Golden Moon Tea

So I decided I wanted to make some chai over the stove, and I chose this tea for it. WOW! Over the stove top is a lot better than brewing it in a cup! I added more milk to it since the brew was very dark. The cinnamon stench was becoming more subdued - THANK GOODNESS!!!

I love watching the cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon dancing around with the black tea leaves. Very pretty to watch. I love how my entire house turned into a warm, cinnamon haven! Yum! This is perfect for autumn. When I tasted it, the creamy milk mixed with the spices were a delight. I could still taste the spice oil or cinnamon oil Golden Moon Tea decided to place unnecessarily, but it wasn’t as alarming. This chai blend is still not my favorite since I adore chai that is predominantly cardamom and almost no cinnamon.

I opened this tea up finally. I was a little disappointed to be honest. I saw the beautiful whole spices in there, such as cloves, cinnamon bits, and cardamom pods. However, all I smelled was some sort of cinnamon spice oils. It smells too strong, and I was worried it would overpower the blend. The chai blends that I have tried never had this scent. I usually make my own blend or buy blends that are natural. This one is not natural.

Anyway, I brewed this up Western style. The blend was not bitter, which is a plus. I needed to add sugar and milk to this though. The oil is overwhelming :( I don’t recall the sample being this way. The milk and sugar did temper the oil, so I was a bit glad about that. Overall, this isn’t one of my favorites, but it seems as if it would be a great tea during the cold winter months. I will try this again but brewed over the stove top.

Huzzah! I have officially gone through the Golden Moon sampler box. Happily, we end things on a high note. It occurred to me that perhaps I had been unfair in many of my GM Sample ratings, for I use 16oz./~475mL water, which may be too much for the sample packets. Naturally, this thought occurs to me on my very last GM Sample. Oops. This thought was emphasised when I opened the packet and saw just how little tea is in this particular sample. =\

The dry leaves have a wonderful fragrance. It’s delicate and floral, with the chrysanthemum coming through clearly when I inhaled deeply, but very very subtle when taking just a quick sniff.

Steeped, the tea is pale and fragrant, still very delicate. I generally like bolder flavours, but this was really nice. The only sad thing is that the caffeine hit me like a freight train, so it’s unlikely I’ll be stocking this. Still, if I had more I’d happily drink it. =)

Tea amount: 1 sample packet
Water amount: 8oz./~237mL
Additives: 1 tsp Demerara sugar
Dry mouth factor: 4/10

I’m really glad I only have (had) a sample of this, because it’s not even worthy of a swap list. Had I never had green tea before, this would inspire me to try others. The reason for this is that this tea’s fragrance makes a promise on which its flavour simply doesn’t deliver. It is so bland, so utterly featureless, that it couldn’t possibly do the green tea justice.

For most of my mug, I felt like I was drinking little more than sugar water. As the tea cooled, a little bit of flavour came through, and that was pleasant enough, but still unremarkable.

Tea amount: 1 sample packet
Water amount: 8oz./~237mL
Additives: ~2tsp Demerara sugar
Dry mouth factor: 2/10

I’m usually not a big fan of white teas unless they’re silver needle, but I found a whole tin of this while doing my tea cabinet clean.

It’s not big on ginger flavor — that would overpower the delicateness of the white tea — but you do get a little hint of it as an aftertaste. It’s just an OK, middle-of-the-road tea. I expected to like it, but it was just average for me.

This is the NYT crossword puzzle of teas. What I mean by that is that everything is there, right in front of me, but I just don’t get it. =)

They make it sound so grand, don’t they? Let’s see how my experience compares to the expectations created by the description:

“Mesmerizing, silver-tipped leaves…” – Absolutely. I never (okay, almost never) notice the quality/attributes of the leaves I’m steeping. I’m generally as oblivious of them as I am of a film’s score and soundtrack while I’m watching it: that is to say, completely. But these actually warranted a second look. They seem delicate, a bit like very fine yarn.

“…with a nectary amber liquor.” – I would say honey more than amber, but okay.

