RiverTea

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a fucking star.

Why, you ask?

Because yesterday I got a call out of the blue from a gentleman I met at a networking event about a month ago. He had just been nominated for a local business award and needed someone to edit the writing in his nomination package.

The nomination package was due in less than 24 hours.

So he sent me the document he needed edited around 2 PM, I got to work, called him once or twice to clear a few things up, and then sent the whole edited shebang off to him around 7:30.

And thus, I was able to invoice for a few hundred dollars that I didn’t have when I woke up yesterday morning!

I spent the rest of the evening in this kind of dazzled, exhausted high, as I’ve never done rush editing like that before. Whoo!

I ended up having this tea to cap things off, since I’ve never had it straight. It’s okay, but quite woody. This is one I’ll definitely try to finish off quickly since it’s not really my thing.

I remember the first time I tried this I mixed with some vanilla meringue rooibos to get lemon meringue tea. This time, I tried mixing it with some straight-up lemon myrtle to see about making it taste more strongly of lemon, but I think I botched things as the rooibos flavour didn’t come forward very much at all.

Of course, I should just have the tea by itself, but where would the fun be in that? ;-)

Backlog from yesterday evening.

So a while back I got a swap from Ubacat of Lemon Meringue rooibos from Tealish. I liked it, but because I’m obstinate and irrational, I haven’t ordered from Tealish directly, even though it’s in the same city as me.

So what did I do? I ordered this tea and the Sweet Meringue (vanilla, almond and meringue rooibos) from Rivertea in the hopes that I could jerry-rig my own lemon meringue blend from these two flavours.

I did this by mixing 1 tsp each of both teas – the vanilla meringue one had a little meringue puff and an almond sliver included – in a disposable bag and steeping them in 16 oz of boiling water for 7 minutes.

The resulting mix of the tea was very heavy on the vanilla and meringue flavour, and very light on the lemon flavour. This one didn’t need much sweetener, but the vanilla flavour is so loud and heavy that it was kind of overwhelming.

I can definitely see there being an audience for the meringue tea, though, considering the popularity of Birthday Cake by David’s Tea.

I wonder if the lemon flavour would come out more in this tea if I mixed some lemon myrtle with it. Hmm…

Also, I’m cross-posting much of this same note to the tasting note for Sweet Meringue.

Backlog from a few nights ago:

Sipdown!

I sent some of this tea off to a fantasy writer in Quebec whom I follow on Twitter, and she’s been live-tweeting about my tea swap for the past few days! When she wrote about having this tea, I decided to have it too, and now it is no more.

Sweet and nutty. Glad I finished this off, though as I bought it over a year ago.

Note: This is cross-posted with my most recent note on Granny’s Cake: http://steepster.com/cvasilevski/posts/265266

I can’t remember everything I drank last week, but I do remember having this on the morning of my birthday on Friday (Holy crap, I’m 30!). I did what I’ve wanted to do for a while with this tea, in fact:

I mixed it half-and-half with RiverTea’s Granny’s Cake. Black chocolate chai tea with rooibos vanilla-flavoured meringue tea – what on earth was there not to like?

As it turns out, mixing those two teas together isn’t an awful idea, but it didn’t result in the fireworks of deliciousness that I expected. I could taste a little chocolate and a little vanilla, but that was about it. I might try it again, but I’m happy to leave these two separate.

The more I have this tea, the more I like it. It’s sweet and nutty, and I don’t really have anything else in my cupboard that’s so unabashedly candy-like.

One day I’ll mix this up with the remainder of my sample of Granny’s Cake, and then, it shall be glorious.

Backlog from a few nights ago.

I still have yet to try this blended with Granny’s cake, but this really is a nice dessert option, especially if you’re careful with the steeping time. Not much else to report here – vanilla-y, nutty, woody from the rooibos…pretty good.

Backlog from yesterday evening.

I steeped this and added a bit of agave nectar and almond milk. It was quite sweet, but the vanilla flavour felt hollow, somehow. I really need to try seeing how this tastes if steeped up directly in almond milk.

I also need to try and do a mix of this with Granny’s Cake. Something tells me these two flavours might work really well together. But yes, this is definitely something that could be used as a dessert replacement.

Backlog from yesterday evening.

So a while back I got a swap from Ubacat of Lemon Meringue rooibos from Tealish. I liked it, but because I’m obstinate and irrational, I haven’t ordered from Tealish directly, even though it’s in the same city as me.

So what did I do? I ordered this tea and the African Star (lemon rooibos) from Rivertea in the hopes that I could jerry-rig my own lemon meringue blend from these two flavours.

