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My internet is still being a piece of shit unfortunately. DX

Anyway I had this with breakfast and it has quite a kick, maybe a bit too much of a kick for early in the morning.

*looks up Gyokuro tea on the Wiki *
“…The shading process increases the amount of theanine and caffine in the leaves…”

*looks at clock *
1:50 AM

Uh…ooops?

I also appear to be brewing this tea incorrectly, but whatever. I’ll mess around with that later. Anyways the resteep is a bit weaker but still nice; a bit more vegetale though, perhaps.

To be honest, I wasn’t to sure about this tea when I bought it. I’ve heard from various Steepsterites how finicky Gyokuro can be and what a fine line it can be between a good cuppa and horrible one. But I wanted a plain green tea and the Dragonwell Murchies was selling was more expensive (they were touting it as a ‘rare tea’, which seemed odd to me – but then this is a store that specializes in traditional English teas).

I also liked the clean-smelling, grassy scent this tea has, particularly the dry leaves. The flavour is grassy too, but not as much as I was expecting, actually. It reminds me a bit of the traditional-style matcha that I had in Vancouver, but not as strong and there’s a bit of sweetness on the beginning of the sip. It’s not bitter or rough in the mouth at all, and it doesn’t leave my tongue feeling dry like some greens and oolongs do. I’m also getting an odd sort of roasted/smokey, almost spicy aftertaste to each sip. It’s nothing strong, just…there.

You know, I could really get into this tea. _

I got this in a tea trade with silvermage2000 (thank you!) along with a bunch of other teas I need to try still.

The smell of the dry tea reminds my a of vanilla…only not quite. I can pick up sweet creamy notes that make me think of a dessert of some kind. When I add though water though, I smell strawberries – strawberry puree with some sweet cream added to it maybe. That impression stays with me as I taste the liquid too. It’s a very dessert-like tea, not heavy or harsh in any way. I imagin it would taste good with milk, but it’s perfectly drinkable on it’s own aswell.

Well this was the last of the sample tin I got with my first Adagio order. It’s a decent flavoured tea but I don’t think I’d buy a whole 4oz canister of it. It’s a shame that custom blends like the Zodiac series don’t come in sample tins. I think I’d be more interested in trying them if I didn’t have to commit to a big thing of tea I might not like.

My internet was borked and I only got it back now, so this is from early this morning.

I hadn’t had this tea in awhile and decided to remedy that tragic oversight. This is still the best chai I have ever drank. I’m definitely ordering a refill for this puppy when it runs out. :)

I have no idea why I’m doing this….okay maybe I do, I’m just not sure about the wisdom of it. When I was reading up about honeybush tea a couple days ago I came across info that said that the British used to drink this as a tea substitute – complete with milk and sugar. Thus I felt compelled to add some milk to my honeybush and see if they were onto something – or just on something.

The colour the tea turned…I don’t even know what to call the colour. It’s a sort of pinkish, greyish, brown shade – very appetizing. D:

Fortunately, it tastes better than it looks. It reminds me of a very light black tea (maybe a Ceylon) with some berry flavour added to it. Not horrible, but it still pretty much killed the unique flavour that honeybush has. I think I’ll keep drinking it plain, thank you very much!

This seems to haved worked out to be a coconut tea day – I swear it wasn’t planned! :D

Mmm, I love the floral-coconut scent this tea has – so fragrantly delicious. One thing I noticed is that this tea leaves a bit of a dry-mouth feeling, particularly on the first steep (4 min).

A resteep (5 min) solidifies my opinion that this isn’t a good resteeping tea because, while it keeps its wonderful frangrance, the taste is weak and lacking.

So I was looking for a black tea have following my cup of 52Teas’ Coconut Cream Pie tea and my gaze happened to fall on this tea. The two are quite similar, at least the descriptions would suggest they are, so I thought it might be neat to compare them both. This is just a quick and dirty evaluation, I don’t think I have the patience to do one of the long, detailed reviews Takgoti does. ;)

What I notice about the dry tea is, while 52Teas’ tea has lots of big coconut shavings, this tea only a has a few measly little shreds scattered through it. It doesn’t smell quite as strongly of coconut either.

The trend continues with the flavours; not as much coconut, but a bit more creaminess and also a touch sweeter, I think. One point in Capricorn’s favor is that it seems to take to milk better than the Coconut Cream Pie tea. The ‘bases’ of the tea taste different too, which I suppose only makes sense as Capricorn has an Irish Breakfast (Assam) base and 52Teas uses a Nilgiri base for their teas.

Which of these two teas do I like better? They’re both very much drinkable and pleasent, but I’m leaving toward prefering Coconut Cream Pie over this one because of its stronger, richer coconut flavour.

I added skim milk to this cup and while it did smooth out some of the edges it didn’t really bring out the creaminess of the tea like I’d hoped. It might take a ‘heavier’ milk to accomplish that, but I never drink anything other than skim, so that’s likely an experiment for someone else.

I’m still rocking the nice (and real-tasting!) coconut flavour however. :D