1403 Tasting Notes
After a long stretch of greens and oolongs, I’ve been craving black teas now that I am back from being away. Perhaps because I had several coffees during my getaway, I am more open to the stronger punch of black teas.
I felt brave enough today to have this one when I pulled it out despite my poor previous experience with it. Having braced myself for the worst, I am now pleasantly surprised to find that I am enjoying this cup. I added a huge spoon of honey to soften the truly charred and smoky edge, and that seems to have worked to bring out both the sweetness and butteriness of the toast. I detect the slightest vaguest bit of cinnamon toast here . I really have to squint to imagine the raisins though.
This is one to try Eastern European style, with a spoon or two of red berry preserves.
Found a bit of this leaf to enjoy today. It is not the deliciousness that it once was, but it was still an enjoyable cup.
(I did have a bit of this that had gone off. I sincerely hope that I had tossed that bit into the bin so that it doesn’t reemerge.)
This cup hinted at liquorice after the coconut, faint raspberry, and chocolate happening. Wonder what is up with that.
Just got home from being away for a bit and this is my first tea back at home. I had been so careful about my away-travel tea selection, but, you know, spoiled. It is good to be back home to choices, choices, and more choices.
It was a bit hot and humid when I fell asleep last night, but then I was uncovered and chilled when I woke up this morning. This is the tea I reached for. Delicious, warming, and lovely, especially when strains of autumn are slowly peeking through early summer mornings.It has been an exhausting and stressful day.
There were a few highlights though. I discovered a new, to me, restaurant in the neighbourhood and the food and the owners are both lovely. The steak sandwich I had there was just over-the-top fantastic: quality roll, steak perfectly prepared, heavy on the mushrooms and caramelized onions. Perfect. The side salad was pretty fab too.
This tea is another highlight of the day. I added a spoon of honey to my cup and to me, it tastes just like carrot cake. A beautiful job on balancing the spices. Very nice.
Flavors: Carrot, Cinnamon, Ginger, Nutmeg
Preparation
Evening tea for the past couple of nights. I recall that I used to drink this plain and it was quite flavourful. Now I’ve been adding a spoon of honey to bring out the white chocolate and caramel notes out more. Delicious.
Flavors: Caramel, White Chocolate
Preparation
Sounds delicious! I always use honey when I want to sweeten my tea – Never sugar! I too have noticed that honey dose a superb job of bringing out caramel flavors. Orange blossom honey is my favorite!
Orange blossom honey! Yum. I will have to keep my eyes open for that one. Just this past week, I’ve been on a honey purchase binge as I came across very tempting and unexpected flavours. Stay tuned.
Absolutely! If you’ve never had orange blossom honey you’re in for a real treat – It dose wondrous things to tea!
On it! Thank you for the tip.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle through my teas and after about three other thoughts, ended up choosing this tea. Ginger upfront—boom. The pear is there somewhere gently, gently. The white tea is nowhere.
Years ago, I discovered canning and got so revved up that from the start of spring, I’d be preserving every fruit and vegetable as it became ripe. Delicious stuff. By autumn when pears came into season, I made pear and ginger preserves to serve with toast or on top of ice cream or applesauce. If I added a spoon of honey to this tea, the taste might take me in that direction.
Flavors: Ginger, Pear
Preparation
Pear and ginger preserves! Oh, what a delicious thought….
Those preserves sound mightily delicious.
Yes, they were a winner. Highly recommend that combination for the canners among you.
Or waffles or pancakes and so on.
OMG that would be so awesome on waffles or pancakes. I haven’t tried canning since I’m terrified of the whole sterling process but ginger pear is definitely a combination I’d try.
I was surprised at how much I took to it. It is quite a production, but it beautifully satisfying. I would never in a million years attempt canning anything containing meat or fish, but fruits and vegetables are pretty safe. It is easy to tell if things did not seal properly. I would suggest you try it. Why not?
I had this the other day and meh. Today, I added a spoon of honey to the steeped tea and it made a huge difference. Quite lovely. The banana and butteriness picked up a bit more. The coconut is still very subtle despite many shreds of coconut in my spoon of dry leaf. The honeybush is beautifully supporting the other flavours. Yes, yes, enjoying this cup.
Flavors: Butter, Coconut, Creamy
Preparation
Steeping this one up for the first time today. It came out five days ago, on August 2nd, as DTs introduced three or four new unflavoured teas. I assume the rationale is to win back a bit of interest from those of us who are not fans of the over-imitation flavoured and over-imitation sweetened teas they’ve started cranking out lately. I was certainly happy to see that this bai mu dan was one of the new offerings.
I am breaking in a new glass tea jar—well, not all that new as I bought it at the tea festival here at the end of January, but I’ve just begun using it in earnest. Why have I waited so long to engage with this tea jar? I like the shape and I like the style, but two things keep me from using it for daily steeping and carrying, aside from my experience that glass teas jars don’t tend to be good containers for throwing into my bag on a day out in the world. The tea capacity of this one is only about 10 or 12 ounces, as compared to my 16 ounce glass tea jars. The second thing is that this one is glass on the inside and glass on the outside, which makes it more fragile in my world. I can’t speak to either the leak factor as I use it upright at home, or the how long does the tea stay hot factor as that doesn’t concern me much.
This tea is quite lovely: mild, vegetal, and creamy. Very nice. I am not detecting the fresh snow pea flavour advertised.
The steeped leaf is beautiful: tiny, slender, and delicate. The clarity of the glass jar, compared to the slightest haze in the jars which have a plastic exterior, gives me a chance to appreciate the beauty of the leaf. Many of the leaves are in wee clumps of three or four still attached to their stem. The longer leaves are about the length of a dime, and about the width of a third of a dime.Because white tea is so light in weight in comparison to other teas, the DT person who served me when I bought this one crammed the tea into the bag and tapped it down with the metal scoop resulting in crushed leaves. I see them at the bottom of my jar and it hurts my heart a little. Criminal. It’d be nice if DT’s gave their staff a bit of instruction on respect for the higher quality leaf. Maybe that is too much to ask.
I am going to give multiple steeping a whirl and see how it goes.
Edit—The second steep is still lovely and light. This may be the last good one.
Flavors: Creamy, Umami, Vegetal
Preparation
I wonder, what difference does it make when the tea leaves are broken? Do they impact the flavour a lot?
There’s a whole thread about just this topic. Count me as among those who don’t want their leaves crushed. http://steepster.com/discuss/2501-is-this-bad-for-the-tea
I steeped this with cooler than boiling water to coax a bit more raspberry and a bit less woodiness from the leaf. It’s still a bit light on the flavour though the raspberry is in the foreground of the scent and of the sip. There’s the slightest bit of cream cheese- like sourness at the tailend if I really unfurl my imagination.
I’d like a bit of creaminess here too. Perhaps vanilla. Perhaps white chocolate. Essentially, I’d like a bit more flavour and texture here without having to add milk and/or sweetener to it at home.Flavors: Raspberry
Preparation
I generally recommend brewing with a slightly cooler than boiling water for both rooibos and honeybush – I find that it helps reduce that funky sour woody flavor and just lets that sweet, nutty/woody flavor come through without that funky taste.
Thank you. This has become my regular brewing habit with both rooibos and honeybush as well.
