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My second Art of Tea dessert sampler tea. Backlogging from last night. (I got sleepy)
I feel I should say something about my experience ordering the sampler. I have to say I’m very impressed with the turn around time – I ordered it on Monday and received it on Friday. I also got a personalized e-mail telling me that it was processing – which was kind of neat. Painless, easy, and pretty fast. No complaints here!

Except about the tea of course. Due to my whole kisiel experiences, i was kind of worried about a repeat with this tea, especially since it was berry flavored and the specific kisiel taste I was getting was raspberry. At first, I thought that that is exactly what had happened, but I quickly realized that it was a more consistent and straightforward berry flavor. For a while, that is all I was getting out of this tea. Then, as I got deeper into the cup, I started to get vanilla. And my second cup was also much more vanilla-y. Is it possible for vanilla taste to sink to the bottom? I didn’t get any chocolate at all out of it, but then I think white chocolate, since it contains no cocoa solids, has a much milder taste than normal chocolate (I still love it though!) and I could see it easily getting lost within all of the other stuff in here.

In terms of the blend, I am once again impressed by the way the flavors seem to meld with the underlying rooibos. As with the chocolate monkey, the rooibos is present, but only to provide a foundation for the flavors to rest on. Still, the tea doesn’t quite live up to it’s own hype.

Second steeping of this – I decided to add milk and a teensy bit of sugar, because that is what I do when eating kisiel (well, I add cream or yogort mixed with sugar, but same difference) and it works really well!
The weird now kisiel, now chocolate banana flavor switch-off is still there, but this time the kisiel is winning – or at least it’s winning in my head, I freely admit that it may be my own associations coloring the way I receive this tea.

Still tasty though! I’m really glad the sample sizes are generous :D

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #20:
Running out of black teas for the morning, so looks like I’m going to have to settle for a flavored tea. Well, I say settle but I’ve been looking forward to this tea for a while now. I love rose flavored stuff. I realize it’s really overpowering for some, but to me it brings back childhood memories of confectionaries.

On the first steep the rose flavor WAS almost overpowering, I couldn’t really get much of a tea taste from it at all, but it started coming out as the tea cooled. Are you telling me that you wish to be an iced tea, Rose Tea? I am unsure if the world is ready for rose flavored iced tea. Especially without hibiscus. Everyone knows proper flavored iced tea needs to contain hibiscus. This is Fact.

The second steeping was more tea flavored, but it was also a little anemic. Hmm…I am, however, suddenly filled with a craving for shortbread. Mmmm, shortbread.

Well, I have to say, nothing gets through my “need beer nao” haze, quite like the sudden arrival (at 9pm, wtf UPS?) of my Art of Tea dessert tea sampler. So now I am totally like “need tea, go away beer.” Ah, how fickle is woman, etc, etc.

Naturally, for my first pick from the sampler, I randomly drew one of the packets and this is what I got. Now, I have to say. Banana and I have a relationship that is even rockier than mine and Vanilla’s. You see, outside of tea, I am generally fine with vanilla. Whereas A. I have never HAD tea that involved banana and B. I am just not a huge fan of bananas. Unless I am in a banana mood. Which happens like, once every two months. Still, I was willing to give this tea a chance. Also, I am pretty sure someone else mentioned this, but monkey in the title! How can you go wrong?

Even before brewing, I am pretty impressed. This tea smells like a banana split! It has been ages since I had a banana split! I shouldn’t even remember how one smells! Which probably means that this smells like banana split should, not how it necessarily does.

The taste however…hm. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s tasty! So tasty, that I suspect Art of Tea of witchcraft, but it’s also kind of…confusing. Sometimes, I totally get chocolate and banana. But sometimes I also got this tang that puts me more in mind of a Polish dessert called kisiel. Which I am never in a million years going to be able to explain, so Wikipedia to the rescue: “It consists of sweetened juice, thickened with arrowroot, cornstarch or potato starch, and sometimes red wine or dried fruits are added. It is similar to the Danish Rødgrød or German Rote Grütze.” So, there you have it. It is usually tangy, has the consistency of custard (basically) and is super tasty with cream.

