Phoenix Tea Shop

Sample from Hoálatha

Baked bread with chocolate.

Fin.

PS. Thank you Hoálatha for the sample. :)

Amazing, amazing Taiwanese oolong that just gets better/richer with each infusion. It’s nutty one sip and floral the next, with notes of sweetness that surprised me. This is the kind of tea that I hide in my closet for “me time.” I got about 4-5 solid infusions out of a 1/2 teaspoon. The tea comes rolled in little balls, so you don’t need that much for a good cup.

I friggin love this tea. Never astringent, sweet, malty, almost caramely. Amazing Kenyan tea, or maybe I just really like kenyan tea. Love the tea shop as well.

Brewed in gaiwan tastes great, but it should burn very briefly, even for this type of tea

Great unique tea, has more of the body of a sencha then of a harsher black tea.

After sleeping most of my Saturday away (I’ve no idea why) and staying up until close to 4am today I was shocked to get up around 8:30am…of course the call from my mother might have helped that. She was asking what “red stuff” I put on the nieces eggs the last time she visited… “Paprika?” I recall as my response. Of course she thought that’s what it was, but my niece HAD to be sure and called to ask me. Good thing that kid is cute.

Once I was up and out of bed…I noticed our cats were swarming the bed. I’m the food lady in the house…so I snap, crackle, and popped my way downstairs to feed them. This also consisted of turning on the electric kettle. I needed tea…stat! I reached for this one as I thought it was a tea I had tried before. But after having it…I don’t think it was. I would have remembered this tea. It was bold, but with a light sweetness that made it very easy to drink in almost one big sip. I need to spend more time with this tea for sure!

Thanks to Phoenix Tea Shop for sending me this sample. I finished it off today but I can’t say there was anything totally remarkable about it. Not rating it because I still don’t know if my tastebuds are feeling all too perky and back to normal. :((

I’d had ginseng green from Adagio once, and hated it, so this was one of those iffy things. This is nothing like that. It’s smooth, with a little spike of flavour. I inadvertently ate one of the tiny round balls of flower and figured out that that’s where the flavour was concentrated. Reminded me of those little mints where the minty liquid is in the ball. It’s ALMOST bitter (maybe I brewed too hot or too long) but comfortably so. Brews pretty dark.

So I tried this last night while I was working on ideas for a Doctor Who party we’re throwing this weekend with friends. I thought this tea would be a perfect match to my planning. I have to say the thyme was STRONG in this one. WOW! It also took over the cup of tea as I was drinking it. Which kind of put me off. BUT I did like the keemun I could taste a hint of under all the thyme. I’d still try this one again…it was a sample so perhaps I needed to shake it up a little more?

Boy, I just can’t get enough of this stuff. It is so robust, but not in a bitter sort of way. Full of character. I wish I had the words to describe it. More importantly just try it. :)

I LOVE this stuff! I can’t believe how amazing this is and it’s a CTC. It is unique, has character, and punches you in the face without even leaving any marks. Not your typical CTC. I encourage you to give it a try. I am currently addicted this one.

This tea scares me. More out of fear of what to think than…er…genuine fear. It’s CTC-grade, bitter as all heck, malty, and it kicks me in the skull. Normally traits that I wouldn’t like in a morning cup o’ black. Just so happens, I may have been wrong. (That happens a lot, actually.)

This tea is Excedrin in a cup – a headache reliever with a wallop of caffeine. But, dang, does it ever need milk.

Thank you, Courtney ( The Purrfect Cup ) for this sample.

I actually acquired this at the Northwest Tea Festival this year. Love events like that where you can taste before you buy. This is an unusual post-fermented tea in the fact there’s no harshness to it at all – compared to the other non-pu-erh hei chas I’ve had, anyway. It lasted a good seven or eight infusions, and its deceptive gentleness was counteracted by a wallop of caffeine. Necessary fuel for a five-hour long writing streak.

Said writing streak was my coverage of said Northwest Tea Festival, which can be found here: http://lazyliteratus.teatra.de/2012/10/07/my-first-tea-fest/

I received this tea Monday after getting some rather terrible news so I didn’t try it straight away. My husband and I went to the doctor for an 8 week check only to find out our sweet angel baby had passed away the week before. :‘( (So I had another appointment yesterday and am home recovering the rest of the week) We also lost my husbands cousin Monday evening. It’s has been a really rotten week for us.

