A.C. Perch's Thehandel

Well… The banana and melon flavourings are coming out very nicely here.

It’s just that underneath it the white tea is shouting insults at me and accusations of mistreatment… I may have been slightly distracted while making this cup. In my defence I was exploring Standard Panel storage options, although without finding anything super-useful.

This cup, though… Nah, I think we’ll start over from the top.

This tea has been very carefully selected as one of the very most delicate sorts of tea I own, and I’ll tell you why.

Come time for cooking dinner, I discovered that I had no tap water. A little investigation told me that this was because it had been turned off so that they could fix a leaky pipe somewhere and that we should not expect to have running water again until 2.30 as the earliest. 2.30 was three hours gone by the time I discovered this, so who knew when there might be tap water again? So I waited a little while for the water to return while bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t cook dinner without water and that this fact made three times as hungry as I was to begin with. At least.

Then I realised that if I had to use the bathroom, I wouldn’t be able to wash my hands after. Then I decided to make a mad dash to the nearest grocery store for some bottled water rather than wait it out. You know, just in case.

Of course after having returned with my loot, the tap water has been turned on again (and it’s a lovely yellow too), but at least now I can do things without having to wait for all the yellowness to be gone.

Seeing as I actually had bottled water in the house now, I decided to see if I could tell any difference in tea making as opposed to my regular tap water. Hence making the most delicate tea I could find in my cupboard. I do have a plain Pai Mu Tan also, but that one’s getting rather on in age, so I figured a fresher one would be a better test subject, even if it did have a ton of fruit in it.

And I only just now realised that I took the dream tea when I meant to take the temple tea. Oh well, they have the same base, so same difference in this instance.

So! Interesting experiment ahead! Can I make out a difference between my tap water and this bottled stuff that cost money and didn’t come out of the faucet for next-to-free?

No.

NaNo isn’t going so well today. Oh the words are coming but my characters have suddenly come over all religious-like. I HATE it when people get religious at me in real life, and I CERTAINLY don’t want a bunch of born-again christians in my story, but apparently writing certain things will have repercussions.

So I’m taking another break while trying to sort out how to get around that one without the whole thing turning into some something so un-me it’s ridiculous.

This combined with a serious craving for sweets which started with the first cup of the white temple tea… So fight fire with fire. Or something.

This one is also bought based on Rijje liking it and I ended up taking it because even if I didn’t like it, send to her, good home, and so on and so forth.

There aren’t any fruit chunks in it, but there are some nice purple flowers and it’s scented with melons and bananas. If you know this you can easily identify the aroma of the dry leaves as a mixture of these to fruits. If you don’t know this, it’s probably a bit more tricky. The jury is still out on whether or not it smells good or if it’s just horribly sickly cloying.

It does make me want to eat a banana, though.

After steeping it smells hugely of bananas! And not much else, really. This is 100% Bananaland. Thankfully the flavour is a little more controlled. Like with the white temple, the nuttyness of the white tea is coming through wonderfully and then the whole thing is wrapped around with banana flavour. It tastes exactly like I imagined it would.

The funny thing is I’m not getting bananas and melons at the same time here. At first it’s bananas but then as I’m about to swallow it morphs and it’s only melons. Isn’t that odd?

You could probably steep this a few times easily, but it’s really very much a one-cup deal. One is enough. More than that and it would start to taste really horrible, I think.

Once again I’m going to put myself pretty close to Rijje’s score and keep it myself.

Now, my little NaNo characters. Shape up or ship out! rolls up sleeves and cracks knuckles

GOSH! This stuff coldbrewed? Awesometastic, I swear! Wow. It’s all tropical and sweet and with a ton of papaya and pineapple coming through. Unlike the white dream tea from the same company, this one totally wins by being cold brewed. And it was pretty tasty to begin with. I might be considering wether the Standard Panel should contain some seasonal standards as well.

I had this at 93 points before so it was already pretty high up, but this cold brewing turned out so awesome that I’m adjusting it further upwards.

I’m probably going to be a little scarce for a couple of days. Two new kittens, sisters Charm and Luna age 13 weeks, in the house (yay kitties) that we just brought home yesterday. They are so sweet and exploring the house and very distracting from serious business things such as tea. My room is being investigated… wait, now they left. They are so cute I could just explode!

Gosh. Seem to have managed to scald these leaves a bit.

