709 Tasting Notes
This is a tea I would never had considered without provocation. I don’t like the tought of banana in tea, and had no urge to even try it until I smelled the tin in store. Somehow, that delicious smell convinced me to try it. Retrospectively, it smells sort of like those banana marshmallow candies…far more like candied banana than real bananas, but it’s a nice smell.
I bought 26 g of it to try out…and after smelling a brewed cup, I think I might regret that choice. The smell of the steeped tea has a weird pungent edge that I don’t appreciate at all…still a candied banana smell as well. Why am I having this at 10 am after having only eaten a cheesecake ball for breakfast? Apparently I am a sucker for punishment..
First sips give are unimpressive. The taste matches the weird smell I got from the tea. I know that my dislike is partially my own fault, as I’m not feeling the greatest, but this might have been a mistake. There is a very weird taste mixed in with the sugary banana. Maybe the green rooibos base? I’ve had green rooibos in other teas, but I could never identify it. I think I will let this cup cool and try it cold, see if that is any more impressive. For me, this is not a tea I should have tried, so I’m not going to rate it. It’s probably a 30 for me. Not extremely disgusting, but definitely something I don’t ever want to drink.
Hem… This tea has been made to be drank cold… Am I right? If you try it cold, I wanna know if it’s a good one! Because “Dreamsicle” was a really big failure in my opinion. Hope that’s not the case for this one…
I didn’t realize it was made to be drank cold…and I don’t really like the idea of a tea that is only good cold. I’m not really super fond of iced or cold tea. Either way, at room temperature it was still not anything I wanted to drink, so the beau poured the pot out (he also didn’t like it). This was definitely a case of letting my nose and the sales clerk get the better of me.
The new summer teas are for Iced Tea to be drank cold but there is nothing wrong with drinking them hot as well as has been mentioned by Davids Tea. I sort of liked this one but it isn’t anything I am going to order any more of.
This is a perfectly yummy mint green tea…and there is no shame in that! Unfortunately, It only gets an ‘average’ rating because it tastes…well, average. Most of the 52Teas I have had have really stoofdout in one way or another, which made them rise to the top of my selections. This is nice, but I never feel drawn to drink it. More of an “everyday, use it ‘til it’s gone” sort of tea. Again, nothing wrong with that!
Now, I’ve managed to go my whole life without ever having a tea classed as an English Breakfast, so I’ve got nothing for comparison. So far, in my experience with plain blacks I prefer Chinese ones for their innate sweetness and general deliciousness. This tea has more of a hearty flavour, with none of the sweetness I find in the China blacks. It’s not bitter, it’s just definitely more plain.
I can see how this would be more of a “wake me up” tea, if tea worked for me like that. However, caffeine, etc seem to have no effect on me so I just drink what I want when I want it. I think this tea would be more of a “buck up and get through it” sort of tea for me. I’m not sure that I’ll re-stock it when it’s gone as nothing about it leaps out for me, but it is a change from my currently beloved China blacks. A perfectly respectable tea, and one of the cheapest in my neighbourhood, if cost factors in. ($4.50 for 50 g)
Preparation
I am officially impressed with this tea. I had a cup this morning, steeped for around 2.5 minutes and I thought it was delicious. no bitterness at all, just a lovely naturally sweet black tea. I made a second cup from the same leaves this afternoon and forgot to take the leaves out for ten minutes. I hoped it might be okay, since it was the second steep, and it is! There is the slightest hint of bitterness this time, more in the “aftersip” than anything else, but definitely palatable, and nearly as enjoyable as the first. I appreciate any tea that can handle my forgetfulness…
How did it take me so long to realize I love unflavoured black teas??
I too was reluctant to expand my black tea horizons. My how we’ve grown! :)
Thank the tea gods! (Though my wallet doesn’t…)
Update: Eked out a third steep this afternoon as I didn’t have enough time to dump the leaves, clean up and start a new one. The tea is definitely losing it’s flavour, but even on a thin third steep, this is more impressive than the standard bagged orange pekoe. It’s sort of reminiscent of Bigelow’s Bagged Ceylon right now, which I actually enjoy.
Keemun is one of my very favorite teas. This Keemun is nice – not the best, but enjoyable. Keemun is very forgiving on long steeps – this makes it a good tea for beginners looking to explore regional teas. But don’t be fooled – pretty much all teas have a very limited steep time to capture the true essence of the leaf. I love to wake up to this tea. I have at least 2 cups each morning before I go out for the day.
Smelled this at the market today and fell madly in love. The wine smell is so authentic that when I gave it to the beau (without telling him what it was) his first guess was wine. I don’t know that I get pear or berries, but I do get a deliciously sweet fruity wine scent. I’ve unfortunately not yet had an ice wine so I can’t speak to it’s authenticity on that front, but it definitely smells like a wine.
