Irish Breakfast

First cup of the day, bold & beautiful!
As I’ve said before, I enjoy a good breakfast blend. I’m especially excited about Stacy’s new English Breakfast blend, The Black Lotus, which I’m sure I’ll be destined to love.
Confession: I’ve been on an ordering binge this week…it’s not over yet…

We are finally down to the last 5 Black Friday orders! These are the last of the “problem orders” and special requests and they will be shipped out tomorrow. This Black Friday definitely went down quite differently than anticipated. I was thinking we might do 20% more in sales than last year’s Black Friday but instead we ended up doing 6 times that. In addition to the large number of orders, a lot of teas that usually aren’t ordered as much became the stars of the Black Friday sale, like our Oriental Beauty and Anji Bai Cha. This lead us to scramble to have teas shipped in from China and Taiwan and flavorings as well as other ingredients being special rushed to us. A lot of very late nights were put in by all, including my 70+ year old mother-in-law who was frequently staying until 2 or 3 am to work. She only normally puts in a few hours a day but she was really amazing during the rush. She also wants everyone to know that a lot of love went into the teas that she made. Working with her is a lot of fun. She’s a retired chemist, so she loves making the teas. I’m trying to convince her to come up with her own special blend. We all felt bad that a lot of orders were really delayed. I’m hoping that most orders make it to people in time for Christmas (or whatever holiday is celebrated, whether it be Christmas or Yule or Kwanzaa, at that point there was no way we were getting orders out in time for Hanukkah though).

During our Black Friday sale, we ended up running out of our current Irish Breakfast. I had seriously underestimated the amount of Hattialli we would need for the year, so unfortunately, that version won’t be coming back until the summer. For this new blend, we started with maybe 17 different combinations. We just tried the final 3 and I think we have a winner. Here is a pic of the final 3: http://instagram.com/p/iKQszalfDg/#. The Dinjoye Assam is the most prominently featured tea with the Khongea Assam just behind it and then our organic Ceylon from the Venture estate. This tea can be really strong, depending on how its brewed. I’m enjoying it slightly less strong by using 1 ½ teaspoons of tea for 3minutes in boiling water. At this level, I’m getting a heavy malty flavor that leaves a tingle on the tongue without being astringent. There are burned chocolate notes up front but a citrusy finish. Some bread notes are present. The citrus is somewhat like bergamot. This is very enjoyable, especially piping hot. It’s not overly complex but a great breakfast tea.

The following is a shameless plug. Sorry guys! I was lucky enough to be involved with 130 other artists (though I don’t consider myself an artist) in essentially a large complicated game of “telephone”. Basically, there are artists that work in different mediums (for instance, dance, painting, music, poetry, photography, film, etc). Each artist is given a piece of art and asked to interpret its soul in their art medium. So, I was given a painting and asked to make a tea based on the soul of that painting. Well, I did and that tea is “With Open Eyes”. That tea was then given to Wes Craven (how crazy is that) to create a character/plot. Here is a link for more info: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/consenses. We are used in the example, so its ok for me to mention it. You can see the painting that inspired it. Sally Taylor is the artists who ran with this amazing idea and she is just super sweet. They are looking for funding. Please check it out if you can, share it, and donate if possible. This is just such a super cool project and I really can’t wait to see the final result.

Yum. This is a good breakfast blend. Super smooth and not overly bitter, just the right amount. I would definitely reorder this if it wasn’t sold out! Glad I have an ounce!

I love a good hearty tea when its stupid-cold outside. If it weren’t for tea, I don’t know how I’d survive winter – I’m such a summer girl at heart.

What does this smell like??? It is so familiar. AH! I know – it kind of reminds me of Lao Shan black – the malty chocolate note just overpowers you (in a really good way). It smells sort of like toasted bread/genmaicha, too. Strong in the way I like my breakfast teas to be.

I added the extra bit of leaf (the 1.5 tsp) with the expectation of putting milk and sugar in, but decided to give it a sip plain just to see what it tasted like. This was a wise choice – as I’m thinking it really doesn’t need it. I was expecting some astringency just because that is what breakfast teas do – they are strong to the point where they need additives. So imagine my surprise when I just get this mouthful of smooth, chewy dark chocolate, followed by a bright – ceylon esque finish?

It was pretty blissful, I tell you.

As it cools some of the astringency I was expecting comes in, so I do add a touch of milk and sugar just to experience the change in flavor. I figured I would like it even better, since I do normally take breakfast teas this way, but I’m finding its muting some of the rich distinct flavors I got before. Still good, but its become any generic breakfast tea.

Well, future self, that settles it: a little lighter on the leaf, sans additives (or at least sans the milk) next time. It still gets good marks for those promising first sips though!

Good hearty cup of black tea. Not better or worse than the previous Irish Breakfast available from Butiki. I was so sad to see that one removed from the website after I first bought it, but happy that a replacement wasn’t too far behind.

So this is that morning when I’m having a hard time getting going (not to imply that most of my mornings are otherwise…). But anyway, I’m drinking this tea, and it’s just perfect. It’s strong and deep and malty and, surprisingly (since I used a lot of leaf and steeped for a long time and didn’t pay much attention to brewing parameters generally), quite smooth. There’s some astringency, but I actually like that in a tea. This may not be a refined masterwork of a blend, but it’s really hitting this particular (sleep deprived and morning hating) spot for me in a way that not too many teas can.

This is a great first tea of the morning. Bold, with a touch of maltiness. Now to determine if I want French toast or my oatmeal with maple syrup and blueberries for breakfast. Hmm.

I’ve got a lot planned to do today for school, but I think it’s manageable and if all goes well, I’ll be back on top of things again. Yes!

Like I need another favourite morning tea. Really Stacy, get your act together and stop making my choices so darn difficult. I need a new favourite tea like I need to have my teeth pulled out one by one without anesthesia (ok, I’m pushing the envelope just a little here but you catch my drift).

Lol, no jokes, this is some bold breakfast tea I find myself in love with. It whispers at me «wake up girl, don’t smell the coffee, just sniff me and pouf! all morning laziness will go away, I promise.»

It just works, simple. But I hear you, you want some decent load of tea adjectives, don’t you? How bout malty, earthy, astringent, woodsy, fruity, tobaccowy (?? not sure about that last one but it fits well in my sentence, lol)

More. I want more. Hey, I HAVE more, good for me!

Nice and hearty. With all of the smoothness I’ve come to expect from Butiki’s teas. I think I may have underleafed this a tad so I’ll hold off on a numerical rating for now. Suffice to say I enjoyed this blend but remain undecided on restocking.

First tea of the day. It’s snowing quite a bit outside and thankfully I don’t have to go to work. So today is a stay in and drink tea sort of day.
I was going to make this last night but I read it’s more of a, well, breakfast tea, so I saved it for breakfast. Lol. Glad I did. This was a lovely way to start the day.
It’s milder than I was expecting so maybe next time I’ll use a smidge more leaves or steep longer….or maybe not since this is nice as is. It’s nicely malty and there’s just enough astringency to let you know it’s there but not claw your throat out.
Maybe a vague chocolaty note to it? Though I couldn’t be sure since I’m horrible at picking those sorts of notes out in tea.

Overall I really liked this. I think I might like the Black Lotus (English Breakfast) better, but I’ll definitely finish this batch off instead of trying to swap it.

Edit – One steep wonder for me. Second steep turned almost sharp and pokey….Which I know doesn’t make sense, but I’ll fix it later. Lol!