August Uncommon Tea

Samurai TTB #4

Michelle kindly included this one in the TTB at my request and I’m so glad she did! I’ve really enjoyed some of the other August Uncommon teas I’ve tried in the past and have recently been really enjoying more smoked teas, so this sounded right up my alley. And sure enough…I love it! It’s so rich and nuanced with the perfect blend of sweet and smoky flavors. This is one I’ll definitely be ordering for myself in the future!

Homemade Advent day 6

This is such a cool dessert tea. I finished off my sample of it by brewing the remaining 2 tsp of leaf with 450 mL boiling water and then adding a generous portion of soy milk. It was a great combo. The tea is quite strong (bold) and would have bitter tendencies if not for the milk to round it out. What is neat if the thick cocoa and vanilla flavour. I wouldn’t say I can make out pepper, but in the aftertaste is a strong pineapple flavour (similar to dried or candied pineapple). [EDIT: I stand corrected. I let this cool and now I’m getting a lot of spicey pepper in the after taste. Sooooo goood]

When I take a sip, the cup smells like a latte – almost coffee-like and very intense in the chocolate and cream notes. Then, I taste a very thick tea with smooth, thick cream and cocoa and a strong chocolately black tea. The aftertaste is when the pineapple comes out. It isn’t a fruity tea, much more desserty.

I was happy to get another sipdown, however I really wish I had more of this. This is one of the best cups I’ve ever had. It isn’t even smoky (I’m not interested in smoky teas) but it has such a rich flavour.

LPT: Brew this strong and add milk

DIY Advent Calendar – Day 2

Today’s tea is courtesy of Sil. Thank you!

This is just oolong to me. There is supposed to be more I think but it’s just oolong and it’s a pretty meh oolong at that. Fun to try but surprisingly mediocre.

Sipdown! And the last one from my November Sips by box.

This one is fairly good. I like the combination of the cardamom with the custardy vanilla, it almost reminds me of eggnog in a way. But the vanilla can veer a tad bit artificial and cloying, and I feel like the base tea is just wrong for these flavors. It’s sort of harsh and grassy with a definite minerality to it, which conflicts with the creaminess of the vanilla. A softer base would be better, maybe a nuttier green tea or even an oolong.

It’s good, but with limitations that hold it back from greatness!

This is from my Sips by box for November.

I’ve had a rather tumultuous experience with August Uncommon. There are a couple of their teas that I really like, but also a few that I thought were just bad. Hasn’t stopped me from recently ordering more samples, though! They added a lot of new teas while I was away.

This one is nice enough. The base tea is rather smooth and unremarkable, with a soft grassiness. I really like the vanilla here! It’s sweet and custardy and cakey and lovely. I would love to see this vanilla flavor used in an Earl Grey cream blend. The cardamom is mild but present, and strongest at the very beginning of the sip and in the aftertaste.

The flavors complement each other well, but for some reason they just don’t add up to a remarkable tea. Something more is needed, perhaps a hint of lemon or raspberry? I think this would also probably be tastier on an oolong base, or at least a nuttier green base. So it’s good, but not great unfortunately!

From the Samurai TTB
An interesting combination, spicy ginger with a sage and orange aftertaste. The orange reminds me a bit too much of Tang for me to like it. I’d be interested in a sage and ginger blend as they seem to balance each other well. But this one was nice to try, not for me.

SIpdown 27- 2021
Such an excellent chocolate/hazelnut flavor going on. Sad to see it go.

One of the few August Uncommon blends I hadn’t gotten around to trying and it’s another winner for me. August Uncommon and I really get along. This is the perfect balance of hazelnut and chocolate, with the hazelnut being much more dominant. I definitely underleafed this a bit, but it was still decadent.

I ordered this tea because that is both vegan and has a non-vegan name, gives me a thrill. (I go crazy for blood oranges.) Plus, I was curious about a tea that combined cocoa and caraway. Would it taste like rye bread? The answer is no. It tastes like rich chocolate with a slight leathery smell. Like sitting in a library of leatherbound volumes and drinking a delicious cup of hot cocoa. Top marks for a delicious and creative blend!

Passage promises to combine black tea, hazelnut and chocolate. Its overpowering flavor is chocolate. The hazelnut adds a creamy richness to the tea that is very welcome. I am cutting down on excess fat and sugar in my diet so this provides mouth joy without the calories. Another top notch tea from August Uncommon Teas. Great suggestion! I’m glad I followed through and bought from them.

I finished my sample of this so I know I’ve had it before, but I haven’t yet logged it here. It’s so deep and chocolaty, the best cup I’ve had the last couple of weeks. I haven’t felt inspired to share on recent cups here since they’ve been pretty mediocre, but this was worthy of a note.

Sample sipdown!

While I can recognize that this is a high-quality tea and it smells deliciously chocolaty, it’s just not for me.

I do get the promised cocoa, which is not at all sweet and in fact quite bitter, along with cinnamon and some chile heat. The base tea is somewhat tobacco-y with some woody notes as well.

I’m never a huge fan of chile and chocolate together, so I’m just not enjoying the combination here. But I’m sure others who do like this flavor profile would really love this tea.

Having a pot of this with the housemate and a side of almond milk rice pudding with cardamom and rose that I made a few nights ago.

