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From Simple Loose Leaf’s July box. I expected this to be covered in powder, like other ginseng oolongs I’ve seen online, but there’s no trace of powder at all. It looks like a dark yellow-green rolled oolong. It smells quite grassy and sweet, and for some reason like peanuts in the shell? Lol. The package suggested 3-5 minutes, so I did 4.

I’m always amazed by how big oolong leaves get when steeped. It’s like magic! :D I’ve only tried one green oolong, but this smells similar to how I remember it. It’s rather sweet-smelling, with fruity (peach?) and floral notes. There’s also a vegetal scent similar to sencha. This is an extremely light-tasting tea. All of the flavors are subtle and I found them a little hard to pick out individually. But here goes! I could definitely taste a light vegetal note, but it was so mild that I can’t really be specific. The tea is lightly sweet in an almost fruity way, and I taste a mild and fresh floral note, especially in the aftertaste. And it’s really quite buttery which is nice. :)

I’m not going to rate this because I’m not sure I’m getting all the nuances here. I may try this again with more leaf or a longer steep but for now, I wouldn’t purchase it.

I got this sample from TeaBrat in our recent swap. I don’t have a lot of experience with green rooibos, so we shall see! There are also a few white and red flower petals in this blend. It smells very strongly of peppermint with a slight sweetness. Candy cane indeed! I brewed for 5 minutes.

The brewed tea has a lovely aroma. The peppermint has grown milder and I pick up on a sweet vanilla note. However, when I taste this plain, I pretty much just get a mild peppermint tea. In a lot of other notes, people mentioned sweetness from stevia but I didn’t get that at all. I’m not sure what green rooibos tastes like but clearly it’s very neutral because I don’t really pick up on any other taste besides peppermint. When I add sugar, it helps to bring out that vanilla sweetness. This is quite tasty with milk and sugar, but kind of unremarkable on its own.

Hooray, another Yunnan to try! :D I picked this up in my recent Adagio order because I had a $5 coupon and the sample was $5, so I figured that makes it free! ;) Do not question it! The leaves are very cute. They’re all curled up into little loose balls, bi luo chun style. Mostly dark with some golden tips in there too. The dry scent is strong malt with honey and a hay accent – pretty much what I expect at this point. I brewed this twice, first at 4 minutes and then at 3 (not a resteep, with separate leaves each time).

I did 4 minutes first, because it’s the average time for this tea on Steepster. The leaves get pretty big when they unfurl! :D Smells mostly malty with some bread and honey notes mixed in. The taste seemed kind of one-note to me. It was a ton of malt with a little earthy smokiness in there. Meh. Trying again.

Then I did 3 minutes in hopes I would get some other flavors. The aroma was similar, with more honey and some hay as well. I still taste mostly malt, but now there is some honey in there and none of the earth and smoke taste. Still not a super complex flavor profile. I added a bit of sugar and I felt it helped to round out the taste for me. I found this tea pretty good but not great. Somewhere between H&S Tippy Yunnan and Yunnan Golden Tips.

On another note, I saw several reviews for this on Adagio in which people said it didn’t have the normal Yunnan taste. This confuses me a bit because in all the Yunnans I’ve tried so far, the predominant flavors have been strong malt, bread, and honey notes. And this tea definitely has some of those. So I guess I don’t get what the “typical” Yunnan taste is supposed to be. :P

Aw, one of the best characters ever… Beep boop beep! This tea is a mixture of broken-up green and white tea leaves, lots of dried apple pieces, some rose hips, and a few blueberries. I see some small pieces of hibiscus, so hopefully they won’t factor into the taste (I hate hibiscus, and rose hips for that matter). It smells very apple-y, with some tartness and a sugary scent. Brewed for 3 minutes at 190 degrees.

It smells pretty good – a mild blend of blueberry, vanilla, and the hay scent of white tea. The taste is quite weird though. It feels like the flavors are fighting one another and not melding very well. I can taste a generic green tea taste with a little bit of bitterness and some musty hay from the white tea. I also taste quite a bit of apple and little to no blueberry. Sigh… I hate it when companies include apples as filler. There’s a really weird tart aftertaste from the rosehips that linger unpleasantly at the back of my throat. Overall, pretty meh. Next time I’ll try a lower temperature, since the recommended 190 seems high to me for a blend with green tea in it. I could see trying this cold-brewed too.

Is this R2D2? I don’t think so. I have a sneaking suspicion that the creator chose this combination because it involves a lot of the colors white and blue. I am always so disappointed when fandom blends are created this way… R2D2 is such a go-getter! He definitely needs a caffeine punch in his tea!

Another tea from KiwiDelight’s Japanese green sample extravaganza package. It’s a sencha tea with the teensiest cherry blossom buds in it. Cute! The smell is a bit odd… I don’t really smell the sencha, just a strange vinegar scent?

After the tea is brewed, it smells more like a sencha, albeit a mild one. It’s grassy and spinachy in a very light way. There’s a light floral note, and that weird vinegar odor is still there in the background. It tastes similar to the smell – mild grassy sencha with just a wisp of floral taste. I taste vinegar in the back of my mouth at the beginning of the sip – strange but not wholly unpleasant. I asked my boyfriend what he thought, and he said it reminded him of apple cider (what?! weirdo). It seems to me that the floral note is mostly in the aroma.

This was definitely a very delicate tea. I don’t think it lent itself very well to western style – either that or I should have used more leaf. Interesting, but I’m not in love. :P

I got this sample from KiwiDelight. I’m not really going to go into the dry leaf, because I think most of us know what dry sencha looks and smells like (at least, anyone who reads my notes will know by now). Steeped for 1 minute as per usual.

