ETTE TEA

Steeped a cup of this neglected tea this morning after I realized I’m out of Lupicia’s Cookie and saw they are sold out on their site. I swear I had backups…
Anyway… with a breakfast tea I expect bold flavors that stand up to the addition of milk. I tried that and had to sip half way through my cup to start picking up flavor that the milk diluted. I am getting a bit of candied orange and it reminds me of a lighter version of a Fauchon tea I love. I’m not crazy about this tea and wouldn’t order it again, but I’m enjoying this cup well enough.

I’m not into this tea. Today I’m getting tart/tannic flavors on the base of light preserved orange. They grow stronger as my cup cools. There is a flatness in there somewhere that seems to shift. A bit alkaline in the finish. I’m about ready to toss it in the “get rid of” bag. :(

Still just striking me as your average French melange blend that features orange. It’s nice and has an almost caramel undertone, but it’s really not something amazing or unique which is what I look for when buying teas that take effort to get from overseas. This blend will not be a reorder.

I haven’t been feeling well for the past few days which may explain why I read “singapore breakfast”, thought “singapore earl grey” and was confused as to why I wasn’t tasting bergamot. It has a light orange peel flavor to it. Lots of low notes make this a pretty mellow cup. I think I can taste hints of pandan, but they are subtle. The tea leaves my mouth feeling a little dry. There is a French tea that tastes very similar to this. Melange by Hediard maybe?
This blend is falling into the same category as many of the other Ette blends I’ve been trying which is that I feel like there is something more to this tea that I’m not getting. Going to be playing around with the steeping parameters for sure.

Did a light and short steep on this. When it is really hot the genmaicha is what comes through. As it cools I get the pandan flavor lingering in the finish and the tiniest bit of heat. There was a little piece of chili that made it into my steeping basket, but it doesn’t seem to have made it’s presence known in the cup. It has a nice light roasty flavor to it. Not sure which ingredient that is from. So far I’m feeling like it is an alright cup, but not something I’d repurchase.

I love pandan, so I ordered what I suspect was nearly every tea with pandan that Ette has. There is a layered sweet that I was introduced to when I was living in Australia that was sweet coconut sticky rice on the bottom and green pandan pudding/jelly on the top. It was so good! I found a pandan pudding powder at some random market in San Francisco and have made the sweet at home a few times now. I also have a pandan house plant in my living room! All that pandan love and I still have a hard time picking out the flavor when it is subtle.

When steeped the bergamot comes out super strong. EG all the way, although I’m not sure what makes and EG French. If I’m focusing really hard I can smell a softness behind the berg that is the pandan, but it’s very light. I feel like I get the same thing in flavor. Strong EG, light almost ghost like pandan. I usually like to add creamer to my EGs, but I haven’t found the perfect replacement creamer for my favorite and I’m not willing to ruin another good cup of tea with plastic flavored almond creamer. Luckily the berg isn’t at nuclear level strength. Looking forward to playing with the steeping temps and seeing if I can get more pandan out of this tea!

This is full of lychee flavor! Not so much that it overpowers the berg, but enough that they play well together while giving each other space to shine. It’s also really pretty too look at when steeped. I had to put it in my glass travel mug to watch the sparkles drift like dust through a beam of sunshine! The flavor was really nice and I kept trying to sip it before it cooled enough. Unfortunately, it was only good for once steeping. The second steep was lacking in flavor.

Steeping instructions would be super helpful here. I’m not sure if I did something wrong or if my palate isn’t tuned into these particular flavors. What I’m getting is a very grassy green taste. It is a little buttery and has a slight fruitiness to the end of the sip. So far it’s nice, but not unique enough to warrant having it shipped from Singapore.

Just opened up the package of this tea. It’s the first I’m trying from my order that just arrived. The scent is dark chocolate and red berries. Raspberry was my guess, but no, it’s cranberry! There is something else slightly savory. Once steeped I get similar flavors in each sip. Mostly tart berry on the sip, which chocolate in the finish and something that makes the sides of my tongue pucker in the same way wheat grass juice does. A little bit of hay lingers along with a dry sensation in my throat. I’m not quite sure what to think of this. I want to play around with the steeping parameters to see if I can get a slightly more fulfilling cup out of this.

Iced with some almond milk.

I decided yesterday that it would be interesting to do a side by side comparison of five of the different unsweetened/unflavoured hojicha powders that I own – all were made the exact same way. It was frankly A LOT of hojicha to drink throughout the day and, to be honest, that wasn’t even all the hojicha powder I owned.

