Featured & New Tasting Notes

It is a sad day in my tea and art area, my little blue peacock of a fish passed yesterday after fighting with dropsy. I live in fear of the pinecone infliction (called that because the bacterial infection causes swelling which makes their scales pop out like a pinecone) because it is almost always fatal. Pretty sure it was brought in by one of the mystery snails I bought, since one died and then a day later Fish Beleren took ill. I was ridiculously attached to that fish and I feel immense sadness, I will get another Betta after Christmas because I like having them around, but I doubt I will find one as epic as him…those fish are a rarity. At least Espeon can tell I am sad and has been staying close to keep me company, comfort from cats is always welcomed.

Today’s tea is all sorts of holiday cheer! I totally forgot to get real holiday teas this year, so I am winging it. From Teaguys, this is their Maple, Bourbon & Nutmeg (Eggnog) blend, which is concocted from rooibos, honeybush, buckwheat, maple sugar, almond flour, cinnamon, flavors, nutmeg, sliced almonds, coconut, soy pieces, marshmallow pieces, stevia, turmeric, which is quite the list of ingredients! Browsing around their catalog, they have a bunch of unique looking blends that I need to get my hands on at some point. The aroma of this eggnog themed tea is not so much eggnog, but certainly get the bourbon and nutmeg. Underneath strong bourbon and nutmeg is woody sweetness and coconut with just a hint of maple at the finish. It is very sweet smelling, and the woodiness blends well with the maple and bourbon.

Steeping time, the liquid is rather cloudy, probably from the marshmallow or the coconut, or one of the other random ingredients. The aroma is quite woody and sweet, with strong notes of maple and bourbon, with lesser notes of nutmeg, coconut, and a gentle nuttiness. The liquid sans tea and bits is woody and spicy, very creamy with notes of coconut and bourbon, it is quite sweet smelling and I am starting to pick up on the eggnog idea.

The website gives the instructions to make this into a latte, and in hindsight I kinda wish I would have tried that, but I was only gifted enough for a cup so oops. The first thing I notice is the oily and thick mouthfeel with a slightly dry finish, typical of a rooibos and honeybush blend with coconut, a clever way of combating the strong dryness of this woody plant. The taste is rather sweet, strong notes of bourbon and coconut with a slight metallic note (honeybush always tastes vaguely metallic to me, not really sure why) and a maple and marshmallow midtaste. The finish has an odd coconut candy that lingers. This is an alright blend, not my favorite, but points for unique!

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/12/teaguys-maple-bourbon-nutmeg-eggnog-tea.html

Thank you, Fjellrev, for reminding me about this when I was bemoaning the no-moreness of the ATR Apricot Black. Fortunately, I had this in the little file-like storage box where I keep my samples, as yet unopened.

There’s a lot of apricot in the scent right out of the sample packet, though it’s a little different than the Apricot. A bit less focused, for lack of a better term? Like there is more to it than apricot, maybe. It has to be the saffron.

I steeped a little shorter than recommended but at the temp recommended on the packet and got a cherry-wood colored liquor (not surprising since the base is Ceylon) that is clear and quite attractive. I smell a higher pitched version of the leaves in the steeped tea.

The flavor is really nice. Certainly better than the Adagio apricot, but not as apricot-ty to my taste buds as the Apricot Black. Still, there’s a fruity rather than jammy apricot flavor that is noticeable particularly in the finish and lingers in the aftertaste. I’m trying to figure out what the saffron is doing flavor-wise, if anything. I think of it as a savory flavor though with some sweetness. I don’t really taste something I can identify as saffron, but the effect is to mellow the apricot and tea flavors and knit them together.

I will miss my Apricot Black, but this is delicious.

