A.C. Perch's Thehandel

After a workday where I didn’t even have time to eat my lunch(!), this tea has never been better.

Never.

(And if it hadn’t been for the two cups of raspberry oolong I took with me in the lab (Yes, I know. Ssshhhh!), I’m not sure I would have survived.)

Seeing as the vanilla Nilgiri from Chi of Tea appears to be very out of stock, I’ve been forced to look for a replacement, just as I had decided it was my perfect vanilla tea.

Well, plock!

First place to look is close to home obviously. After all, I might get lucky. So I got this one in my latest order.

Now, the Chi of Tea one had bits of vanilla pod in it, and I’ve been trying to see if this one does as well. The problem is, though, that the thing about vanilla pod bits is they are small, black and kinda glossy. And the thing about black tea leaves is they are small, black and kinda glossy. Which makes it kinda hard to tell.

The aroma of the leaves is strongly vanilla, though, and reminds me quite nicely of the Chi of Tea, so one is hopeful. Same with the post steeping aroma. It’s very sweet and thick and has a very pod-like quality to it.

There is, which I also mentioned something similar about on the Chi of Tea vanilla Nilgiri, a distinct difference between vanilla aroma and actual vanilla pods, which is that the aroma is sweet and vanilla-y, while the addition of the pod gives it a rougher sort of impression not unlike leather. Note, it doesn’t smell or taste of leather, but the pod itself is leather-y in texture and that texture somehow translates into flavour as intensity that is only rarely found in the absence of pod.

This particular vanilla black has that quality in the aroma. On the flavour, however, it’s a bit thin. Not at all what I would expect from a description like ‘creamy, bailey-like’. It’s not really that particularly creamy on the tongue. I can’t be certain about the bailey-like bit, as I’m not that fond of liqueurs and it’s been ages since I’ve had a bailey and there for don’t have a very clear memory of what it tastes like beyond the strong alcoholic feeling which I dislike and therefore clouds the memory further.

I do believe I can spot some of that pod-ness though, it’s just that I would have liked for there to be more of it. Thicker somehow. But it’s still closer to the Perfect Vanilla Nilgiri from Chi of Tea than the Whittard of Chelsea vanilla black is, the latter having a somewhat more synthetic feel to it.

For the time being this is close enough. I may move some of it to another tin and doctor it with a whole vanilla pod ala JacquelineM and see if that gives me the desired difference. I suspect though, that the root of my problem here lies in the fact that it doesn’t have the same tea base to start with. I can’t tell what this is, but I really don’t think it’s Nilgiri, and not just because A C Perch’s don’t sell Nilgiri plain. This base is a bit rougher and has a front note that reminds me primarily of Assam, a very different from Nilgiri type indeed.

As it is, I think it should work well enough as a substitute, but I’m not even remotely as happy with it as I have been with the Chi of Tea.

Good morning, Steepsterites.

This one is actually a bit funny because I bought it not knowing what it was. On the Danish version of the website it was named (in direct translation) “Emperor Tea” and the description only said that it was a Chinese tea using top shoots, much the same as the description in English does. Nothing at all about region.

I am always interested in a plain Chinese black. Always. So I bought it and planned on seeing if I could guess the region on tasting and write the shop afterwards asking for confirmation on my guess.

Then it arrived and I went to enter it into the Steepster database. So I found the tea again in the shop and switched to English view and suddenly it was named “Keemun Deluxe”. Well that solved that mystery, but why hadn’t they translated the name? Or, why had they not called it Keemun Deluxe in Danish as well? Oddness abounds.

Anyway, I’m quite pleased with it being a Keemun. I’ve been putting some small thought into the perfect Keemun for a while without having explored enough to really find one that I thought was outstanding above all others and also available to me. (I have met one or two that were, but lost a lot of points by not being available to me, and having to order something by having someone else buy it and forward it for me takes a lot of Perfect Points out of the equation, no matter how good the flavour)

What I want from the perfect Keemun is a solid base of sweet grainyness, a strong reminder of proper Danish rye bread, a smooth and rounded flavour and just a touch of pseudo-smokyness with just a hint of a floral top note, all coming together as a whole.

This one delivers in smoothness and grainyness in the aroma, but not the other aspects. In fact it’s almost semi-honeyed in the aroma which is a good sign for me as well.

As for the flavour, there is a strong wooden note to it, which develops into the pseudo-smoke and leaves a long heavy aftertaste of floral perfume-y notes. And the problem is that this seems to be it.