I did this by mixing 1 tsp each of both teas – the vanilla meringue one had a little meringue puff and an almond sliver included – in a disposable bag and steeping them in 16 oz of boiling water for 7 minutes.

The resulting mix of the tea was very heavy on the vanilla and meringue flavour, and very light on the lemon flavour. This one didn’t need much sweetener, but the vanilla flavour is so loud and heavy that it was kind of overwhelming.

I can definitely see there being an audience for the meringue tea, though, considering the popularity of Birthday Cake by David’s Tea.

I’m going to try mixing this meringue flavour with my other rooibos blends, like the red currant one, to see how I like it.

Also, I’m cross-posting much of this same note to the tasting note for African Star.

So here is my full confession.

I haven’t had many oolongs, so I don’t really know if I know what’s a good one. My whole life I have been all about the strong, very oxidized teas, and I still love them. Recently when I was trying to put together a Rivertea order I went by the ratings on here and saw that this one was pretty highly rated.

I think I like it. I think the problem is ME. I expect tea to be brown (this isn’t), strong (this isn’t), very hot (not an oolong!) and heavily flavored. I think the issue is that I need to retrain my taste buds to appreciate delicate teas.

When I initially made this, I was waffling on whether to put the rest of it into the TTB or keep trying it to see if I can broaden my tearizons. I think I’ll do the latter.

As a bonus, it doesn’t taste green!

As for me…dude, work has been so busy this week. We got a new Burger King account, Carl’s Jr. starts next week, Volkswagen starts in two weeks, Hill’s pet food any day (who knows?) This is on top of all of our regular stuff. And, I think I need to bring on two more people.

I drank this before I read any reviews, and I was really taken aback because the flavors I got weren’t what were listed here at all. I had to go back to check the Rivertea site to see if they had reblended it. They haven’t.

I got vanilla, I got mango, and I got black tea. No cinnamon, chamomile, banana (which I hate and would have noticed), or cranberry.

It was a nice cup, nothing that made me make any funny sounds out loud to entertain my husband, but nothing bad either. I have to give Rivertea credit that their samples are generous, there was maybe 3 tsp in there, so that’s two big cups for me. Nice.

This…. this is a sipdown (starts to cry)

I have yet to find a tea that has this exact flavour profile, but I’m close, I think. Plus, I enjoy a lot of things and I have a huge amount of tea in my cupboard, so continuing to search for a replacement for this is not top priority right now.

But damn, I will miss this. It tastes so smooth and is so hard to fuck up when you brew. This tea takes abuse – overleafing, oversteeping, it’s all good! This was my go-to tea to bring along when visiting the in-laws because it was so forgiving.

I will miss you, Golden Yunnan. I’ll be resteeping your leaves a lot today. (bawls)

This is my semi-official tea when I visit the in-laws: it tastes great and it’s very hard to fuck up, so it’s really forgiving when I travel. I am going to miss this tea veeerrrry much when I run out. I found a similar-tasting tea from EsGreen, but the exchange rate is going to hurt.

I notice that one of my triggers for getting headaches is getting dehydrated. One of the big signs that I’m dehydrated is this feeling that my eyeballs are super tired and pressing down into my skull, like someone is pushing them into my sockets and keeping them there.

I’ve had this eye-socket feeling all day today, no matter how much liquid I drink. Even this tea hasn’t helped. However, I made sure to have it before 5 PM, which I think willl help me from getting the caffeine jitters before bed.

Overleafed this a bit, but it was still tolerable. Nice sweet smoky flavour.

My oh my.

This tea was everything it needed to be – smoky, rich, soothing. I really hope I can find a similarly smoky Yunnan black to replace this once it runs out. Another cry of sadness for RiverTea going out of business. Bumping the rating up accordingly.

Backlog from yesterday morning.

I didn’t have the measuring spoon handy so I just eyed the leaf instead and used two large pinches for 3 cups of liquid.

Nice, and a bit smokier than usual. Not too astringent, though. I had a lovely weekend at a mastermind retreat for small business owners, and this was a good way to get started on the right foot.

Oh man. I took this tea with me to my in-laws’ because it’s foolproof, and drinking it there reminded me of just HOW MUCH I love this tea. It’s smoky, sweet-potato-ish, and damn near impossible to fuck up – a critical feature when you’re at the house of people who HAVE NO KETTLE.

Also, I’ve realized just how much of the leaf I’ve consumed of this tea! I’ve still got about an ounce left, so I’m fine for now, but it is surprising to see how often this has ended up in my rotation. If RiverTea doesn’t have a sale soon, I’ll have to find another place that offers something similar, so I can restock when the time comes.

