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Gross. This one tasted like swampy water mixed with earthy turnips and yams. What’s weird is the flavor bore no resemblance to the smell. The leaves had a citrusy aroma of lemon and tangerine however none of that came through in the tea. Didn’t bother rebrewing and will likely chuck the rest of my sample. That’s how bad it was.

This is likely my last time buying a Taiwanese green. In my experience, they smell great but seldom if ever deliver on flavor.

Backlog.

I was torn on how to rate this tea. If you’d asked me when I first opened it, I would have rated it close to a 100. When fresh, it was intensely flavorful. A dynamic mixture of alpine flowers, tropical fruit, pastry cream, perfume, and minerals. But a few weeks later, the flavor suddenly began to go flat. It lost some of its brightness and body as sharper, more savory notes began to creep in. Usually high mountain teas fade gradually but this one lost its oomph pretty quickly.

Well, it took longer than I expected get back on this site. Had been away for a while to focus on work-related training which finally ended a few weeks ago (whew!). In the process, I sort of fell out of my daily Steepster habit and the mountain of backlogged notes left me feeling a little overwhelmed. Wish there was a way to post my tasting notes from the MyTeaPal app to Steepster.

This was a complex and delicious roasted gaoshan. Despite its name, it did not taste roasty or charred at all. Instead it had deeply caramelized notes of salted caramel, brown sugar, and candied pecan. I steeped it grandpa style at 185-195 F. Lower temperatures brought out more sweetness and chocolatey notes.

A belated happy new year Steepsterites! Hope 2022 will be a great year for everyone. Still on semi-hiatus due to studies – can’t wait till March when I’m finished with it all – but do plan to post here and there.

I picked this up on a whim a couple of weeks ago when I was in Florida for a wedding. It was in the checkout aisle at Ross of all places. I had bought loose tea with me as I always do during my travels but not sencha. Although I seldom bother with teabags, Ito-En is a reputable Japanese tea brand and I drink their bottled tea all the time. The date of production stamped on the package showed it was only 6 months old, which is about as fresh as it gets with bagged tea.

Color of the tea is intense green and infuses rather quickly, which indicates a fukamushi. The flavor is also characteristic of a deep steamed sencha. At higher water temperature, it’s matcha like with raw wheatgrass and chlorophyll. Smooth and full bodied. Lower temperatures bring out spinachy, grassy notes with a mellow sweet taste. Doesn’t have all of the nuances of loose tea but still delivers with a rich flavor and freshness.

I’ve continued drinking this upon returning home. Despite having plenty of sencha in my cupboard, the convenience of teabags can’t be beat. Especially during busy times when I just need a quick cup and don’t have time to fuss with gaiwans and pitchers. Is this the best sencha ever? No, but it’s more than serviceable and head and shoulders above standard bagged tea. The only downside is it can’t be resteeped so this is a one and done kind of tea.

Until yesterday, this nifty little device had been a part of my office tea setup for more than 5 years. It’s basically an electric coil that you submerge in water to heat it up. You can boil a cup of water using it in about 5 minutes. It does the job but there are a couple of quirks to be aware of.

First, it works well as long as you’re boiling 8oz or less at a time. Any quantity larger than this and you’ll be waiting a long time. Also, you must leave it submerged before unplugging or you’ll burn the coil. As you can imagine, having to constantly plug and unplug the coil after every steep is annoying so I use it with a wall plug that has an on/off switch.

I ended up replacing this with a 0.5L mini kettle from Amazon. Although it worked well, it made my desk look like a meth lab and with me being so accident prone, I was constantly paranoid about knocking something over while the coil was plugged in. I will, however, continue using it for travel. It’s so much easier to haul in your suitcase than a kettle and all you need to boil water is a heat proof cup. For $8, I definitely got my money’s worth.

I wasn’t feeling the melon candy flavor of this tea when I first had it, but I’ve been really getting into it now. It could be that the flavoring has mellowed out after sitting around for a year. I’ve noticed this with all of my Lupicia teas. The flavoring is less intense since opening, which in some cases like this one is good but flavored green teas have gone off slightly. Bumping up the rating for this tea.

Hello Steepster! Hope you all have been well. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted. Life has been a bit hectic lately and on top of everything, I’ve started a new course for work which has been consuming most of my free time. I’ve barely had time to even browse Steepster let alone log anything since I feel guilty whenever I’m doing anything online besides studying. Anyway, tea drinking is still going strong and with my backlog starting to grow, I decided to sneak in a few notes.

This is another sencha from my Yuuki-Cha haul this summer. It’s a fragrant, light steamed sencha that presents a broad spectrum of flavors. Depending on the way it’s brewed, it can offer the typical spinachy, vegetal green tea flavor or it can become gyokuro-like with rich umami and oceanic elements. Smooth, medium bodied, and clean tasting with notes of grass/kelp and cannelloni beans.

Sipdown.

I liked this a lot better after tweaking my brewing. Increasing the leaf quantity and lowering temperature was key. Vibrant green color and flavor. Full bodied with notes of freshly cut grass, cashew, and cream. Upping my rating as I enjoyed it far more this time around.

Last tea from the Lupicia group order. I put this one off for a while because I didn’t care for their Melon Oolong and expected it to taste the same. Finally had it today and it wasn’t half bad.

You can tell its the same melon flavoring used in the oolong version but it goes quite nicely with the white tea base. Clean tasting and lighter than the oolong. Candy sweet with more of a cantaloupe flavor than Hi-Chew candy this time.

This is one of the teas from last year’s Lupicia group buy that I just got around to recently. It reminds me a lot of a plum oolong I used to like back in the day.

Dry leaf smells like plum, pomegranate, and raspberry. When heated, it becomes more plummy with notes of overripe berries and a little sweet potato. The flavor closely matches the aroma. Nice, tart flavor of plum, pomegranate, and dark cherry. There’s supposed to be white peach and strawberry in this blend too but I didn’t detect it. Normally I’m leery of tart/sour teas (I’m looking at you, hibiscus) but here it’s executed very well and is not overpowering at all.

Tastes good both on its own and blended with a straight black tea.