Sun and Cloud Mist

My swap from CHAroma arrived today! Yay! Now if only the boxed up teas were potent enough to combat the nauseating skunk smell of the house…. Ever since 6:30am, the house has reeked of skunk. And so did my car (everytime I got into it, it smelled horrible!) It’s truly nauseating. Stupid skunk.

Anyhow, I was so excited for this one that I figured I should try it first. And aside from the fact that I obviously oversteeped it, it was pretty yummy! Very delicious, creamy lemon fluff flavours. So glad I ordered it before it sold out! I can’t rate it until I’ve steeped it properly (4 minutes is too long), but I think it’s going to be high. Also, the base tea is lovely – I can really taste it shining through! Now to wait the 3+ weeks until I get my very own baggie of it…

ETA: Seriously? I ruined the second infusion by oversteeping too? You’re kidding me. Guess it’s a very good thing I’m getting my own. Also, highly recommend like 2 min or less infusion times…

I almost didn’t buy this because of the goofy cat, but I like green teas and adore lemony flavored things so I finally gave in. Shipping was very fast (Thank you, Frank) and I decided to steep some of this up after lunch.

It definitely smells lemony in the package and then after I smell the wet leaf, I’m thinking, “Huh, this really does smell like lemon pound cake.”

I’m liking this as it cools down. I don’t know if it tastes like lemon pound cake to me, but it is yummy. I am thinking it is more like a lemon tart. I like the green tea base here, which is very light and soft and really allows the lemon yumminess to shine through. To me, it smells more marshmallow-y than it tastes, but I like it nonetheless! Compared to the lemon cardamom chun mee, it’s not as zesty, it’s definitely on the softer side. I am going to have to try this with a little soymilk added, I bet it would also be really good iced.

When I’ve had cloud mist teas on their own they seem a little boring, but it works well as the base for this.

Frank you are terrific with these lemon blends. I will enjoy this with no problem. :)

I’ve been buying far too many flavoured blacks lately and wanted to pick up a green tea. This one fit the bill.

In the pouch, the dry leaf smells extra lemony, like a tart lemon candy. A little creamy but it’s very subtle.

The first time I steeped this, I did for about two-and-a-half minutes. Unfortunately, I found it to be on the bitter side. The lemon was there, but between the vegetal base and the bitterness, there was no fluffy lemon marshmallowness to be had.

Second steep, I cut the steep time down to around two minutes, and it was still too bitter and vegetal for my liking. The lemon was a little creamier, but overall, weaker than the first steep. Both times, I steeped it at approximately the same (lower) temperature that I do with my other greens, so hmm.

Just now, I steeped a fresh pot with some new leaves, and tried around 1 min 15 sec, and it was so much better. The bitterness was gone, the vegetal twang was more subdued, and the lemon turned into lemon pie filling. Now we’re talking. I wish there were more marshmallows going on in this blend, but I’ll continue to experiment with the steeping perimeters. Perhaps lower the temperature even more or something.

I bought this tea along with 52 Tea’s Butterbeer. “Sun and Cloud Mist” (S&CM) I think should have the kitty wearing a hollowed out lemon helmet on its head. I dunno, I’m weird. But hey, that’s cool, you can’t please everyone right? Regardless, I do like lemony teas, so I wanted to try this tea out.

OBSERVATIONS: I am wondering why Frank doesn’t post steeping times. For this and butterbeer I went onto Steepster to figure out what others did for their tea – and it looks like “S&CM” has some tinkering to avoid bitterness. I feel bad for the peeps that overcook their tea, and it is limited edition type tea.

DRY: Lemony drop smell – sweet and lemony! I wanna chomp down on these tea leaves because it smells so delicious!

STEEPED: Pure yellow colour. Smells slightly sweet with lemon.

TASTE: Sharp and lemony with a hit of grassyness, starting to creep into bitterness. There’s a mysterious hit of fluffy creamyness at the end. Aftertaste is back to grassy lemon. Refreshing tea!
As it cools, the mystery creamyness comes out more and less bitterness.

WHO’D LIKE THIS TEA: Lemon tea drinkers. Or people like me who love lemon bars! oooooooh!