The tea is still fairly nice, but there’s a certain sharpness and bite to the flavour that wasn’t there before. And frankly wasn’t supposed to be there either. It’s like if you take a sip it’s got tiny little needles in it.

I haven’t ruined it. It’s definitely still drinkable but it’s just a little bit off the spot.

This one is from my latest A C Perch’s order which I received yesterday. Yes, the one with the enormous box. I’ve been eyeing it for a while because Rijje posted about it and it being a favourite of hers, and although I must admit to there being some sceptism mixed in with the fascination here, I decided to just go ahead and try it out. I’d probably do that sooner or later anyway, so why not just get it over with? And then I decided that if I didn’t like it, it wouldn’t really be such a bad thing anyway, because I could always ship it off to Greenland where I knew it would get a good home.

This being settled, I felt much better about making the order, and now it’s time to see if the white tropical explosion from 52teas is just a freak incident or if I actually really do enjoy tropical white blends as much as I think I do.

The leaves definitely smell strongly tropical. It’s more like sniffing at the contents of a snack bag of dried fruit than it is sniffing at tea leaves. Making a difference from the 52teas blend, this one doesn’t have coconut in it, which I take as a good sign as coconut in tea is very touch and go for me. Sometimes I think it works. Most of the time it just gets cloying. The pineapple is really strong here, as are the strawberries, and again, as I saw with the raspberry oolong, there are generous amounts of fruit chunks in here, and they’re big too.

After steeping the aroma is more or less the same but without that harshness that dried fruit can have. It smells warm and soft and very fruity, and it’s got an honey-golden colour in the cup. It doesn’t actually remind me that much of the aforementioned white explosion anymore, though, apart from both of them being white blends with tropical fruit. And based on the same type white I think if memory serves me right.

I’m surprised at the level of astringency here. It’s not super-astringent to the point where it becomes unpleasant, just nicely so. Initially I get the flavour of the white tea and not much of the fruit. The characteristic note of walnuts is coming through loud and clear. Then there’s a sweet pang of tropical fruit behind it and mostly on the swallow. If I keep it in my mouth a little longer before swallowing the tropical flavours really expand in the mouth and come out in a sweet fruity pleasantness. At this point is rather like the white explosion again, only a bit less explode-y and without the coconut. This is the more subdued version, the calmer, less impatiently enthusiastic variation of the tropical white.

I can’t get the tropical explosion again although I love it, unless Frank decides to make a new batch, but right now that’s not quite as big a catastrophe as before, because this is most definitely a very worthy substitute. Perhaps even a little better for the lack of the coconut.

Sorry, Rijje. I’m keeping this one, but thank you very much for the inspiration to try it. :)

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss For sending me some of this tea to try!

This is really good. Sweet, buttery, with a clean taste. I brewed it in my Kati tumbler, but, I think next time I’ll brew it in my gaiwan.

A lovely, lovely tea!

You know how everyone keeps saying that “this puerh tastes like fish tank, but in a good way” or “this tastes like dirt, but in a good way”.

Well, this tastes like salty, slightly off butter, but in a good way. Vegetially sweet smelling, but not sweet tasting at all.

I’m not thrilled with this tea, but I could see where green tea lovers would really love it.

Thanks for the tea Angrboda, this was good to try.

This is what I’m having at work, I think I’ve mentioned that before.

I’m sharing it with my boss and usually we take turns buying milk for it. I don’t usually take milk in tea, but while I rarely do it at home, I do think a little milk really suits a lot of Assams. But anyway, she was on vacation for the last week and a half so I’ve been all alone with the tea. Once I ran out of milk, I did buy a new half liter, but forgot to bring it, so I was just drinking it plain.

Lately I’ve found a lot of raisins in Assam. It’s funny really how I’m finally beginning to learn to spot those typical flavours. It’s taken me ages. I’d find them in each individual tea, but it’s only just in the last year or so that I’m learning to really associate a specific region with a specific flavour profile. It makes it so much easier to work out what to expect from a new one.

So anyway, raisins. And also some sweetness. Some would say malty sweetness, and to a certain degree I agree with that, but sometimes I think it’s more along the lines of honey.

The reason I’m posting about this one now is that yesterday at work I had an experience that was much like what I imagine it feels like to have succeeded in making Jackee Muntz go all caramel-y. The last half of the cup, cooled to just the right temperature was pure honey. It felt thick in the mouth even. An intense and dark honey with a little black tea around it.