Mind you, I may still have a tongue/post-illness (I am on the mend, definitely) problem to deal with here, but this just isn’t a candidate for perfection at this point. I’m lacking the grainyness in the flavour and the pseudo-smoke note is so strong that smoothness is just not anywhere on the agenda at all.

Underneath all this, I can find that note of sweet but strong honey that I also found in the aroma and thought was a good sign, but it’s just not enough.

This is a good and pleasant tea when in the mood for something smoky without going full-on Lapsang, but it’s quite far from my idea of a perfect Keemun. I shall keep on searching.

(To be honest though, I fear that I have already met my perfect Keemun, the hao ya A from Teaspring, but I would strongly prefer if the perfect Keemun could be a rather less expensive…)

There has been a sudden development to do with Stuff. If all goes well, I might dare telling you what it is soon.

This otherwise very good tea has been moved to the Consider This First shelf. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just gets forgotten a lot for some reason.

This has been on my shopping list for a while. I had a sudden need for berry-flavoured black exploration a while back and AC Perch’s had a number that I was interested in, but couldn’t make myself buy them all at the same time. I got their black currant black tea a while ago and have been enjoying that, so that definitely didn’t harm my interest in the others any.

Spurred on by taste success of the green blend earlier this evening/afternoon, I’ve moved on to the next, sharing a pot with the boyfriend as he suggested it sounded like something one might have during a cold (he’s poorly too, poor us) so here we go.

The aroma is sweet and fruity and not as penetrating as the black currant aroma is. This is sweeter and seems milder. On the aroma alone, I like this better than the black currant, I think.

Aroma, however, is not all, and direct comparison between blackberry and black currant is probably a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Unfair to both parties. It does however seem to be a milder, more discreet sort of flavoured, whereas the black currant is fairly violent on the flavouring intensity.

I like this. The blackberry isn’t really recognisable as 100% certainly blackberry but there is a fruity undertone, definitely, to a primarily black tea. The black base is even coming out a little strongly here, which makes me think I probably should have used a little less leaf. I was brewing in a different sized pot from the one I use 95% of the time, so it’s always a little touch and go with that.

As I said, I like this. In spite of it being a little on the strong side and the blackberry being rather shy (I’ve mentioned before that I quite like these subtle flavoured ones in general), but I’m not sure if it’s really a keeper. I can’t really see myself developing a craving for it at this point, but we’ll see how that goes. I remember having a similar thought about the black currant and I go through periods now and then where I have that one almost exclusively for two or three days. So we’ll see if the same thing happens with this one.

The boyfriend just popped his head into my room just now to say pretty much the same thing. He also liked it but agreed with my thoughts that it’s not, as he said, “a punch in the face with blackberry”.

A C Perch’s recommended this for an iced tea. I’m not normally one for iced tea at all, I prefer to have my tea hot, thank you very much. There’s just something strange about chilled tea that I can’t quite shake, but then Denmark doesn’t really have much of a tradition for the stuff which may account for some of my hesitation. When we say ‘iced tea’ here, more often than not it is in referral to NesTea and similar substances.

Anyway, I was feeling adventurous with this one because it is so very fruity in flavour and otherwise mild in tea flavour, and since it came with recommendation of the attempt and it’s a frightfully hot day and so on and so forth. Insert any further excuses you can think of here.

I’ve had it in the fridge for several hours now and it’s nicely cold and chilly now. I’m getting a lot of green tea which feels sort of borderline bitter and astringent. Not best pleased with that. The fruit is not really putting in a heavy appearance either. The orange is there, just as it was when hot, but the strawberry is not really coming out to play much at all. So it’s a lot like when it’s hot, only it’s chilled.

Funny thing is, I test-tasted a small sip earlier just to see how cold it had got at that point, and that small sip was exquisitely fruity and refreshing. At that point I would estimate it had reached about a little under room temperature. It was cold, but it wasn’t chilled yet. It was a totally different picture then than I’m getting now.

So either it’s a good enough iced tea as long as it doesn’t get too cold, or I was just that hot and thirsty after our afternoon walkies. Take your pick.

It’s okay as an iced tea. I only made one mug because I’m completely pitcher-less, but once I’ve got me a new pitcher, I may indeed make the attempt again, perhaps with a touch of sweetener or an adjustment of leaf usage.

Since my ‘woe, I’m dying horribly’ post earlier today I’ve been to the pharmacists and have eaten something fever-reducing so I’m going to cautiously try my hand (or tongue) on one of these new teas that I just picked up from the post office today (conveniently placed right next to the pharmacy). What torture, having new teas and not really being able to taste them properly due to permanently odd flavour in mouth.