Anyway, which of the two things it’s gonna taste like varies basically from sip to sip, although the chocolate banana seems to be gaining the upper hand as it cools. My aim with ordering this sampler is that I want to find a dessert tea that I can use to full my sweet tooth into thinking that I have had dessert when nothing of the sort has actually occurred. I am unsure if this will serve the purpose. Further steepings are required! With milk! and possibly some sort of artificial sweetner! The more calories I can free up by avoiding dessert, the more beer I can consume! Yes, I have a one track mind, leave me alone.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #19:
This was actually my breakfast tea, but I didn’t have time to log it until now. Let me tell you about my day. Taught two discussion sections and was hard-pressed to say who won the “most people who didn’t read” award. Then I got to drive two hours to LA! Then I got to stare at microfiche/film for four hours. Then I got to drive back! In rush hour traffic! GOOD TIMES.
After a day like that, maybe you would say, you need some damn good tea. To which I would reply, after a day like that I need beer. Or possibly something stronger. The day I figure out a way to mix tea and alcohol without getting something absolutely horrific, I will probably give up beer (note: this is a total lie, beer is awesome). But that day is not today.
On a somewhat related note. Although I love beer and I love tea, I am much less willing to try new beers than I am to try new teas. Why is that I wonder?

Getting back on topic, Pu-erh! It was largely a mystery to me until my first Adagio black tea sampler a year ago. Adagio’s Pu-erh Poe, I have recently begun to suspect, however, is not really a good example of it’s breed. Or perhaps Golden Moon just really likes Pu-erh that has the funkyness factor turned up a notch. That said, the smell was actually not that weird, but as soon as I tried some, I was like GAH MUSHROOMS.

Then I took a step back. I said to myself, wait a minute, Ewa, don’t you like mushrooms? To which I replied (yes, I realize that it is only ok to talk to yourself if you don’t answer, but I’m afraid I crossed that line a while ago), well yes, but, you know, on pizza! And in pasta sauce! not in TEA. Well, I answered, why not? Isn’t there tomato flavored tea? There was a tasting note of it earlier this week! AND. There is a sweet Chinese dessert that uses fungus. Well ok, but if you recall, I rebutted, I don’t actually like that dessert…

This continued on for some time, but the end verdict ran. Ok fine, it is only the fact that I am unused to mushroom in my tea that makes me go gah, the taste itself is actually kind of neat. It certainly has more character than it’s Adagio counterpart. But I maintain that Pu-erh chai is just weird.

This moral of this story is: writing tealogs while exhausted and mildly inebriated is just not a good idea.

Backlogging from yesterday. Ok, so I know I said in my Sinharaja post that this wasn’t in the database, but, honestly, how am I supposed to keep up if they keep changing the name?

So I got 5 bags of this and 5 bags of peppermint and eucalyptus from a friend whose friend had given it to HER, but she didn’t like tea. The fact that this is labeled “fresh and fruity” rather than herbal revive makes me think it must have been a souvenir from England or something. Oh well, her loss = my gain.

So, thing is, I love currants. I love eating fresh red currants (not that I get to very often what with most of the US being ignorant of their existence), I love black currant flavored stuff, especially juice, but jam is also up there. My relationship with vanilla, on the other hand, is rocky at best. Still, I was cautiously optimistic. And, at first, it was great! Super fruity, with the creaminess of the vanilla offsetting the blackcurrant tang. But then…everything changed…I was having lunch with a friend outside so there was really no good way to get rid of the teabag, so I just left it in. BIG mistake. The nice light currant flavored changed into this heavy generalized vegetal doom thing, that, when mixed with vanilla was just…not good. Also, it left my mug determined to smell like currant.

Despite my bad experience, this was a super tasty tea, and is, seriously, just asking to be combined with a neutral black tea (see: my Sinharaja post), chilled and served as Super Tasty Currant Tea Juice!

