236 Tasting Notes
My giant half pound bag of Sinharaja arrived. When I saw it I feared I’d made a terrible mistake. What if I’d been overly optimistic about the tea? A few sips dispelled that. It is still smooth, sweet, and delicious. If aliens came and took every other tea, I could be content drinking nothing but this. Mmmm!
I’ve been waiting for another “Be Brave” day to try Lapsang Souchong. I like the salty, smoky way it smells dry but I have a hard time seeing it as a tea. I can picture using it as a marinade over seitan or tofu and I may try that at a later point.
I brewed it light with less leaves than I normally do and for less time, just 3:30 minutes. (It smelled so strong in the sample, I couldn’t imagine doing my normal kamikaze tea routine.)
It brews up into a light honey colored amber, though I’m sure that if i brewed it for four or five minutes it would be darker. It has a campfire smell that is reminiscent of smoked food, as someone said it smells like bacon or smoked meats. It has a light sharpness in the smoky taste. I can definitely see using this tea in cooking, especially to soak seitan or tofu in. I don’t mind it too much as a tea drink, either. Though I put it in the same category as drinking pickle juice: something fun and strange to do to wake up my taste buds, but not an everyday quaff.
I liken it to liquid BBQ. It’s just too strong and too smokey for me to drink it plain so I prefere it blended with other teas like in Russian Caravan.
It does have a sort of liquid BBQ taste. I was even thinking that a tea BBQ sauce might be an interesting use.
That is such a good idea to use this tea in cooking. Lapsang Souchong reminds me of Worcestershire sauce. I wonder how it would actually taste in say a jerky or baked beans. Thanks for the idea!
The sweet, hypnotic scent of roses rises from this very pretty tea decorated with rose petals. At a 3:30 minute steep it brews up black and produces a sweet rose-flavored brew. The taste is reminiscent of fine halavah made with rose water. The tea blends well with the rose flavor but its taste is not very prominent.
I bought a canister of this after trying the sample and I’m glad I did. However, it is not an everyday tea. It is something that demands quiet sipping time and space.So what does one say to one’s tea collection after certain members of it have given one a splitting headache? Balls! Balls! Bring them on!
It really is a great tea. Sharp like good chocolate without being bitter and with a full ration of caffeine to chase away the most troublesome headache. Bring on the Balls!
Actually, I like to say “Balls! Balls!” as a general rule in varying social situations and almost always in public.
But I will give you that the onset of a headache gives the saying more of an emotional drive.
It is deeply amusing to me to be able to say Balls! and mean tea.
I actually use the word “balls” in my daily swearing. “Holy BALLS!” or during my drive time…“Dude!!! pause BALLS, man!”
Good times.
It’s an average chai, nothing special. I prefer the chais from Upton Teas.
One problem I’ve had with all of Adagio’s flavored teas has been that I get a splitting headache after drinking them. I didn’t want to blame the tea, but so far this has happened every single time I’ve tried an Adagio flavored tea and not at all with their non-flavored teas. (It also hasn’t happened with the Golden Moon or Upton Teas flavored blends.) I tried a number of them on my Chicago trip but didn’t log them because I didn’t want to be unfair to the tea. However it seems that I am probably sensitive to the base they use for their flavors. So, I will not be trying any other flavored teas from Adagio.
Wow, what a bummer. I wonder what it is that they put in there? Perhaps you could write and ask them just for informative purposes?
I probably could ask them but I don’t know that they would know the answer. Typically flavors are alchemy. They’re deep, dark secrets cooked up in flavor labs which do not need to reveal this information and typically don’t.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 35 years and have learned over time what is likely possible to learn and what is likely not possible. Flavors are typically not possible to find out much about (but they’re usually not made with animal ingredients, either).
I kind of figured they might not… Oh well. As much as I like tea, I don’t know that there are any for which I would be willing to withstand a headache. Maybe I’m a wuss. Or maybe headaches just suck a big one.
Wow, that’s not fun at all! I wonder what they have in them that gives you a headache… too bad there’s no real way to find out.
I’ve never heard of anything like that! But its good to know. That’s what happens to me when I have anything caffeinated. I’ve always assumed the flavored teas are based on plain black tea so I’ve never tried them.
@pinkShaya: The flavored teas are based on plain black tea. It actually looks like a CTC Ceylon tea. The flavoring is added to that. So if you get headaches from caffeine, you’ll definitely get headaches from the caffeinated versions of the flavored teas. You might be able to tolerate the decaf versions, though.
@pinkShaya Disclaimer: I’ve never tried this myself, so if you WANT to test the waters you might want to do it on a day when you’ve got nothing important to do and medication or whatever you use handy. However, I’ve heard from a couple of different sources that if you steep a black tea for around 45 seconds and then toss that out it gets rid of a pretty big portion of the caffeine. I also found this as well, and they explain it in a little more detail: http://is.gd/4w69w
Might be helpful?
@takgoti: Just found this info on Facts and Myths about Caffeine in Tea: http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and-reality.html
He says the short steep to remove caffeine is a myth and that it takes at least five minutes to remove a significant amount of caffeine from tea.
(There is a lot of other good info on caffeine in tea in this article/blog post as well.)
Oh wow! Super interesting stuff. Bookmarked that. Thanks for the link.
I’d email them, the person doing the live chat for Q & A probably wouldn’t know, but if you email them, your ? can be forwarded to a person who might. The worst that’ll happen is they’ll say they don’t know. But if you don’t ask, there’s a 100% chance you’ll never find out. Have you tried their straight ceylon? Does it happen w/ their vanilla rooibos chai and bengal green chai as well? What about their spiced green (which is basically a chai type tea)?
I really like this one. It has a sweet, buttery, floral scent. The taste is a very light buttery, nutty, with a very slight vegetal. It reminds me more of a white tea than a green tea in its light taste. The color is a pale, cornsilk yellow that is very appealing. I may steep it for a little longer than 3 minutes next time to see what it does.
