New Tasting Notes
Holy snow day!! Today was basically endless white in every direction you looked, so it was the perfect time to get cozy and try out this tea – one of the new teas I picked up from Toronto Tea Festival this year, and also a new (to me) tea company as well!! This tea won the black tea category of this year’s blind tasting competition, and it’s not hard to see why. Though I would maybe personally prefer a bit of a richer and more sweet milk chocolate note, the tea is undeniably very, very smooth with a pretty solid balance between the cocoa and creamy flavours with a brisk, malty and more full-bodied black tea base. It’s perfectly comforting on a day spent bundled up indoors. Well, other than the quick jaunt outside to snap some tea photos…
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGB4auQS3dK/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iThlpKPtsdo&ab_channel=TeenageDads
A tea enjoyed yesterday for Valentine’s Day!
What could be more on theme than oversized heart-shaped shortbread cookies dunked into a delicious teacup of this black tea blend with a splash of coconut milk? Like a lot of teas I’m drinking this month, this was a pick up from Toronto Tea Festival! The sweet raspberry and chocolate notes of the dry leaf won me over and, now that I’m brewing it up myself, I’m happy to report that it’s just a rich, jammy and wonderful once steeped with the perfect balance of berry and cocoa alongside a more brisk, full-bodied black tea. It’s even interestingly just a little bit nutty in its undertones, which was unexpected but welcome.
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGEgkPsy0ym/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xee_2r-5L2U&ab_channel=CameronWinter
I cold=brewed this overnight and I was actually worried that I ended up cold-brewing a bit too long because rather than it just being overnight, it ended up being more than 24 hours. Yikes!
But, surprisingly, it’s not bitter. The black tea tastes smooth. Surprisingly smooth, given the circumstances. The cherry & almond are nice together. It’s a favorite flavor combo from my early tea drinking days, in fact, my first company [LiberTEAS] also had Cherry Almond flavor – a black tea – sans the “cola” part, and it was definitely one of my favorite offerings from LiberTEAS.
Anyway, I like this. It’s definitely better as a cold-brew than when I drank it hot during the taste testing phase – even when over-brewed.
Okay, it’s been a long time coming, since I bought this sheng in the summer of 2017, and kept it in a dark, vented jelly jar for the past 7+ years, sipping along now and then, waiting for it to improve before putting words on paper. Alas, it has not gotten much better than the bitter, woody, leaf-litter flavor it has had all along. I’ve tried gong-fu as well as western style as directed by the label, all to no avail. It’s pretty dang WEAK, too. No idea when this tea was produced, other than before 2017. It was never pressed into a cake, and I know of no special treatment or storage. Just that it is from China. I get nothing but disappointment from it, and now it’s headed to my garden compost heap since it’s not worth the cost of the spring water I steep with. I rate it a 40, and wouldn’t recommend it — it’s no longer listed for sale by Tealyra, either, though “topproteastore” out of Miami still lists it (along with a bunch of other stuff identical to Tealyra’s offerings, right down to the photos and verbatim descriptions.)
Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Bitter, Watery, Woody
Preparation
According to Ethan’s description, this spring 2024 Si Ji Chun is from a higher elevation than the regular Nantou variety. At $20 for 50 g, it’s a bit more than one would expect to pay for a Four Seasons oolong, but since my curiosity regarding gaoshan is boundless, it made its way into my order. I steeped 6 g of leaf in 120 ml of 195F water for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds, plus some long, uncounted steeps.
The dry aroma is of cookies, butter, grass, and honeysuckle. The first steep has notes of cookie, butter, cream, walnut, grass, honeysuckle, freesia, and orchid. This tea is quite soft, with none of the high notes I associate with Qing Xin. The next steep is round, buttery, nutty, and floral, with more flowery notes than the first steep. Steeps three and four have a nice lemony quality, along with more intense freesia, honeysuckle, and orchids and a little grass. Subsequent steeps are still nutty and floral, but with more grass and minerals. The final steeps are predictably grassy, vegetal, mineral, and a bit floral.
This tea didn’t wow me like some of Ethan’s other offerings, but the first few steeps were nice. I’m not sure the higher price was fully justified. I guess you can’t win them all!
Flavors: Butter, Cookie, Cream, Floral, Grass, Honeysuckle, Lemon, Mineral, Nutty, Orchid, Round, Vegetal, Walnut
Preparation
This one sounds quite lovely.
It was pretty good, though I tend to like Qing Xin a bit more. Have you tried the Si Ji Chun from Camellia Sinensis? It’s like $11 for 50 g and I remember enjoying it when I had it a few years ago.
I quite liked that one when I tried it. The price makes it an easy choice to!
Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – February 2025 Tea #3 – February 14 – International Book Giving Day – have a cuppa and enjoy a nice read!
A blustery yet sunny day. The perfect day to READ. (Like I need an excuse to read, or a prompt in order to read. hah.) I am currently attempting to read maybe seven or eight books in a row for the Morning News Tournament of Books that begins on March 6th. That’s my mention of the Tournament for this year. I decided this tea was the perfect tea for the day – Chai but super cozy! Cozy because it’s toasty! I had to stock up on a couple of 52Teas marshmallow treat blends when I saw them. I am occasionally on the lookout for them and a Chai marshmallow treat is definitely my sort of tea. It’s good stuff! A nice balance of sweetness, spice and the classic flavor of genmaicha.
