Golden Moon Tea

I drank this tea in my new color-changing whale mug from DavidsTea this morning. I’ve never owned a color- changing mug before, and it’s AWESOME! It’s like magic, like it shows the color only while you’re drinking the tea, so it’s like tea is the magic element! Ha!

This tea is a solid breakfast tea, but I like the flavor profile of Sinharaja loads more. Honestly, the delicious honeyed smell I get from the dry leaf didn’t really come through in the steeped cup. Maybe I’m killing it by adding soymilk? I don’t know, but I do know the whale mug is AWESOME! :)

Was very productive today…cleaned out two of my tea shelves. I mainly wanted to pull out teas that need to be cleared out. I found about 4oz of Yumberry Wulong separated it different spots. That is a clear sign I have too much tea.

So I figured I really need to sip down teas that are in baggies from swaps. This could have been in my cupboard for a year! I really have no idea when I got it.

Upon opening I really did not smell much in the way of jasmine or vanilla! In fact I really couldn’t smell even the tea base so had to come on here and look it up. Once brewed though I could clearly smell the jasmine and vanilla!

Being this sample is old I really don’t taste too much jasmine. In fact, I really dislike vanilla teas because tea companies don’t seem to pair them with the right black base. This is perfect in both regards. I’m definitely going to get some of this some day…fresher of course – lol.

LOVE this! Golden Moon, why haven’t I tried you sooner?! I think I might have just died and gone to tea heaven! It’s like they read my mind and made a tea just for me. It’s sweet, it’s carmel-ly, it’s a little toasty, and so absolutely satisfying. Must resteep!!!

This may be my favorite unflavored black tea. It’s so freaking delicious! I made some at work with microwaved water and it was still delicious! It tastes like a smooth malty berry tea. I see another order from Golden Moon in my near future; however I’ve got to get through some of my massive cupboard of tea first! I really want to try their keemum! Oh the temptation!

Yum, yum, yum!! This is freaking delicious! So smooth, and I can taste the hint of berries and molasses even though my taste buds and sense of smell have been dampened by residual congestion from the last time I was sick. That means, it’ll be even more yummy when I can actually taste it! Ha! Can’t wait! I can see this tea becoming a staple straight black for me. I’m very impressed with Golden Moon Tea so far, and I have 6 more new teas to try! :)

Tea & Cards TTB

Oh, boy…I’m a fan of this. There’s a great, smooth – almost buttery – note from the tea that layers in under the creamy coconut flavours. The mouthfeel is also buttery and lingers for a comfortingly long while; it’s the perfect sort of thing to sip while doing emails and puttering around on the computer.

It almost reminds me of freshly-baked shortbread cookies in all the best ways. Delicious, addictive and all kinds of wonderful…I’d drink as much of it as I could wrangle up. :)

Tea & Cards TTB

I was pleasantly surprised by this tea…there’s a subtle caramel smoothness that goes along with the mellow, woodsy oolong notes. It’s not an overly complicated drink, but it goes down easy and lingers in your mouth in a way that’s comforting and rather enjoyable.

I’m not sure if I would buy it for myself, but it is tasty and I could see it going well with a nice dish of Singapore noodles or something all curried and tasty. Gods, now I want takeout…

Beautiful tea leaves. Nutty sweet flavor.

I received a very generous sample of this from bluebelle in our February swap. Thank you!

This is a nice Ceylon. The cup smelled fruity with a sugary smell. This was very nice and smooth. I might try my next cup with a touch of milk and honey. I really enjoy Ceylon’s in the afternoon and this was a nice cup. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you ifjuly for sending me this sample.

This is one of those “I don’t get it” teas. This says black, but in my mind “honey orchid” is oolong. I’m not sure if it’s just me not being able to wrap my head around it, but this seems like oolong to me. It steeps really light in color – like an oolong, it tastes like a really mild oolong. I’m not really getting anything that screams black tea. Dunno if it’s just me, or that’s the way it is. In my world this is one of those “cross over” teas, a little oolong, a little black.
Tons of honey in this one though – really sweet.

We got the revert-to-cold snap last night I was hoping for and I jumped on it as a chance to drink up some chai! I did them all proper even, the whole 10 to 20 minute stovetop dance with milk and honey as I’ve decided that’s just the only way I’m ever satisfied drinking chai.

Wasn’t nuts for this one. It was rather bitter. Not awful, but compared to the others I had last night it was my least favorite. Ah well.

Sipdown! I just realized I never actually added this tea to my Steepster cupboard, so I’m still at 99 teas. Now I’m kind of wondering how many other teas I have that I didn’t add to my cupboard… Anyway, like I said in yesterday’s tasting note, I used up my last two teaspoons of this in a cold brew in the fridge overnight. I think I may actually prefer this one as a cold brew because it just felt a lot smoother. I think the absence of bitterness and astringency really helped with that. It wasn’t much sweeter than the hot version, but that’s okay because sometimes I like just a nice bold iced black tea that doesn’t have too much sweetness to it. Another successful cold brew experiment!

Backlog from this morning. Good news is that I’m getting my family hooked on tea, so if their initial openness and curiosity holds up, I should get to my Black Friday sipdown goal of under 75 fairly easily. Today, I introduced them to this EB. It’s nice and bold with a little bit of a tartness to it that is hard to place. My mom thought it tasted like chemicals, but I wasn’t getting that as much. Despite that complaint, she did ask for a resteep, so I obliged! The tea held up pretty well in a resteep in terms of flavor and strength. There was some astringency that made it a bit unpleasant, but no one else seemed to mention it, so maybe I was just a little extra sensitive today. Anyhow, I stuck my last bit of this tea in the fridge for an overnight cold brew, so I’ll post the sipdown tasting note tomorrow!