But now, being medicated, this seems to have diminished a lot, so I’m giving it a go. Also I’m very curious about this one. What we’ve got here is a green tea strawberry and orange. I’ve already got a green tea with strawberry but the addition of orange really intrigued me.

The aroma is very fruity with the orange clearly running the show, both in the dry leaf and the steeped cup. Dry, it smells almost like fruit concentrate, the sort you dilute with water before drinking. Steeped, the strawberry peeks out as well, but it’s largely just orange.

What’s surprising about this is that when I actually taste it, it tastes very green. Judging from the strength of the fruit in the aroma I would have imagined the green tea to be completely overwhelmed by the fruit here, but it’s really surprisingly harmonic.

It’s still heavily orange, though, orange dominant over strawberry, but there’s just enough of it to make it a nice green tea rather than a round of warm cordial.

I’m quite pleased with this. I don’t know if, in the future, I would keep this one around as well as the green strawberry from Kusmi. Probably not. I just haven’t decided yet which of the two I’d be more likely to choose to stock up on, if any. (One thing is a really good tea. But just because it’s a really good tea doesn’t necessarily mean that it has the longevity to keep it around indefinitely.)

And yeah, the funny side note? Not noticable at this time.

A while ago I bought new teas for work and took aside a sampling for myself so that I could log it on Steepster. The Late Summer Blend, the Travancore and this one. This is (I think) the only one I never got around to actually writing about on Steepster.

I shall do it now because it was the tea I thought I’d have at work today, only the boss had already started making tea for us when I got that far and she had chosen the Late Summer Blend (which is also awesome, so no biggie)

This one, chinese black. Supposedly medium strength between Keemun and Yunnan, where, mysteriously, Keemun is supposed to be a mild tea. I don’t know, it usually strikes me as pretty robust, but perhaps that’s because of the smoky note it tends to have for me.

The aroma of the dry leaves are fairly similar to the Keemun, only without a smoky note. After steeping it’s very different. This is very sweet and grainy, and it has a fruity hint as well. Dried fruit though, rather than fresh. At the top of all that there is a whiff of floralness. So the aroma itself has a fairly complex profile.

Flavourwise, yes it does have a fair strenght, although I still wouldn’t say that it was necessarily stronger than your average Keemun. It’s quite floral in flavour, but not as fruity in flavour as the aroma was. Actually the flavour profile is a whole lot simpler here. Lots of floral flavours, a sweet underlying tone of rye bread-y grainyness and on the whole just an honest flavour of tea. Keemun-like, but entirely its own. People who enjoy Keemun should check this type out as well.

This particular cup is a bit overbrewed because I nearly forgot about it, so I can’t really describe it any further than that at the moment, but I’ve had it several times at work so far. It seems to be the one I go for if I’m the tea-making person that day and I’m not feeling in the mood for flavoured. I’m not sure yet what the boss thinks about it, though, I haven’t asked her. If she doesn’t much care for it, I’ll happily buy her out. I could definitely see myself having it at home.

I’m not sure exactly where it comes from though, other than just China. A C Perch’s aren’t too informative on that count, so if anybody can clue me in, that would be great.

This is another one of the new work teas, tested in peace at home with regards to posting about it. I actually had this at work yesterday, but as mentioned, while I’m there I don’t have time or opportunity to really fully pay attention to it. I did find it quite pleasant as a while-I-work-tea, though.

I have to say I’m not a fan of this leaf grade. They’re torn into such tiny pieces, it’s a crying shame to look at. Remember I’m used to large leaf Chinese primarily. I don’t know why Indian stuff almost always have to come in such itty-bitty sizes. A lot of the beauty goes missing this way.

Purely aesthetical issues aside, though, they don’t have a very strong dry aroma. It’s there though and kind of malty. It’s much better after steeping, malty and a little grainy as well. It smells very smooth.

Now, this is what I like! I’m not a fan of Indian teas in general. I dislike the prickly grassyness of Darjeelings and Assams tend to develop a funny sort of astringency all too easily. Both get fiendishly bitter when not tended to. I’ve had Dooars and Sikkim as well, neither of which managed to leave any sort of good impression on me. I think I’ve had a plain Nilgiri once but wasn’t hugely impressed at the time, although if I could find one I’m sure it would grow on my in a quite spectacular way. I seem to recall me disliking it at the time for the same sort of reason that I initially wasn’t all that happy about the Tan Yang Te Ji, which later, famously, completely bowled me over ♥. This is the first plain Travancore I’ve had in my life and as it comes from the South West of India, like Nilgiri, I expect there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two.

