Rishi Tea

One of the best Earl grey teas I’ve ever had. The bergamot is nice and strong and this may very well be my favorite tea of all now.

This is a sipdown for me. I’m way behind on my sipdowns this month, so it feels nice to get through another one. This sampler was from the travelling tea box, and I really liked trying different brewing methods.

My first brew was on the stove in hot water, then sweetened with agave and soy milk.

This morning’s brew is Western style with soy milk. I think I prefer this method to avoid the bitterness than comes from stronger brewing (hotter water while boiling on the stove leads to a more bitter tea than cooler temperatures). I normally use ~75-90 deg. C water. I don’t measure it exactly, but I also don’t care about using cooler water and getting a weaker brew.

I like the spice blend here – very spicy, fresh spices, a traditional blend of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and clove. I prefer this blend over most spice blends I have tried because I find it more flavourful and pleasant then the blends with licorice root or no clove. IT could maybe use a bit more ginger, but overall it was a great chai.

Happily and surprisingly continuing my green and oolong trend. How very odd. Nonetheless, going with it for as long as it lasts.

The leaf is quite pretty. The tea leaves are long flat and slender, fatter than needles, and the raspberry is plentiful.

Steeped, the raspberry comes through supported by the earthy vegetal of the green base . There is also a sweetness here akin to a glaze drizzle on a raspberry pound cake. The hibiscus comes in as a slight tartness, but in a barely there kind of way.

I am enjoying the clean clear flavours present here.

Nice tea. Minty with savory undertones.

Mmmmmmno, not impressed. Followed steeping instructions, but didn’t get that great of a cup. It smells like peach, but there is a little hint of a hibiscus bite and a flatness to the flavor. I swear I can taste the bag in the finish. After having teas with such bright and full peach flavor, this one really underwhelms.

Love You Oolong Time! This oolong is quickly proving to be a favorite. The first time I ever attempted gongfu brewing it was with this tea, and when I had a friend over, we had a gongfu session together with it as well, and really enjoyed picking out the flavor notes from each infusion together. I have the spring 2017 harvest of this tea.

I brewed five grams of this tea gongfu style in approximately 75ml of 200 F water. I got ten infusions from the tea, before it started losing flavor. The steeping times were as follows: 10 sec, 15 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 40 sec, 50 sec, 1 min, 1 min 30 sec. The tea brews up a very bright, clear, golden yellow color.

The first infusion of the tea had a very strong, astringent vegetal note, tasting of spinach and brocolli, with a slight, floral note lingering beneath the surface. The second infusion brought out the vegetal notes even more strongly, with that astringent, bitter spinach bite really filling the mouth, and the lingering floral notes becoming even more subdued.

By the third infusion, the leaves were really starting to open up, and a pleasant perfumey aroma was making itself present in the tea. The flavor of the tea was starting to sweeten out a bit, and taste more of orchids. The next infusion is when it really started to mellow out, becoming very sweet, creamy, and floral, tasting very much of orchids and lilacs! The next few infusions were probably the best, tasting extremely sweet, and entirely of floral notes… any lingering presense of the vegetal notes had disappeared! There was a slightly buttery mouthfeel, the tea was very smooth, it was filled with lovely floral notes, and it was hard to believe that it had such an astringent start. Subsequent infusions continued to have a very sweet taste of orchids and lilacs, though a slight vegetal aftertaste reappeared on my tongue.

The tea had very good staying power, and I felt very tea-full, satisfied, and had that nice aware-and-relaxed feeling from the session. I think fans of green teas or light floral notes would find this a very satisfying oolong.

Full Review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2018/02/18/tea60/

I don’t think I’ve ever met a Yunnan I didn’t like. I cracked this one open because I’d forgotten I had it and I seem to be on a bit of a Rishi kick lately.

This one has small, dark (almost black) twisty leaves, with golden ones for highlight and contrast. It smells sweet and bready in the packet.

It smells wonderful. It has that rich, dark (smoldering, really), malty, chocolatey, baked bread, peppery thing going on that gets me every time. The smell is the same smell that gives the ATR and Samovar breakfast and Earl Grey blends their depth and complexity over that of others.

It’s not quite as chewy in the taste as those, but it’s smooth and sweet with a bit of molasses and pepper.

It’s a sexy tea. :-)

Sipdown no. 34 of 2018 (no. 390 total).

I tossed the rest of this into a cold brew but it was only enough for half a pitcher, so I supplemented with Teafrog English Breakfast. It’s steeping in the fridge now. I can already tell it’s going to be a tasty iced tea.

Steeped according to directions on the outside of the packet.

The tea in the packet smells like the very definition of a second flush darjeeling — winey, grapey, earthy, with a sharp note.

With Muscatel in the name, I’d expect winey and grapey, and that’s pretty much what I’m getting in the aroma with the pleasant happenstance that the sharp note has smoothed out and become almost sweet and sugary. The tea is clear, and a medium-dark amber color.

The flavor is a bit more complex than the aroma. The tea isn’t sour, but it isn’t particularly sweet either, and it has just a tinge of something that isn’t quite bitterness in the finish. Oddly, there’s something reminiscent of coffee about it.

