448 Tasting Notes
2021 Sipdown #12
Another sad sip down, but it’s time for this one to go! It’s a few years old so it’s losing flavor, especially the bready, bakey flavors. I’m still getting some cinnamon, caramel, vanilla type flavors but they’re weaker, so I will enjoy this last cup and be happy I got to enjoy most of this while it was nice and fresh!
Most of my old AQ2T samples are opened and that’s why so many have lost their flavor. While cleaning out my tea, I found this one that was still sealed. I opened it up and made myself a cup, hoping the flavor had held up better in this one. Luckily it had! After that cup, I made a pot to share with my partner and we both really enjoyed it.
My first cup was very tart raspberry/strawberry heavy without any creamy custardiness. The pot that we shared had more of a strawberry and blueberry flavor, and much more of the vanilla cream-type flavor that I was expecting. We have a few more cups of this one left and I don’t plan on letting it sit around and get old(er)!
2021 Sipdown #8!
This was a tiny sample size from quite a while ago. I was hoping since this one hadn’t been opened, it would still be good. Unfortunately, it looks like that isn’t the case :(
This one smelled nice but overall it just tasted kinda funky and I ended up pouring out the rest of the cup. After looking over the other reviews, I’m not sure if this one was off because it was old or because of the raspberry flavoring. I’m happy to have cleared this one out, but sad I didn’t get to taste it at its best.
I made a pot of this to share with my partner, who is slowly opening up to more and more teas. I added a splash of milk to mine. It was very floral and lavendery today, I didn’t really get much bergamot! I meant to add sugar and completely forgot. I’ve never had an amount of tea this big, I think it allows the ingredients to mix and separate interestingly and each cup seems like it’ll be different! What an interesting tea adventure
I made a cup of this for myself and one for my partner. Mine ended up undrinkably bitter and his ended up slightly bitter with a little bit of smoke and no fruit taste at all. Not sure what I did to this one but at least I have a few more cups to try again!
Preparation
Oh no! I have this one but haven’t tried it yet. My default steep time for black teas is 3 minutes though.
I’ve found that I generally like August Uncommon’s black teas between 4-5 minutes, especially to compensate for not getting to 212°, but I don’t think that holds true for this one!
Ooh, a tricksy one! From the photo it looks like there’s some CTC black tea mixed in, so maybe that was your downfall ha ha.
2021 Sipdown #6
Finished this one off last night with my fiance. Dry, this smelled AMAZING. Tons of pistachio and cream scent. Unfortunately, as with many of my old teas, nearly all of that was gone once steeped. I didn’t get any pistachio. The tea base was weak but still present, and there was probably a tiny bit of creaminess (or just wishful thinking).
I’m really enjoying being a part of this sipdown. I wasn’t as into tea for a while and let a lot of samples go old and didn’t have them properly stored. A lot of the ones that went old were the ones I really liked and that I was worried about not having more of, so I “saved” them. Participating in this sipdown has really taught me about enjoying them when I have them, since so many have gone to waste!
