Any mothers out there ever noticed that as soon as you lock the bathroom door and start filling the tub with warm water that the kids start severing major arteries, break bones, set things on fire, flood what they don’t set on fire, break windows, loose a sibling or two, and electrocute anyone who makes the mistake of approaching the front door?
(Well ok, while I’m not a mother, I have numerous nieces and nephews and have witnessed this phenomena many times.)
I think of this every time I attempt to try a new tea while at work. Its like the universe is psychic, knowing exactly when the water starts to boil in the kettle. Access points go down, someone starts rebooting the router over and over (because the APs have gone down, which have nothing to do with the router). Machines start crashing, servers stop responding, vital passwords have been forgotten and must be reset this very instant, etc.
Yeah, this was one of those days.
So, to the tea. I got this as a sample in my latest Whispering Pines order. The name didn’t ring any bells and it was not listed on the site. With some searching around, I found an instagram post referring to this tea as something being tried out. Yay, I get to be a Guinea pig. :)
The leaves are very pretty and look to be whole leaves tightly rolled. Kind of hay like in color. I’m assuming this is a black (yeah, I’m real educated on tea here).
First steep finishes right before an all projects engineering meeting starts. Great, I need the caffeine. Cup is mostly gone and is cold by the time I realized I haven’t noticed one little thing about it. Try to pay attention to the next few sips. It seems a little astringent to my pallet. Not horribly so like you might get in a breakfast tea, but it is an element I notice the most.
Its now lunch time so after I eat I go for steep number two.
I’ve noticed the leaves have plumped out a little bit, but they really are still rather tightly rolled. Steep for another 3 minutes. The color of the tea is lovely. Kind of reminds me of the color of home made caramel sauce. The flavor is much less astringent, though there is still a little there.
The flavor is hard for me to describe. Mostly because I just don’t have the vocabulary, but also mostly just because I can’t taste all the things people list in their tasting notes. I do like it. The kind of thing I was wanting this morning. Too bad its afternoon now by the time I’m getting a chance to really try it.
Its now late afternoon and I go for a 3rd steep. Four minutes this time and I swear these leaves are still going strong. Color is still that of caramel. Astringency is now almost gone. Too bad its now time to go home.
I’m half tempted to spread the leaves out on some paper towels and let them dry over night so I can keep going in the morning. The leaves are still rolled up pretty tightly
I’m not rating this yet as I really haven’t had the chance to give this much attention. Maybe to be continued tomorrow.
