Organic Black with Coconut

Sooooooo good. Perfect snowy (14 inches expected!) afternoon tea – the creamy coconut is a reminder that warm days will come again. I’ve really been enjoying my afternoon tea breaks! Being at home where there is milk and sugar has been really lovely, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to drink these yummy decadent teas that I usually only have on the weekends.

I’m also thrilled that I can taste again! I’d say I’m about 75% better! Yay!

Sipdown!

I am really sad to see this one leave my cupboard. It has a wonderful base tea paired with a lovely coconut flavor . I wish more coconut flavored teas used toasted coconut. It really does make a difference. The flavor is intense without being artificial or leaving a bitter taste. It might overwhelm other flavors, but otherwise I’d say it’s worth the extra bit of effort.

I’m sure this tea will find its way back on to my tea shelf sooner rather than later. Definitely before the snowflakes start falling this tea’ll be back in my cup. If the toll for the bridge over to Philly wasn’t so insanely high I’d be tempted to make a trip to Premium Steap far more often than I do now (which is next to never)!

And another JacquelineM tea.

Wow.

This is heads and shoulders above the only other coconut black tea that I’ve tried, Adagio’s. I like the idea of combining coconut with Nilgiri tea instead of Adagio’s Ceylon. The taste is improved tenfold. And this has more of a toasted coconut taste than Adagio’s version – not sure if that’s due to the Nilgiri, or if it actually uses toasted coconut.

Either way, it’s really, really good. I may have to order a full size. Yummmm.

love the toasty coconut flavor and the black tea base has no astringency or bitterness and blends perfectly w/the coconut flavor. Even better is that the toasty coconut flavor seems natural and not syrupy. A great blend.

We’ve only known each other for a short time – I will always consider you my friend – you will be missed…

I’m finishing up what’s in my stash today because it seems one of the steepster tea trends for the day is Coconut…I’m game.

Which brings me to a thought…should we start a daily trend and post it in the discussion section and see who wants to play each day!? Hummmm…just a thought…

At last, I have reached what I hope will be the pinnacle of my coconut journey. I’m really excited to try this one given all the love it has here on Steepster.

Also excited because I can’t remember whether I’ve had Nilgiri before. It might have shown up in a blend somewhere along the line but I don’t recall ever having tasted it straight before.

The coconut in here, being toasted, looks different than the coconut in other blends I’ve tried recently. It’s in long thin strips that look a little like flower petals in tea. The Nilgiri leaves are big, dark and sort of coarse looking. The fragrance of the dry mix is intense. Very volatile, almost alcohol-smelling.

After steeping I can really smell the tea more than coconut, though there’s a coconut note there, for sure. The tea’s aroma has a really pretty floral note to it that I wasn’t expecting. The liquor is medium-light amber.

I should say that I steeped this according to Premium Steap’s directions and put it at boiling rather than at a lower temperature, which I’ve been doing with other flavored blacks, mostly because it seems sometimes to bring more flavor out. Other times it doesn’t or doesn’t make a difference. But I wanted to go according to the book the first time with this one.

And yes, there’s a difference in flavor between toasted and nontoasted versions of coconut black tea, though not as much as I had expected, and though I’m not sure how much the Nilgiri contributes to the mix since I’m rather a Nilgiri neophyte. I have to say the American Tea Room version was pretty impressive notwithstanding its nontoastedness. That said, I’m really enjoying the macaroon flashes I’m getting from this, especially as the tea cools and especially in the minutes after sipping.

To me, the most impressive part about this is the blend. It’s not a black tea with coconut sitting on top so much as it is a tea that seems to be imbued with coconut flavor. Like they can’t really be separated from each other. I’m always pretty impressed by teas that manage to do this as it seems much more difficult to accomplish than just flavoring tea (though I have no idea whether this is true, it just seems that way because it’s rarer than an obvious flavoring).

The true test of this one will be tasting it in isolation without earlier coconuts still in my tastebuds’ memories, but so far it’s in front, with the ATR close behind. I could see this and the ATR coexisting in my cupboard much in the same way I can see The du Loup and Florence coexisting as though they’re similar, they’re different enough to be… well… different.