“A supple bouquet of orange blossoms…” – Um…what? [looks under a leaf] Where’s that hiding, then?
“…and chestnuts…” – Eh? You’re having a laugh, surely.
“…gentle hints of dates…” – Well, maybe. I did occasionally detect an underlying sweetness that could, if one were feeling quite generous, be attributed to dates. Maybe.
“…musky cedar…” – Finally! Finally something I can sort of detect. A sort of smoky, roasty kind of thing. Woodsy kind of thing. Not in a rooibos way, but like in a forest kind of way. In a go-chop-some-wood-for-the-fireplace kind of way. It’s not overpowering, but it’s definitely there.

So, did I dislike it? No, no, not at all. The flavour isn’t bad, but after my BLAMINYOFACE introduction to lapsang souchong, I’m learning that that smoky roasty thing in a tea doesn’t really do it for me, especially if it’s the star of the show. Golden Moon’s description of this makes it sound like it’s not really meant to be the star of the show, but that’s how it worked out for me. What worries me is how many folks said that this description is spot-on. That means that my tea palate is even less developed than I’d hoped it’d be by now. In any case, I like this well enough to drink the rest of it, but not well enough get more of it, or even re-steep this sample.

Tea amount: 1 sample packet
Water amount: 16oz./~475mL
Additives: After a few unadulterated sips, ~1 level tbsp Demerara sugar.
Caffeine: Seems to me to be pretty high. I’ve not drunk much of the tea from my mug, but am already exhibiting some of the symptoms of too much caffeine (my tolerance for it is extremely low).
Dry mouth factor: 6/10. It’s not very bad, but it’s a little bit more than middle of the road.

This is great stuff! There’s a freshness and authenticity to the fragrance. When I first opened the packet, all I could smell was coconut. “Where’s the tea?,” I thought. And this was odd, because if you look at the dry tea, all you see is leaves—it’s not like it’s a pile of coconut flakes or anything. After a few breaths, I could smell the fragrance of the tea itself start to creep in. What was interesting about the fragrance was how it changed when I steeped the tea: suddenly, the coconut disappeared and all I could smell was tea. Like I did with the dry leaves, I gave it a few moments and slowly the coconut began to creep in and mix with the tea. I was kind of fascinated by these aromatic acrobatics.

I’ve never had coconut cream pie. I’ve also never had any of the teas that attempt to recreate that flavour. But when I took a sip of this blend, I immediately thought of some sort of creamy, coconut treat. The tea has…substance to it, as if I’d added milk to it. As I was with the fragrance, I was fascinated by the tea itself. It’s really something, isn’t it, that we can combine a tea blend with water and end up with a light amber liquid that tastes…creamy! I don’t mean to make this sound like a science experiment, I just can’t get over this creaminess-without-cream effect.

Okay, so texture and consistency aside, this blend tastes great. It’s flavourful and balanced. It’s light in spite of the smooth, creamy consistency. I found myself sipping this one slowly to make the brew last longer, a clear indication that I need to add this to my shopping list. What I’d like to do, in the future, is try some different preparation methods: first, I’d like to try it iced; second, I’d like to blend it with a chocolatey tea—I love Mounds candy bars; and third, I’d like to make it kind of like chai, with (soy) milk instead of water.

Tea amount: 1 sample packet (I didn’t measure it out, sorry.)
Water amount: 16oz./~475mL
Additives: ~1 level tbsp Demerara sugar

Let’s just call this one “Eau de Clove.” I steeped the sample (in its entirety) in water, and clove is all I could smell and taste. The taste didn’t linger like I wanted it to, either, and the dry mouth factor is on the high side. So ya, not a fan.

That said, I’m still tempted to put this on my shopping list and order it in a small size, because I feel like steeping it normally didn’t do it justice. I don’t have the patience to make proper chai, but I feel like if I did, it would have tasted much better and I would have rated it better. I am tempted to give it another chance.

Tea amount: Golden Moon sample size, one packet.
Water amount: 16oz./~475mL
Additives: 2 level tbsp. demerara sugar.

