Capital Tea Ltd.

This was my last tea of the night last night, but I forgot to write down any notes on it so I’m having it again tonight. The leaves are spindly and wavy/curly, and smell malty and bread like.

The aroma is also malty and bread like. The taste is malty, cocoa, bread, and a little browned caramel (and maybe a wisp of smoke in the end of the sip). This, like all of the other teas I’ve tried from Capital Tea Ltd., is delicious. I think if I had to chose, I’d go with Etambagahawila Estate Ceylon, but they’re both great teas that I will restock.

The dry leaf is emerald green, with long needle like leaves, that smell like butter and spinach. As it’s steeping the aroma is so buttery, almost to the point of smelling like popcorn. And the wet leaf once removed has a spinach presence again, while still smelling buttery. It’s mouthwatering.

The first steep (1m) is light gold, clear but there’s some floaties in it so I made sure to drink fast. The taste is mildly butter and spinach, with an oceany (seaweed and minerals) aftertaste.

Second steep (30s) is a greenish gold color, and cloudier. The aroma is more ocean like than before, though not quite salty. The taste is still a bit buttery, but less so than the last cup, mild veggie, and a little sashimi grade salmon (salmon sashimi is one of my all time favorite foods): fresh clean slightly mineral sort of buttery and distinctly from the ocean. I can only imagine how amazing this would be with sushi.

Third steep (1m) same greenish gold as the last cup, but with the clearness of the first cup. Vegetal aroma. The taste is less buttery, more mineral vegetal, even a little metallic. I think I’ll stop here.

This is really good, lots if the things I like in a green tea. I didn’t get any floral despite what the description says, which is fine by me because I’m beginning to realize, unless it’s jasmine, I’m not big on floral.

The leaves on this have lots of silver in them and they’re very twisted and curly, very beautiful. They smell vegetal and sweet.

Steeped up, it’s slightly astringent and bitter, sweet chestnut and peas, a light floral note, which lingers with the sweet pea taste in a nice aftertaste. I’m learning to not totally reject slight astringency, and don’t mind it in this tea. I’m also finding that I don’t like most straight green teas with sweetener. I tried added some to the last half of the cup, ad found that I like this much more unadulterated.

Oh how tastes change, I used to have to sweeten everything, and now not only can I drink a bunch of teas unsweetened, but I prefer some that way.

Dry Leaf: roughly wound thick but small, chocolate to black brown leaves with prominent scattered gold to silver green downy tips. The leaves smell of fruit and hay.

Broth: clear copper orange

Scent: spice, malt, a mix of lightly roasted nuts, fruit

1 tsp/ 225 ml/95°C/3 min: sweet fresh and nutty sweet flavour. Fresh torn tree leaves, honey, a hint of citrus and a touch of rose water, roasted nuts (to me a cross between almonds, cashews and hazelnuts), fruit notes ranging from a slightly floral Gewürztraminer wine with notes of citrus, grape and a touch of melon, balanced over a touch of cocoa, malt, butter, and toasted grains. Mild, bright and buttery in the mouth opening to a bright freshness. The aftertaste is fruity and sweet with just a touch of bitterness with a mote that reminds me of bananas.
4 min resteep: an interesting spicy citrus note, overlies the other existing notes. The tea remains sweet, fruity and nutty.

This tea has a decent dose of caffeine and makes a nice tea for all times of day.

The first steep is very malty, dark, and probably would hold up well to some milk. Full bodied, and full flavored. As it cools a bit of a raisin note comes out. There’s also a dark sweetness, not quite molasses, but like a dark honey.
Second steep is more sweet than the first. A bit of malt and cocoa Lots if molasses end of sip and lingering after taste, with a bit of honey and cherries.
The third steep was more molasses but with a dark fruit (plum?) thrown in.
Again I am amazed by how much flavors I’m getting from a type if tea that I thought of as bottom tier. I need to stop assuming things about teas I haven’t tried. This tea seems dark, but in a sweet kind of way. Like a good girl who’s had her heartbroken and turns “heartless”: a darker version of her sweet self, but the sweet can’t really be hidden by the dark.