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for a full mug // 30 minutes after boiling // 1 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 30 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
I’m happy to hear that you’re enjoying this one! When I came across a recipe for chai spiced rice krispy squares, I was like, HOW? HOW did I never think to even try a chai spiced Marshmallow Treat tea?
Chai + genmaicha really should be a more common combination in general.
I agree. I do like the combination!
February Sipdown Challenge Prompt – drink a latté or milk tea
Time for a pick me up! I have been making brownies and chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s tonight. I wanted a little something before starting to cook supper.
I thought I had used a bit too much matcha but I really would have liked even more. I put about four little scoops of matcha in a matcha bowl, added a tiny amount of cold water and made a smooth paste, added a small amount of sugar and whisked some more until it was perfectly smooth, and it was gorgeous. The color was a bright and intense green. I scraped the matcha bowl contents into a glass of milk (metal Boroux cup) and used an Aerolatte to mix it all together. It didn’t last very long at all. The froth was excellent.
The chocolate covered strawberries wouldn’t all fit into the container so I took one for the team and ate one. It was so perfect with my latte. I almost always have plain whisked matcha with a sweet little something like a truffle, so why not the latté as well?
Those Jingmai Moonlights are like a cuddle in a cup. So sweet, so smooth, so easydrinking.
I have used today 90°C water and just finished my thermos full of that water with various, definitely uncounted and random steeping times; and there wasn’t a single bad steep.
Some were distinctly stonefruity, later ones were more herbaceous and meadow forward; with hot fresh hay notes.
All steeps were companied with velvety smooth and long mouthfeel and perfect as usual.
Comparing it to the 2018 harvest I had, I find this a wee better, although my impressions of that harvest are very faded by now.
Preparation
I have been looking for evening decaf teas that are not always Roobios, which is iffy for me, although I seem to have plenty of blends. I generally adore most of Simpson & Vail tea, and I have had three of their standard similar black blends that are not decaffeinated – for some reason this one is WEAK. I have tried three times and it’s like weak store bag tea. Even the consistency of the leaves is almost a powder type. Very disappointing.
Thank you, Marshall, for this trade! The simple joy of getting tea in the mail is so nice.
Dry Appearance: The leaves on this one are so long! Definitely 3rd, 4th, and 6th leaf on the branch. Even some cute stems! They are dusty-looking with rich, deep chocolate brown notes.
Initial rinse: 1880s house. Lots of old wood notes.
Mouth Feel: Very smooth. Blanketing.
Flavor: Bits of charcoal. Burnt toast. If you steep it too long you really feel like you’re licking a very old wood house.
Sheng is a category I think I would have to explore more deeply to pull out some of the nuanced notes.
February 14 Sipdown Challenge Prompt – International Book Giving Day
Not a sipdown but a brand new tea! My daughter gave this to me for Valentine’s Day. And because flowers don’t mean a lot to her and she has plenty of candles, I followed the prompt and gave her books for Valentine’s! (Or for International Book Giving Day, however you want to look at it!)
I cut open the pouch and sniffed the dry leaves and was transported to that place I loved to visit where I can no longer go – A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, NC. This is TEA.
Though it is labeled an English breakfast style tea, the directions call for 185F for 1-2 minutes. I decided to be bold and go for two minutes.
It is delicious! I taste the Assam first I think, and then the Malawi black tea gives it another layer of interest. What surprised me was that it has a moderate creaminess to the body, something totally unexpected.
I thought I might need milk since I am sometimes an Assam wimp and I did go the full steep, but I didn’t. Either it is smoother than many non-golden tip Assam teas, or I am better-faster-stronger than I used to be and can enjoy more teas from India. The lower steep temp and time also help make it smoother, no doubt. I need to remember that next time I run into an Assam I can’t handle. By the end of the pot of tea, the last sips in my cup were becoming a bit more assertive but were welcome, nevertheless.
Edit to add: I resteeped the leaves about an hour later. Just as good as the first steep, and I may even have liked it better.
additional notes: This one almost ended up in my last order, but didn’t. Then I just had to place another recent order on a few of S&V’s retiring teas. This is retiring. noooo. I will always need a rooibos vanilla around, I think. This might be my favorite rooibos vanilla. I’m sad they are retiring this cupboard staple. The vanilla DOES seem like vanilla extract. It’s just so smooth and cozy.
A lovely tisane from Tealyra. I sipped the brew straight and hot and unsweetened, and got no hint of the titular cream. Chamomile was also absent in aroma, flavor, and appearance. Zooming-in on the scoop-ful in the saucer photo I’ve uploaded, I see no evidence of the reputed chamomile. I don’t know the flavor of nettle, “blue mellow flowers” or corn flowers, so I can’t say that I noticed them, either. I do think I got a good hit of rose hip, along with hibiscus, as their bitterness was present & pleasant, contrasting with the sweetness of peach, apple, and orange peel. I suppose if one really wanted a creaminess, one could always add milk or cream. The peach appears mainly as an aroma, but I liked the way the other flavors enveloped my entire mouth, stimulating much salivation! In the last 1/3 cup, I dumped in a yellow packet of sweetener, and the brew opened up wonderfully into a thick, syrupy swill that I could drink all evening! It felt like I was drinking the heavy syrup from tinned fruit salad. Very nicely balanced to my senses, so I’ll rate it strongly at 88. With the rose hip, this is bound to have a good dose of vitamin C.
Flavors: Apple, Hibiscus, Orange, Peach, Rosehips