Purchased from Iheartteas.com – thanks Rachel! :) Today’s cup is an old Aynsley bone china teacup, that is bright goldenrod colour, overlaid with a heavy gold floral pattern. Small flowers adorn both the centre of the cup and the saucer. It’s a very cheery, yet elegant cup. I admit that it isn’t my favourite, but for some reason, I felt drawn to it today.

Dry – very sweet smelling leaves. Smells like caramel popcorn.
Steeped 180 degrees F, for 3mins.

1st Steeping, 1st cup:
Steeped 180 degrees F, 3mins
Colour: pale yellow liquor
Slight vegetal smell, overlaid with a sweeter, caramel smell. A slight hint of nut.
Taste: Quite light, and refreshing. It’s not a sweet tasting tea, as I had first expected. I can taste the oolong, but the burnt sugar/caramel is along side of it, gently easing onto my tongue. I find the caramel more prominent at the finish.
Quite nice.

1st Steeping, 2nd cup:
Per the Golden Moon Tea’s website, they recommend adding some sugar to help enhance the caramel flavour, as well as some milk to make it a richer cup. I only added a small amount of sugar – they suggest one teaspoon, and I imagine that would be for a larger vessel than the old teacup that I am using. I can always add more sugar if required. I also added just a dribble of milk. Hmmm, this concoction looks a little sad in my cup now. As the liquor was so pale to begin with, it looks like I’ve just poured really watered down milk into a fancy teacup LOL! Ok, I guess it doesn’t matter what it looks like, but how it tastes is what counts, right?

Well, it could just be me, but I’m not sure if the sugar really brought out the caramel. Maybe if I had used rock sugar instead of plain old white sugar, that might have made a difference. The cup is definitely sweeter tasting, but I wonder it’s perhaps taking away from the taste, not improving it. That also could be the milk too. I will need to do some experiments with it….
Another cup, with a wee bit less milk and same amount of sugar has made this grow on me, and I am getting more of the burnt sugar and caramel flavour from it. Tasty!

2nd Steeping, 1st cup, no additives:
Steeped 180 degrees F, 3mins 25secs
I noticed that the leaves had opened up more during this second steeping. Quite frankly, it smells pretty much the same as the first steeping. Maybe slightly more vegetal.
Upon tasting it, I’m not finding the sugar/caramel notes as strongly as I did in the previous steeping. As with the other cups, the caramel swoops in at the finish.
Very enjoyable, although now I’m hankering to add some milk and sugar and amp it up somewhat and make it more dessert-like.

2nd Steeping, 2nd cup, milk and sugar added
I think I’ve found the right milk/sugar combo – yum!

3rd Steeping: 1st cup, no additives:
Steeped 180 degrees F, accidentally lost track of time – maybe 4mins or so?
Just beginning to lose the caramel and sugar notes – more vegetal tasting.
Subsequent cups with milk and sugar still quite good though. Helps bring out the sweet caramel.
Not as punchy as the first 2 steepings.

4th Steeping: 1st cup, no additives:
Steeped 180 degrees F, 5mins 15secs
Becoming more bland but still nice.

Golden Moon’s White Ginger tea is right splat in the middle of the road. Really, all it needs is some oomph to be a lovely, gingery, white tea. Sadly, it is oomphless. It smells like white tea, with a very slightly sweet note on the end that made me think of candied ginger. It tastes like white tea, with a very slightly gingery prickle in the throat as you swallow. If you like ginger, this tea will leave you far short of satisfied. You may be able to give it a bit of oomph by grating some ginger into your infuser, but with so many ginger teas out there, I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Just gorgeous. I’m watching the last episode of Downton Abbey and felt that I needed something a little special to drink this morning. Still on my black kick, I pulled this one out of my treasure chest. A huge thank you to Rachel from Iheartteas.com for sending this to me. I cannot recommend her products and services enough. I love being able to try out so many different teas without purchasing full bags. Please do check out her online shop :)

Ok, back to the tea. I love honey. And, I also love orchids. So it seemed to me that this should be a good match for me, right? YES! Most definitely!

Dry, this tea is sweet and mouthwatering, and the leaves are really big. Brewed, I was quite surprised at how light coloured the liquor was. Much lighter than I had expected, especially for a black tea. I began to wonder if I messed up the water to tea ratio lol.