It’s raining here for another day in a fairly long string of rainy mornings. I’m trying to be a sport about it because we need the rain, but it helped the day get away from me. The kids are off school for the winter break and no. 1 had a friend sleep over last night. I awoke before seven to the sound of shouting and crying. The boys apparently decided wrestling would be a good idea, and as usually happens, no. 1 got hurt and took it out on no. 2. You’d think after the 800,000th time, someone would learn something? But no. (At what age does this stop? I’m almost afraid to ask). After that settled down, the sound of remote control cars whirring loudly and crashing into (I am guessing) table legs or each other. Until the BF got up to go to his doctors’ appointment and took all of them away to breakfast and the youth center and I went back to bed. I am trying to kick start my exercise program and I worked out yesterday and the day before. Today I woke up feeling like a truck had run over me, and since it’s raining I used the soreness as an excuse not to go out for day three, at least not just yet. Anyway, at some point I rolled over and fell asleep and when I woke up it was noon.

Geez.

You really need to let this one cool down in order to pick up on any background flavours. I don’t get any classic eggnog spices from this (was hoping for some nutmeg), but I do pick up on a super light, creamy vanilla eggy note. It’s more like vanilla soufflé than cake. Or, I once tried making one of those mug cakes in the microwave and it ended up tasting really eggy. This sort of captures that type of dessert.

Ugh, I am ILL. Not only that, I’m at work. At work and ill is a bad, bad combination. It’s also nearly Christmas, which makes it all doubly rubbish because I was hoping this might be the year when I actually managed to escape being ill on Christmas Day. Probably this will not be the case. In an effort to try and make it the case, though, I’ll be drinking this tea on repeat all day. My first choice would have been Bluebird’s Kung Flu Fighter, but I’m out of that and it’s a bit late to be ordering any now. So I have this. It actually has a reasonably high proportion of Echinacea (20%) which is better than most similar teas I looked at in the supermarket yeterday (5%, for the most part). I’m hoping it’ll do at least a little bit of good.

Taste wise, it’s not too bad. It’s mostly hibiscus, and it’s a little tart and sour in the way of most Twinings fruit infusions. There’s the tiniest hint of raspberry, but it’s mostly drowned out except in the scent. The Echinacea is a little earthy and helps to augment the tartness a bit, but I have to be honest and say that I’m not drinking this for the flavour. If I was, I wouldn’t be particularly impressed.

I think it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t drink this one if I wasn’t ill, but as something that’s currently making me feel better it deserves a reasonable rating.

Not going out today means tending to my tea samples all day. West Edmonton Mall yesterday, on the last Saturday before Christmas, was utter madness as expected so now it’s time to balance that off with a day of hermitry.

The aroma of the steeped tea reminds me of almond cookies, specifically Voortman Almonette and Almond Krunch cookies. Soft almond that isn’t as strong as almond biscotti. I detect a hint of cranberry as well. This so seems like it’ll be up my alley.

And it basically is, however, the cranberry ends up tasting more like artificial raspberry. I know there are real dried cranberries in the blend, but I wonder if the natural flavouring in this includes something berry-ish. The artificial berry tone is fighting with the lovely almond note. The base is light and lovely, excellent pairing with berries and almonds. I don’t taste any obvious bready or baked confection notes in here but in my opinion, the almond takes care of that since it’s such a fluffy, sugary almond note.

Ultimately, I’d love this tea if it had a more genuine cranberry flavour.

The first notes of this tea are wet wood and spice, indicative of wet storage. These notes were prominent for the first four steeps. Later steeps developed into something sweet, but with a wet wood aftertaste. Overall this tea is good but I think it needs to air out for six months. This had slightly less wet storage taste than the 1998 White Tuo had. That one improved with six months of storage in a drier climate I think this one will too. I won’t go as far as to say that I found notes of chocolate or fruity notes but it did get sweeter in later steeps.

I steeped this ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 10.2g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. This would definitely go a few more steeps if I wanted to continue but I am at my caffeine limit for the day.

Sipdown no. 201. The rest of the sample. I briefly considered trying to do an entire day of avoiding sipdowns. Then I thought maybe I should go the opposite direction and try to do all sipdowns today. Then I decided I was seriously overthinking this and should spend no more time even considering the question.