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #18:
I actually grabbed this this morning for my morning cup, but apparently I hadn’t washed out my mug quite thoroughly enough after “enjoying” Twinings Blackcurrant, Vanilla and Ginseng tea (one that I was too lazy to tealog, especially since I’d have to add it to the database first. For the curious, it was actually quite pleasant but I let it steep too long and the nice currant taste turned into a weird vegetal blargness) for lunch yesterday. So what I actually got was mostly black currant with a tinge of “generic black tea” underneath. Now the combination was actually quite tasty and has given me a pretty awesome idea for iced tea, but it was hardly fair to the Sinharaja.

Naturally, I made a second cup this afternoon (taking care to clean out my mug thoroughly this time), and I have to say that I’m glad I took the trouble, because this is some pretty great tea. Now, I’m not always able to differentiate between just straight black teas unless they are pretty aggressively different, but for some reason I don’t have that problem here. This has character but it doesn’t overwhelm, it’s…quietly confident, to anthropomorphize a bit. It has a noticeable but not overpowering malty note as well as a separate underlying sweetness, and a surprisingly rich overriding tea taste.

I may need to get more of this.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #17
Woah, almost halfway! I am making some excellent time here.
I was very pleased that this came out from my random grab this afternoon, since my belly has been complaining about something all day and I’ve often found it responds well to ginger – better than to mint and chamomile, even. I’ve been kind of dreading getting any of the white teas, though, since I am a total white tea noob.

I was somewhat suspicious of the 2-4 minute steeping time on the packet, so I decided to compromise by going with 1m 30s for my initial cup (which is what my timer app recommends) then proceeding to leave the leaves in the pot for an additional one and a half minutes for the rest of the cups. Depending on the results, maybe I’ll put the leaves back in after my second cup. But that is probably a horrible thing to do to a white tea, so I will try to refrain.

The first cup was very light, I agree with Meghann that the taste isn’t vegetal of grassy, but I can’t put my finger on what it actually is. I like that, although the taste is light, it still seems to have suffused the water and doesn’t just taste like tea flavored water, but like it’s own unique beverage. The ginger, in this cup, is only obvious in the aftertaste.

Second cup, the doubled steeping time has left the tea darker and, obviously, stronger. The burn from the ginger is obvious throughout, and the white tea flavor, which I have decided tastes kind of grain-ish, is also much more obvious. There is also a sweetness that seems much more subdued than the sugary taste of a green tea.

Although I quite like ginger, it seems to serve more to add a kick to the tea rather than any sort of flavor. My stomach does feel better though.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #16
So, when I was reading the description on the sample packet, they referred to the “tips” in this tea as “buds” but, for some reason, at first I read it as “suds.” Obviously, I immediately did a double-take and corrected myself, but I think the whole soap idea stayed with me, because that is what I smelled when I opened this tea. Seriously. Soap. What is wrong with me?

The tea brewed up just fine, a darker red. On tasting it, however, I got…paper. Paper, water, and soap. What. As I drank further, I eventually isolated the paper down to the kind of peppery taste of the lavender. I got nothing about the soap though, I think it’s just imprinted on this tea now, which is a shame because…Earl Grey!

All while drinking this, I was unable to convince my brain that I was drinking tea and not papery dishwater. Oh Tippy Earl Grey, I want to love you, as I love most of your kind! But I don’t think it’s meant to be. Lavender is, apparently, just not my thing, and I have no idea what the hell kind of brain fart has made me unable to let go of the soap thing, but I think I’m not gonna be able to rid myself of it.

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #15:
Goodness, the packet wasn’t kidding about the whole pale green thing. My initial brewing, which I did exactly as I was told to, (Boiling water, really?) and got a very light, almost tasteless green tea. No floral note that I could discern, and altogether not particularly impressive.

I let my second cup steep longer. It’s now more of a golden color, and has more taste, but on the downside is, of course, also more bitter. By quite a bit. The original steep didn’t have any bitterness, which was probably the point.

On the third cup, the tastes seem to have settled down somewhat and I’m finally getting something floral. It all seems quite muted to me though, and I can’t help but feel decidedly meh about the whole thing. Guys…I think I might just not be that into Oolong.