Camellia Sinensis

2021 sipdown no. 79

I really enjoyed this one. I initially thought the Yunnan Da Ye was more enjoyable, but that is no longer the case. This one has a lovely honey sweetness that cuts through the maltiness. I would definitely re-order this one.

Happy Friday! I made this tea for a 3a Zoom for school (Martin was thinking maybe I’d see you here).

I don’t know if it was the tea at this specific unearthly hour, but it tasted like a dream. This really does remind me of my all-time favourite Yuchi Wild Mountain Black from TTC, but with some subtle differences. That honey sweetness is amazing and there are hints of maltiness that break through as well. A winning combination.

I should really make the two side by side for a direct comparison. I have a few teas I’d like to do that with adding up…

I’m headed back to bed for a couple hours, then off to start the workday!

All the malt. Hints of honey. Some mineral notes pop out as the tea cools.

A adds “That’s nice. Smooth.”

2021 sipdown no. 48

I really enjoy this. The maple is maple sugar crystals against a great Assam base and it works perfectly. We keep maple sugar crystals in the cupboard, so perhaps my remaining CS Assam Banaspaty will occasionally have those added in until I can re-order this one.

Camellia Sinensis is here!

A wanted Choco Chou first, so we enjoyed that one together, then I made this one for me.

I love all the maple sugar crystals in this one. It’s really beautiful. The flavour is very light — mostly just a hint of sweetness in the sip. What a great start to these CS teas! Also, the packaging on these teas is lovely, and they threw in an extra sample!

2021 sipdown no. 7

This tea is both hay-like and reminiscent of a delicious, creamy rice pudding. This blend would be perfect for a summer evening. I will resteep this as many times are possible.

Thanks VariaTEA for this awesome tea!

Another awesome sample from VariaTEA!

I think I’ve chosen the right tea in the database for this note. This is my second steep and it’s creamy and hay-like. I reminds me a little bit of Butiki’s White Rhino.

First steep 3 minutes
Second steep 4 minutes

Thanks for sharing VariaTEA :)

DIY Advent Calendar – Day 11

Gong Fu Sipdown (257)

This is dirt to me. I feel bad because it’s appeal is quite genuinely lost on me. I steeped it according to the company recommendations and I just got cup after cup of dirt. And if it wasn’t dirt, it was wet leaves. Thank you Roswell Strange for sharing but this is a no for me.

Sipdown (302)

Had this earlier while playing Life with my sister and brother-in-law. We’re basically playing board games, watched Soul, and are taking it easy. This tea fit that perfectly because it was an easy drinker that was good and smooth and flavourful but didn’t require a lot of concentration to enjoy.

I was not expecting to like this. Darjeelings are usually sharp and drying and overtly floral. It came as a sample in my order with my first gaiwan so I guess in a way I should be thanking Roswell Strange for this one. Thank you, Ros!!

This is really smooth. It’s the slightest bit peppery and maybe a bit floral. But it really doesn’t have much flavor to it. It’s not bad and an easy drinking tea because of that. I just also don’t find it particularly interesting though.

Sometimes the way a tea makes you feel
and the way it tastes,
the associations it evokes
and the things you’re reading about or thinking about or listening to while sipping
and the weather

all align in a moment so harmonious that all you can muster for a note is

wow.

word: drink it grandpa, leaf it heavy, deal with the floaters. they’re all floaters.

Something I will be looking out for next season. Thanks so much, Leafhopper :)

This is another one I’m adding to the SVTTB. It’s nice but I don’t reach for it ever. Smooth with a cocoa undertone. It’s brisk and a touch metallic at times. It’s just not a favourite.

I made this and drank it rather quickly just before heading out for a walk. It was nice but also a touch coppery/astringent.

2021 sipdown no. 52

This tea is tasty, but I seem to go back and forth on it. Today there’s malty sweetness with a hint of perhaps spearmint in the background.

Putting a reminder here because I do think I at least need to pick up another sample pack in the next order.

Sipdown of this awesome share from VariaTEA!

I would consider adding this to an order. There’s both depth, yet a lightness to this tea and subtle notes of maltiness and breadiness.

This is another awesome sample sent to me by VariaTEA :)

This tea has a perfect subtle black tea flavour for me today. Absolutely no astringency and smooth. It’s not too intense in flavour, just light and smooth – perfect for any time of day.

I actually think I’ll have to check out this tea company – I’ve never ordered from them before, but this tea has inspired me to at least look over their website!

Thanks VariaTEA!