COMMENTS: Hrmmmm. I’m totally the tart bitter tea police as I think I’m sensitive to those flavors. I think with this tea I need to mess with steeping times more, maybe 165F or drop to 2 minutes to drop that hint of bitterness. That or cold steeping would be interesting to try on this tea.

However, S&CM is addictive as I chugged it down so fast. The mystery fluff flavor is interesting. MMMM fluff!!! Now my cup is empty and I’m going to get a cold steep started on this and hopefully not destroy it like my last cold steep.

Frank had me at cute kitten! :D Just look at that adorable little kitten with his paw in the air, awwwwww!!! I simply love this image. The sun is a lemon and the clouds are marshmallows and then there’s the cutest kitten I’ve ever seen reaching out towards me saying (now you have to imitate a little kitten voice to get the full effect), “Please! Buy this tea!” Awww, I won’t let you down cute kitten! You’re coming home with me!

I promptly opened the package as soon as it arrived and turned on the kettle. Hey, I gotta’ make the little bugger feel welcome! The dry leaf aroma is potently lemon, quickly followed by marshmallow. It smells like those lemon bars with powdered sugar on top. No, it smells like that iced lemon pound cake from Starbucks! Whoa, I’m getting a slight headache from these insanely fragrant leaves. Warning: I think you can get high off sniffing this stuff.

Time to brew it up! The dominant aroma in the brewed tea is lemon followed by green tea and finally, there’s the marshmallow root. It shows up last and still closely resembles icing. I’ve never had a Yun Wu tea before, but I’m excited to try it now!

First taste…lemon and then a lovely green tea like I’ve never tasted before! Wow, it’s heavenly! The aftertaste is slightly vegetal and grassy, but not too grassy. It just screams, “I am a high quality tea!” Man, this tea sure is talkative. And the kitten seems to be getting along nicely with Mr. Frodo. (No, I’m kidding. The tea didn’t actually come with a live kitten).

Back to the tea: this lemon, icing, green tea confection is blowing my mind! I’m getting creamy, I’m getting buttery, I’m getting cakey! Then up comes that grassy aftertaste, and I’m getting green tea! Oh man. I didn’t think I was going to fall in love with this given the fairly simple ingredients. Then again, I think it was love at first sight with that kitten, so I really shouldn’t have doubted. This stuff is almost as magical as the Butterbeer tea! GASP! Yep, I said it! This tea is amazing!

And let me just say, I’m soooo happy that Frank used a high quality Chinese green tea base here and not sencha. Sencha is all fine and good, but this is glorious! Plus, it’s fun to try something new and different and this does not disappoint. To any of you doubters out there, just do it! Buy it! Try it! It’s incredible! You will love it!

Made in my steep and go today!

Lemon marshmallows. I always see recipes for making your own marshmallows, but who needs that when you can have tea that tastes like lemon marshmallows.

I haaaaate my M/W classes. I’m gone from 10:55 to 3:40 or so I wake up at like 10:30 because I hate mornings and then get to eat like some breakfast biscuits and that’s about it till I get home. Not fun. I’ll try to get myself up earlier next week and eat an actual breakfast. I even made myself a coffee to get moving and then left it completely untouched. Way to go.

This I took with me and I am still enjoying it. I didn’t have cold water and of course when I tried to refill the bottle with some, the water fountain wasn’t working. My school is great. I think this might require a longer steep in a legitimate cold brew format because when it’s cold I feel like I’m only getting the flavors rather than the tea. Earlier I could taste green tea, but I still felt like I was missing out on something more.

Kitten tea is a winner anyway. I really feel like I am drinking in a great big lemony, marshmallow cloud.

Oh yum! This is best if you let it cool for just a couple of minutes – the marshmallow flavor emerges more when it is slightly cooler than the fresh from the teapot hot temperature. I love the way this is blended – the Yun Wu offers a lighter, sweeter, nuttier flavor than the Chinese Sencha that 52teas customarily uses for their green tea blends, and I am loving the difference. I still love the Chinese Sencha too, but this Yun Wu makes for a deliciously different, refreshing change.