Housemate says the dry ingredients smells like a mix of Juicy Fruit gum with peppermint gum. I think it smells like vanilla-peppermint cream with pistachios and rose. The rosehips give the brew an appropriate color for the name. The tea smells fruity with apples and something else I can’t parse…, creamy nougat studded with pistachios and almonds and peppermint. The taste is like a mixture of herbal tea on the sip followed quickly by a very prominent vanilla-honey-caramel nougat flavor, an intense nuttiness of (I can’t shake it!) what smells like rubbery Barbie doll legs, a hint of red rooibos. It finishes mineral and lightly drying along with tangy rosehips. Lingering perfume of sweet apple, bittersweet rose and vanilla-honey nougat, some clean peppermint cooling but overall body warming. Housemate says it tastes kinda marshmallowy like those orange circus candy peanuts.

This tea is really very strange.

It seems I haven’t been feeling the whole ‘tasting’ thing for a while. I’m sorry. The days are weird.

3.5g, 300mL, 212F, 2 steeps at 4 and ?? minutes

Heartbreaker is in my experience as August Uncommon describes. The colors and flavors remind me STRONGLY of the 1980s, the rubbery legs of Barbie dolls, tanned babes with strawberry blonde hair. Not only are the days weird, the tea is weird.

Atmospheric sounds pairing: Crazy Doberman — Free LSD Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTI9GTHaUyg

Happy Halloween. This year sucks.

Pretty proud of myself lately with keeping my tea purchases small. I feel like I’ve finally entered this stage where I can slow my roll with exploration, whittle down my current cupboard and focus on the types of teas that I know complement my constitution. Watch me go back on my word sometime soon :P

Cult of Demeter is one of those complementary blends. Heavier on the cocoa notes than a previous batch, less on the anise. Barley malt feels about the same. It smells and tastes like an anise biscotti soaked in a hot cocoa water. Kind of thin but I’m not bothered by the fact. Still amazed this is only 3 ingredients with no added flavorings.

Natural feeling. Gentle. Swaddling, even?

Listen: Familiarity by Punch Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sya6Jh2pwzA

This tisane fits a specific circumstance for me, that of waking up much too early with a racing mind and needing a soothing, warm beverage to cradle me back to sleep, or to at least gently lead me into the dawn hour. I said before this is liquid biscotti to soothe the sad-sack soul. I firmly lie by this notion, under the warmth of a down comforter and the heaviness of a weighted blanket, feeling grateful for the riches bestowed upon me.

Biscotti balm to soothe the sad-sack soul. I’m crying tears of grain.

Supple, comforting and complete. I’m dumbfounded that this is only barley malt, anise seed and cocoa shells, all organic.

3.5g, 300mL, 212F, 5 and ??min

Song pairing: CC-BT

Big’ol pot that depleted almost the entire sample.

Imagine an orange. Or maybe the flavor of mild orange in a sphere. Now imagine that mildorange flavorsphere sitting on a modest bed of earthy lemon verbena and a scattering of sweet blackberry leaves. Next, moving up, a thin core of savory sage is sprinkled into the mildorange flavorsphere so that it both extends down into the verbena and overflows the top of the mildorange flavorsphere and coats it like caramel on an apple. Then, finally spicy ginger envelopes the entire flavorsphere, making a sort of spicy-ball.

It could be better. For some reason I want it to taste more like tangerine than orange. Overall quite nice but not worth the price for me.

Sipdown! (48 | 145)

From my August Sips by box. Gotta admit, I giggled a little bit when there was a tea from August Uncommon in my August subscription box. Well played, Sips by…

This smells amazing, but the steeped tea is super thin and weak. It does have pleasant buttery cake and caramelized pineapple flavors, which I really enjoy. But it might as well be a fruit tisane for how much I can taste the green tea. And I used a lot of tea, half of the pouch or about 7 grams for a 16-ounce pot.

Yet it tastes like slightly sweetened pineapple-upside-down-cake-flavored water. And the longer I sip it, the more the flavoring becomes artificial and cloying to me. Love the concept, but not the execution unfortunately.

Hmm…

I think this one is suffering from age, it’s surprisingly weak given the amount of leaf I used for the mugful. I do taste the pineapple this time, along with coconut (eyeroll).

But that’s about it, aside from a vague sweetness. Another one for the list of samples to order again for a second try!

Tried again with different parameters: 3g, 300mL, 212F, 2 steeps at 3 and ?? minutes. When drank hot, it was smoky, dark, exotic and spicy. As it cooled, the blackberry leaf sweetness materialized and when mixed with that heavy-handed cardamom, really gave this a medicinal feel.

The smoked Chinese black tea mixed with both green cardamom pods and oil reminds me so much of black cardamom which I thought at first was in the blend. A little poking around and I see none, unless the cardamom oil was pressed from the larger black pods.

This is tolerable when brewed less intense than August Uncommon’s suggestions. Drinking hot is a must.

My cup this morning… I didn’t pay much attention to but it reminded me of walking through the city on a foggy night wearing the well worn leather jacket I picked up for $}18 at Goodwill in Ohio before I ended up on the west coast. Finely ground coffee with cardamom I used to buy from the halal store a few blocks down. But then there was this oh so terrible sweetness from the blackberry leaf that jolted be right out of that moment and into the pre-dawn darkness of driving to work before 6am with my open mug in the cupholder. Less blackberry leaf, maybe even none, and I’d be happy with the leathery, almost medicinal taste of this tea. Pretty sure there’s not just green cardamom in this but also those big ol’ smokey, wrinkly black ones.

Civil Disobedience is going to take some work to get around that awful blackberry leaf sweetness.