It’s got an every day tea sort of quality about it — a solid tea that reflects the characteristics of its type but without anything either horrible or spectacular about it. If I drank darjeeling more than I do, I could see making this a sort of default.

Courtesy of the travelling teabox, I steeped one of these fancy Earl Grey sachets in hot water for about 1 minute and then added milk. I then resteeped it and made a latte for my mother. This is a very strong bergamot-y Earl Grey. I liked it as a latte, but found it too brisk and a bit strong plain. These are traits most people look for in an Earl Grey, but I’m more of a smooth and malty EG fan.

This was a very pleasant cup. The green tea tasted smooth but flavourful. The peppermint was fresh but not too overpowering. This green tea/mint blend is well balanced.

Thanks to the travelling teabox, I got to try this jasmine green that comes in fancy (and giant) sachet. The green base is slightly sweet, but overall fairly mild. It is very fresh (thank you, indivigually sealed wrappers!), a little bit herbaceous, highly floral (duh). The jasmine is flavourful and pleasant. Overall, this is a really good jasmine green. It is one of the better blends I have tried because the green base is of high quality. Tbe jasmine is strong but not bitter.

This is a nice peach tea for coldbrewing, however I wouldn’t drink it again hot. There is an acidity here that doesn’t work for me. Also, there is a weird aftertaste of something similar to baking soda. The peach is nice, as is the honeybush. This would have been a stronger tea using more honeybush in place of the white tea. There isn’t enough honeybush for it to really shine through, and the white tea is drowned out by the powerful rose hips and peach flavour.

Sipdown no. 26 of 2018 (no. 382 total).

Sigh. I really wanted to like this. And yet, I’m an outlier in the community when it comes to this tea.

I tried it a number of different ways — hotter water, cooler water, more leaf (including double by weight what I’d ordinarily use), longer steep time, shorter steep time. And I couldn’t get much flavor out of it.

Perhaps I’m just not able to appreciate the subtlety of this. It’s not like there’s no flavor at all. I can smell a definite smell in my empty Timolino when I rinse it out at night. But it doesn’t do anything for me.

So I fear I must own up to my outlier status and lower the rating.

Why do I feel bad about this? Really, do I owe this tea anything? Geez, it’s like that commercial where the person feels sorry for the lamp that’s left out in the rain…

I steeped twice again as much tea at a slightly higher temperature in an effort to get the flavor that everyone seems so enchanted by in the other notes on Steepster about this tea.

7.5 grams of tea for 500 ml water at 190 for 2 minutes.

It didn’t make a difference. Tomorrow I’ll try doubling it.

I steeped this according to package directions — a bit hotter and a bit longer than I would for a green tea. The package says this is a green tea in one place and a yellow tea in another, but the consensus online seems to be this is a yellow tea.

I haven’t had that many yellow teas, but the ones I’ve had seem more like green teas than anything else.

This one, though, looks like a white tea — like a silver needle. The leaves are long and twisty when dry, and take up so much room in the spoon (with a lot of air in between) that I decided to weigh rather than rely on a spoon measurement.

This tea has received a lot of love on Steepster in the past so I’m excited to try it.

In the packet, the leaves have a smell that sometimes comes across to me as rice, and sometimes as nutty, but in both cases with a tinge of sweetness.

The tea is basically colorless and clear. If I look really hard, I can make out a rose-yellow tint. I get very little aroma from the steeped tea which is puzzling given that a lot of other notes seem to get a honey, or butter, or sweet rich nectar. I get, weirdly, some sweetness and something that reminds me of vanilla. This might be the honey/nectar others smell.

Sadly, I also don’t get a lot of flavor out of this tea. Maybe for the same reason I have a hard time with white teas — I often feel cheated. Where others taste all kinds of miraculous things, I taste faintly sweet or vegetal hot water. Perhaps my palate requires a more in your face flavor? Or perhaps I’m steeping this wrong.

I’m tempted to amp up everything next time (leaf, water temp, and steeping time) and see if it makes a difference.

But right now this tea is making me sad because everyone loves it and it’s doing nothing for me.

Sob.

This is the first tie guan yin I’m trying. Used a gaiwan.

I was very excited to taste the baked goods quality to this tea. It tasted like a spice cookie to me early on, although I can see how that may be vanilla or apricot instead. I by no means have a refined Oolong palate.

Later on it gets a more vegetal taste and some astringency. Pretty good especially for something I can buy in bulk at a grocery store! Part of me wonders if ordering directly from Rishi would be more fresh. Not that freshness was a problem.

Just the right blend of cinnamon with hibiscus and plum. Love that it’s caffeine free to enjoy in the afternoon or evening.

My new favorite chamomile! I’ve tasted a few but this loose leaf version is so fresh tasting.

I love it! Great flavor, i love for strong and smooth it is, beautiful color when steeped too!

This had a much lighter flavor than I was expecting. It was sweet, with a hint of grass taste, but not much else. I prefer my black teas a bit stronger, but this was a good change of pace.