Very lemony… but I like that the lemon does not overpower the other flavors throughout the sip, it saves most of it’s very strong flavor for the aftertaste. This tea reminds me of lemon meringue jelly bellys. YUM!

I really love this tea, am so glad I finally got around to trying it. Seriously folks, I have so much tea here waiting for me to try. :)

The label is hilarious! What’s up with the kitten? I love random weirdness like this, I can’t help but smile.

When it comes to lemon flavored anything, I’m quite picky. So this tea didn’t have much chance of making my reorder list. It’s still a nice blend where I can taste both the green tea and the lemon in a complimentary balance. Those are two flavors that I wouldn’t have thought could taste good together, but what can I say, that’s the magic of 52teas!

However, because of my lemon indifference, it’s not something that I’d choose to reorder for myself. There are just too many other teas out there that I’d prefer to drink. I’m still glad I had the chance to give it a try.

Speaking of reordering, I went ahead and placed another order with 52teas yesterday. Not that I needed more tea. I have a rule that my tea collection must fit in a shoebox sized Rubbermaid container. For now, my collection still fits, but I recently (and conveniently) lost the lid to the container, which can allow me to pile my teas sky high. So far the container isn’t overflowing, but I ordered a bunch of tea a while back,and gave it to my Dad to give me for Christmas, which is only a few days away. Thank goodness I ordered mostly sample sizes for that company. So hopefully I’ll be through a good bunch of them before my 52teas order arrives.

Thanks for sharing CHAroma, this is a really tasty tea!!
I’m just not quite sure how to regard it. The marshmallow and lemon really goes well together, and I quite enjoy the taste… but to me, the aroma is that of bergamot, and well, we allll know about my little hate affair with the big Berg. In fact, when it was freshly hot, I could barely stand taking a sip. For that reason, it’s much better as it cools.
Taste wise, it reminds me a bit of Graveyard Mist, which could be due to their shared base tea, or is there some other ingredient that creates the same foggy effect?
Anyhow, the lemon and marshmallow round each other out perfectly. So much in fact that I’m not quite sure what to think. Does it remind me of lemon candy? or marshmallows? agh I can’t quite put my finger on it!!
Thanks again CHAroma!
Edit: on the second steep now and some of the smoothness is missing. Lowering the rating a hair. Of course, it’s still great tea!

I try to taste my teas in the order they come in, and I still have several left from a few assorted sales. This came in today, though, and I just couldn’t wait. I’ve dubbed this “kitten tea” and there was no way I wasn’t going to rip the package open after dinner and brew some up.

I saw other reviews that said this smelled like lemon pound cake, and it does, frosting included! It’s kind of intoxicating, and I wanted to keep sniffing it. It doesn’t really taste like pound cake (which I suppose is good, so you don’t get an overly dessert-y flavor), more like lemon meringue or a fresh-baked lemon pie. It’s sweet, citrusy, and so fresh tasting. The marshmallow tastes like the real homemade kind, airy and not too sweet. It comes in at the end of the sip, and sandwiched between the lemon and marshmallow is a gorgeous green base. You can tell this is a high quality tea, and it holds up to the strong flavors so well.

This tea is fantastic, amazing! I could probably drink it every day, but I feel like this is going to be a tea I horde for special days. I’m already considering buying another pouch and I’m only one cup into the bag I have! Oh kitten tea, I love you.

EDIT: So I played around with this last night and got a really great second steep. It’s way more marshmallow-y than the first one, much like how the Cheesecake Earl Grey is more cheesecakey on the second steep. It’s also sweeter, almost candy-like (but in a good way). The mouthfeel is creamier and richer as well.

I also tried something new and cold brewed the leaves I’d already steeped twice. I hate to waste a tea like this which is both amazingly delicious AND a limited edition. I let it steep for around 16 hours, longer than usual for me, but I didn’t know how strong the flavor would be. It’s very lemony and light, with the green base more prominent here than on the previous steeps. The marshmallow is the least-prominent, though some sweetness comes in at the end of the sip. It’s pretty much the opposite of the second steep, while the first was right in the middle. It’s great to see so many different aspects of the same tea!