In the past I’ve really enjoyed this hojicha powder a lot and I kind of expected that it might be my favourite – but having it next to all of the others was really eye opening. Firstly, it was the darker/most intense colour once whisked up and the taste was also really dark and more obviously heavily roasted. That darker element is definitely my personal preference in terms of taste.

However, it was the hardest to whisk up of all five I prepared and the more coarse feeling grind was very obvious in terms of mouthfeel compared to the others – something I probably wouldn’t have noticed as intensely were I not doing a side by side. Overall, this may have been middle of the pack due to the mouthfeel.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-F56YPuEoo/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL8jxMFu5bA

I don’t remember the context, but last weekend a friend mentioned Hojicha Powder and then I just started really craving it, so I ended up making a large chawan of this powder on Monday for #MatchaMonday with some chocolate agave syrup whisked into it as well, and it was delicious and deeply hit the spot! Toasty and cozy, but also rich and sweet from that subtle chocolate addition. It all meshed very well.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFH7yp_A0KZ/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqv0JBF67LA&ab_channel=Havelock

Latte!

I was having an interesting conversation with a coworker yesterday about how houjicha is such a prevalent and commercial flavour in beverage/food in Japan but largely unknown here in Canada and we were loosely speculating if maybe the next progression after the “matcha bubble” inevitably bursts/hits a peak in North America will be an exploration of houjicha…

I’m not sure if we were reached a conclusion to our conversation, really, but it did prompt me to bring in my houjicha matcha/powder to work today so that I could make us a houjicha latte since this coworker had never experienced one but really loves straight houjicha. Unfortunately the only milk I could find in the office that she could drink (she’s lactose intolerant) was rice milk, so we ended up making rice milk houjicha lattes…

Y’know, the rice milk complimented the dark, toasty and nutty notes of the houjicha really well then and we both ended up LOVING our lattes. The profile was very, very nutty with a roasty top note and more of a caramelized something to the undertone. Smooth, not even a little bit gritty – very rich and still pretty creamy despite the use of rice milk. I wish the milk had actually frothed up, but that’s just the downside to using non-traditional milks, I suppose…

Hard to believe how long I’ve had this in my cupboard without trying it. Putting an end to that tonight though; and when I cracked open the little container for it I was just hit with the most amazing smell of roasted peanuts – so I definitely feel like I’m making a good choice in trying it out tonight!

Houjicha Powder/‘Matcha’ has interested me for a long time; I absolutely LOVE Houjicha and its toasty flavour characteristics and I can see it making the most phenomenal hot or iced lattes. Plus, it’s a safer option for the evenings due to the decreased amount of caffeine and it’s a good alternative for me personally since I don’t love the grassy flavour that most straight matchas have. Kind of sounds like a win-win-win!?

Despite feeling like this really would be the best ever matcha latte, I’m drinking it in straight, cold water tonight because I just want to get a good sense of what the powder tastes like on its own before I go getting creative. It’s been really delightful; definitely has the toastiness of typical houjicha with those lovely, slightly autumnal leaning roasted nuts, caramel(ish), barley notes. It’s also very smooth tasting, and whisked up really easily/without any clumping at all. I am DEFINITELY going to stand by my theory that this would be a bomb as fuck latte; but it’s also just a nice straight matcha to sip on as well.

I have literally no complaints.

Sipdown (617)!

Finished this one off iced; two of the sachets steeped together for seven minutes. Even after such a long steep time I still just could NOT get this to taste flavourful or produce a striking blue colour (like it should have been able to, because of the butterfly flower). Instead it was vaguely the colour of anime pool water and tasted like the sort of lemon infused water you might get at a nicer sort of restaurant.

BORING.

Bright, sweet lemon notes.

A little bit of a plain flavour, but ultimately enjoyable overall. My throat was feeling scratchy, so I appreciated the soothing nature of this one.

Early evening cuppa, made in a teacup.

Last time I made this one it was in a mug and I was very disappointed by the fact that it did not in fact brew up blue, like it was advertised as doing due to the butterfly pea flower in the blend. If it turned anything it was a weird sort of green colour? This time to try and combat that, I brewed the teabag/sachet in a small teacup to hopefully get a stronger flavour and colour.

It did sort of work; this still did NOT brew blue which is the whole reason I purchased it in the first place but it was a much darker green colour – and one that was very unnatural for tea to brew up. So I guess that’s something right? I added in a little bit of creamed honey to sweeten it and about a half cap of lemon juice concentrate to see what colour my green tea would change to. DAVIDsTEA’s Magic Potion blend with butterfly pea flower changes from deep indigo to a purple colour, so I was expected this would maybe go from green to a more magenta-y pink? It actually turned into this SUPER light lilac/periwinkle colour though. Actually quite pretty!

