Daylon R Thomas Send Message

I’m so excited to try all of the awesome blends that I bought from Liquid Proust! I had a REALLY hard time deciding, so I opted for the most breakfast-y blend I got. I smelled the coffee and the grapefruit immediately from the bag. It reminded me distinctly of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee (Yes, I’m an EX-coffee snob, though I indulge in Kona every now and then.) So I brew this up at boiling, not exactly sure the amount of leaves I used, but I had at least 2 big grapefruit pieces and maybe a teaspoon and a half of the black tea mix. I pour over the water and smell the same things and then HAHA a cocoa note in the smell! Oh, Yunnan Dianhong, you sneaky delight.

Finally getting to drink it, it tastes exactly like an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe with the exact same notes. My mom also liked it, but she LOVES grapefruit…and so do I. As it cooled, it changed. I tasted more of the cocoa profile from the Dianhong and the Keemum, a little bit of coffee, and the grapefruit came through more with the Pu-Erh as the earthy background. Grapefruit is dominant, but again, it tastes like coffee. This is slightly lighter than coffee in terms of body, but it’s pretty damn close to being a lighter blend of one.

The grapefruit was a really clever addition to this one. It makes the tea taste like breakfast, like a cup of Joe and grapefruit with a spoon. It’s also really clever because the grapefruit makes the mouth feel and taste considerably acidic and the same as coffee. The black teas blended together makes this even closer to coffee-all of them are smooth bodied teas; pu-erh has an earth base like coffee; Dianhong can be subtly sweet like coffee; and keemum has a chocolate note that isn’t quite chocolate note like coffee.

Steep two, I taste all three black teas more though it’s coffee light: the Dianhong, the keemum, and the pu-erh with the grapefruit now in the background. Dianhong comes in more now with that weird malty sweet potato-I probably wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t tried a Dianhong before.

Now, the consensus-it’s a really good tea and the great breakfast tea in my opinion, though that may change as soon as I try the French Toast. This is the perfect tea for coffee lovers, hands down. More experienced drinkers would appreciate the Chinese black teas, and younger ones will have to figure out their preference on it. Sugar and cream probably would work for it in an unexpected way, but I like it as is.

Also: notes are starting to get too pretentious for me in tea descriptions. I am going to figure out a better way to describe it without being too vague or over descriptive. There are some things like cocoa, chocolate, and fruit that are definitely there to me, but to someone reading this, they’ll either think “WTF is he talking about” or “Chocolate? GIVE ME!” then “This didn’t taste like chocolate. WTF!”

I’m in a loopy mood today…