I decided to give this tea a chance after seeing it described as aromatic and fruity, although I’ve had a black Tie Guan Yin before that I wasn’t too fond of. Of course, Jin Guan Yin is a slightly different varietal, though my expectations were still somewhat similar. I used the instructions given in the Camellia Sinensis Summer Session, an online event held in August that reviewed eight of their teas, as provided by Tea in Spoons:
https://teainspoons.com/2020/10/01/camellia-sinensis-summer-session-08-2020-part-3/
They said to steep 5 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 203F for 30, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of sourdough bread, dates, tart fruit, and sweet potato. The first two steeps have notes of sweet potato, citrus, dates, sap, caramel, and baked bread. In the next steep, the sweet potato gets even richer, the citrus resolves itself into orange zest, the tannins become more prominent, and flavours of tart rhubarb and sourdough emerge. That sourdough is especially noticeable when exhaling a few minutes after a sip and is kind of entertaining.

In steeps four to six, the sourdough starts competing with the sweet potato, and I get some earth, tannins, and wood. This is slightly disappointing since I liked those sweet potato-heavy initial steeps so much. The final few long steeps reveal mellow sweet potato, combined with tannins, wood, malt, earth, and minerals.

This tea is a lot better than my previous batch of black TGY. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves sweet potato and enjoys a dynamic gongfu session. It’s especially appropriate at the moment since it’s the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Happy early Thanksgiving to everyone who’s celebrating, and I hope you can connect with family virtually if not in person.

Cookies, butter, an hint of vegetables, one of my favourites

Today’s #septembersipdown is about blending teas, which I don’t usually do. I was trying to come up with something and a recent conversation about lapsangs with Sil and Roswell Strange came to mind. In particular, the fruity lapsangs that Roswell Strange has been trying lately had me intrigued.

Then I remembered Sil always recommends maple syrup in lapsangs so I thought blending Maple Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha and a lapsang could be cool – maple and smoke but also the idea of toasted marshmallows came to mind. However, this tea and that one are brewed so differently that I didn’t want to start guessing what would be the best steeping parameters. So, I tried to think of something else that was sweet or fruity that might pair and my copious amount of Cotton Candy tea sprung to mind.

So how does the combination of this tea and Cotton Candy by DAVIDsTEA taste? Like someone put sugar in a lapsang. I guess that is accurate since cotton candy is largely just sugar. It makes for a smokey top note and sweet underneath. Nothing mind blowing enough that I would do it again but not bad.

Thank you Roswell Strange for sending me a sample of this! I’ll save rating it until I have an unblended taste.

Quite the list of ingredients, all harvested from Québec. A little thin but sweet, fruity and woody with a strong note of fir that evokes a feeling of near-winter, inhaling frigid, moist air through my nostrils and catching the clean, cool scents of a northern Canadian landscape. Or for those unacquainted, I’d say it’s like a Christmas tree in a cup. A hint of wild blueberry and a tangy-sweet quality. Brewed for the recommended 7 minutes, there is a drying catch on the swallow but it tastes so cool and comforting I don’t care. A long-lingering resinous sweetness follows.

Directions call for 2tsp/250mL; I opted for something like 5 teaspoons for half my glass teapot, so 500ish mL. The mélange of ingredients with differing shapes and sizes doesn’t make it easy to get a varied distribution, so I did do some hand-picking of the larger ingredients instead of incorporating them into my teaspoon measurements.

I placed a small order with Camellia Sinensis because I was interested in some of their herbals, namely Wintergreen, Labrador Tea and Taïga Sauvage.

Following a wake-up, chest-clearing mug of Juniper Ridge’s Yerba Santa, I had time for only 1 steep of this tea from Bhutan. According to Camellia Sinensis, this tea comes from the only tea production in Bhutan which is led by an all-women cooperative. Always keeping my eye out for unique teas, I couldn’t resist ordering a sample of the July 2020 harvest.

I prepared the tea close to package directions, using more tea than 2 teaspoons because the leaves do not rest uniformly in a teaspoon. I went for my standard-as-of-late measurement of 1g/100mL for green, white, and black teas prepared western style.
The tea is very clean and smooth. It sits well in my empty stomach. The taste evokes lightly buttered sauteed sweet green cabbage. There is an interesting minerality which Camellia Sinensis refers to as seashells and I think I can agree with that — calcium. A vague feeling, not taste, of smokey, earthy bitterness sits deep within the liquor. A spicy feeling sits only in the chest, something I could equate to the warmth of Saigon cinnamon, but like the smokey bitterness, it’s not a taste. A second steep when I came home for lunch brought forward lime-like and bright green olive impressions.

Overall, this is an exceptionally smooth green tea with an interesting profile that reminds me of sheng puerh. It covers a satisfying and nuanced range of flavors and impressions between sweet, vegetal, umami, mineral, citrus, bitter-smoke and warming spice. As I was just now browsing to purchase a larger quantity, the tea is now out of stock only 2 weeks after placing my order.

Gongfu!

Steeped this up in a bunch of panda themed teaware as my pre-commute session! This is such a beautifully soft and buttery oolong with notes of fresh coconut, white Spring flowers, and just a hint of vegetal spinach. Really delicate in taste but with such a rich feeling liquor; an excellent way to ease into the day!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CqDnTBFOZee/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJCg8HIWKTY