Day 11 in the 2014 12 Teas of Christmas sampler.
I had a second cup of this this afternoon to refresh my memory, as it’s been a couple of weeks since the last time I drank it. Inexplicably, something rather drastic has changed in those two weeks. It’s a good job I remember really enjoying this tea the first time round, or I would be rating it pretty low. I thought I had steeped it the same both times, so I’m not really sure what has caused the difference…
So the first time around, this tea was delicious. Even my little brother loved it. It was fresh strawberries, with vanilla and cakey flavours. It reminded me more of cake and ice cream than custard, but who’s going to complain about that? I was expecting more of the same when I brewed it up today. The scent of the dry leaf was how I remembered, but when I added the water I recoiled a bit. Almost straight away, there was a strong smoky odour which became more powerful than the strawberry smell. First sip confirmed that the smoke was also in the taste. Yuck. Who wants smoky strawberry? The creamy cakey flavours has disappeared, too, so I was left with a very disappointing cup. I still don’t understand why. At first I assumed the sample must have been contaminated, but that’s not possible – it’s in a sealed pouch, and was stored with the rest of the twelve teas sampler, none of which have been contaminated. I read through a few of the tasting notes from other steepsterites before writing up the note, and noticed that Kittena has noted a similar smokiness, which leads me to think it’s just a feature of the tea which I managed to avoid with my first cup. I will definitely have to experiment with steep times, amount of leaf and water temperature to try and coax out the deliciousness that I got first time around.