Jacqueline sent me some of this tea. Some her willing-to-trudge-out-through-the-snow-to-get-this-tea tea, no less, which I consider to be a high honor. When she said that she found this to be even better than Coconut Pouchong, I was intrigued.

Now, I shall admit that the first third of this cup did not go over well because I drank it too hot. I need to learn to let things cool down more before I start drinking them. The flavors open up much more for me that way. So at the start, this mainly tasted like bitter black tea and I thought I’d effed up royally somehow. I was already planning how I was going to adjust the parameters the next time I tried this and jotting notes down on a post-it.

Not to worry, though. By the time that the tea was at an appropriate temperature the coconut macaroon flavor began to come through much more and I found myself in a much happier place.

So here’s the thing. This is definitely a black tea. I can taste it, which I don’t mind, but I’m much more of a buttery oolong type of gal and so while this is really a very tasty tea, it was already at a slight disadvantage because given the choice between a black tea and an oolong I’m predisposed to pick the latter. Now, to be perfectly fair, I have yet to try this with milk, and milk could very well add that extra dimension of richness that I like from my oolong teas. [Though, again, given the choice between drinking straight tea and drinking tea with milk, I’m going to choose the former.]

There wasn’t much else that I got out of this tea flavor-wise aside from the black tea taste and that toasted coconut, macaroony taste, with which I am perfectly fine. It was an extremely enjoyable cup of tea and I can see why Jacqueline likes it so much; especially since she drinks a lot of black tea.

This tea was good enough to get me to briefly peruse Premium Steap’s website, which is saying something because I really don’t need to be buying more tea right now. And, oooh, drat. They’ve got Pantone and Marimekko and adorable owl mugs and a milk oolong and URRRRGH.

April, when you get here you’ll be sending me a London Sky mug and one or five oolongs. Mark my words. Thanks so much for letting me try this one, Jacqueline! Next time, with milk!

I am finally getting to try this tea courtesy of JacquelineM (Thanks Jackie!). It is such a deep dark tea with a true coconut smell and flavor! The dry leaf smelled phenomenal (if you like coconut that is) and so I was just praying that once steeped it tasted in accordance with the smell and my prayers were answered it does taste like coconut black tea!!

It’s a great tasting tea the first steep was a little strong and I thought maybe it could have used some milk but that’s not how I roll so I just went with it. The second steep has no astringency and is perfect without milk. I like it and will definitely order some that is when I run out of some black teas that I already have.

Thanks again Jackie! It is the black tea version of my coconut custard rooibos that I also love!

JacquelineM put this into the traveling tea box and when it came to my door there was only one scant tsp. left. But I am the kind of person who appreciates the labour of love that trudging through the snow can be. The best way to honor JacquelineM is to thank her for her efforts and not allow this tea to travel to a potentially less appreciative home.

I am going to need to place an order with Premium Steap. I like coconut teas and this one is so utterly true and pure and rich. There’s been no compromise whatsoever on flavor. It’s Full Metal Jacket Coconut with no frilly little nods to the tropics. So many times the exquisite flavor of coconut gets lost in a marriage with chocolate or in a threesome with chocolate and pineapple or into a tropical melange of flavors. The purity of this tea really allows one to focus on the coconut and the satisfactions it offers.

This flavor is excellent. Coconut has taken rather a bashing with all those synthetic shampoos and soaps and sun-lotions. This is not a Copper-Tone kind of coconut, but rather a Tea at the Savoy kind of coconut. I could imagine the Queen of England sipping this whilst murmuring endearments to her corgi dogs.

This is an exquisite tea that I will need to keep in stock. It’s a tea for grown-ups. I added a tiny crystal of brown sugar and an ort of milk.

I took this as my tea of the day to work this morning and it was absolutely delicious!! I love the toasted coconut flavor and aroma of this tea. I am quite fond of the tea base used also, it is very smooth which blends well with the coconut. I really think this smells like GM’s Coconut Pouchong, but I like this WAY better!

A big thank you to JacquelineM for sending me a sample of this tea! It will now have to go on my shopping list.