It was UH-MAY-ZING!

And this is the reason why I’m giving the rating of this one a few more points.

I reckon this is a fairly good leaf grade. Obviously it’s not The Best Ever out there, but it’s not just an OP either. Funny that this, and not the FTGFOP should turn out to be something coming very very close to being My Perfect Assam. Even when I don’t get it to be so utterly honey-y.

I wish I knew what I’d done to achieve that though. I have some other good Assams in my possession at the moment and I’ll get through those first, but once they’re gone, I may very well just order some of this for at home as well as work.

Our new tea at work, my colleague and me.

We generally have an Assam with plenty of milk when we go to our favourite cafe for our little ‘afternoon meetings’ now and then. It’s about the only instance I take milk in my tea by default. Most of the time I prefer without.

So after the fiasco that was the Taiwanese oolong of boringness, we decided to go back to something thoroughtly tried and tested. We even bought a small carton of milk for it too.

I tried a little of it without additives first, and unlike aforementioned oolong of boringness I was quite pleased with what I got.

The aroma is strong on the malty sweetness. There’s a little oakyness too but not very much. Mostly it’s just a molasses-y sweet general tea aroma.

There is a good deal of body in the flavour, but it still seems quite mild and smooth. Mild here does not equal delicate or weak. Just sort of… mild. You know?

It’s still quite sweet with a touch of astringency on the finish, but interestingly I’m also getting a relatively strong raisin-y note at the back of my palate. It’s not as strong as the one in 52teas’ Essense of Assam, but it’s very very clearly there, especially if I slurp a little.

I’ve never noticed that in Assams before, but now I’m wondering if I’ve stumbled upon some sort of typical flavour for the type. Like the cocoa note in Fujians. Interesting.

All of this is of course completely drowned out and ruined by the addition of milk, but that’s okay given the fact that this is for work. We are not concentrating on flavour here, we just want some tea to drink. :)

All in all I’m quite pleased with this one. I’m not sure if this is the Perfect Assam for me either, but it’s definitely a pleasant tea. I did like the 52teas Assam a little better for the stronger raisin note, but this would be an excellent alternative.

Backlog from last night.
Had a killer headache and was a bit restless at 11. (The rain is getting on my nerves)Then I found this in my cupboard – gooddie!

It’s… It’s sweet and soothing. Can’t really tell you all the flavors because of the blend. Because it is a Blend with a biiiiig B. Green tea meet herbal tea meet rooibos. I acually felt my body unwinding after a half cup of this, so it works.

They should call it SUPERTEA

A green Earl Grey with Jasmine!
Awesome!

The leafs are nice… Very even in size and colors.
A spoon of dry leafs smells very much of Earl Grey, but I can’t detect the jasmine in the dry leafs. THEN after steeping the weirdest thing happened. The smell of EG is all gone and is now replaced by … (drumroll) … Jasmine!

It also taste very much of jasmine. In fact the jasmineflavor is so much in-your-face it drowns all the other other flavors. This is so unlike Perchs blend it leaves me slightly confused. They usually blends to perfection, and this is far from perfect. Somehow I like it anyway. As a jasmine tea it’s actually decent, and CHEAP, so if I ever run dry of jasmine tea I would go to this.

By the way, the coloring of this tea is also weird. Green with a brown tint.
Oh, Perch – I found a flaw of you today but it’s so good that I forgive you!
(P.S Long live the Queen and all her dogs)

… I got into the kitchen and found my teachest raided.
Two used bags had been left to dry and rot on top of it – I wonder if someone is trying to piss me off intentionaly, but I think it’s just some poor absentminded parttimers who don’t know that the tea is PRIVATE.

sigh In truth I am just very upset to find that the only tea left was the green rhubarb.
It’s creamy, sweet and green – and soo very not what I need at the moment.

As for the tea… well. It’s good.

…Strawberry and green tea.
I always get the UGH feeling when those two meet in a mug. They kind of clash. Both ingredients has a bitterness to it. Combined they are just to much…

But I couldn’t help myself when the sweetest ekspedient let me have a whiff of this. I HAD TO HAVE IT!!!! I don’t need to drink it; Just throwing into my closet is fine. Just having it in my home like a perfume – I needed to buy it.

