440 Tasting Notes
Brewed this one up tonight to sip while I caught up on Steepster. (Two days away and wow that’s a lot of backlog!) I love this one. Even though it is hard to make sure you get some tea in with your fruit when measuring, I find that it is totally worth it. This tea is delicious and reminds me of a slightly more tart and complex version of Pear Cream from The Tea Haus. The fruit overpowers the tea, it is true, however sometimes I’m just in the mood for flavour rather than tea taste, and this one fits the spot deliciously when I’m in that mood.
Preparation
This one is interesting. I didn’t expect to like it but dry it smelled lovely so I stole some from Indigobloom. Brewed it is definitely more flavour than tea. I steeped for four minutes since I wasn’t going to be awake enough to do a lot of infusions, and the longer time got me a caramel flavour with intense hints of nuts. The colour is a golden brown, the colour of light maple syrup and now that I say that I detect faint maple notes in the tea. Adding a dash of sugar brought the maple and caramel to the forefront. I think this one would be really nice in a muffin recipe to add a bit of sweetness to the mix.
Preparation
This is only the second time I’ve had a keemun, and I’m definitely going to have to keep my eye out for more. I brewed this one to have along with some pasta, and yum. It was definitely a good choice. My first cup was mild, brewed for 3 minutes before pouring. There was some slight malt, and overall a nice round flavour that stood on its own against the abundance of garlic I’d tossed into my lunch.
My second cup came from the same pot, I’d left the leaves in and it kept steeping. There was no bitterness or oversteepage flavours. The malt was much stronger here, but if anything it made me enjoy the tea more. The extra flavour gave it a really nice strong body, which drinking black was deliciously yummy. Yes, I said yummy. Definitely looking forward to this one again.
Preparation
This tea tried to fool me! I got it as a sample from the lovely and awesome Indigobloom and when I labelled it I wrote black instead of pu’erh. So when I went to brew it, half asleep this morning, I was started to smell pu’erh as I lifted it for my first sip. Tricky tea, I figured you out anyway!
Dry this tea smells lovely, like a chocolate filled with strawberry nougat waiting in the tray calling to you. Brewed, the tea definitely has notes of pu’erh, but I didn’t detect any fishiness. There were hints of strawberry in the smell but I didn’t really get much chocolate. Leery now since I’m not a fan of pu’erhs yet, I hesitantly took my first sips.
Okay, this is now the second pu’erh that I’ve enjoyed. The strawberry is a fake strawberry, like those candies I mentioned above. The chocolate and pu’erh balance really nicely, however, to make it a lovely cup.
Preparation
Wow, I do like this one. It’s been a few days since I had a white and I’ve missed them. This one hot is lovely, with the fruit notes coming out to blend well with the tea flavours, making it a tea I drank quickly. The second cup (not second infusion) I drank slower, and this one got cold by the time I was done. Cold the tea isn’t as lovely, the notes that make it sparkle are lost and it is more a generic white tea. But hot? Wow this one is a star. I wish I could afford to get more, but dang is it costly. Thanks to Indigobloom for sharing this one with me!
Preparation
Tried this one yesterday morning but didn’t blog it because I used boiling water and . . . it definitely got burnt. It wasn’t horrid, but I decided to wait and retry it today.
I brewed it up today, hopeful since the cup last time had an amazing mango scent despite the burnt factor. The mango flavour is definitely present, and more so the hotter the water. The mate has a nice roasted flavour to it, which doesn’t overpower but instead makes me thing of mango over an open fire. I’ve never tried it, but it can’t be a bad thing, right? And it isn’t in the tea, either. I’m thinking next time I’ll try it on a hotter temperature that isn’t boiling and see if I can get more mango since it was no where near as strong when I brewed it like a green.
Preparation
This was my after work tea tonight, again courtesy of Indigobloom. I found it a nice but unremarkable blend, with the vanilla dominating. I didn’t notice much coconut, but I suspect that it is there more to support the other flavours than to be a star in the blend.
This is one of the better teas I’ve tried from Adagio, and I definitely thank Indigobloom for sending it my way!
