Emilie Send Message

I visited Zhi Tea this weekend and picked up a couple of teas to try. I love the store, I just wish it was slightly closer to me.
I cold brewed this tea overnight and brought it to class with me this morning. I thought I had added too much tea, but this still tasted great with no astringency. My suspicion is that this holds up very well to being oversteeped. The flavor is very light and delicate, with just the hint of floral rose. It is not an overwhelming rose flavor, and that’s due to the fact that this tea is not actual flavored, but instead gets any rose flavor from the roses mixed in with the tea leaves. Another bonus to that is that this is quite a beautiful tea to steep up, with the roses floating around. I’m really happy with this one!

This is a tea that I picked up on my recent visit to the steeping room. Lately, I’ve found that I’ve mostly been sticking to flavored black teas, so I’m trying to get myself to branch out a little bit more. I really love jasmine green teas, but for some reason I never seem to go for them. I happened to pick this one up to smell, and it was AMAZING. I knew I had to get it. I tried it for the first time yesterday and ended up having about three cups of it.

The jasmine is the main flavor here, with the blueberry adding a nice sweetness and some dimension to the flavor. One thing that tends to make me shy away from green teas, is that I tend to oversteep them and make them bitter. This one, however, seemed very resistant to oversteeping, which is a nice added bonus for me!

My boyfriend is starting to get into tea more, and he’s willing to start moving away from his beloved Earl Grey Creams and try some other things. While out at a local restaurant, I ordered a pot of this to share.

Turns out, he loved it! He said that he liked that it was a more delicate flavor than many of the teas he’s had before. This was also my first time trying this one, and while it was nice, I would have personally steeped it a little longer. I was able to get the white tea, but I couldn’t get a lot of the other notes, such as coconut. I plan on introducing my boyfriend to more white teas.

I saw the little sampler pack that contains this, Raspberry Earl Grey, and two others that I don’t remember at TJ Maxx for about $5 and decided it was worth a try. The Raspberry Earl Grey was really what drew me in, but I’m interested in sampling all of the flavors.

This one is such a strong mint smell dry, it will definitely clear your nose out. I steeped this one up, and really all I’m getting is the mint. While not bad by any means, I can’t tell a difference taste wise between this and a mint tisane/herbal. The only benefit I see of drinking this one over an herbal is if you want the caffeine, but otherwise there doesn’t seem like a lot of difference.

So not bad, but it doesn’t stand out either.

This is another older tea that I’ve had for a while. It still smells great, smoky and foresty, but unfortunately it seems to have lost a lot of its flavor at this point. I still get a weak smoky flavor but that’s about it. I definitely need to go through my stash and clean out some of my older teas and refresh my stash, since I believe a significant number of my teas are on the older side.

Holy moly it’s been as while since I’ve really posted on here very much. I’ve just been so busy, but I’ve missed this community and definitely want to make time to come back and review the teas that I’m drinking anyway.

The tea: I’ve had this stuff forever. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I always skip over drinking it, I think because I always get to it when I’m looking for caffeine. Well I needed something warm more than I needed caffeine today so I went for this. I added in a splash of this half almond milk/half coconut milk stuff I just got. While the milk is awesome, this tea was just kinda eh to me. There was a weird fake taste that I couldn’t quite place. There is a chance these are just old, because I feel like I remember liking this more in the past so take this as you will.

This is another one that I’ve had for a long time. I cold brewed it over night and drank it at work this morning. It had a an odd bitter after taste that covered up any sweet or fruity flavors. It seemed different from an “I oversteeped” or “I overleafed” bitter flavor, which makes me think it may be time to get rid of this one. It may just be too old now. I really need to go through and find all of my old teas and see if they’re still any good. A cupboard clean up sounds like a good idea.

I was setting this up for a cold brew, and noticed that it seemed to smell kinda weird. I know that coconut in teas can go bad, so I brewed a cup hot to make sure it was ok. I didn’t notice any glaring abnormalities, so I did a cold brew, which I am now drinking at work. It has an odd, almost plastic taste that I am pretty sure is not from the cup. I think this tea has gone bad after all, unfortunately. This was a really good tea, and I’m sad to have to get rid of it, but that’s how it goes.

I’m pretty sure this tea tastes different to me every time I drink it. I remember drinking it and tasting smoke one time, and another I remember orange. Now I’m getting a vaguely pastry flavor. I’m not sure if that’s something that should be expected of this tea, or if it’s just getting old at this point. I didn’t see anyone else mention pastry as one of the flavors for this, and I have had it for a while now.

This is one that I completely forgot that I had until just recently. I’m happy I found it, because I’m quite enjoying it. I only had one small sample size of this, but this is one I’m definitely considering getting a larger size of. I also want to try it iced, which I can’t believe I haven’t yet!

This tea has the perfect blend of jasmine and coconut. Neither one really overpowers the other and they work well together. And this is one of the most forgiving jasmine teas I have encountered. Many jasmine teas, at least for me, have been very sensitive to oversteeping and overleafing, but I have yet to make this one bitter. Maybe the coconut mellows it out somehow?