296 Tasting Notes
From the Amoda Tea Monthly Box – January 2015
Dry leaf: Big chunks of ginger and citrus peel mix around with little silver-green balls of jasmine green tea
Liquor color: bright yellow green
Leaves: Dry – light sweet grass notes with a zinger of ginger. Wet – when the leaves ‘pop’ out of their shapes, they reveal long and sexy grass green leaves.
Notes: One of the flavors I consider to be a large part of my ‘comfort foods’ is ginger. I love it in all of it’s forms. Ginger is to me as chocolate chip cookies might be to someone else. (fun fact: the first time I had a chocolate chip cookie was in the 7th grade :P) so, for me, the big chunks of ginger in the sample package really excited me. I had only hoped that the blend tasted as good as it looked.
And it was! Although I do not like jasmine for the most part, it brought something else for my taste buds to focus on besides the ginger spice. The green tea was pretty good too, with the buttered vegetal quality that I find most satisfying in certain Chinese greens.
The first time I gongfu’d this tea, and then Grampa style’d it to work to sip down the last of it. I was able to get 4 small gongfu steeps out of the first bit, and then two good mug-fuls grampa style. After the third steep in my tumbler, I got a really overpowering ginger and an astringent quality from the green. Not the best type of tea to test out gramps style on, but the first two steeps were heavenly.
It’s too bad that my fellow tea sipper Roswell didn’t like this one from Amoda’s monthly box. I do know plenty of people for whom ginger is not ‘their cup of tea.’ Rightly so! Certain ginger ales are too over the top for even me. To each their own, I suppose.This may have been my favorite! I felt like the spice of the ginger wasn’t too overpowering if brewed right and it was very energizing and full of all the right warming qi. I may have to get more of this eventually!
Flavors: Ginger, Jasmine, Orange Zest, Peas
Preparation
First off, I just would like to say, what the hell is an after eight? So, after some Googling I have come to the conclusion that after eight’s are just UK versions of an Andes mint. Huh.
Ooooh, but this tea.This is not so vanilla, exactly. Creamy, fudge-y fun of the golden monkey and sweet ever so slightly cherry-esque vanilla beans. With each steep, the vanilla comes out and the tea gets sweeter and sweeter. Holy cannoli, Tippy’s. Your golden monkey is SO. GOOD.
I could definitely smell the mint in the dry leaf, but I got disappointed by the first sip. No mint on the palate? whaaat? But, as soon as I inhaled, I got the familiar coolness that I associate with chewing minty gum. Not what I had expected, but I think it’s quite refreshing. (pun intended.)
Flavors: Dark Chocolate, Malt, Mint, Sweet, Vanilla
Preparation
this sounds pretty tasty!
We have After Eights in Canada too. They’re kind of similar to Andes mints but they’re thinner and softer. The mint filling is slightly creamy and gooey, and they have a very thin coating of dark chocolate on them.
Yea, Canada has a lot of British people. So a lot of British confectionery items are for sale in shopping centres across this frozen wasteland :P.
Smelling the package, I didin’t think that I would like this blend. Luckily, this was not the case. The corn flowers and freeze-dried blueberries added an extra purple tint to this muddy brown liquor. I have only had Butiki’s 1989 Suncha Puerh in her flavored blends, but I am still really impressed but the subtle earthy richness this tea brings to the table. It’s quite durable, and took 15 steeps before I called it quits. The blueberry was a happy addition throughout almost all the steepings. I felt only a subtle white wine taste to this blend. It was sweet grapes, like a Demi-sec champagne. But if I was not told what was in this tea, I could not have placed the champagne. Sweet white grapes? Yes. Not so much effervescent as I could have imagined.
All in all I am so glad I got to try this tea! So worth it.
Flavors: Blueberry, Char, Earth, Smoke, White Wine
Preparation
Sickly sweet, this tea just tastes like cheap cinnamon candy. This was the sample that Teavana tosses into every order. The amount of rock sugar they use is appalling. The big hunks can’t dissolve, and turn this mix into undrinkable sludge. I couldn’t tell if there was oolong in my sample, there was so much going on.
Teavana, you might as well just hand out samples of your rock sugar, and not waste what could be okay-ish tea.