So I needed some comfort today as it’s my first day home by myself. I could think of nothing better than a cup of this tea. It is so comforting to me, rich, malty, and very much like a blanket wrapping me in warmth and hugging me tight.

Sorry for being so personal but I love the tea community here and you all are much like my family and I felt the need to share with my tea family. hugs

Yum yum yum yum yum. Super dark and thick cooked pu-erh. It comes out sweet and earthy and cocoa-y. Wonderful for first time drinkers if they’re switching from coffee or like the thicker red wines.

I am drinking this one again today after not having it for over a year. These mini bricks are so cute! I wonder where I can get another one since neither Phoenix Tea Shop or China Cha Do seems to carry them.

I am really happy with the way this is aging! It’s a delicious tea with a brothy like flavor & bittersweet notes. It is producing a kaleidoscope of flavors! Early steepings were floral, then I got some definite woodsy pine notes and by the 6th steep it has a lemony flavor. LIght smoke throughout the tea. It gives forth a pleasant uplifting energy.

This is amazing, I am bumping up the rating. I think this is the first sheng I have purchased where I can see aging made a big impact on the tea (box says it is from 2008). Yum Yum!

I am definitely planning to experiment more with Douji in the future.

I haven’t been drinking a lot of shengs lately for some reason but now I am back on a sheng kick. It’s been kind of fun to break out a few of the ones I haven’t had in a while.

This is a nice little brick, although it’s so compact that I found it difficult to break off a piece without it shattering into a bunch of dust. Anyway, so I brewed this in the yixing and tried to filter it through a strainer but I still got some tea dust in the bottom of my cup.

This is a nice and mellow sheng however. It has a clean taste with sweet and woodsy notes up front and a trace of bitterness in the finish. Check out my previous review, if interested.

I decided to purchase one of these mini sheng bricks recently after Phoenix told me via Twitter that there was not a lot of bitterness in them. When it arrived, I immediately thought I should have purchased two because they are so cute and the packaging is really lovely!

Anyway, I could hardly wait to try it this morning. I attempted to break a piece off but it is compressed very tightly and I ended up with mostly tea dust which is okay. I steeped that up in my yixing.

Steeps #1 and #2 of this tea were about 15 seconds. What I got was a light yellow tea liquor. For a young sheng, it is fairly mellow with a nice sweetness and a definite acidity, but not one that I am finding terribly bitter. After the first two steeps, it is starting to quiet down a bit more and is becoming mostly pleasant and mild.

I steeped this tea 10 times and after the first 3 infusions, I was enjoying it a lot more.

This is my first Douji sheng tea, but I spent a little time this morning looking up Douji on the ‘net. They certainly seem to have a good reputation and they have these bricks made from different source materials, I’m just not sure which this one is because the label is written in Chinese. I can see more experiments will be required in the future. I think perhaps sheng is an acquired taste, and one I am still getting used to. I think this will be excellent with a few more years of aging.

These days I’ve been in an “In Teamorium” phase. As in, finishing off the last of teas that have been on the shelf. Today, I finished the last of my Dan-Cha from Phoenix Teahouse. It was extra special because it was the first cup of tea I’d had in 26 hours.

Yeah, tragic.

I got two burly pots out of this sucker. I probably wasn’t as delicate with it as I should’ve been, but I thought I’d take it to its limit. It held up to the punishment I dished out with “x-treme” gusto. Even took on shades of malt as an act of sincerity.

Good show, Danny-boy. Er, girl. Whatever.

I purchased this after trying it at Phoenix’es “Teattle” shop. It was – without much exaggeration – one of the most unique teas I’ve come across. I’m still hard-pressed to define it, but I do my darnedest here…and explain how it makes me feel like a bit of a “tea hipster” – an old one at that: http://lazyliteratus.teatra.de/2012/05/08/youve-probably-never-heard-of-this-tea-before/

Hmmm, interesting, Tastes good almost Oolong like and it was a dark green color, like incredible hulk green.

I actually received this before the Purple Tea of Kenya but didn’t get around to it after. A travesty given my love of teas with the word “GOLD!” in them. This bears a lot of similarities to Yunnan Golds both in site, smell and taste. Where it differs is the subtlety of its character. It’s not as “thick” as a Yunnan gold on delivery, instead presenting its berry-sweet, honey-like presence in a fluttery sorta way. It can also take a brew-beating of five minutes far better than a Yunnan can. Approval was met with gusto.

Full Review: http://lazyliteratus.teatra.de/2011/11/10/running-for-kenyan-gold/