Once I poured it into my cup, I took another sniff – still honeyed sweetness, but also a very light floral was emanating. Very alluring! To taste, this tea is smooth and light, but still full of flavours – in fact, it is quite complex. On the tongue, I can taste the smooth honeyed notes, and then the floral makes a complementary appearance, finally completing to a smooth, sweet finish. Honestly, the whole experience is a delight! I haven’t even tried adding anything to my cup, as it is beautiful straight.

It is a decadent tea that deserves a fine bone china cup, and I’m pleased to have chosen an old Double Warrant stamped Paragaon, decked out gaily in blue and gold. I’m going to finish my pot, and I already have the Golden Moon website open to place an order for more of this fabulous tea.

I actually tasted this tea yesterday, but I still don’t really function very well on 11th September, so I wasn’t up to writing a tasting note.

There are only a few samples left from my Golden Moon sampler set. I’m very much a “save the best for last” kind of person, and the idea of white tea infused with melon was so enticing that I immediately put it aside so it could be one of the last ones I tasted.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I cut open the packet, inhaled, and crinkled my nose in displeasure. The dry leaves smell like stale bread. I persisted, and after a few breaths I could discern a vaguely melon-y aroma. But when I reset my sense of smell and went back to the tea a couple of moments later, there it was again: stale bread. Unpleasant.

As off-putting as the tea’s aroma was, I couldn’t just pour it out without tasting it. And who knows, sometimes the taste is a surprise, y’know? Sadly, the tea tasted like a wilting flower. Other tasters have mentioned alcohol, overly ripe melon, a sort of fermented smell, but the one thing I took away from both the smell and taste of this tea is, “spoilt.” The smell of stale bread and the taste of a wilting flower’s sickly sweet smell. Blech.

As with the aroma, continuing to sip for a while improved the experience ever so slightly, but putting the mug down for a while and coming back to it after a few moments pushed the reset button so that I had to endure the whole stale bread, wilting flower thing all over again. That’s just too much work to try and enjoy a nice, hot cup of tea.

Underwhelmed. Mehness. The flavour of this tea does not live up to the promise made by its fragrance. It smells really nice, but the flavour is a bit bland, a bit weak. The fragrance is mostly that of green tea: fresh-smelling, a bit vegetal. There are also some floral undertones here. Given its name (and given that I read only the name, and not the ingredients), I thought I’d get more orchid (I love floral teas), but that’s not the case. There is only the most subtle of floral hints in the fragrance, and even these are mostly absent from the flavour.

I like less subtlety in my tea, so found this a mediocre offering. Next, please.

Dry, this seems like a pretty unassuming tea — not surprising, since I tend to think of Ceylon as “normal” black tea. Steeping gets you a nice dark cup with a fairly strong smell, woodsy and almost smoky. I wasn’t expecting much based on the dry leaf, but this is getting exciting!

As I sip, I immediately notice that this isn’t the least bit subtle in flavor, which is, as usual, a plus in my book. Toasty is definitely a good way to describe it, and I think my earlier declaration of woodsy still applies. It’s somewhat astringent, more than I’m personally used to tasting, and almost sour. I’m not getting any of the sweet or berry-ish notes that others apparently are, and in fact it’s more bitter than I’d like.

Taking this one for a second steeping, I’m getting a similar albiet milder taste. The bitterness is mostly gone now, but it seems to have taken a lot of the tea’s character with it. This time I tried a pinch of artificial sweetener (I don’t have the recommended raw sugar and milk), but it seems to mellow out the flavor some more more than anything else. Not a bad cup, though; it reminds me a lot of Twinnings’ very basic ceylon.

A very nice choice if you’re a fan of strong, full-bodied black tea, especially if you might like to finish off with a milder second steep! I might choose this as a coffee substitute if I needed one, as while it doesn’t taste like coffee at all, it offers a similar experience. On a personal level, it’s not a favorite due to the bitter and woodlike qualities, but it’s lovely for what it is and I might consider getting it again if I wanted a more permanent ceylon in my stash.

