1908 Tasting Notes
I used cooler water this time and I didn’t steep it as long (3.5 minutes) and it actually came out pretty decent. Green tea was the predominent flavour but the black tea managed to sneak in there aswell. I think treating this like a plain green tea is the way to go to get the most out of it.
Preparation
This is the first pu-erh tea I’ve tasted, though this has so may extra ingredients added I’m sure any purists out there will cringe. Steeped for just over 4 minutes in boiling water.
Dry the smell of this tea is of nutmeg like whoa! When I added the water the nutmeg scent was still there faintly, but I could also smell cocoa. Neither of which were quite able to disguise a rotting, fermented sort of scent, which is what I’m told straight pu-erh tea generally smells like. It wasn’t too obnoxious and it doesn’t seem to translate to the flavour of the tea.
The brew is slightly cloudy and it’s about the colour of black coffee. I’m rather hoping the similarity ends there and this doesn’t make me violently sick like coffee does.
It tastes slightly bitter but it’s a rich, smoothly-pleasent sort of bitter. The tea tastes ‘dark’ if that makes any sense. At this point I don’t know enough to tell if what I’m tasting is the pu-ehr or the chocolate, spices, etc that were added to it.
This is not a tea for all occaisions but I’m still leaning towards liking it.
Eep. I hope you don’t get sick, too. The grounding taste of most pu-erhs I’ve had is only something I can describe as earthy.
This is one I’ve had on the list to check out for a while now – I haven’t had many flavored pu-erhs. It still sounds interesting; I’ll need to get around to it soon.
I would say that a flavoured pu-ehr is probably not the best place to start. I find that pu-ehr in itself has a sort of flavour that doesn’t need additives. I am kind of intrigued by this though.
It’s the chocolate that’s making it black. A plain pu-ehr is very red, like a chestnut.
I agree with Takgoti that the flavour can best be described as earthy. The first time I tried pu-ehr I got associations to a pine forest in autumn, just after it has rained so everything has this heavy sort of damp smell.
I told a colleague at work, where everyone in my department seems to drink tea, that I was going to try pu-ehr and she said that when she tried some years ago, it had made her gag.
I dismissed her comment as an exaggeration. After all, I love Yunnan tea and what is pu-ehr after all, but aged Yunnan tea. Well, I did try some and, yeah, it made me gag, too.
It didn’t taste bad, per se, but it was as if my Western tongue interpreted that earthy taste as, literally, dirt, as something I shouldn’t be putting into my mouth. I had no context for associating that taste with something you’d eat. It’s kinda how I imagine someone from rural China might react if they smelled pizza for the first time. To us, it smells (and tastes good), to them it might smell completely revolting.
Yep, nutmeg=whoa! in this one:)
Steeped 5 minutes. When I first add the water the tea turns a vivid pink and as it steeps it turns into a very red-looking cup of tea, it’s enough to make me wonder if the colouring is even natural.
I’ve also noticed that it leaves a bit of a dry taste in my mouth.
Preparation
Drank this when I was out earlier and found it reasonably enjoyable. The drink wasn’t too sweet like how Starbuck’s makes some of their drinks and the rooibos base made a surprsingly creamy-tasting latte.
I was a bit annoyed that they didn’t bother to take the tea bag out of the cup though. I’m not sure if you can overbrew rooibos – but still!
Preparation
This tastes quite sweet to me tonight for some reason. This is another tea that would probably be delicious iced – in fact I might do just that with the second steeping.
And Cynthia is right, this tea is out of stock and I’m more than half-finished the sample tin I got with my order. is a sad panda :(
The second steeping came out much better and I stuck it in the fridge to cool and drank it with supper. This is a wonderful tea to drink iced, with or without sweetener.
Steeped for 2.5 minutes and added skim milk.
The smell might be BBQ-y but the taste is ever so faintly that of a campfire; there’s a trace of ash and smoke and hot embers in each sip. It’s not really unpleasent, just sort of intriguing, even if I’m not sure if I like it or not.