But this, this is finally an Indian tea that I like. Typical then, that it’s one that’s virtually unknown in Denmark. A C Perch’s, my favourite tea shop in the country, has it though so I’m not complaining. I’ve got my bases covered. :)

The tea tastes very different from the North Indian types, it has an almost Chinese Fujian-y quality to it. The smoothness and the grainy sort of malty notes that make me think of rye bread.

And a milked note. That’s a funny sort of note, that one. It’s the one that usually makes me try something with milk in it, because it sort of tastes like there’s already a little in there. It’s a very small one though, and easily missed. I doubt I’ll try this with milk although I’m sure it would hold up to it beautifully, mostly because I just prefer my tea without. I can drink it with, I prefer not to.

It’s a large flavour. Rounded and assertive, and I’m not at all suprised to discover that it’s also used in A C Perchs’ Irish Breakfast blend. It has that breakfast-y sort of flavour.

I don’t know if, like the others, it will turn super-bitter over time, though, and I’m not going to find out if I can help it, but it doesn’t taste like it would, really. Totally smooth and not a hint of astringency anywhere at all.

I am WAY pleased! Imagine finding an Indian tea that I actually like. And not just I-drink-this-like, but like -like! I’m so glad I allowed myself to get inspired for this one. I think the boss will like it too. (She’s had two days off work, so she hasn’t been introduced to our new teas yet)

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

This morning on my way to work I passed by a building where I saw this in the window

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/i6Y6UlZTujhSL0URL1xy-Tt0rtk7VScRcTAqR2hWR8Q?feat=directlink

The sign says that they are opening both a shop and a tea room there in August this year.

YOU GUYS, IT MADE MY DAY!

They’ve had the shop in Copenhagen for over 175 years, of course, and they’ve also managed to get a foot in on the Japanese market as a luxury item so they’ve got a couple of shops there, but this is the first new shop in Denmark, and it’s right near where I live! I’ll be walking right past it every (work) day.

This, ladies and gentlemen, has the potential of becoming very very expensive. (While actually saving money, because I’ll no longer be bound to amounts dividable by 100g and I’ll no longer have to pay the (modest for within Denmark) shipping fee.

I am celebrating this with a cup of the Late Summer blend which contains cranberry and vanilla on a black Chinese base, and which is one of my absolute favourites from ACP.

Can it be August yet? Can it? Can it?

Cranberry + vanilla = om nom nom nom!

This is one of the new teas for work that I picked up from the post office today. Stupid as I am, I didn’t consider that it might be smart to have the parcel shipped directly to the work address. I’ll do that the next time. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what the boss wanted when I ordered and I couldn’t find her, so I just added a few things to the basket that I was interested in because I figured I could just keep them for myself if she wasn’t interested. Turns out she was, and when I told her about a black chinese with cranberry and vanilla… You should have seen her face. :D We’ve both been looking forward to this one since placing the order.

An advantage of having it sent to me at home was that I could take out small samples of each to try at home in a calm environment and post about them. I can’t do that at work, really. That’s not what I’m there for and I rarely have time to pay that much attention to it, much less post about it. And if anybody thinks that’s unfair when the boss is paying for half of it, remember that she works five days a week to my four. She has plenty of time to get ahead. :)

As mentioned, this is a Chinese black (Chinese! Check!) flavoured with cranberries (Berries! Check!) and vanilla (Vanilla! Check!). In no possible way can I imagine this being less than at least very good. (Can you see why I chose the rhubarb creamy green the other day when I really wished I could have tried this one out?)

The dry leaves don’t really have much in the way of aroma. It has both vanilla and cranberries easy enough to find, but the base isn’t really coming out an enormous lot and on the whole it’s not a very strong aroma.

After steeping it’s another matter. The berries are really coming out here and the vanilla adds a creamy custardy dessertlike quality to it. More importantly the base tea is shining through. That sweet grainy note that I like is right there on the edge of all the flavouring.

Wow. I knew this would be a good choice! Awesome, I am it!

You know, I may have to get a supply of this for myself as well. It reminds me of the strawberry zabaglione black that 52teas made, only this isn’t strawberry. Strawberries seem to be difficult to get right in tea. Often it’s more just something vaguely strawberry-ish rather than something that actually tastes like a real strawberry. This doesn’t really seem to be the case with the cranberries. They’re just there without turning into something vaguely synthetic.