Oh, so this is pu-erh. I just realised that I haven’t had it before, and that I probably should’ve tried this before drinking Golden Moon’s Pu-erh Chai1. After tasting this, I have a much better understanding of all the different flavours swirling around in that pu-erh chai.

I didn’t know what to expect here, but the packet says “earthy.” From the dry leaves what I got is a fragrance that I’d describe as more fruity than earthy. The tea itself is a different story: I definitely got earthy from the first whiff, but upon exhaling and inhaling again, my first thought was, “sandalwood.” Sandalwood! I am mad about sandalwood. I have incense. I have soap. I have talcum powder. And I’m very, very picky about my sandalwood, too, much like I am about my rose2. And what I got from this tea was the hint of some really lovely sandalwood.

These earthy, incense-y, sandalwood-y, very slightly smoky traits all carried over from the fragrance to the flavour, and the end result is really nice. If this is what pu-erh is usually like, I’m a fan. I quite like its flavour and find it second only to rooibos (my favourite since I first tried it in 2009).

1 http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/128501

2 http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/128096

The irksome thing about vanilla is that, like cinnamon, you give it a little bit of stage time and it wants to hog the entire spotlight. I love jasmine, but couldn’t smell it in the dry leaves, which smelled entirely of vanilla. I could smell a bit of jasmine in the steeped tea, but it was pretty subtle. The tea itself is kind of weak, and tastes like vanilla; I don’t taste any jasmine. Definitely not my thing, don’t think I’m going to get through this mug. On to the next one!

[Edit]: I removed my rating, which was 13. It’s not the tea’s fault that I don’t like vanilla. I reckon if I did, I’d like the tea better in spite of its weakness and insufficient jasmine presence. In any case, I didn’t want to pull its overall rating down with my biased score.

This is one of the most interesting teas I’ve ever tasted, so much so that I don’t really trust my score. Normally, I take a few sips, and I have a pretty good idea of what the tea is going to be like, what to expect from the rest of the mug…y’know? But this tea kept me guessing ’til the very end.

The first thing I smelled when I cut open the packet was cinnamon. Bleh, I don’t like cinnamon. But the very next time I inhaled, I hardly smelled any cinnamon at all. This time, it was cardamom. Meh, I’m not a fan of cardamom, either. But again I couldn’t write the tea off, because it changed again! This time what I got was almost fruity in nature, but more fruit punch, not the “smooth citrusy bouquet” the packet claims.

Steeped, the tea’s flavour was just as variable as its fragrance. One sip tasted all cinnamon-y, another tasted kinded of fruity, another tasted a little earthy (eh?), another a little like…rooibos (whaaa…?). It all tasted good, but more than that, it was just…interesting! The sample wasn’t nearly enough to figure out this tea. I’ve added it to the shopping list for further study.

This is kind of a middle of the road jasmine green tea. The fragrance is heavenly, and it’s one of those teas that makes me want to strap the packet to my nose. The jasmine is spot on: not subtle, not perfume-y, not overwhelming, not artificial. Really, really nice.

Given its fragrance, I was hoping for a nice, bold flavour to do it justice. That’s not the case here, though: the tea is a little on the weak side. To its credit, however, I didn’t get any bitterness or dry mouth from it.

OMNOMNOM. I really need to drink more black tea, because I really can’t tell the difference between them. I swear, every time I drink a new black tea, I think, “Yes! THIS is it! THIS is what I mean when I think of black tea! The fragrance, the flavour, this, this, this!”

Until the next cup of a different black tea. [Sigh.]

So ya. This. THIS smells just like the chai Mum made every day, even without the milk and sugar. THIS tastes just like that tea, even without the milk and the cardamom and ginger. More accurately, it tastes just like the black tea base of that tea, before the milk and the cardamom and the ginger were added.

At least, I think it does. Until the next cup of black tea I drink. I obviously cannot be trusted.

It’s yummy, though. And it’s comforting. I needed something “safe” today, as I’ve been a bit too adventurous of late and just wasn’t up to evaluating a new flavour. I didn’t get any bitterness or dry mouth, which is always nice. It’s not as, I dunno, flavourful? bold? oomphy? as some other black teas I’ve recently tried, for which I docked it a few points. But it’s very nice.

