612 Tasting Notes
very high 4/5, kinda tempted to make it 5/5 in that it’s the best still-affordable straight sencha I’ve had so far
Aw man, I hate having relatively pricey taste, ha. I like this sencha much, much, MUCH more than the previous, cheaper one I tried from Den’s. Smooth and sweet, no harsh bitterness here at all. Really lovely stuff. Probably the best straight (that is, unflavored) sencha I’ve tried so far.
Price aside, the major disparity between the two could have something to do with the surprisingly high brew temperature recommended for the other one (180F instead of 160F)…might mess around a bit with it to see if 160F makes it better. That said I think it’s unlikely the previous one will ever taste as good as this!
Preparation
3/5
Extremely mineral-y and quite grassy, earthy-bitter. It doesn’t actually taste of beets or bitter greens (think high oxalic acid greens), but has a similar flavor profile. Definitely not something I’d want all the time, but I can see why it’d be an excellent tea to drink with certain types of meals full of relatively bland-sweet white rice and seafood. Like with many greens, the sweetness comes in at the end and lingers in a very pleasant way.
Preparation
4/5
This smells so good! I love how creamy it is and yes, true coconut flavored. It’s pretty leaf- and cup-wise too. Curious how it’d taste cold steeped.
Had a second cup it was so good (I must be a zombie today because at first I started to pour hot water over the steeping basket without a cup underneath it whoa o_O), this time with my late lunch of leftover chicken and shrimp salad with grapes, green apple, oranges, fried shallots, and serrano chile (Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe) and it was fantastically delicious. I love when tea makes a good meal even better.
Preparation
Very sweet. At some point I’m going to use my Kusmi order thing, and I’ve been trying to decide what to get and if Zoubrovka never comes back in stock (crossing my fingers it will though! I want to try it so badly!) I’ll probably grab some Caramel. Would be curious to see how it compares—the vibe I’m getting from Steepster reviews is that DT hits you over the head at least aroma-wise, and Kusmi tends to be far more delicate and subtle. We’ll see.
I noticed the other day when I was reorganizing my stash (I’ve been cleaning it out at a rather fast clip, go me) practically all of my dessert-y teas are chocolate, spice, and/or nut flavored. I really need to branch out (while still avoiding most tart fruit-based blends—the catcher!). Srsly, I had like 20 chocolate teas this year. That’s goofy! I wish I knew of more tea blends with like, rosemary or plum or something in them.
Preparation
This was alright, but the steeping parameters seemed strong both in amount and duration for my tastes and maybe I should’ve listened to my gut about easing back a bit as this has a strong bitter element, even with some milk and sugar. The thing is, the almond butter flavor is pretty strong in aroma but less so in taste; there’s a chance making the tea less strong will bring it out more though as I suspect the black tea bitterness might be overwhelming it.
That said the rich bitterness worked well with a dutch caramel wafer/stroopwafel, so there’s that. Love those things.
Preparation
Drinking a big ol’ mug of this before I meet up with a friend for lunch downtown and a tour of the Victorian Village because I’m working with less than 6 hours sleep (that’s standard for lots of friends of mine, but I’m an “8 hours or catatonic” type myself…must be all those academic nerd years as a teen only getting 1 or 2 every night, broke my body somehow ugh). Like everything I’ve tried from ATR, smells great.
Preparation
1 or 2/5…maybe 1.5/5. I didn’t puke or retch or anything, but there’s no way I’d voluntarily drink this again.
Harsh on the bergamot, and in an off-putting Pine-Sol industrial citrus (more chemical lemon than bergamot) bathroom cleaner way, ugh. Maybe steeping for less time will help—it calls for 8 minutes!—but I dunno, it didn’t seem like it was a leaf thing so much as a bad chemical flavoring thing. Now I appreciate American Tea Room’s version much more.
Preparation
oooooo. i am not a fan of bergamot and i don’t do rooiboos….. pine-sol? ack!!!
NMSAA….I did wretch :-(
sorry to hear! at least i’m not alone in disliking this one though…as decaf earls go, two i haven’t hated and would drink again if i was desperate for that flavor but couldn’t have the caffeine late at night would be american tea room’s and utopia’s cream one. hope you have a better cuppa in front of you now, CelebriTEA!
4/5, and probably going to be a go-to for when you want to feel like you’re really drinking TEA and not just dessert-y tisanes at night, similar to H&S Vanilla Comoro (where it doesn’t hold a candle to real tea but is the best substitute option I’ve found for that taste). In this case I suspect it’s not an uncanny nearly-like-black-tea-leaf magic so much as a mental association thing, where the Earl Grey profile is very spot on and smooth, enough to trick you into just having the whole EG sense memory thing fill in the blanks with the actual tea flavor. Neat.
I was thinking this was nothing to write home about albeit a totally drinkable if pale substitute to the real thing for after 9pm cravings, thennn I filled my second cup with Upton’s and let’s just say that made me appreciate the heck out of this one. You could clearly do a lot worse, ha.
EDIT: Thennn about an hour later I was craving it all over again so I made enough to fill my 3 cup corningware makeshift matcha bowl, ha! This time I added milk, which worked really well (it doesn’t need it, but it also is great with it; it doesn’t turn into cloudy sad dishwater but stays smooth and silky and opaque, creamy in look, texture, and taste, yum). Yeah, I think I’ll be making this a regular rotation thing for when I want something that tastes of tea but without too many distracting dessert-y bells and whistles late before bed.
Preparation
Intensely chocolatey, not sugary sweet candy bar; it’s taken me a while to figure out pu erh is go-to for that sort of thing. Very nutty too, almost savory. Super rich. That little bit of peppery spice at the end is great. I like. Part of me wants to do a side-by-side test with H&S Florence as I’m curious if I’d like this better now that I’ve grown a bit in my tea exposure. Hmm.
Preparation
Extremely girly/elderly-ladies-who-lunch take on EG. Name is fitting. At first I blanched at the smell of the dry leaves—rose perfume, whoa—but there’s a fresher, less musty floral scent in the cup. The creaminess of the vanilla keeps the perfume burn in check and rounds things out nicely. Definitely not a regular thing for me (I’m pretty durn ungirly most of the time) but kind of cool for novelty.
