Franklin Tea Company

Good stuff! Hard to describe…but this tastes like minerals and earth. Sounds like an odd taste – but it’s great if you are a true oolong lover. This is not a tea for beginners. You have to appreciate oolongs to like this one. Franklin Tea is a great tea shop.

Nice big leaves; nice sweet taste; first adjective that registered in the brain when I tasted it was “cereal!” (Cereal is a noun, I know…but I wasn’t awake enough to add ly to make it ceareally.)

Bolder than other oolongs I’ve tried. Slightly astringent, but I may have used too much leaf. There are some definite caramel notes in this tea. Prepared with stevia.

I see this name in similar configurations under other tea companies, so I wonder if it’s a house branding of a variety available elsewhere.

All the same, it does have a Creamsicle vibe; sweet orange rather than tart blends nicely with the rooibos. Makes a nice afternoon break.

This is my first real experience with oolong. I know I have had this type of tea before in different Chinese restaurants and bought it bagged. But this is the first experience where I know I am having it!
I received an ample sample of this tea from wombatgirl. It’s pretty bold, caramel and fall in a cup. One of my favorite Chinese restaurants in Chicago wouldn’t tell me the brand of tea they used. Looks like I don’t need them.

The 2nd infusion is very very weak. I don’t think this tea in multiple infusions, which is a shame. Still, a nice dark brew.

When I first tried this tea, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it. But I’ve been drinking it iced over the last week. Yum. The orange flavoring goes wonderfully with the cold tea. I’m out of my sample… Boo…

The first of my “limerick” teas :o) Quite a mystery, in that the Franklin Tea site doesn’t give me much to go on … but I could have sworn I was tasting some citrus. Orange? Mango? Very light, very enigmatic, very nice.

When brewed to reccomendations – this was a little weak. However when brewed a little stronger, it’s quite nice. And, this just is LOVELY as an iced tea. It does brew up very lightly – the color is just a light, light green.

First time I tried this, I thought it was a bit weak and flavorless. So I tried it again with a little more leaf in the brew, and added splenda and sugar. It’s lovely now. The chocolate is delicate, but blends well with the mint and the tea adds lovely background support.

Finishing this up from my stash today…randomly picked one and ended up with this. I still kind of like this…check out my previous review…

This tasted much better than I remembered it…therefore, I will up the rating…good cold too!

I can totally smell the Pumpkin seed comparison.

Just about done with the infusion…
receive this in a swap…I have some boxes going on today and more next week – sorry for the delay, girls!

Okay…so…
Green tea taste, yes…with a masculine type taste at the end…
I can taste a seed-like taste, I guess…sunflower or pumpkin-esque.

It’s not very memorable and not one of those teas I would be jumping out of my shoes to try again but I must give it an “E” for effort.

Not bad but not great. The first time I tried this, I was using way too much leaf, and it was so vegetal and astringent that I could barely finish the cup. Today, I actually followed directions, and it was much lighter, and much less like drinking a glass of seaweed puree. i don’t have a good way to check the water temp here at work, so I’ve been winging it – I have noticed that the hotter the water I’ve used, the stronger both in flavor and in astringency.

I think this would work for you if you like strong, simple green teas.

So, the bottom of my IngenuiTea decided it wanted to float up in the middle of brewing this tea. so I tried to push it down with a spoon, and that somehow got the release mechanism stuck, so that when I wanted to stop filling my cup, it wouldn’t stop draining when I picked it up.

However, through all of this – the tea stayed yummy. This is a nice, clean, fresh tea and very enjoyable to drink. It’s a shame this set of leaves will end up getting ditched as I go through and try to fix my pot.

Thank goodness for caffiene today. And thank goodness for oolong teas on days where nothing else goes right.

So, I need to learn to NOT drink anything with caffiene after about 5pm. I thought about that last night as I watched the hours roll by. Sigh.

But I couldn’t stop drinking the oolong I had yesterday. (http://steepster.com/teas/red-blossom-tea-company/3148-silk-oolong-formosa) The sleeplessness was almost worth it. :) And then today, I decided to try another oolong.