I have come to a realization, though. I like this so much better than the Adagio Apricot. I know I have a Mariage Freres Apricot in my stash after having done a sort of quasi-inventory project the other day, but really, unless that one is even better, I really see no reason to have multiple apricot teas some of which I like better than others. Why not just have one I really like?

And then, just when I was ready to standardize on this (for now) as my apricot black tea of choice for all the reasons stated in my previous note (and bumped up the rating accordingly), I discovered that this tea is no longer available on the ATR site.

Wwwwhhhhaaaaaaa!

Smells decent, looks okay. Steeped… ermahgerd… this is dessert in a cup. I get the hazelnut and the caramel, mostly the caramel. Tea is an aftertaste here, but that’s okay for what this is supposed to be. Little bit of orange but not a lot. The caramel is a fresh, buttery caramel taste, too. Add just a little splash of cream and wow does it feel like a dessert! I would not serve this with any food course at a tea party unless it was just a plain shortbread cookie. And then you’d leave the table feeling utterly decadent. As flavored teas go, this is off the charts.

And since I consider this a fundamentally unserious tea, I pulled out the frou-frou. :)
http://tinyurl.com/o3dmhk2

Additional notes: So this note is for the current harvest of GM that Nicole was so kind to parcel out for a few people – thank you so much! I can tell right away that this is a different harvest. Rather than like a traditional black with hints of gold leaf, this one is mostly dark amber and very very fuzzy. The flavor is less like my favorite golden monkey (deep chocolate, caramel) and more like tomato soup than chocolate or caramel. I’m a little sad about that. It isn’t the same tea, but it also isn’t a bad tea. I just wish it was the sammmmmeeee.

noms. tea for warming up after the dog adventure! We pooped the dog out a lot today – first time he’s been out off leash we figure and allowed to run around like a crazy dog in the valley. We were with another friend who had a dog, so we knew she’d keep ours in check. Now that we’re home, we have one tired out puppy. Here’s hoping we can do that a few more times :)

At first sip I didn’t like this tea that much. But as I drink it it is improving. The main note is a kind of a burnt note from the brown rice, not sure how else to describe it. There is a secondary note from the green tea, barely perceptible and somewhat grassy. Overall I like this tea.

I steeped this tea one time with 10g leaf and 190 degree water in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper for 1 min. 10g seems like a lot but those were the Yunomi directions.

Another tea company that sadly, is no more. I have a number of never opened teas from them and this is one of those.

Continuing to explore the Yunnans in my stash, and I was delighted to find that the leaves on this one are almost as golden as the Adagio ones and quite pretty. There’s a peppery, malty note to the dry leaves that makes me think this one holds a lot of promise.

The tea is a clear maple color and smells terrific. Chocolate, cocoa, malty, a little pepper, sweet molasses. It tastes just like it smells. A little drying on the tongue, very smooth and clean in the finish. Pleasant, sweet arboreal aftertaste.

Very lovely indeed.

i thought WP used to write all their parameters on the bag – this time around, none of my teas have them written on them, making it challenging for me when i make a tea – means i need to have my computer on. Which i didn’t this morning when i was making this one. Still tastes dcent but not as lovely as i remember it being. will have to see if i can do better next time.

I had this gingerbread-flavoured tea before going to bed. The leaf is dark brown and fluffy, and contains visible chunks of dried ginger and flower petals. The ginger is obvious in the scent, as well.

The leaf is fluffy, which means that it’s hard to measure out, but I used about 2 tsp for a 12-oz mug, brewed it at 85°C for 4 minutes, and was greeted with a pale umber liquid. As it cooled down, the tea became darker.

The roasted base of the houjicha is really complementary to the ginger — it’s not spicy, but I can sense the ginger’s fruity zing. I can also taste some gentle spices on the back of the sip, most notably coriander. However, the base is still the strongest flavour, especially in the middle of the sip. The ginger and spices only really come out to play at the end of the sip and in the aftertaste.