I think it’s the combination of these two things that makes me think of the strawberry zabaglione. The vanilla in combination with a fruit results in something incredibly dessert-like and softly sweet. I think I like this one better than the strawberry zabaglione, though. (Sorry, Frank)

It doesn’t say which particular chinese black this is based on, but what I can pick up of it through the flavouring strikes me as familiar and I’m having suspicions that my absolute favourite region might be involved here. (I’ll bet you lot can’t guess where that is!) I can’t taste it cleanly enough to be certain though, but I’m curious enough that I might actually write them an email and ask.

This is really very nice, and I suspect the boss will agree. If I’m the one to make the tea tomorrow, I think I’ll start our new supply with this one.

This particular tin seems to be getting more attention from me than I had previously thought it would. For a fruit flavoured black this almost always seem to do the trick unless I very specifically want something else. Maybe I will make it part of the Standard Panel in the future. We shall see, we shall see.

It’s so summerly and so fresh. It makes me wish I had a black currant bush nearby as my mother told me that the leaves of same would be good for herbal tea. Those of you who DO have access to black currant bushes may wish to try this out. (I’ve never actually tried this myself, though, so if you’re feeling curious about it you may wish to do some research of your own first.)

Black currant really is the overlooked berry.

Irrelevant to this particular tea, but relevant to me, attention Steepsterites who sometimes shop at Necessitea! Might I prevail on one of you to get something for me and send it on the next time you shop there anyway? I will of course repay you for the purchase and shipping either by sending you something of equal value of your choice or paypal or something. I’m sure we could figure something out. It’s not urgent or important, just keep me in mind the next time you shop, yes? Shoot me a PM or an email (address in my info) if you will help me. Sorted. Thank you QuiltGuppy

Oh gosh, I am so knackered it’s not even funny! We were at my parents’ house for the weekend and my mother took us for a walk in Rebild Bakker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebild_National_Park), which, if you can’t be bothered to follow the link, is a very hilly place where the Danish-American Society have their 4th of July celebrations. We followed a few trails, got very lost indeed, and generally spent a whole lot of energy struggling up and down snow-covered hills while trying not to break arms and legs. My thigh muscles had definitely started in on the fatty acids before we came out and back to the car!

Anyway, the point of this is I’m dead on my feet and couldn’t face tackling all the posts you lot made while I was away. Something heartening was very much required, and I found that I automatically reached for the black currant.

Funny that. I’ve had it a few times but only posted about it the first time. I didn’t think then that it would be one that I would keep in stock, and I’m still don’t think it really will be, but for now it’s definitely still enough of a novelty in my collection that it continues to hold my interest.

There were the other berry flavoured ones as well, and this one is making me quite excited to try those.

It’s very sweet tonight, with a fair sized side note of vanilla. I seem to consistently find that vanilla-ish note, and it makes me wonder if the black currant flavouring has been modified a bit so as not to become overly tart. You know, considering the fact that the black currant really is very strongly present, acidic astringency and all.

Beware. This is going to get long.

I had an AC Perch’s order arrive yesterday, but it was mainly a stock-up parcel, so this one was the only new thing in it. (Meanwhile Chi of Tea is tempting me with tempting temptyness, but my bank account insists that I wait until nearer to the end of the month. Oh well.)

To me black currant is a classic flavoured black flavour. When I was a child, my mother would only occasionally have a cup of tea. Mainly if she had asked me dad if she should make so coffee and he hadn’t wanted any, she would sometimes make a cup of tea instead. Or sometimes, I could get her to have a cup of tea with me.

That was way before I really started liking it much and I could only have it with milk and sugar, otherwise I didn’t like it. But having a cup of tea with my mother made me feel like a big girl, because I was drinking something hot with my mother the way she and my dad had coffee. It was just your average mediocre teabags with artificial flavouring, mostly, and black currant was my mother’s preferred flavour. And that’s why it has come to represent classicism in tea flavouring for me.

So I was thinking recently-ish that I wanted to try some more berry flavoured stuff and explore that area for a while. Mainly due to the awesome raspberry oolong and the sudden emptying of the 4 Red Fruits tin from Kusmi. I was inspired, I guess. So I looked at what was available at AC Perch’s, found three interesting things (strawberry, black currant and blackberry.) and then agonised for a while over where to start.

Due to the above story, that turned out to be black currant.

As usual I’m throwing AC Perch’s brewing recommendations over my shoulder and hopping along my own little merry way. There’s just no way I’m going to voluntarily steep a black for seven minutes on the first go. It’s a lovely company, but their steeping instructions are so not for my particular taste. I consider myself sufficiently experienced to know better at this point.