Bonus: Just like every time I eat a clementine, I pranced around the kitchen singing, “Oh, m’darlin’, O m’darlin’, O m’daaaarlin’ Darjeeling, I will steep you, I will sip you, o m’darlin’, Darjeeling” ♬ while this was steeping. (Note that the clementine variant is "I will peel you, I will eat you, o m’darlin’, clementine. ♬)

Wow, the leaves for this one had a /very/ strong smell of sweet melons.

I wanted to have a go at this sample after having Butiki’s lovely Cantaloupe & Cream earlier – definitely in a melon mood! Compared to the powerful smell of the leaves, the brewed cup smelled far less strong (though still does have that wine-y scent) – but the sweetness of the melon was rather gentle. Overall, it is fairly refreshing!

My nose acknowledges four classes of rose: the flower, the perfume, the essence (as in rose water), and the soap/lotion. We use a lot of rose essence/rose water in our cooking in India, so I’m most familiar with the variety of tastes created by adding that to a beverage or dish. As well, when I was little I used to munch on rose petals. I like rose. A lot.

I was very happy with the fragrance of the dry leaves. Of the four recognised classes, this tea fell squarely in the “flower” one: the fragrance was fresh, pure, not artificial. Not even remotely subtle, and really lovely. The wet leaves and the steeped tea didn’t smell as strongly like a fresh flower, which was good, because it let the black tea come through a little more.

The flavour is where things just went all pear-shaped. The flavour, my friends, is neither essence nor flower, but lotion. Lotion! It’s wrong. So, so, wrong. To make matters worse, my first sip of the unsweetened tea hit the back of my throat with a distinct bitterness, which immediately shattered my resolve to wean myself off sugar/sweeteners in my tea. Straightaway, I added some sugar.

So now I’m drinking non-bitter rose lotion. Because I like rose so much, I’m reluctant to dump the tea, so it’s sitting here, and every so often I forget how disappointed I am and reach for another sip or two. What I’m finding is that as it sits (it’s just sitting, not really cooling, thanks to my super duper mug), the flavour is transitioning from lotion to flower, more like what I expected when I first cut open the packet.

In the end, I’m glad that I didn’t pour the tea down the drain. I still feel that there is a slightly lotion-y aftertaste, but to be fair, it is possible that this is mostly psychological. I’ll be okay getting through this mug, but unfortunately this isn’t a tea I’ll be stocking in the future. That said, I’d now really like to find a bold, rose tea that I would like to keep stocked. I tried a white rose that I really liked, but it was subtle. I’d like something more like this, with a nice, bold flavour, but with a rose infusion that’s more to my liking. I’ll keep trying, I’m sure I’ll find something. =)

I love licorice. But I’m pretty sceptical of licorice in tea, because it tends to coat my tongue in a really unpleasant, icky way. Pre-steep, these dry leaves smell like licorice and tea, instead of just licorice. In fact, the licorice was pretty subtle. It came out more post-steep, but still wasn’t really strong.

If you’re kind of on the fence about licorice, you might like this one. The tea has a pretty balanced flavour, and it does a respectable job of not coating your tongue in that icky way. I think I would’ve liked it more with a touch of sugar, but I’m trying to wean myself off sugar/sweeteners (sadpanda), so I left it out. To its credit, I can actually drink this one without sugar; normally, I can’t tolerate more than a few sips of unsweetened tea.

I love jasmine, and this tea smells wonderful, so I had high hopes. By wonderful I mean that the jasmine is not subtle. I like bold, full flavours and this really smells like jasmine. Additionally, it’s a very pure fragrance, not like perfume.

But in the end, it doesn’t measure up to jasmine greens I’ve had in the past. With a recommended steep for four minutes at water “just below the boiling point,” I figured I’d be perfectly safe with 175°, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. There was some bitterness, right from the start, that only increased as the tea cooled. As well, the dry mouth factor here is pretty high.

That said, I’ve still got the empty packet next to me so I can sniff it every once in a while. It really does smell lovely. =)