The Tea Brewery (unfrotunately) doesn’t list any information about their teas or steeping parameters on their website or the packaging. Accordingly, I made it up. It looks and acts like a black tea, so we boiled the water. I gave mine about 3 minutes of steeping, and the beau kept his closer to five. The liquor is rich and dark, a deep wine red in the pot and a reddish amber in my mug. The smell is similar to that of the dry leaves: fruit, wine. Delicious!
First sips match the smell wonderfully. No bitterness, no tea taste at all, in fact. It’s like drinking wine, only without the alcohol tinge. This really captures some of my favourite aspects of sweeter wines…Unsurprisingly, I love wine. I have no real taste for it though, and happily drink the $10 bottles from the NSLC. For times when I oughtn’t “drink” (aka during the work day!), this tea will be a lovely source of comfort…Wonder if I could succesfully drink it from a wine glass?
As the cup cools I start to get shadows of the tea taste, but that is not a problem. It is a wonderful merging of wine and tea…a real treat on this rainy evening.
Preparation
Oh man…Oh MAN! This is fantastic. These strawberries really are blazing (but not in a spicy way!)…I get a totally authentic strawberry tastes, complete with the occasional tinge of bitterness that strawberries have. I don’t know where that’s coming from – the bamboo, maybe? Either way, I am extremely impressed. My disclaimer is that I got this in store, and they used the proper amount of tea by their standards. I try to stretch out my tea, so I usually use one perfect teaspoon to two big mugs, but this tea would not work that way, I don’t think. Definitely use at least one solid teaspoon to a mug. I think I will be buying some of this, because when I decide I want a real strawberry flavour, (but no berries are to be found) this will be where I turn. Hoping it’s as light as it looks, because I definitely want this in my repertoire.
Preparation
This sounds sooooo good!
Wow. I think this is the first one we have disagreed on. I did not have any strawberry flavour in my cup just lots of what I thought was the bamboo. I need to try it again especially since you are recommending it.
did you use any sweetener to it?
Nope, no sweetener. I rarely put things in my tea, unless it’s a chai or it tastes horrible. I definitely had let it steep 5 or 10 minutes before I ever tried it, as we were walking. Also, as I said, they prepared it in store so I’m not sure of the amount of tea, but it might have been extra. I did not get any peppercorn taste though, lol.
Okay, so I’ve steeped this at work and obviously under imperfect conditions. However, I have, to the best of my knowledge, steeped this for just under three minutes and the water was hot, but definitely NOT boiling. The dry leaf smell is extremely mild…I was smelling a number of black teas yesterday and this was the faintest every time.
Steeped, I get an initial sweet black tea smell, something I am finding typical of China blacks, but underneath that I actually get a hint of bitter/hoppy/malty scent. Almost as if it were burnt or over-steeped, but I don’t think so. I hope not, at least!
First sips retain that sweetness I get in the smell. It’s almost as if this tea has been sweetened, but it has no additives. It doesn’t quite have the honey touch I found in the Borengajuli I had yesterday afternoon, it is more of a sugar sweetness. I’m actually astonished that a plain tea can be so sweet!
As it cools/I get deeper into the cup I am getting more hints of the “over-steeped” flavour, which I think is actually termed as astringency. In general though, this is a sweet and surprisingly juicy cup, reminiscent of some mild fruit flavoured blacks I own. It is very similar to my memory of Sawadee’s Borengajuli, I’ll have to do a side by side testing someday.
The taste echo is a little more bitter than I would like, so I think maybe 30 seconds less steep time would do a world of good for my preferences, but this is really nice. Pricier than I would prefer (100g for $12 = 1oz for $3.40), but definitely nice. I’ll be picking up some of David’s Tea’s black teas tonight so I’ll have something to compare to.
Bought 26 grams of this last weekend. Finally gave it a go this morning as the beau and I both woke up stuffy and have been fighting half-colds for a few weeks. I was taken in by the dry smell…I am a mint nut, so this seemed right up my alley. Steeped, it’s less exciting smelling. I don’t really like lemon and mint combined, so I don’t know what I was thinking when I got this.
The flavour was, to me, largely lemongrass with a hint of mint. I couldn’t distinguish any other ingredients. I like all the things that are in this, but together they don’t make anything impressive. I will use what I have, but I have no motivation to get more. I find DT lately has had a lot of less than impressive teas for me. I don’t know if I am trying things that aren’t really my “cuppa tea” or if there have just been less than stellar selections. Anyway, this is decent enough, but no superstar. Much like Some Velvet Morning…