The aroma is kind of sweet and creamy. There are some fairly large vanilla hints in there which pushes the actual berry (is black currant a true berry?) a little more towards the background. Of course it’s a bit difficult to tell for certain at this point, since I got distracted and didn’t get around to making aroma notes until after it had cooled some. I find that this always diminishes the aroma to some degree. Anyway, sweet, creamy and with black currant mingled with vanilla notes. It rather smells like dessert.

I wonder what sort of black this is based on. It seems to be a rather hearty one because I’m getting a lot of natural tea flavour out of it, but without any of the hints that would help me make an educated guess as to which part of the world we were talking about. I suspect Indian or Ceylon. Probably a mix. This seems to be fairly common with flavoured blacks.

There is lots and lots of black currant in this. It even has that tart sort of astringency that you get from the fruit. My tongue is feeling all prickly and shrivelly at the moment. It tickles! It’s not overwhelmingly fruity, however. You could probably drink an entire cup and not recognise it if you weren’t paying attention, but if you do pay attention, it’s very easy to find. It’s completely interwoven into the tea flavours that it end up feeling like a seamless whole.

The aftertaste has a lot more of that creamy vanilla-ness. It doesn’t taste like it has had milk added while you drink it, but the aftertaste does. It adds to the feeling of it being a dessertish sort of tea. I’m reminded a little of the strawberry zabaglione from 52teas. The creamy sweetness of this one is very reminiscent of that, only not quite as obviously custard-y.

It’s very nice, this. I’m not sure if I’ll be needing more than this one batch in the long run, though. Only time will tell.

Another backlog from last night.

The boyfriend already liked the Sencha and I thought it would be a good idea to also get a chinese green to illustrate the differences between japanses and chinese greens. What could be more classic than a Gunpowder?

M really liked the rolled up glossy looking leaves, but she didn’t care much for the tea itself. She thought it had a sort of aftertaste similar to the aftertaste when eating fish. .

For myself, again, a fairly smooth and straight forward tea experience. I don’t actually remember a lot about this one any more but was a bit more butter-y in flavour and a bit more semi-salty and colour of the flavour was sort of like the colour of straw. Deep yellow brew, though.

This is also the first proper quality FRESH Gunpowder that I’ve had in years. I searched really really hard, high and low, and I could not find even the vaguest hint of a smoky note. Gunpowder is not a smoky tea. I don’t care what you say, it just isn’t.

Like M, I preferred the Sencha, although both were pleasant teas.

Yesterday we got together with some friends, M&C. For those of you who have been here for a while, these are the same people that we went to visit in Paris last spring. They’ve moved home to Denmark again now, and M has become interested in green tea. She had bought a sencha from a shop near where she lives, but didn’t like it very much. (Apparently the man in the shop was also rather weird. When asked what he would recommend, he said, ‘nothing, because taste is individual.’ That’s… not very helpful.)

Anyway, the boyfriend is quite fond of this sencha so we started out with a cup of that, and M quite liked it and especially the typically sencha radioactive colour. Turns out she didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to use boiling water like she normally would (Again, man in shop, when dealing with an obvious newbie, it’s a good idea to mention this!) so it had turned all bitter and weird on her.

I would say this one was quite mild. It wasn’t brewed by me, however, and that may account for some differences. I wasn’t actually looking while it was being prepared, so I don’t know for certain, but I have a strong suspicion that the boyfriend and I use very different leaf to water ratios. We definitely use very different steep times. I’m borderline gongfu these days with a LOT of leaf and no more than a minute on the first steep, where he’s more traditional in his usage of leaf and typically use about four-five minutes steeping. So yes, I would very likely have prepared it differently.

As it was, however, I found it very mild in flavour. The colour was very clear and glowing in the dark, and the aroma was quite butter-y. The tea itself was super-smooth with hints of dark green but not so much of the spinach and boiled broccoli-ish notes as I have come to associate with Sencha. (I’m actually drinking a Sencha now that Auggy shared with me, and I’m having the hardest time not to let that influence my post about this one)

I would have brewed it stronger myself and tried to find some more forcefulness in the flavour. It seemed a little timid and shy to me as it was, but it was an okay tea.

I’m so tired of drinking nothing but Pickwick or Lipton when I’m at my parent’s house. Recently they’ve had Twinings which is a step up. A very small step, granted, but still up. So for Christmas 2010 I decided to do the sort of thing I hate and give someone else something that I was interested in rather than something they were interested in. I bought some free flow pyramid bags (because I know better than to throw loose tea at someone who only ever have a cup once in a blue moon anyway) from A C Perch’s, stuffed as many as I could fit inside a 250g tin from same and wrapped it for her. In my defence it wasn’t her only present, I also got her something from the Body Shop. Further in my defence, she had bought me a tea light holder. AGAIN! I counted them all yesterday. I now have in my possession 16 tea light holders. And I never light candles, tea lights or otherwise.