I got this one while in Nashville. (One of the ones on sale for being in the wrong color bag. ) I’m liking it a lot. The leaf before steeping smells green – not necessarily like green tea, but like the color green. (Wierd, I know). As you steep it, the leaves are smelling progressively spicier. The tea brewed smells warm, and the flavor is just nice. No random tones, except a hint of floral. But overall, it’s just nice. :) I appear to be turning into an oolong fan. :)

A holdover from last year that’s held up pretty nicely. I don’t see it on Franklin Tea Company’s roster this season, but there’s a Hot Cinnamon Spice that I’m guessing is highly similar—cinnamon of the red hot variety, sweet clove and orange rind. I’m tasting all of those here.

Makes a very genteel cup, so I poured into a very delicate and dainty pedestal cup—gold trim and everything—that I hauled home from my parents’ attic Thanksgiving afternoon.

Seems that Grandma, still from an era when ladies had “club” at their house once a month or so and entertained with froofy cakes and servingware, fixed me up with a “flower of the month” set. (Currently drinking from September—Aster.) As a skinny, squirrely tomboy third grader, I had no use for foofy stuff in my room, so up to the attic they went and were forgotten until recently.

I’m still a tomboy—I know Grandma would cluck her tongue at me right now, dressed like a refugee from the DAV thrift store after raking leaves, sipping from her carefully chosen china cups with handles so lacy you can barely thread a pinky through them—but it makes me smile all the same that she might have had a premonition I would need something lovely from which to drink my tea.

I think this is a private label variety from another producer. Imagine liquid cinnamon red hots with a little orange zest thrown in, maybe a little clove. (Remember sticking cloves in oranges to make Christmastime room smell-goodies?) Between this and my Cinnabon scented candle, the house smells like I can actually cook!

Backlogging. 7 days ago. Monday afternoon.

The February Backlog: From the 1st to today.

I don’t remember why I decided to drink this or what I was going while drinking, though it prolly involved some studying at some point. I remember the tea being more fruity less green tea at first.

2nd steep: 3 mins 30 secs
3rd steep: 4 mins

Backlogging.

I always forget that I actually like this tea and it’s not just so-so. I inhaled the first two cups with immediate resteepings. The third steep was watery but drinkable.

So in other Franklin Tea Company news, my mom gave me samples of two of the other teas she brought there when I was at her house last. I haven’t had either of them yet, but I went to look them up in Steepster to see what people had said and neither had been logged yet. So I went to the Franklin Tea Co website and neither were listed. I did notice a Hot Cinnamon tea so I googled the names of the two teas and sure enough they were Harney teas too. I’m pretty sure this is one too, but I cannot figure out which one.

1st steep: 3 min.
2nd steep: 3 min 30 sec.
3rd steep: 5 min.

Backlogging. Wednesday afternoon, the same day as the previous tealog.

I made this cup of tea to go with a meal or right after a meal, I forget. I’ve been oddly wanting tea as my beverage with food and thinking about what tea might go well with the food. Or thinking about what I’m planning to eat and then thinking a certain tea would be good with that. But I digress. Another tea failure occurred because of the user. Yes, I know. Two tea failures two days in a row on two green teas no less. The first steep was quite good and I totally meant to drink more. But I forgot about the leaves or remembered briefly intending to go back and never did. This one is not quite as much a loss as yesterday’s because I have quite a bit of this tea and while good, I do not like it as much as Jasmine Green.

I was looking for a non-black/oolong tea this evening and with my nifty new tea thermometer, I decided to give this one a try again. Upon smelling the leaves again, I noticed a strong orange-pineapple-coconut scent with no green tea scent and an odd non-sugar sweetener like scent. Tea has a pineapple-apple taste with not much green tea. Better brewed at this temperature correctly but still nothing great. 2nd steep included the husband’s leaves as well so I still only steeped it for 3 min.

Today I tried a tea my mom brought back for me from her vacation in Nashville, TN. My dad and her decided to take a long weekend and see the area, for no reason other than that they’d never been before. This is the first tea I’ve logged on Steepster that I haven’t had before.

Generic sencha taste, not strong. Non-descript tropical flavor, no one fruit stands out. Decent, not good, not bad.

Large pottery moose head mug. 1 tsp. Gently steaming water. 3 minutes.