Full review of 52Teas 2015 Holiday Kickstarter set at http://booksandtea.ca/2015/12/christmas-teas-from-the-52teas-holiday-kickstarter/

Taking some time tonight with a couple of these in the little tortoise and hare teapot. And feeding the tea ibex. He looks pretty good with the cones on his back. :)

This tea is still excellent. Om nom nom. Smooth and mellow malt and deliciousness without any smoke.

http://tinyurl.com/poyhnxb
http://tinyurl.com/j2pq3us

Right now I am sitting down with a lot of tea in front of me and Christmas cards… who would have guessed that I’d spend over $100 to send tea to people I never met just to bring joy to others during the holiday seasons?
Not me.
Anyways, I decided to pull out something special while I package up some of my favorite teas because holidays are meant to show that you care not just that you can; so goodbye to a few of my favorites.

You’re wondering what this taste like? It taste like you need to go buy some :p

2004 Shi Kun Mu’s Menghai Gushu Raw
Shi Kun Mu is a tea trader/blender/master from Taiwan and I was very curious about the 2004 ShiKunMu productions (Yiwu, YiBang, Manzhuan, Menghai). When my Menghai and YiBang cakes arrived over 18 months ago, they seemed a bit dry so I stuck them away to freshen up a bit. They have been in my humidity monitored tea cabinets and they now seem ready to taste. The Menghai cake is rather enjoyable – overall a tea of rich flavor and mouth feel. Reported to be spring ancient arbor material, the leaf looks good and the dark golden tea liquor is very clean. Sweet aroma lingers in the cup. Early steeps offer an earthy mushroom flavor which lightens and becomes sweeter in the next cups. The flavor includes a bit of rather delicate astringency in 3rd and later infusions but this makes the tea a little more interesting and complex in my opinion. Camphor and menthol appear off and on. Reasonable amount of Qi builds up through the session. Decent endurance – I’ve enjoyed eight cups and the tea has more to give. My mouth continues to water from the tea session which ended an hour ago.

Happy The Force Awakens day! I’m thinking about going to see it tomorrow morning. Astonishingly, there are tickets available for a 10:40 a.m. showing near me. Then I’ll have to see it again with the kids, obv. Ah, the only benefit of unemployment. Movies at odd times of day during the week. I am hopeful I will remedy this situation soon. I have another interview next week at a place where I’ve been onsite for interviews twice already, so wish me luck.

I found an unopened packet of this in one of my tea drawers and thought that since I’d sipped down a large tin today (with another in the offing) I deserved to break open something new.

It has been a while since I had a straight ceylon. This has those dark, bird nesty leaves that are so fun to look at and in the packet there’s an earthy smell with some notes that are cocoa-like.

The steeped tea is clear and toward the red end of the reddish brown spectrum, and the aroma has a sweet baked bread note. Yum.

The flavor has a middle of the road sweetness to it, like a touch of honey or maybe date sugar, and the “tea” flavor that makes you wonder how it would be iced. As it happens, Kenilworth is apparently a favorite for icing (I just looked it up).

The tea is quite smooth. Not grabby in the throat, not harsh on the stomach. I sort of just want to sit back and enjoy without thinking about it too much, which I suppose is a great compliment to the tea.

I’m finding my tastebuds have a rather short memory and I can’t remember the taste of other Ceylons to compare this to, so I’ll just assign it a number for now based on overall experience and worry about how it fits in with the others later.

On a sad note, I seem to have lost my Timolino! I can’t find it anywhere, and I don’t remember where I had it last. We had a bag with swimming gear in it go missing a while back and I wonder whether my poor Timolino might have been in it. I’m so sad. I loved that thing, and I loved the color which was a sort of deep green. I looked at David’s online and I don’t see that color anymore (they seem to be selling their own brand now anyway, not so much Timolino). I think I will go cry for a while now.

