Liquid Proust Teas

So, so, so yummy. I wasn’t sure I would love the popcorn/blueberry flavor combo, but thankfully I was very wrong. I have never been able to taste the blueberry in a blueberry tea quite this intensely, and it is very sweet all on its own. I had it hot and let it cool and both were delicious. It held up really well to resteeping – the blueberry flavor was still strong, which I find rare. It was more balanced in the second steep, making it remind me of blueberry oatmeal. A must for anyone who loves blueberry.

I enjoyed this a lot – I am a HUGE honeysuckle lover, both flavor and scent. In fact, I think it is my love of it that made me a little disappointed when the tea didn’t smell like someone shoved some honeysuckle in my face. Unrealistic expectations, I know. But, I wasn’t disappointed by the flavor. It is naturally sweet, the tea doesn’t overwhelm or get drowned out by the floral notes, and it resteeped pretty well for me.

I will say I preferred it when I added a drop of honey to bring out the sweetness more reminiscent of tasting honeysuckle flowers, and I let it cool. But I prefer teas that are memory triggers, and noshing on honeysuckle after swimming in the pool in the summer at our house when we lived in West Chester when I was 8 is a tough one to evoke.

With a little maple the second steep is straight French toast. Lots to play with in this tea.

This is lovely. :)
It tastes like Amanda’s comment on another post— lingering French toast taste in a smooth dianhong— smooth and sweet, and forgiving since I oversteeped by a minute and no astringency at all. Rich amber color and smells amazing, like vanilla/chocolate with a hint of spice—I think this is what made the mailer package smell so good. It’s not floral but reminds me somehow of a luscious perfume, maybe because I used to wear vanilla. The egg taste is definitely there but subtle like custard— adds a lot of dimension. I am guessing the sweetness is from the tea itself and not a flavoring.

The first two steps taste very similar, probably because I oversteeped some. The third was more pure dianhong with the warmth of a little spice on the back end, almost like a very mild chai made but with really high quality tea. This tea makes me excited to try more from Liquid Proust!

I was probably the most apprehensive of this one out of the three, see I have a lifetime hate of watermelon…until about a year ago I ate some and surprisingly loved it, next thing I knew I was devouring slices of watermelon like it was going out of style. The aroma of this tea is pretty peculiar, mixing heady flowers with fresh vegetation, a bit of umami kelp, and delicate watermelon. Like someone is sitting next to you eating watermelon while you are sitting sipping your tea, it does not overwhelm at all, also props for it smelling like the melon and not candy.

I brewed this one in my gaiwan, got several steeps out of it too! The mouthfeel was delightfully creamy and smooth, and the taste was something else. It took the familiar sweet and floral notes of a green TGY and mix it with bright green notes of celery and lettuce, with a hint of buttery and green seaweed note. But where is the watermelon you might ask? Oh it is there, it blooms in the midtaste as a delicate, juicy, watermelon with an accompaniment of the green rind. It does not evolve much over steeps except the buttery Gyokuro notes became stronger, which I loved.

Wow, it has been forever since I had either a blackberry tea or a Keemun, sad, Keemun used to be one of my favorite black teas before being ousted by the fuzzy golden Yunnans, I kinda miss it. Oh man, the aroma of this one is intensely blackberry, very sweet and creamy with a bit of a crust aroma, like a blackberry cobbler. There is also a gentle hint of sage at the very end, which is kinda fun, it tickles the nose a bit.

This one was so tasty! Boo that it isn’t in the store! The Keemun is mellow and sweet, adding an underlying chocolate and slight floral edge to the intense blackberry notes. It tastes like cobbler and this makes me immensely happy. The sage is pretty mellow, just sneaking in at the finish to add a bit of an herbal depth to the tea.

I did a bit of a hmmm when deciding how to brew this one, so I defaulted to gaiwan because of course I did. The aroma is delightfully roasty, you know me and my love of char and toasted notes, the added mellow notes of orange peel and the really odd note of mate blend well. Mate is a strange thing, it smells vaguely of sage and burnt pinto beans, herbaceous and strange, but not in an unpleasant way.

I went for a couple steeps with this one too, it was wonderful experiencing the growth of the roasted notes, starting out as toasted sesame and roasted oranges and building to intense notes of char and wood. There was of course the mate, it did not necessarily clash with the oolong, but it is so strange tasting that it takes me out of the moment, the roasty toasty moment. As the steeps progressed the mate taste mellowed out and the orange notes increased, blending really well with the char, overall I had mixed feelings on this peculiar tea.

I used the last of the tea that I bought in Tokorozawa when I was there just a few months ago. Somewhat sad that I can’t just walk to Tokyo from my house… but, I will get my hand on Japanese teas to play with!

I know someone’s going to read this as peach earl grey and not realize that it’s a formosa oolong base tea and not a black tea…

Anyways, this is one battle that required a referee!

Guess who got a decent amount of Dong Ding to play with?
I wanted to make a tea taste like peach rings, but then I found out there are peach blossoms so I scratched that idea for the time being and lightly flavored this nice leaf and measured out some peach blossoms to add to it :)
Don’t tell anyone, but there is hope for floral flavors and my taste buds after all.

This is one of those teas that only a few people will have the ability to purchase because I stocked up on other base teas and got others to play with (like this one)

This is also my first attempt at putting some cream in a tea :)

So happy to be able to say that I blended with a yellow tea :)

Also, my best friend and I nailed down the steeping advice on this one (which, 30seconds changes A LOT with this tea)

https://liquidproust.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/20150623_2010021.jpg?w=660

Limited release to see if it would be worth making a full batch of.
Please don’t ask why I added a cream flavor to an osmanthus oolong… I just did

Why does dried melon cost as much as jewelry?
Two white teas with one green tea was selected to merge with my melon.
I’m going to dry so many melons in the future!

I don’t play favorites, but…

:)

I want to forget how long I spent on this tea :p
I actually made four batches of rock candy to test for water temperature… that was interesting, but I finally got it to not completely dissolve over three steeps!

Look at this ingredients list though:
Brazilian mate, green rooibos from South Africa, rock candy (sugar, corn syrup, food coloring, flavor), apple, marshmallow root, beet root, strawberry, carrot flakes, flower petals, flavoring

Not going to lie… I used lily so I could name the tea and jasmine dragonwell did not sound to me so I went with this :)

Part of me thinks I’m crazy for spending a few hours on roasting jackfruit seeds… but I just had to!
Jackseed is said to taste like walnut but I found them to be quite mellow so I put a tiny bit of vanilla on them before the final roasting session. I can’t wait until I have a dehydrator because I will for sure have jackfruit pieces in my teas and that will make me smile

As much as I would love to explain the journey this tea took me on, I’m going to be doing the best bout being objective when I write about my teas. I will say that is quite different than what I was expecting when I tasted it

This tea was made for my brother who likes citrus fruits and chai tea. Thankfully I recently started corresponding with someone who actually had lemon and limes available so this has lime in it as well. Thankfully he likes it because I gave him a few ounces as a gift :)

It’s not easy making a smoked cinnamon roll tea… but, I was surprised to figure out the steeping advice after just four different scoops/steeps. The first time I tried steeping this I left it in far too long and thought I made a horrible batch, but that is what I get for forgetting to use a timer. There was a nice sense of relief when I tried a second time though as I realized that I fouled up and not the tea.

Not going to lie… I was screwing around with silly ideas when I made this, but when it turned out to be something I wanted to keep drinking I ended up making a few to see how others will receive it. With this working, I look forward to other crazy ideas like cotton candy infused teas :)