The aroma is pretty standard but still nice – a mixture of spinach and alfalfa with a buttery edge. Tasting this, I assumed that this was a heavily steamed variety because it has more intense flavors. However, it’s actually because it’s not harvested until autumn (I don’t know how steamed it is, it didn’t say). It’s a nice balance between the intense and sweet flavors of gyokuro and the more savory flavor of sencha. I get notes of spinach, zucchini, and butter with a little touch of savory seaweed. Overall, quite tasty and I would definitely drink it again. :)

This is the first tea I selected to try from my brand spanking new Star Wars fandom sampler from Adagio. To be honest, I’m not expecting much from these teas and I mostly bought the sampler for the cute tins (I love Star Wars…). I chose this one because it smells fantastic! It’s very strong marzipan/sweet almond scent with other roasty nuttiness mixed in and a few spices. The dry leaf is a mix of a ton of various tiny brown things. Only a few tiny chocolate chips, which makes me happy because I generally don’t like chocolate in teas. On to the tasting! BRRWHHHAARGH! …sorry, I don’t know how to spell a Chewbacca roar…

The aroma of this tea is yum and yum! It’s a more toned-down marzipan mixed with hazelnut and nice roastiness. The taste is also more yum and yum! It’s much more subtle than the smell, but the flavors blend beautifully. There’s a lovely roasted nutty taste with little hints of sweet almond and spice. It also seems a little vanilla-like to me, but there is no vanilla in this so I guess it’s just the almond! I don’t taste chocolate, hooray! This is a very warm and comforting tea, and it reminds me of the holidays. I found myself inhaling with each sip to smell that amazing marzipan goodness. I added a bit of sugar to the second half and I think I may have liked it better without. I can see this being good with milk too!

Now, to the really important part… does this represent Chewbacca? I would say it does a decent job at least. Chewbacca is generally laid back, warm and fuzzy, just like this blend. Then there’s the hints of spice and the caffeine kick from the mate to represent his outbursts. Bravo, I say! I am so pleasantly surprised by this one!

My last new Yunnan to try from H&S. I was a little intimidated to try this one, and I’m blaming boychik! ;) I believe she used the word “gross”… Eep. The dry leaves are kind of short and slightly curved, and they’re mostly black with some scattered golden tips. The smell is similar to the Yunnan Golden Tips I tried yesterday morning – very malty with scents of honey and stonefruits. This one also has a sort of musty hay note to it. I did a 3 minute steep because it seemed to be what most people suggested after trying this one.

Well, this Yunnan is definitely very different from the other couple that I’ve tried so far. It almost seems like a completely different type of tea – the only note that really ties them together is malt. While others I’ve tried have been bready, this tea is very earthy and has a fair amount of smoke taste to it. There’s a light honey flavor that I augmented with a small amount of sugar. The sweetness also helped to cut the earth and smoke flavors slightly. I also get an aftertaste that definitely reminds me of leather, but in a mild way. Boychik had warned me that this made her mouth very fuzzy, and I definitely do get a dry mouthfeel from it (that’s what astringency means, right?), but I didn’t have to brush my teeth after. :P

Overall, I realize this is a lower grade tea than the others but I feel it has a similar level of complexity but with largely different flavors. I quite enjoyed it. :)

This is my 100th tasting note! Hooray! Not bad for being on Steepster for just under a month.

I got this sample with my David’s mug order. I was pretty excited since there’s been a lot of hype around here about the carnival collection. The dry tea is a mixture of a lot of stuff. There’s red and green rooibos, sprinkles, mango pieces, and apparently some kind of brittle. It smells very sugary and rooibosy.

The aroma is very cotton candy, which was a good sign. I can smell the rooibos, but it’s in the background. At the first sip, I definitely got the cotton candy flavor. However, it seems with subsequent sips I don’t get it any more, which is odd. I’m not sure if my tongue adjusted to the sugar and now it tastes less sweet to me or what. So it basically tastes like a somewhat weak and sweetened rooibos… Meh. I used the whole sample, too, which looked like more than the recommended 1.25 tsp.

First-ever gyokuro! I got this as a free sample from YunomiUS as part of my Japanese green exploration fun time (totally made that up). I don’t know anything about gyokuro, so I kind of browsed around on Steepster to come up with some steeping parameters for western-style. The dry leaf is a beautiful jewel-tone green and shiny, but it is extremely broken up, which I did not expect. It smells similar to a sencha, mostly like alfalfa and a sweet grassiness.

The brewed tea smelled a lot like sencha to me, too. It’s quite spinachy and somewhat sweet with a buttery zucchini element to it that is new to me. But wow, the taste of it took me completely by surprise! I can see similarities to a more heavily steamed sencha, but the level of intensity is so enormous here. There’s a second when I first sip where I don’t taste a whole lot, but then I’m immediately hit by this immensely deep and powerful butternut squash taste. There might be some asparagus in there, too. I also taste a slight bitterness which seems intrinsic to the tea, but I could have also screwed up the steeping. :P This tea has an extremely thick and creamy texture and it coats the tongue heavily. The flavor lingers on and on.

Honestly, this tea is a bit much for me. I don’t find it very well-suited to western brewing because the flavor is so intense and it continues to build as you drink it. I think I would like it more if I did the traditional smaller brew.

This was a very interesting tea experience! I definitely can’t assign a rating to this, I would have no idea where to start. :P