It’s bitter but it’s not that bad. Maybe if I steep it for a shorter time and cool it down…?
Then maybe… Just maybe, it could turn out to be one of my fave!

Hello Steepsterias ;)
Long time no see! I had to go to Denmark for some checkups in Copenhagen.
This, sadly, means I didn’t drink any tea for ages. But I did think of tea, and all of you,
when I went on a shopping spree. I am now the happy owner of … a lot of tea :P

This is one of the teas I bought i Perchs teashop.
If you ever visit Copenhagen, you should really try stopping by their adorable little shop.
I just love how tiny and cute it is! And the service is just great <3

Love the name of this tea “White dreams”.
It taste of banana and melon. Lovely and sweet! I have to try it iced!

Much gratitude to ANGRBODA for sending me this tea. I have been a fan of the Queen of Denmark for decades—since she was a young girl with her lovely parents and her two younger sisters. I was, therefore thrilled to try the tea that she drinks expecting a intelligent and feminine blend.

The aroma of the dry tea is magnificent: it’s like stepping into an exquisite flower shoppe. The floral scent is multifarious. The tea itself is like a fairly strong Earl Grey with added floral oomph.

What a pleasure!

This tea has a lime green color.
It’s still salty, but in a pleasant way. This brew also has a little seaweed notes in it… But this time it’s perfectly balances. It makes me thirst for another sip, while I type. It’s like good food – you know your full but you can’t stop because it just taste so good. You’ll eat it, just for the taste!

Mmh, delicious.

I like it.
It’s salty and makes me think of seaweed. Now, normaly, I don’t like seaweed.
But when drinking this … I’m thinking – why not. We got all this seaweed in the world.
Lets eat and drink it. Especially when it’s as tasty as THIS tea.
Ah, this tea … God, this tea made me HUNGRY.

Thumbs up.

Good morning steepsterites.

This is breakfast. That is all.

(Also, I don’t think I’m using quite the same leaf to water ratio as A C Perch’s do. They recommend steeping for six minutes. I usually do around three. My tongue just shrivelled up and died at the thought of six!)

Goodmorning Steepsterites.

I thought it was an Irish Breakfast sort of morning, especially because I spotted the tin and had forgotten I had it. And what’s more, I’d forgotten what it tasted like.

I’m pleased to re-find that I like it. It has a certain amount of astringency on the swallow, especially as it cools, but apart from that it has a rich smoothness that feels a bit thick. The assam in the blend is making itself known with a very honey-ed sweetness.

I think this would be quite nice for the travel cup in the morning.

Goodmorning Steepsterites.

Yeah, I know it’s nearly… nevermind. I’ve slept in, so it counts.

I have also successfully managed to whittle my following list down to an amazing 139! That’s a far cry from the 1100 or so I think it was before. And at least 80% of them were inactive accounts. It feels good to have done a little house keeping and I think I’ve discovered (maybe) and easier for me way to use the site and still try to keep an eye on a lot of people with the recent posts page. It means an extra click and seeing some things twice and some things from people I had previously chosen not to follow for this or that reason, but I can deal with that. So again, to the few I have dropped that wasn’t inactive, it’s nothing personal against anybody, it’s merely a change of tactics for me. I might readd some people again in the coming days

Anyway, I decided to go for the Irish Morning again this morning, and this time I tried to use a little less leaf. A C Perch’s recommends steeping for six minutes which seems like an awfully long time for such a small leaf tea, but I think it’s because they’ve based it on people who like to add milk. I happen to have milk at the moment, so I think we’ll give that a try.

I’ve just poured a little bit first to try and tell what it’s like without milk. My first thought was that it was extraordinarily sweet! I would never have guessed that from yesterday’s dosage problems. Sweet yes, but not that much. As it cooled a bit, the sweetness went away, so that only really works when it’s still very hot.

Adding a (good) bit of milk, I discover that either I’m not really a big fan of it with milk or my milk has a too high fat content (I tend to prefer 1,5%) to really work with this one. It tastes more like I’ve added cream, and that has not been a problem for me before in adding milk to any other tea. The tea itself seems a bit overpowered by this. So either it needs less milk than I added or it needs a thinner milk. Since I’m not about to change the type of milk I prefer for everything else or begin to buy two types of milk, I’ll have to experiment with less milk.

