Jillian Send Message

I’m picking up just the very faintest hint of smoke this morning. It’s a nice morning tea IMO for those who want the wake-up but not the harsh taste that some of the Indian teas like Assam tend to pack. This is a very smooth-tasting tea that doesn’t really feel like it needs milk or sugar added to it.

EDIT: It resteeps nicely too.

This tastes a great deal better with a shorter steep – and I also used a bit less dry tea aswell. It’s certainly tasting creamier, sweeter, and smoother and I bet I could make an awesome London Fog out of this – I’d only need to add the steamed milk. I’ve decided to up the rating a little bit, too.

My only other experience with Monk’s Blend is from a rather unfortunate (and yucky) teabag so I wanted to see how the real blend tasted. The tea was slightly sweet-smelling but not heavily so, scented with vanilla and fruity notes (from the grenadine I’m assuming).

The flavours are not terribly bold and I get the impression that the tea base is supposed to take centre stage and that the flavouring is more a compliment than anything else, as opposed to an actual flavoured tea where you mostly get the flavouring rather than the tea.

The result in this case is a mild, smooth-tasting tea with little astringency and enhanced with notes of sweet pomegranate (some people have said that grenadine tastes more like cherry, but this one at least is distinctly pomegranate to me) and hints of vanilla. Not bad.

I went for shorter steeps this time ‘round even though white teas are supposed to get a longer steep in general, I think. The result was a lighter tea with a smoother taste but with plenty of flavour. The nuttiness still predominates, but I’m also getting a hint of something else that makes me think of rhubarb or maybe underipe blackberries – veeeery interesting.

I wanted to try this tea sweetened but I only realized as I brewed the cup that I only had cherry-flavoured creamed honey, lol! It doesn’t seem to have hurt the flavour of the tea though – if anything the cherry sort of enhances that little hint of berry flavour. The biggest change I tasted was that the natural honey/molasses flavour of the tea was really brought out by the honey – now I’m beginning to see what people are talking about. ;)

I’m having this with milk for my morning cuppa. It makes a descent breakfast tea but I still wish that it were a bit more robust – although it might be the cream flavour mellowing it out a bit.

I don’t really like this tea enough to use up the full canister I bought so I’ll be ‘donating’ some of it to the various people who requested some in the Take It Away thread.

I’ll admit it – I’m starting to fall in love with this tea. It’s just such a unique blend and it’s a wonderfully-balanced combination of savory maltiness and fresh grassiness. It has a surprisingly good caffeine kick to it aswell.

The resteep (@ 4:45) was good too, though leaning a bit more towards the grassy-flavoured side of things.

You get a big waft of smokey-BBQ when you open the bag and I was afraid that it would be too heavy on the Lapsang Souchong. My fears were allayed however, and while there’s some smoke, it doesn’t take over the tea and drown out all the other flavours. I’m picking up a slightly astringent, tannic sort of note that comes from the Darjeeling I think, aswell as a rounder, mellower flavour that might be from the Keemun.

It’s a nice, well-balanced black tea that goes down smoothly and that doesn’t really seem like it needs a ton of milk and/or sugar. Although I suppose you could add it if you wanted – I don’t think it would wreck the taste or anything.

Adding milk really gives this tea a decadent, creamy, rich vanilla flavour that’s pretty close to the flavour of vanilla ice cream. Unfortunately I still think the apple in the blend could stand for having more of a presence, but otherwise this tea is quite yummy.

Man this tea is so yummy, I can’t believe I didn’t have any for such a long time. There’s almost a buttery sort of texture to it, very much the sort you’d get from fresh-out-of-the-oven sugar cookies, but not a milligram of fat in sight – boo yeah!

BTW was it you Ricky who was oogling this tea awhile back? I owe you for sending me some of your A&D Series 4.