the tea regains its full flavor and the tastes impact the back of the tongue, providing a long smoky finish.

Therefore, this tea is a comfortable drinking tea but it may sour the palate after a longer session. The special grade gunpowder is best appreciated in smaller and longer sips, letting the tea rest on the tongue so that you may experience the fullness that this tea has to offer.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 15 sec

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Bio

I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

I am a 21 year old student at Georgia Tech studying Business and Computer Science. I enjoy working out, going to local coffee shops, playing board games, reading, and watching film. My brother is studying film in SoCal – you can find his work at my website url. He doesn’t know that I’ve included it, but I’m his biggest fan.

Ratings:

0-59: F
This tea fails me so! O how this does not suit me! A million sighs. Bleghch uchgh

60-69: D
Needs work, son. Not my cup of tea. Will not be trying again, but won’t knock it. Did not enjoy.

70-79: C
Alas! I see how others may enjoy this tea, but mine own taste buds have not come around to the party. Sully were my expectations to not have matched the profile of the tea. Just O.K.

80-89: B
Hey now! Not bad, I actually really like this tea! I did something right here. I must study this. Up my alley.

90-99: A
Goodness me! I love this tea, and I will be purchasing this again.

100: Super-A
Oh Sweet Buttercups! This tea is the belle of the ball! Ecstasy.

The World is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Location

Atlanta, GA

Website

https://www.youtube.com/chann...

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