I decided to try to make like a pseudo Thai Iced Tea with this, loosely based off of this recipe:
http://whiteonricecouple.com/recipes/thai-tea-recipe/
I used evaporated milk because its the only milky thing I have. It didn’t really taste like Thai Iced tea, but it was a delicious milk iced tea non the less. I need to but a pitcher so I can keep a big thing of this in the fridge, because its delicious cold!

So, I’ve had tea wish vanilla bean in then before, but this was the first time I ever have seen an actual vanilla bean segment in a tea. It was a few cm big and bursting with the little black vanilla bean seed things, so cool.

I don’t know if it’s because how much straight tea I’ve been having lately, or because of how great the quality of the base tea is, but I’m getting a bunch of flavors from this. There’s the vanilla of course, but there’s also some cocoa and malt and cherries and honey. And there’s a nice long lingering raisin and cherry after taste. I always assumed Ceylon were bland, I don’t know why, but I really need to stop underestimating black teas.

In all my years, I’ve only ever had Earl Grey one other time. I wasn’t a fan. First thing I notice when I opened the package was that from a foot from my nose I could smell cream. But when I smelled the dry leaf up close, the scent was more citrus and what I assume is bergamot (it smells nothing like all the Bath&Body Works scents with bergamot that I love so much), and then that creamy smell.

This isn’t terrible, I’m still not a big bergamot fan, but the creamy notes round out the blarg and make it drinkable. If served, I would drink it, but wouldn’t choose it given a choice. Better than the other EG I had though, and if you like the blargamot you’ll enjoy this.

This is such an intriguing tea. The dark spindly leaves look like a black tea when dry, and they smell sort of malty and breadish like a black tea. But the wet tea smells malty still, but also bright and fruity, like apricots and lime zest. And the leaves have unspindled, and have become light to medium green whole leaves, reminding me of green tea or a green oolong.

And the taste is a mix of malt and honey, apricots and water chestnuts, and a bit of citrus. It might sound like an odd mix, but the different notes come out to play at different times and blend with the other notes to create a very complex and interesting cup.

I can’t even describe what I’m tasting, but this is my best attempt to.

I always find it interesting when I see an oolong that’s not rolled into tight knobby balls. The leaves almost look like how the leaves of most tightly rolled knobby balls of oolong look after a short steep, still rolled and wrinkly looking, still knobby, but straightened up out of the ball shape. The leaves stayed rolled and wrinkly, through the first two steeps, and it wasn’t until the forth steep that they actually started to smooth out.

The aroma of this is like most green oolongs, floral, sort of vegetal, and a little roasty. This is a floral oolong, with a natural sweetness that again makes me think of peach blossoms, with a very light roasted taste that only sticks around for the first steep or two, and a buttery taste that is especially noticeable in the 3rd and 4th steeps.

Overall not a bad tea, but not phenomenal, a good tea for when you want to just drink something simple and floral.

This smells like green beans with a couple crushed roasted peanuts on top, next to a bouquet of flowers. A dark kind of dark vegetal mixed with a raosted note, and a floral finish. The leaves are tightly rolled dark and light green, gnarled knobby little things. The wet leaf smells more floral, and after the first steep the leaves are still wrinked but not longer balls. The second steep the leaves expand and smooth out more, and by the third steep they’re fully unfurled.

This is on the more savory side of the oolong spectrum.It’s roasty, but not in your face roasty (like the actual peanuts and not the peanut skins). Its that sort of floral thats that I always have a hard time defining. For some reason I want to say peach blossoms (is that even a thing?), or orchids. And in the background is darkly vegetal, like green beans, and buttery, both in taste and texture. Its a fancy cold green bean salad, with a orchid and peach blossom infused butter sauce drizzled on top, and sprinkled with crushed peanuts. Its different, it’s hard to describe, but still you want more.

mmmmm post bike ride tea! this one courtesy of YYZ and one of the few teas i have left from her generosity. First off, this smells tasty! i pick up the caramel instantly but not so much the fruit. once brewed this is a delightful caramel tea with a hint of fruit in the background. I vastly prefer THIS marco polo to the one from MF…and yes, they are totally different teas heh :)

Sample from evol ving ness this is another revisit for me :) turns out this one has grown on me a little since i had it. (bumping the rating up a little) There;s a sweetness to this one with some notes in here – sort of fruity with a little bit of malt. I wouldn’t classify this as a malty assam though. just a nice cup – good for an afternoon sort of tea. thanks evol!

