4843 Tasting Notes
I cold-brewed some of this last night and it’s so good. One of the better reblends I’ve crafted – I think that the use of the Bai Mu Dan is what elevates this tea.
It’s sweet and tastes very much like cotton candy – but I also get a good amount of the Bai Mu Dan too. A very refreshing iced tea.
Sipping on a cup of this week’s tea of the week at the moment.
I’m really pleased with how this one turned out (yeah, I probably say that a lot). The blueberry and coconut are probably the two most prominent flavors but the raspberry pops toward the end of the sip.
I really like this one iced so I might just have to keep an extra pouch of it for myself so that I can brew up a pitcher of iced tea in the next few days.
For those of you who remember – last year we had a Kickstarter campaign going to raise funds to be able to take over 52Teas from Frank. One of our contributors was none other than Jason! (Thank you so much Jason!)
And he wanted to create a Ho-dduk flavored tea (which is a Korean street food dessert type of pancake thing that is fried in a bunch of butter and filled with a filling of brown sugar, cinnamon and peanuts – or pecans or other nuts) It took me a while to get the flavor balance just right for this tea. My first batch turned out tasting a bit more cinnamon than I wanted it to – but I do believe I finally got the flavors right!
The black tea base is a Thyolo OP1 Black tea from Malawi – it’s smooth and flavorful but not overly heavy or aggressive. The pancake flavor comes through (but don’t go looking for maple flavoring here which is what my palate was kind of looking for at first because – pancake.) There’s a nice warmth from the cinnamon and a touch of buttery taste. I actually used pecan flavor rather than peanut because I like pecans better than peanuts. I also felt that the pecan flavor would come through better than the peanut flavor would with this particular base.
It’s sweet, cake-y, nutty and warm with cinnamon – with just a touch of butter. Really tasty. I hope Jason likes this as much as I do!
I’m currently taste testing this tea which is a VIT blend that I created from one of our 52Teas Ambassadors. They wanted a tea named after them and they wanted a green tea that was both sweet and lightly spicy with strong minty notes.
I think I captured it with these ingredients. The green tea is a soft buttery flavor and the tulsi adds a hint of mint and notes of basil, pepper and a gentle cinnamon-like flavor. The aleppo peppers are warm and the heat builds gradually. It’s spicy, but not HOT. It is pleasantly spicy.
The minty notes come through nicely and I like the way they contrast with the warmer spice notes. It’s cool and crisp but also zesty and warm. This is my first time working with Tulsi and I’m really pleased with the result.
I’m not really re-reviewing this tea, I’m just resetting my rating to zero since 52Teas couldn’t do that for me.
Drinking this tea now. I received this tea in this month’s Amoda box. This is a subscription that I can’t give up even though I’m doing the 52Teas thing now. I just love Amoda, what can I say? They do what they do better than anyone else.
Since Amoda is promoting this as an ideal iced tea blend, I decided to try this both hot and iced. So I brewed a pot and I poured myself a small cup to drink hot and I’m keeping the rest to the side to cool so that I can have it chilled.
Served hot, this is nice. While it does have a similar flavor profile to the typical holiday type blend (spiced orange) I like that this is blood orange and you can taste that little difference. The orange is a little sweeter and a little brighter here. The spices are not overwhelming the cup.
I look forward to trying it iced.
Currently drinking a cup of this – I have to admit that when I saw the name of the tea, I was excited and thought – oh my goodness, that sounds amazing! Unfortunately, it doesn’t taste quite as good as it sounded. It’s alright, I guess, but I wanted more from it than it delivered.
I’m tasting mostly black tea which is pleasant, of course. The raspberry tastes off and i really don’t taste a lot of cake-y flavor.
Backlog:
Well, I’ll at least try to post two or three reviews per day. I doubt I’ll be able to accomplish that, but maybe some days I’ll be able to post a few more than just 2 or 3. I’d like to get all my backlogs posted though.
I wasn’t so crazy about this tea. I received a sampling of it from Ost (thank you!) and my first few sips were enjoyable but as I continued to sip, the tea became less and less enjoyable.
Here’s my full-length review:
I brewed a gallon of this and I’ve been drinking it all day. It’s really refreshing. The plum notes are more distinctive when the tea is at room temperature rather than ice cold. I really like how the plum and the white tea taste together. I like this a lot better than I anticipated, I expected I’d like it but that it’d taste rather ordinary to me – but the plum is really quite tasty.
Backlog:
Yeah, so I was almost caught up at one point a few months ago and I let it all slide. I was really, really busy with everything that I had to do with the Kickstarter campaign and now with the tea biz, but I do still feel like I should at least post the info about the last few months of tea reviews that I wrote … so when I have a moment or two, I’ll be stopping by and trying to get caught up. At least I won’t be getting more behind now that I’m not writing reviews anymore.
This is a really delightful second flush. Beautiful muscatel notes. The sip begins sweet, grape-y and then transcends into some earthy and woodsy tones. Nice complexity. The finish has what I referred to as a “sugared grape” type of taste. Really nice!
I liked this one. Don’t believe I have reviewed it yet, though I’ve had it twice!
Glad to hear that you enjoyed it! I was really happy with how this one turned out as well.