Backlog from yesterday morning.

I’ve had this tea a lot, but it’s still good. It wasn’t metallic like I experienced the second-last time I tried it. Just rich, deep, a tad smoky. Nice.

Backlog from this morning.

Perhaps I didn’t pay attention to steeping it properly today, but this one tasted different this morning. Normally it’s a pretty laid back, unobtrusive tea. However, this morning, there was definitely a sharp, metallic tang to the taste, like copper. Somewhat salty, even.

Maybe I overleafed it?

Backlog from yesterday.

Ahh, the first tea I’ve had since I got back from visiting the hubby’s parents (they who drinketh not the tea). I don’t really have much to say aside from it being a perfect tea for mornings when my brain isn’t working.

I stayed up way too late last night, and paid for it this morning by feeling super groggy when I woke up. Groggy as in “I don’t want to think about what kind of tea to have”, so I naturally went for this.

It was a tad astringent today after I got to the third cup of the teapot, but at least it did the trick!

Backlog from this morning.

OK, it’s official. This tea, or similar teas like it, are probably going to become a standard part of my tea rotation. This is just a good everyday sort of tea for when I have no idea what to drink, and don’t want to think about it too much. You can overleaf it, oversteep it, and it will still taste perfectly fine with absolutely no astringency.

You know, I remember Sil saying in a different tasting note that she liked RiverTea’s white and green blends more than their black ones, which was unusual for her. For me, it might just be the opposite – I’m in love with the one black tea I ordered, and so-so on everything else. Gonna bump this rating up again.

Ok, I’m bumping up my rating on this one a few points (from 70 to 75) for a very good reason: this tea appears to be impossible to fuck up.

A few days ago when I first tried it, I thought it tasted pretty bland, and figured that the problem was I steeped it for too short a time. However, precisely because of its blah nature, it seemed like it would be the perfect morning tea when I couldn’t figure out what else to have.

So I made it again this morning, and made sure to add a little extra leaf to the mix to see if that would spice things up. I also told myself that I would steep it for a full 5 minutes instead of 3.

Then I prepared my breakfast… and completely forgot the tea was steeping. When I looked up at the clock, not 5 minutes had elapsed, but 8 or 9. So I both overleafed and oversteeped this thing!

I was trepidatious when I put the first cup to my lips after I finished my breakfast. I was expecting a cloying, bitter mess.

Nope. Perfectly smooth, non-astringent (well, maybe slightly astringent, but only 1 on a scale of 1-10), and still really unassuming.

This is the perfect baby-steps tea for someone who is new to black tea in general. And thusly, I will probably slot it into my regular rotation as I expand more and more into drinking black tea. I have a nice 2nd-flush Darjeeling I plan to whip out tomorrow, but this is pretty good in the meantime.

It looks like I’m slowly and methodically going through all my RiverTeas. This one is Number 3 of 10.

I’ve had a few other Yunnans beside this one – Simple Loose Leaf’s Yunnan Breakfast Black and Rishi’s Golden Yunnan – so it’s interesting to try this in comparison.

I steeped this one for about 3.5 minutes, and it tastes fairly light/smooth. There was no astringency, but also none of the really malty, cocoa notes I’ve been told to expect from Yunnans. I wonder how it will be if I resteep it for 5 minutes.

I will say that the dry leaf looks and smells lovely – it’s sweet and haylike, and looks almost like a black version of Bi Luo Chun because of the golden colour, the long strands, and the slight fuzziness.

If it doesn’t work out, at least I’ve got some perfect tea for my mother, who just wants plain ol’ black tea.

EDIT: I did resteep it for five minutes, but the resulting brew was nothing special. It was a lovely dark brown colour, but there wasn’t much flavour. This seems like a one-steep tea to me, with a longer steep being ideal. In that sense, it would probably make a good, no-nonsense tea for the mornings, since it’s not that challenging. I wonder how it would handle gongfu brewing, though.

Another backlog from last week – and it’s a sipdown.

I wasn’t a fan of this tea brewed up hot, so I thought I’d turn the remainder into iced tea last week. It’s better iced, but I’m still not a fan of the flavours in this blend. It’s got this musty sweetness to it that I don’t like – I really want it to taste juicy instead.

Ah well. Another tea down! And now that it’s officially autumn, my iced tea habits will wind down. I’m still making one last pitcher or two of watermelon mint tea from Davids, but that’s just because I’m in denial.