YYZ sent this one my way and i think, in reading other people’s notes why this one was not the tea for me – it’s like a darjeeling. And let’s be honest, those confuse my mouth :) the floral/fruity notes are not my preferred assam so this wasn’t a hit for me, but i’m glad to have tried it as this likely would have been one i would have been tempted to try myself heh. thanks a bunch YYZ!

15/28 sipdowns

this one came to me via YYZ and was another early morning, get me through this day, tea. This yunnan is a fruity sort of yunnan. On the whole i find that i prefer the sort of malty, chocolate, cocoa-y sort of yunnan. that’s not to say that this one isn’t bad, but it’s not the type that i prefer. it does reinforce that i need to get time to place an order with Capital teas though, as there are a number of tea there that i would likely really enjoy. Thanks for sharing YYZ!

YYZ sent me this one and i wanted to hold off for some time when i had more than 20 seconds to drink it to go through a few steepings. I don’t drink a lot of non black teas but when i do, i try to pay attention to them more than normal because they surely can’t all taste the same – aka “green” :)

Plus this Comes highly recommended by YYZ so yeah :) I followed her steeping paramters and the first few infusions were floral, but smooth, there was no vegetal taste to this, just mildly sweet water heh later steeps this became a little more floral and less to my liking but the first few steeps were pretty tasty. Sadly, greens just don’t have a permanent place in my cupboard but this was rather nice :) thank you, again, for sharing YYZ!

This is one of the many surprise teas that Sil sent me, buried in a box full of tins from Davids as a silly birthday present (which I love!)

I’m drinking this so I don’t have to add it to my cupboard. I have a lot to add. I’ve had a few people visit me this week and they all brought tea! YAY!

So this is a really nice black tea. I really am going to have to try Capital Teas at some point, once I make a bit of a dent in my unflavoured black collection! I’m tasting an interesting spice but it’s hard to describe what it is. Malt? Cinnamon? Nutmeg? I should resteep it for longer to see if I can tease those chocolate notes out!

Thanks Sil!

Sample from evol ving ness Floral, malty, fruity assam. this was a lovely cup this afternoon during a few meetings :) also…it’s snowing!! yay!

Operation sipdown is in full effect so here goes nothing. I’ve got a few hours of work this morning so i’m trying to make it more enjoyable by trying to get through some of my samples. This one is from YYZ and falls in to that category of tea that has a floral, bitter note to it. So not my favourite. It’s not a terrible cup fo tea, but for sure falls on the other side of the spectrum from the teas i most love. That being said, i am always happy to try more teas! 3 more days until my steepsterversary and i’d like to see how close to 2k teas tasted i can get heh thank you again YYZ! :)

Another one that I finished off at work today.
I like Capital Tea Ltd. for straight black teas, this is just not my favorite style of black tea. With my last order, I just ordered a bunch at random – hoping to find a hidden gem that I wouldn’t normally have noticed. This isn’t it. If you are a fan of Assam style teas, you would probably like this – but that’s not really my thing. At least it reminded me of an Assam, but what do I know. It’s a little too bright, too light, too brisk – ok wait that sounds like Darjeeling – dunno, I’m sure this is a quality tea, just not for me.

I drank the last of this at work today. Thought it was a light black with stone fruit (apricot) notes. This is not my favorite style of black tea, but it was bitter or offensive in any way. I really like Capital Tea Ltd. but for my tastes I do better with the China blacks.

sipdown! only 3 straight blacks in my cupboard now haha so that’s a little weird :) I’ve enjoyed having this one around.