Taste wise it was lemon overload – you definitely could not tell that I’d added honey, it was sheer tart lemon with more lemon grass undertones. Definitely some pucker/punch! Not my favourite flavour, and still a disappointing tea overall both in terms of that flavour and visually. Boo!

So, I picked this one up because I was intrigued by the fact is has butterfly pea flower in it which means that it should brew up blue! The flavour didn’t sound super appealing to me though, so I only got the smallest size option – which was five premeasured sachets as opposed to a tin of it.

I tried the first the other day and… it wasn’t blue.

I can see the butterfly pea flower IN the leaf but I guess it’s just not enough of the pretty flower to have that big of an impact colour wise – even with letting it steep indefinitely while I was drinking it. It kind of eventually settled on a really translucent sort of pastel green kind of colour. I mean, to be fair, it was a colour that wasn’t exactly a “natural”/normal tea colour but it’s not blue.

Flavour wise I was right about this one not being the tea for me though – all I could taste was lemongrass. Just straight up, pure lemongrass. Maybe that does it for some, but certainly not for me. I think I’ll probably just use the rest of the sachets for when I’m feeling sick and want something hot and lemony…

This blend is so magical and beautiful (tears streaming down face). It smells creamy and comforting, and yet also very light and sweet. The sweetness is indescribable, it’s hard to pin down but it seems neither wholly fruity nor floral, and its not cloying. I think it’s the lotus? There is a also a delicately nutty aftertaste on the tongue.

A cuppa from last weekend! This reminded me a little of Violet Cremes from BrutaliTeas. Very smooth, buttery milk oolong with a sweet floral addition. Not nearly as floral as Violet Cremes, and not specifically violet. But that kind of feeling.

Drank a lukewarm mug of this earlier in the week. Definitely light and airy with buttery whipped coconut cream notes and a little bit of a fresh floral sweetness. I was pretty zonked out from all of the cold and flu medicine I’ve been taking, but it was pretty blissful and tasty.

Sipped on this one a few nights back. I was doing so pretty absentmindedly and in paying half a mind I felt like I really only noticed the more buttery notes of the milk oolong base and nothing else really that was happening in the cup. It was still tasty, but I feel like if that’s all my brain was gonna pick up on I probably would have just been better served making one of my cheaper/less hard to acquire milk oolongs instead…

I can’t believe it’s been six years since I last had this tea! The recipe must have changed since then because I see here on Steepster that the blend once contained coconut, but the tin I just bought and what’s listen on ETTE’s website do not.

It’s fascinating to me that my tasting notes now align so much with my tasting notes in the past. I like to think that my palate has changed and evolved so much in the last six years and it can be weirdly jarring to read something from that long ago in the past and realize I think the same thing when, with other tasting notes, it’s like night and day. Flavour is funny like that.

The dry leaf aroma of this tea is insanely buttery. It’s very clearly a flavoured milk oolong that’s used as the base. This doesn’t bother me; but it’s just something I can tell immediately now that my past self probably wouldn’t have been able to identify. Steeped, those very rich buttery/creamy flavours are what come to the forefront. This is especially true when the tea is still quite hot. As it cools, more of a sweet floral emerges. It reminds me a little bit of violet, though I know that’s not actually what it is. There’s something about the combination of florals and milk oolong that works magically well. Like my past self has observed, I do not taste the bergamot. I do not mind. That is probably the element of the blend I was least excited about anyway.

It’s a nice tea.

This is a queued tasting note.

Sipdown (139)!

- Buttery/creamy
- Light hints of coconut
- Had a vegetal/grassy sourness
- And a slight lemony acidity
- Especially prominent in the finish

Hard to say whether or not this cup was better than the first one I had; I feel like the base was smoother in the first cup but at the same time I DIDN’T get to taste much coconut or bergamot. This cup the base wasn’t as pleasant, but I got more coconut and some citrus notes that were bergamot like. Not sure which was the better trade off.

Overall, this was interesting but not captivating. The difference between the two being an important and noteworthy point.

Thank you Liquid Proust for the sample!

- Silky/creamy/buttery mouthfeel
- Very characterstic/“trademark” milk oolong notes
- Butter/cream/yeasty bread dough?/condensed milk
- Very green/grassy base notes; present in aftertaste
- Floral undertone and finish
- But not a floral note w. lots of familiarity
- Whisps of coconut; but quite light
- Especially given the amount of coconut I saw in the leaf
- Didn’t taste the bergamot