Phoenix Pearl

TTB&C #5

This TTB may end up proving a bad thing for my tea budget. So far I have LOVED every tea i have tried. It will be a struggle to convince myself that I can live without xyz tea for awhile. This is yet another one that I did a very big happy dance when I pulled it out of the box. After I had placed my order with Zen Tea in Feb I saw a discussion mentioning this tea as a must try from Zen, and of course it was not in my order.

This tea is AMZAING! Sweet, rich, chocolaty, malty. It is a cup I could curl up too, but it also tastes like it would rock your socks off iced with lemon. There is quite a bit of this tea left so I think I might indulge in 2 cups! I haven’t looked into the origin of this tea, but Thank you to whoever included it!

Oh My Goodness!! This is a tasty treat to start my day. Rich, sweet flavours. A hint of tobacco. Some grain. Perfect, because I’m too lazy to make breakfast right now, so this will do until I can get my lazy self off the couch.

Thanks Dexter!! This is sooooo goooood.

T&C TTB 4/23

I like unflavored black tea but I still have a hard time picking out and describing the different notes. If you told me a year ago I would be drinking hot black tea I would have told you “Your crazy black tea is for iced tea”. With that said I enjoyed this cup of black tea that for now until my palate improves, taste like naturally sweet iced tea but hot.

Thanks Nicole for setting this box up and sharing your tea!

Couldn’t make this pop up in the search bar (even after hitting enter) so I searched my cupboard for it, and while doing so found a Butiki blend that I no longer have but which wasn’t removed from my cupboard apparently, so now I’m at 196/198! Yay!

Anyway, I did get around to resteeping the leaves, and I must say I think I like the resteep a bit better; it still has a little malt to it, but the chocolate/caramel notes are much more present and intense, and there’s a very faint baked bread taste. However, at the end of my cup this started to get bitter and gross.

Despite liking the resteep more I wont push for a third resteep ; I’m not really feeling this one too much now. Two cups today was enough to hold me over for at least a little while. Definitely need to be moving on to something fruitier for my next cup, though!

They suggest having this tea with multiple steeps, so that’s exactly what I’m doing.

Steep #1 was done somewhere between 3 and 4 minutes. It’s slightly metallic and, I think, leathery. Dry, and a little different than I’m used to — it actually reminds me of the Dong Ding that I sampled at the Toronto Tea Festival.

Steep #2 seems a little sweeter, milder, and very smooth. It still has the distinct taste that I mentioned above — I certainly get a different taste from this than Indian black teas.

Steep #3 was closer to ten minutes (it’s my final steep, and I was a little distracted). Thanks to it being a third steep, it doesn’t seem too overdone at all. It’s less sweet than the second steep, but otherwise similar. I think it would go very well with something hot and cheesy. (Though that may just be my appetite talking.)