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Golden Moon Sampler Tea #30
Almost at the end of my Golden Moon sampler! Basically took the entire month to go through it. Which is a pretty good pace, I think.

My mom called right after I set this to steep so it was probably steeping for waaaaay too long, but I don’t think, wonder of wonders, that it did any harm! I have so far been pretty unimpressed with the Golden Moon Oolongs although that may be more of a problem with me than with the teas, but this, THIS is what I think of when I think Oolong. Although very light in color, it has a bold, nutty flavor and a light hint of smokiness and an overall impression of toasted rice. Delicious!

I don’t get much in the way of dates. On the other hand, I don’t eat a hell of a lot of dates, so that is not too surprising. There IS a fruitiness about it though, especially in the aftertaste. There’s a slight acridity which I think comes from the oversteeping, but all in all this is DAMN tasty.

I’m gonna be making a trip to the land of iced oolong in June, so I’m not sure that I want to order more of this since Japan has historically left me feeling a bit oolonged out, but if I WERE going to get Oolong, this would be it.

Edit: Oh wow, I didn’t notice but apparently I hit 100 tasting notes 2 notes ago! Am I spending too much time on tea? (No.)

Tried this this morning as a comparison with the St. Isaac’s blend. Now St. Isaac, Wikipedia tells me, was the patron saint of Peter the Great and Czar Nikolas II was the last czar of Russia. So…no connection there! Well I mean, Nikolas was Peter’s descendant so there’s that connection. But what does that have to do with the tea? Absolutely nothing.

Nikolas DOES follow the St. Isaac’s blend in the way that the tea base is the dominant flavor with the spices in the tea rounding out the taste. It’s more fruity than floral, though. It’s also a much lighter tea – even the first steep was lighter both in color and in terms of the strength of flavor. The second steep barely had any flavor at all. I need to try and remember to use more leaves in the future if I’m gonna drink it in the morning, although this lightness makes it good for the late afternoon, I think.

So after the whole white tea thing, I was craving something a little more substantial, so I decided to combine finishing off this sample, getting rid of some milk that’s kind of on it’s last legs, and trying out Takgoti’s Chai Method, which appears to be the official way of preparing chai properly according to Steepster, since I’ve seen it mentioned so many times with reports of excellent results.

I have copy pasta’d the method (from somebody else’s entry) here for people’s (and my own) convenience:
1 cup of water, 1 cup of milk/milk equivalent , 1 tbsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of chai

Boil water and sugar together in a saucepan until sugar dissolves into water.
Add the chai, then simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the milk, simmering and stirring.
When it comes to a boil (be careful that it doesn’t boil over!), turn the heat off and let it sit for a long time. Like 7-10 minutes long. (I went with 10)
Strain and serve.

This is yummeh, first of all. And nice and filling to boot. I love the taste that milk gets after its been cooked. I’m pretty paranoid about it boiling over, though, so I think I may have jumped the gun a bit with taking it off the heat. Also, I think in the future I’ll use less sugar though – this was a bit too much and covered up the taste of the actual chai a leetle too much. This also meant that a lot of what made this particular chai unique was covered over, though I still get some apple if I concentrate. I definitely want to try this with the Golden Moon Kashmiri Chai.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #29
And then we all pulled out the white tea at the same time!
So I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know Chrysanthemums were edible. Drinkable. Whatever. And I also totally thought that this was just a straight white tea. Oh well!

So since I didn’t realize that the stuff was edible, I can’t really say that the knowledge that it was in the tea made me happy or disappointed. Intrigued is the furthest I’m willing to go. It WAS kinda neat to see the flower among the tea leaves, but that’s about it.

After drinking the tea, I still don’t really have an opinion. If the mums are providing some sort of extra dimension to the white tea taste than I either don’t have the required white tea baseline to be able to differentiate or just did not get enough of them in my sample to judge. This tastes basically like white tea, very light, kind of reminiscent of hay. There’s a slight bite and a sweetness in the aftertaste that may or may not be the mums, it’s a little reminiscent of chamomile maybe. As the water cools the chamomile note starts getting stronger. Interesting.

I can’t say that I’m that enamored of straight white tea, and as far as chamomile goes, for one thing there is my regrettable association and subsequent nausea, but aside from that I prefer it in foxtrot or chacha. So I’m pretty meh on this tea.

Mmmmmm, malty.

I guess I’ve pretty much narrowed down what I like from my Upton sample buying spree and what I am just going to hold in reserve/foist off on other people eventually. Now that that’s settled, it is time to destroy these samples because my tea-buying hand has been restless lately and I need to make space in my cupboard.

I am still not really getting anything in the way of grapefruit from this tea, just a generalized fruity and floral note. I kind of want to drink this and my Czar Nikolas back to back to see how they compare. The Czar also has this sort of light blend with assertive black tea taste and flavors you can’t quite pin down thing going on. Oh wait! I think I got some grapefruit just then, in the aftertaste. Or maybe I’m trying too hard.

So I deliberately grabbed this this morning to see how it stacked up against yesterday’s Scottish Breakfast with the aim of picking one of them to get moar of so I can have quick brewing morning tea.
At first, I was firmly on Scottish Breakfast’s side – this stuff, other then looking hilariously like coffee grounds, smelled totally oversteeped, and there was a VERY strong bitterness to it that was a little TOO shocking in the morning. As I drank more of it, however, I started to get this really interesting (and unexpected!) fruity note. Fascinating! I hope this is not going to turn into one of those things where I basically just vacillate between whichever one I happen to be drinking at the time. (The solution is NOT to just buy both, dammit!)

On another note, I am once again doing a round trip down to LA and back today, so look forward to some half-drunk/half-exhausted tealogs in the evening! GOOD TIMES.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #28
As the Japanese would say, Aaa, natsukashii….Ah, how nostalgic.
Drinking this reminds me of my time in Japan, where for two years I basically drank either sencha, hojicha, ooloncha, or a combination thereof in the case of some of the more terrifying bottled iced teas. Before I lived in Japan I hadn’t had much experience with green teas at all, so this is basically the taste I have come most to associate with green tea.

The leaves were a dark green and looked slightly crumbled. The taste has only a hint of the vegetal. It doesn’t have the sweet note that the green tea had. No candied pineapples here! Instead, there’s a somewhat buttery note which I, personally, prefer. Or maybe I’m just so used to it that I think I prefer it.

While there is a comfortable feeling of familiarity around this tea, I don’t think I really NEED it around. Still, for the moment, if I were to get any of the Golden Moon greens, it would be this one.

Since the Earl Grey proved ineffective, it was up to my travel tin of Scottish Breakfast to save the day! Help me Scottish Breakfast Blend, you’re my only hope!

Oh yeah, this is definitely more what I need in the morning. Nice and strong, a little bitter, very aggressive tea. There is an odd undertone to it this morning that I am having difficulty placing, however. It’s not exactly the oversteepedness that I got in my other note…it seems almost…woody? I don’t know, but it’s there, and it’s driving me crazy!

Deliberately oversteeped because I am VERY sleepy.

Was in an Earl Grey mood again this morning and since this seems to be the one that has grown on me the most, I reached for it. Unfortunately, I reached a little too late and it had a super short steeping time resulting in a super weak tea that completely failed to wake me up. Bummer!

Not the tea’s fault of course, so the rating stays as is, although this HAS brought home to me that I am going to need to keep some sort of “Insert Name of Country” Breakfast tea on hand all the time since those are the only ones that I can treat that way.