Those bags come in boxes of 30 and I wanted there to be something to choose from, so I got two different boxes. I could have got one of the sampler-y boxes they had with four or five different kinds in it, but I liked these better. This one and the breakfast blend. They’re classic basic teas without a ton of flavouring and stuff.

Anyway, that left me with a total of 60 teabags. In case you haven’t tried it yourself, that does NOT fit inside a 250g tin. So I stuffed as many in the tin as I could and kept the rest in the boxes and just gave her the tin. If she founded she didn’t really like these I saw no reason to saddle her with two whole boxes of them. I’ve told her I’ve got the rest and she can have those as well if she wishes.

Which she does, I’ve decided, because later that Christmas my father asked me, no ordered me to get some tea that I could have at their place because he was tired of giving me that cheap stuff knowing that it was a lower quality than I would ever buy for myself. He despises tea, thinking it one of the most vile substances on the planet next after bananas, but he’s into whisky (which I think is absolutely horrid and disgusting) so although neither of us can have the others’ drink of interest without pulling faces, we understand each other perfectly.

So I’ll bring the rest of these boxes up next time I see them. (I have considered doing something like that before, but never did. I can do it now because I’ve been told to, but otherwise I was raised to take what I was offered when a guest in someone’s house and not make a lot of unnecessary dietary demands. So everybody in my family knows it’s not what I drink at home when they give me a cheap teabag because that’s what they have, and I never complain about what they give me.)

In the meantime, I’ve nicked one.

This one I included because I expected it to be similar to my beloved Tan Yang Te Ji (♥), and I stared myself so blind on that fact that it wasn’t until I was asked about the Paklum (or in English apparently Packlon) was that I realised that it was a blend. It has white tea in it, supposedly the Paklum. What is Paklum? I’ve never heard of that before. My initial guess would be some sort of flowery scented something, but I’m assuming it must be the white tea in question. Paklum. News to me. Consulting the literature I can’t find anything about it, but according to the Google results I get it is indeed the white element.

Obviously this means that contrary to what I was expecting this is in fact nothing at all like the Tan Yang that I was expecting it to be. The smoky element is very very light, almost non-existant unless you know precisely what to search for, and the Paklum is giving the whole thing a floraly scented note.

It’s got a spicy sort of note that I recognise from the Tan Yang, but it’s much more obvious here. It’s more like the main note of it all here, along with the floral note, and I miss the deeper notes of cocoa and smoke and oranges. It has the grainy rye-y note as it should, but it seems thinner here. A bit diluted.

All in all, it’s not a bad blend. I could have lived without the white addition, but it’s infinitely better than whatever artificially flavoured stuff Pickwick can come up with. I wouldn’t buy huge amounts of this for myself at home, but it’s definitely good enough for having when visiting my parents.

The Final Sipdown: Day 6
Decupboarding Total: 10

Apparently it is BOP day at my house. The vendor notes say goes well with milk so you can bet I’ll be putting some in. Hopefully it will stand up better than this morning’s Uptons EG FBOP. Just to be difficult, I added a touch of sugar, too. I need tea-cuddles at the moment. I’m exhausted.

The smell certainly is promising. Thick and chewy and honey-malty. And the taste, oh yeah, that is nice. I can tell I’ve added milk to it, but the tea isn’t covered up like (ahem) some teas I might mention that I had this morning. It’s not an overly complex tea but I needed something comforting and relaxing and this definitely qualifies. It’s thick and a little textured feeling in my mouth and has a nice nutty/malty/sweet taste going on that is very cuddly. Yay for comfort teas! This plus a kitty napping on my lap have me well on the way to feeling rejuvinated and perky again!

Thanks to Angrboda for the chance to try this!

Ah pink tea! The tea that almost wasn’t because I had a heck of a time getting the lid pried off the tin.

Actually this is inspired by the fact that A C Perch’s wrote in their newsletter today that they have a new rooibos which is flavoured with rhubarb. Now, admittedly I don’t much care for rooibos, as in not at all, but I can’t for the life of me imagine those two flavours together. I may have to push it on the boyfriend so that I can get an opinion on the matter. Although he may find the rhubarb flavour rather too girly…

Not that rhubarb is really a girly flavour in and off itself but in this green tea, it’s turned into something uber-girly. Pink and fluffy and reminding me of bubblegum.