Into the trash you go, demon!
Flavors: Cinnamon, Sweet
not many teas require an exorcism! ;)
I felt the same way about this one. Who knows, it might even have been decent, but with all that sugar we’ll never know.
I like sweet tea and even I thought this was too sweet as well!
I really like the combo sans sugar, though I prefer their old blend of the white ayurvedic chai and samurai chai mate more. They all have a mostly cinnamon stick single-note quality to them, but the Maharaja chai most of all. At that point, why blend it at all with another chai?
All of this, of course, is contingent on very little or no sweetener. It is weird with all that sugar. I actually will use the packet, meant for 16oz (I hope not 8!), and make 32oz. It is still super sweet, but flavorful. You aren’t likely to taste any oolong here though – I am just a cinnamon junkie. :)
I cast you out, unclean spirit!
But seriously, I wanted to give this sample a chance. I brewed almost 4 cups out of that sample. 1 oz of tea for only 32oz? That’s nuts. I drink tea like I read my books. No matter how bad it is, I have to finish the cup. This was one of the rare times I actually had to spit out the tea and toss it. No. Just no.
Oh Elderwood, you.
Drinking this cup by cup and listening to the Hobbit audiobook on my decade-and-a-half old cassette/cd player combo while making Lembas bread. I love having days off from work. :D
The vanilla is incredible in this blend. They give something delightfully sweet to the creamy milk chocolatey goodness of the base blend. There is also a bit of oak and conifer that reminds me of the name of this blend.
I steeped this western-style, for 3 mins, 4 mins, 6 mins with much success in a 16 oz porcelain teapot. Elderwood is the best of the best out of Whispering Pine’s Vanilla Dreams Collection, IMO. I urge anyone to try it. Wait for a sale, it’s worth it.
Flavors: Chocolate, Oak, Pine, Vanilla
Preparation
This one is on my list of teas I need to try. It sounds delightful.
It’s pretty much magical.
The recipe for this lembas bread? :D
http://lotrscrapbook.bookloaf.net/other/recipes.html#lembas
I made it less like a cookie and more like the hearty “meal” bread Tolkien describes it. Instead of the whote flour I used 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 cup of hemp protein meal. Oh and I doubled the cinnamon and added 1tsp of nutmeg. You should try it! I just finished it all yesterday. :P
Dry leaf: smells like freshly ground coffee beans, strong earthy notes, a light touch of hay,and a touch of smoke.
Liquor Color: deep dark brown.
Notes: I instantly fell in love with this tea. I am in trouble, because it is all that I will ever have. Even though I have only tried it once, I can have already been hunting for another coffee-flavored puerh to add lapsang souchong to. About the LS in this tea, I personally think it could stand to be a little more present in this tea. You know me, I really like my smoky flavors! The coffee flavoring is spot on as well. It is like a fresh brewed cup of dark roast coffee with the addition of a very light smoke.
I gongfu’d this tea, and was able to infuse it 16 times before giving it a rest. The earth and wet wood flavor carried the whole way through, as well as that coffee flavoring. I remember from pumpkin butterscotch coffee that the coffee did linger longest in the brew. The smoke fizzled out within maybe 10 steepings. This was a very good shou puerh base!
I shared the first eight steepings with my ever-patient boyfriend. I rinsed for five seconds. I left the room to grab a pitcher of water and heard my boyfriend exclaim, “Wow, this really does taste like coffee and cigs!”
“But I haven’t made the first cup yet!” I shouted back, confused as hell. Turns out he had drank the rinse that I had left in the cha hai LOL. I tried to explain to him that the water from the rinse was not good, and meant for only your worst enemies, but he didn’t seem to understand.
I don’t know about this, but part of me wants to add cream to this tea as if it was actual coffee. I want to know if anyone has done this, and… is that even a good idea? :P
Flavors: Char, Coffee, Earth, Smoke
Preparation
Hahaha, Ewwww he drank the rinse water. Initially, this tea did have more Lapsang but ultimately I decreased the amount after hearing what some customers thought. This is actually a shou/sheng blend from 1989 though it is heavy on the shou. My best friend drinks this with cream. I haven’t tried it but she thinks it works.
