Upton Tea Imports

I asked for suggestions for roasty black teas in the discussion board a week ago and one of the suggestions was to try Big Red Robe. Since Upton is my go to site for cheap samples of things I’m not sure I’ll like, I stocked up a variety of roasted oolongs. This is the first one.

I should have really taken notice of my mood before I made this. I’m just not in the mood for trying a whole new variety of tea. Maybe a new flavor of a tea I know I like, but I’m just not feeling experimental. Wish I’d realized that before I brewed this up.

That being said. I think I like this. It actually tastes more like a hojicha than anything else i can discern right now. But I’ll resteep the leaves this evening and see if anything else emerges. It’s ok. I don’t know if its what I’m looking for though. That’s why I love upton. $1 later I know that Big Red Robe teas (while I LOVE the name) are not necessarily my tea of choice. Not bad by any means, just not really what I’m looking for.

Fun with a gaiwan day 2!

I bought a sample of this tea a LONG time ago (I know because the date is printed on the label) only because it was crazy expensive and I was curious what a really expensive tea tasted like. At that point I didn’t really know the differences between pretty much any black teas. Or else I probably wouldn’t bought anything listed as a keemun. But I didn’t know any better and spent $8 on a sample. I justified it by comparing it to the glass of wine my husband always orders at dinner.

Anyway, I thought this was another prime candidate for the gaiwain. And I was right. The first few steeps were definitely giving the normal smoky keemun flavor, but around 3 or 4 it got super chocolaty. Now it’s like drinking a cup of roasty dark chocolate tea. Reminds me a bit of Laoshan Black, but with a honey sweetness added to it. I’m really enjoying this. This gaiwan has really opened my eyes to all the flavors in teas that I never really tasted before. Very cool.

So I was having so much fun trying out my new gaiwan that I looked through my cupboard for another candidate for gongfu steeping. I brewed this one a few days ago western style and loved it so I thought I’d see what it was like using the gaiwan.

Holy snikeys! I feel like I’m totally maturing! (not too much though, obviously). I could taste differences in steeps. The first couple were what I expected and then POW caramel. Like yummy gooey caramel. It was crazy. When I brewed this western style it actually reminded me more of a hoppy pale. Now it’s like a cinnamon butter caramel. How can there be such a difference? I wonder where it will go from here.

I always do a resteeped pot of the tea that I make at night and chill it overnight in a mason jar to drink the next day. Sometimes, I taste different things in the cold tea than I did when it was hot or warm. This time there was little change. The chilled tea has a bit more bite, but still has a little bit of a murky stewed vegetable taste to it that I don’t like.

In the jar, it looks like I’ve got a urine sample on my desk with a straw in it. :| Also, it kind of smells like marijuana.

I’m a green tea idiot, so keep that in mind. I’d always thought green tea was horrible, bitter and undrinkable. Until about 30 seconds online taught me that I’d been brewing it all wrong. I just chucked a bag of it into a cup, covered in it boiling water, steeped it to death, and then tried to drink it. And failed. Because I’d made it taste like a cleaning product.

So, on my last Upton order, armed with the new knowledge that tea cares about brewing time and temperature, I got samples of some greens and oolongs and whites. This was the first one I tried. I brewed it per instructions at 180° for just under 3 minutes.

And I didn’t like it. I didn’t turn it into bitter stew, but it was kind of pale and thin and asparagus-y. I resteeped and the flavor was different, and better, but still a bit too delicate and a bit too brothy to suit my tastes. My girlfriend said it tasted like grass, but not in a bad way. Neither of us found it unpleasant and we drank a number of cups, but we weren’t wowed either. I think I like my tea more astringent.

I’m going to refrain from rating this one until I have more green tea tastings under my belt.

Finished my sample pack of gyokuro this morning. Fine by me, I’ve still got a bunch of shincha which I like even more!

Having a cup of this…hoping it will calm my nerves! If nothing else, maybe it’ll work as a placebo, heh.

Gyokuro…I love you but I love Den’s cheaper sencha even more! Sorry Upton.

Treating myself this morning ;)

Sipdown of this sample from Azz.
I cold-brewed the last of it, & I like it better this way! Tasty!

Another selection from the wonder tea box I got from Azzrian! She is amazingly generous, but I’m almost at the end! Thanks Azz!

Didn’t really care much for this one hot, either plain, with stevia, or with stevia & french vanilla coconut milk creamer. I’m trying a cold brew with the rest of the sample. I’ll get back to you with the results.

I was going to write this in my Dragonwell note, but I figured that’s not fair. I’ve been having some bum sessions with pu’erh and oolongs, ones I should like, that I know are good quality, but they haven’t shined for me lately, nothing has stood out. Perhaps it’s my water?

On a more uplifting note either Friday or Saturday, Rowan suggested we have a tea party. He brought me his little cup and creamer and even grabbed my little silver filigree over the cup strainer. He wanted tea with milk as opposed to raspberry tea which is his usually request. So I gave him options, he chose Baker Street Blend from Upton Tea. He chose this not for his love of Sherlock Holmes, but because we live on Baker Street.

He thoroughly enjoyed it and kept asking for more, I probably reinfused it four times, though his tiny cup was usually half full with milk. I don’t think I had tried this one with milk before, but it was quite nice. So after tea and waffles Rowan announces he wants to play a game, Jenga and Clue together. Now this is something we’ve played before though more often than not we play them separately.

Yes, my three and a half year old loves playing Clue though it has taken a lot to get him to not say what he has out loud and mark his sheet correctly (it is a 8 yr+ game). And he mostly just loves building wonky towers with the Jenga blocks. However the first time Rowan saw these two games we were playing them together at my sisters house. Now due to the irony of the tea and the game I had to explain the Sherlock- Baker Street thing to him. He’s seen Great Mouse Detective but I don’t think he’s ready for BBC or Robert Downey Jr.

There’s a ton of this in the traveling tea box so I figured I had to try it. Haven’t been a fan lately of red rooibos of any sort.

I figured this sounded different enough…flowers and hibiscus, kind of weird. I figured since I should probably end my tea-filled day with a tisane, this one would work. Steeped it for five minutes, and it didn’t look like it’d be super rooibosy.

It’s a good bit different, the hibiscus isn’t terrible, instead, it kind of gives it a fruity taste. The floral notes aren’t very strong, I kind of wish they had a bit more of a pop.

Since there’s a bunch in here I’ll probably save enough for 2-3 cups and move it along. It’s a good bit different than most other rooibos blends. It’s not like super flavored, but for something more subtle it still covers a good bit of the flavors of rooibos I can’t stand.

This is pretty good, but no substitute for a good sencha IMO

Maybe I got a bad batch or something. I don’t get any of the flavors Upton mentions in their description or that other folks here on Steepster mention.

It was a fine, standard black tea. But no citrus and no bergamot. Hm.