Or even with no milk at all, which was better yet. Yesterday I got a great resteep, so we’ll try that today as well. And definitely not add milk.

Rating sneakily sneaking upwards, a few points at a time.

Okay, I have re-familiarised myself with the beloved raspberry oolong. I can’t believe how long I’ve gone without it. Now for the second reason for my latest ACP purchase (the third being dangerously low levels of Lapsang Souchong left)

What we’ve got here is a blend of Assam and Travancore, the latter of which is one of those areas that I can never remember exactly where is. Luckily I have literature and atlasses at my disposal, so it was easy enough to figure out. South India for those who suffer from geography deficiency like me.

So far of the Irish Breakfast blends I’ve tried, I have found Adagio’s offering suited me best. Granted I haven’t yet had that many, but this is the way things stand at the moment. I’m a big fan of A C Perch’s as many of you have likely figured out by now, so I have great hopes that their morning tea can, if not beat Adagio’s, then at least be equally as good.

The leaves are quite small and dotted liberally with lovely pretty golden bits, just like my Assam is. Seeing as the leaves are so small though, I will have to play with dosage a bit with this one. My usual dosage in this size pot has turned out to be a wee bit on the strong side for me. The aroma of the dry leaves is absolutely lovely. Assam honey-y sweetness all over the place and something that smells almost, but not quite, smoky. The bag it came in actually had a very smoky aroma hanging at it when I tried sniffing it through the wrapping, which surprised me a bit, because I wouldn’t call this normally a smoky blend. Turns out it was just aroma from the lapsang souchong stuck to the outside of the bag as the leaves inside smell very differently.

After steeping, I have to admit I didn’t consider paying that much attention to the aroma, and it’s gone a bit too cold now to really tell. At this temperature, though, where it’s good for drinking, it smells kind of smooth. Maybe even a bit milky. The actual aroma notes are too weak for me to register at this point. Not because the aroma as such is weak or non-existant, but more because I had an incident at work a few days ago, which involved me, a garbage bag with a hole in it, a bucket with a popped off lid and a few liters of formalin on the floor. To be cleaned up. By me. That’s a few hundred brain cells I’ll never see again. It was quite unpleasant, and I don’t really think my nasal mucus membranes are completely recovered from all the formaldehyde fumes yet. It makes it a bit difficult to really tell what I’m smelling here.

Taste, though. As mentioned, I made it a little too strong for my liking, so next time I’ll have to knock a little off the leaf dosage. The Assam is definitely there, but it feels a little more rounded off here. Relatively astringent, which may be caused by the extra amount of leaf. I tend to be pretty tolerant to astringency, but this cup is right on the border of my limit. I’m trying to look away from that, though.

There is indeed no smokyness in the tea at all. Only the cardboard-y Assam and that other fuller, rounder flavour that is more difficult to pin down. Like the Assam is only providing the frame around this other flavour. Like how a pretty picture is marred by an ugly frame but enhanced by a pretty frame, you know? It’s rather abstract, I’ll admit. Difficult to explain what I mean.

It’s definitely a blend with a good punch, this. It reminds me of Teaplz and the pirate analogy a while ago. I wonder if I can say the tea has that ARRRR-factor. ;) I’m rating it like this for the time being and deeming it indeed a worthy rival of Adagio’s IBB. As I experiment with the leaves, this rating may change.

Isn’t it ironic, by the way, that while I’m sitting here posting about breakfast blends, my actual breakfast is standing on a plate in the kitchen, quite forgotten?

ETA: Very good on the resteep too. A bit smoother and still full of flavour.

I’ve had this one plain and it showed a lot of potential but ultimately disappointed me because of the bitter-nut taste at the end. So I thought I’d try it today with some half & half and sugar. Because of the remembered icky end note, I added a little more sugar and half & half than I normally would but I figured better safe than sorry, right? I do believe I was rewarded. With the additives, this tea actually brought to mind Thomas Sampsom (always a good comparison). It wasn’t quite as smooth and there was still a tiny hint of the bitter-nutty unpleasantness at the end which I never get from good ole TS but it was still stout and bake-y with a nice, thick texture that made me want to chew on it a bit. So while this is not something I’d want to have plain (because of the end note), it is a good morning tea when doctored. Thomas’ place in my heart isn’t at risk, but one day Thomas will not be and I could see this being an acceptable (if not quite as good) substitute.