Tea & Cards TTB #12
Ugh, today brought a string of little failures. I tried to mail off the TTB, but there was some problem with the tape or something. I was then late for class and couldn’t get hot water for my tumbler. Then as I was trying to keep awake in class, I somehow managed to get a papercut right between my fingers, eek. Anyway, I finally managed to get some hot water between classes (hooray!) for this tea. The tea was nice and bold as a breakfast tea should be, yet it was also a bit sweet. As it cooled down, I could swear I almost tasted an apple-like flavor, but that may be contamination from my tumbler or other teas stored next to it. Thankfully, it’s now the weekend, so I can recharge for a better start to next week!

For whatever reason this really hits the spot today. I brewed it for less time than before and it’s mellower and the flavors blend better. I’ve been under the weather for a few days and this is pleasant without feeling like it’s keying me up too much. It’s enough for me to up the rating.

This one came to me from LiberTEAS. I always seem to reach for mint teas when I’m a little under the weather, so maybe I don’t dislike them as much as I think. I’m just picky about when I drink them.

Sadly the flavor of this one doesn’t wow me. The vanilla and mint are both subtle enough that neither of them is really distinct. It blends into one flavor, but it’s not one that I like all that much. Just an okay cup.

I received a sample of this from bluebelle! Thank you so much for sharing.

I was really excited about this tea. I just ordered something very similar from Zen Tea. Vanilla and mint two of my favorite tea ingredients together as one. unfortunately I think I followed instructions on a package when I shouldn’t have. The package seemed much larger than one tsp, but I dumped the entire thing into my steeper and away I went. The resulting cup was really really bitter. I am going to leave this unrated and hopefully we will cross paths again some day.

This is smooth, indeed rum-y, and relatively subtle, which I kind of liked for its novelty. It tastes real, not so much steeped as perfumed, so not like extract. It got a little lost in a froth of milk (I am addicted to that thing! And it’s helping me make up for some horrendous milk-drinking deficiency the last year or so, egads) but I still enjoyed it that way too.

Vanilla’s tricky. Too strong or carelessly done and it’s harsh, with an unpleasant burn that doesn’t meld well with other elements including the tea. Subtle like this, I think to myself, “this is nice, subtly sexy really, but I’m not sure how often I’d reach for this particular experience”. Heavy creamy and it just becomes one of a million rich dessert bombs. I begin to think nothing explicitly labeled vanilla and vanilla only will ever really suit me as cupboard staple, no matter how well done. It’s neat rolling my taste experiences over in the palm of my hand, still smoothing and sorting it all out, learning what works and what doesn’t for me and why. Often it’s through no fault of a tea on its own really.

Tea & Cards TTB #5
Backlog from yesterday. I so wanted to try more from the box yesterday, but had enough caffeine, so I snuck this one in, rationalizing that it probably had less caffeine anyway. It had a nice, light melon taste. I couldn’t really distinguish specific melon flavors (cantaloupe, honeydew, etc), but it wasn’t too overly artificial or perfume-y. Because the melon flavor wasn’t too overwhelming, I could also taste the grassy notes from the white tea itself. While I’m not a huge fan of grassy greens & whites, it was nice to see the base white tea flavor come out on its own for once.

I’m sipping down on the rest of this sample that I pulled from the Tea & Cards TTB today. I never added it to my Steepster cupboard, so it’s kind of a faux sipdown today. Anyway, see my previous tasting note for tea description. I just wanted to say about the TTB that it’s really cool that I got to try out so many new tea companies including this one!

Tea & Cards TTB #3
I have to say that I’m surprised by all the low ratings on Steepster about this tea. Although I did notice that many of them are older, so maybe the tea changed a bit since then? Anyway, I decided to ignore the steeping parameters given by the packet and waited for my boiling water to cool a bit before steeping. I also did a quick rinse before my first steep and did not let the first steep sit as long as 2-3 min as suggested by the packet. All this resulted in a wonderfully floral but not artificially perfume-y oolong. The floral tastes transitioned smoothly into a nuttier, roastier taste toward the end of the sip. The tea also had a buttery feel. I actually really enjoyed this green oolong, and since there is a weirdly small amount left in the sample, I may just pull the rest of it from the TTB.

Definite notes of Laoshan black! If only I hadn’t found the Laoshan first, this may have been a winner for me. But if you’re looking for a lightened up version? This is your tea.

Well, hello my new friend. How have I never run into this tea before? Or any bi luo? I think this is what I’m craving when I want green tea. This tastes like a dragon well grassy base with notes of…burnt sugar? And a pervasive light woodiness. Even a hint of an oolongy butteriness. I fear it will launch yet another in-depth investigation through all the bi luos I can get my hands on, much as milk oolong did to me. Any advice on high (or low) priorities would be very much appreciated!

It has been years since I fell in love with oolongs, but flavoring them just sounded like such a terrible thing to do to such an interesting tea as it is….but coconut? There is something about that particular flavor that just sounds like it would go SO well with oolong’s fruity nuttiness. Then half of Steepster seemed to be so in love with this one, I just couldn’t wait to try it.

When it arrived today, I of course tore open the package…and was scared. I only smelled coconut, with no oolonginess. This is what I was afraid someone would do to oolong. But I brewed it up anyway, and even the first few sips were concerning. Just coconut. Lovely coconut, but I wanted tea.

But then it cooled, and the magic happened! The coconut faded a bit, and a delicate oolong came forward. Much, much better. I will definitely finish and greatly enjoy this tea, but I’m still not sure it will ever call my name from the crowd of great oolongs. Except….iced. I bet this is insanely good iced. Will have to try that asap.

UPDATE: On the second steeping, my opinion is that this is a well-balanced cup but just not a match for my general aversion to flavored teas. It really would have been a miracle for me to love it, and I still bet most people would like it quite a bit.