I actually used too much leaf for this pot because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, so here I don’t seem to have quite as much pinkness as I remembered it having, but there is a good deal of the green tea shining through. Which would have been nice if it hadn’t been for the fact that it’s also a little harsh from the fact that there is rather too much leaf in there. Oh well.

Anyway, it’s still a quite nice cup for those uber-girly moments. It’s just not one I really feel like having very often.

Today’s tea is an inspired one. I ordered new tea for work the other day, but silly me forgot to consider the delivery address. So now I’ve got a big package to pick up from the post office on wednesday (having given up on the stupid package pick up place that keeps displacing my parcels), all of which I’ll have to carry with me into work on thursday. Instead of just having the silly thing delivered directly to work! Oh well, I can steal a few samples of the leaves, I guess.

Anyway, the reason this one is inspired is because one of the new work teas is one that has nothing in common with this one except the brand, but I’m imagining it to have the same sort of creamy-sweet quality as this one does.

I’ve even managed to make it a pretty good cup today, which is good seeing as this seems to be one of those teas that I end up neglecting without meaning to. It’s so summerly and nice, I really ought to have it more often. It reminds me of visiting the boyfriend’s family and having rhubarb crumble with custard. In spite of the fact that the rhubarb is sort of not really coming out clearly in this cup. Which doesn’t really add up with it being a pretty good cup today, but there you are. I never claimed to be logical or consistent.

I just really like this. It tastes pink and girly, and I suspect that the boyfriend would dislike it on principle.

It’s been a long time since I last had any of this one. Even longer since I posted about it. Smelling the tin now I wonder why.

Oh, the sweet creamy aroma, accentuated by a sharp sting of acidic rhubarb! I can’t even begin to describe how awesome these leaves smell. Like a sinfully sweet dessert, but with tartness that makes you want to come back for more. And more. And more. And more. All of this in combination with the standard notes of sencha.

Once it has finished steeping and a cup has been poured, take a moment to revel in this aroma once more. It’s even better when it’s a ‘wet’ smell rather than a ‘dry’ smell. Everything seems to flow together more. (Weirdly though, the aroma of it is sort of purple-ish… Can’t really see the connection there, but the old brain is a strange place.)

Sadly though, the flavour of it doesn’t really live up to the aroma. It’s good and the flavouring is subtle, which I like. But the aroma leads me to believe that there should be so much more. It’s an aroma – flavour mismatch as far as the strength is concerned.

As far as the actual flavour however, it’s very close to the aroma. (Still somewhat purple-ish). Primarily sencha flavours, but rhubarb as a close second. Then at the bottom of the flavour there’s the creamyness along with something every so slightly floral. There are rose petals in the leaves, though, so that’s probably them making an appearance.

Very nice, but not one I feel like having often enough that I think it should have more points than this or that I think I might be restocking. It is, however, very much a flavoured green variant that I would encourage people to give a try.

Of such an enormous order I made recently there are surprisingly few new things for me to try. Only three new things and this is one of them. Of course there will possibly be two more things later on but those are not for me really.

So three new things and this is the only untried one left. Then I’ve got some untried stuff from the latest package from Wombatgirl and I think one or two untried ones from Auggy, although I’ve messed the latter up a bit, so I’d have to check there.

Anyway the aroma is very sencha-y here and it’s got a sweetly fruity additional note to it. It’s sort of bubble-gum-y and only slightly like rhubarb.

The flavour is very rhubarb-y though and also very sencha-y. I steeped a little too long so it’s quite strong, but it’s really very much like I had expected it to be. I really do like the combination of rhubarb and sencha. I think they suit each other nicely while still somehow managing to be very much in contrast with each other.

I don’t see this is a tea I’ll be drinking a lot but it’s definitely one I’m going to enjoy when I do have it. Very nice indeed.

This one was next in the cold brew experiment. It worked out relatively well. The bananas are coming out a whole lot when brewed cold, and I’m not entirely certain that this works to the tea’s advantage. I don’t think there will be more than one pitcher of this. While it is more refreshing this way, it just appeals to me more when it’s hot.

And while I have your attention anyway, Steepsterites, may I draw your attention to this picture? The Tea Corner has been shelved. Er… I mean, there are shelves in the Tea Corner.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/NNX4gWal5i0uUiCC-eiIUOnJOfe6_LFJWQwI2FsYNwU?feat=directlink
Yes, that’s the Bits’n’Bops Basket on the table there. I’m sure you can understand why it’s currently difficult for me to remember where it all came from although it was very nice of the people who contributed to filling it. A blanket thank you to all those who were or have been previously involved.