Ten Ren's Tea

time to do a full review:

When i opened the packet, the smell of the teabag was smooth.

when i finished steeping the tea, it had a aroma similar to pu-ehr.

the taste was strong with a similar taste to pu-ehr with a hint of hay flavor. this tea is great and is worth buying :) my new rating is 100

a really good oolong tea. tastes similar to pu-ehr.

Oh hai, Canadians, I’m in ur country, drinkin’ ur tea. Ok, so this isn’t really Canadian tea, but it was possibly the tea shop closest to the Calgary Airport, and since I was just flying in to drive out into the boonies, I needed a quick fix. I saw on the website that they had rose milk tea at the shop and decided I had to go. It took me a bit to find it because the tea shop was actually inside a huge asian grocery. But eventually, success!

This was a really tasty rose milk tea. Most of the time with these you can’t really taste the “tea” base but the important part to me was the rose, and that was of course in evidence. The boba were a little too soft, which was my main complaint. Otherwise, I loved it. Gotta find a way to make rose milk teas on my own. The ones I’ve had all seem to use a thick rose syrup/jelly type thing with rose petals in it for the flavoring.

I cold brewed this one for maybe 24 hours. The taste is sweet with what I perceive to be a licorice flavor. The ginseng buzz is enough to really get you going. When I brewed this in the Gaiwan I noticed I was getting a bit edgy so I wanted to try the cold brew. It really is a nice refreshing tea. When I shake the Mason Jar it gets a foamy head with a nice amber color. I definitely prefer the cold brew….

Holy bitter tea, Batman! This tea isn’t just bitter…it’s bidd-ah! Yikes! (And I drink my coffee black.)

The description says that the liquor should be “brilliant reddish brown”, but I’m getting opaque dark brown. Unless I hold it up to a light, it looks like a cup of black coffee…if not darker. The tea smells like most pu-erhs in my book. Sharp smoke with a thought of barnyard. Nothing fishy, thank goodness. The taste progression goes a little something like this: Bitter. Smoky. Barnyard…and finishes bitter and earthy. I also pick up some dark tobacco hints. Like a good maduro cigar before it is lit. Not bad for a pu-erh, but still not a tea that I’m in love with. This particular pu-erh tastes a little thin to me. Perhaps I’ve grown too accustomed to chewy, bake-y teas. I’m not appalled, so I guess this can be seen as progress as my venture into the pu-erh world continues.

Thank you SoccerMom for your generous samples. I will be trying this again.

Fourth and final tea of my night of ExpeEeEerimentAAAtiooon.

Got it for my birthday in November from my sister. The box is mostly in Chinese, so all I really know about this tea is that it’s an oolong. Also, that it’s from Taiwan. And, since my sister left the price marker on there, it’s $12 for 150g. Upon tasting, I think it’s a green oolong.

Mmm… it’s okay. Not the best tea I’ve had, but also not the worst. Though I wish I knew more about it, it’s not a terrible tea to keep around. Gentle flavor.

Third thing to research tonight – the intricacies of the differences between green and dark oolongs.
Fourth thing- a general consensus on the proper maintenance for Yixing pots.

That’s all for t’night, folks.

This pu er reminds me of what drinking a cup of folgers coffee might be like. I don’t drink coffee so I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty but it’s what I would imagine it to be like. It steep light amber and then gets magically darker and darker till it becomes black blacker than any black tea I’ve ever had it could be mistaken for a cup of coffee.
It smells like it is going to be hard to get down in terms of it has a bitter smell to it not fishy like some pu erhs I drink. It is fishy on the rinse though, It has a smoky almost a bit of a tobacco/nicotine smell to it but the taste is not so bad not something I would ever crave like my beloved oolongs but it is definently an appetite suppressant when I drink a glass of this I’m not hungry for a couple hours.
A family friend brought this from China he lost 80lbs last time I saw him after drinking this tea for 6 months he says he’s just not hungry when he drinks a couple cups of pu erh a day. While I don’t need to lose 80 lbs I thought if I could lose 5 or 10 lbs drinking tea why not.
So while it is not a tea I would recommend it makes me interested in trying more pu erh until I find the right one (or two or three) to suit my palate.