Thank the higher powers for this tea. Again my stomach is angry this morning, feels like a bout of food poisoning from something I ate last night, and I only have 2.25 hours of work left until my vacation so I can’t leave yet :( and I found this tea in my lunch bag thank goodness. I made it at work so it is weak and it doesn’t taste like it should, but at least it is helping settle my extremely upset stomach. I seriously do not know what I will do when I run out of this, I am down to my last few cups :( :( I will have to find a different ginger stomach saving tea. See previous notes on this tea!

This was the ugliest tea I have set eyes on. Looks like a birds nest that was stepped on outside, picked up, and placed in my Kamjove.

I actually looked at it for awhile because I couldn’t bring myself to pour hot water over something like that… and then I remembered, a lot of tea looks this way.

I ended up steeping this six times and work and realized that it isn’t very strong for a ripe. It’s somewhat mellow which for some is a positive, but I like my sheng mellow and my ripe strong. Light color are light and dark colors are dark, for me that is how it works. This would one to drink while eating though!

Had a damn good job interview today and now I’m back at home chilling out watching Scrubs and drinking tea. So exhausted. Went to bed at 12:30am, which is early for me, hoping to get a good night’s rest, and kept tossing and turning until past 5am. Ugh.

This is pretty good but not amazing or unique. The dry leaf and taste are very heavy on the cinnamon, like cinnamon heart candies. And the almond is trailing close behind and seems rather astringent too, almost like almond extract. These two notes are so strong that it’s almost too difficult to even tell which one you’re smelling/tasting since it’s an ongoing battle between the two. It reminds me a lot of holiday spice candles, or the smell of craft/Michaels stores, you know?

another quick note. Gotta love bellocq’s customer service. Mistake with my order that went to the us that they fixed immediately and sent directly to me so i didn’t have to make arrangements to try and get it from the us given the mix up. Love this tea and am so happy with my first order from this company.

Hmph. Instructions said 4-7 min so I went for 4, and it was a bit bitter. Too much for me, so I added milk and a touch of sugar.
Made that way, it was pleasant enough. A bit malty, smoky, and not very astringent.
I’m looking forward to trying this at three minutes!

Guess who’s finished all of their Christmas shopping!? ME!!!

I finished everything last night when I got my Step Mom’s gift, which was definitely the hardest one to secure since she’s a nightmare to shop for. And so, of course, what do you do when you’ve got all the gifts? Well, wrap them of course. Actually, I still need to buy my Secret Santa gift for work but we haven’t been assigned people so I can’t do it yet.

I chose this tea to drink while wrapping because it can easily be drunk ‘Grandpa style’ and I wasn’t sure how long everything would take. The tea was delicious; it delivered the wonderful vanilla, custard, cocoa, malt, and nutmeg notes I love about it. I was surprised I’d gone through a full kettle of tea when I was done wrapping because it felt like I’d only been doing it for like forty minutes or so. Turns it, it was much closer to three hours!

So, my Christmas presents are as follows. I feel very accomplished, and need to share them with someone because I’m a bad secret keeper and if I don’t share with someone then the secrets could spill out to the actual people…

Mom: Fancy Viktor & Rolf Perfume for my mom.
It’s a $128 bottle so me and my two siblings split the cost.

Mom’s Birthday (Because it’s Christmas Eve): Hedley Shirt.
Her favourite band.

Liam (My Brother): A Game Cube, controllers, and a game. Yay retro gaming!

Brenna (My Half Sister): A rainbow tin of Birthday Cake from DAVIDsTEA & Infused Mug.
Her Dad had the same idea and bought her the exact same present though…

Dad: Fishing themed Mini Calendar for his office & retro ‘trout shaped’ cuff links.

Step Mom: An array of Burt’s Bees make up and beauty products.

Aunt Jill: A retro “Coke Bottle” lamp.
She’s obsessed with Coke products to the point where she got the logo tattooed on her.

Grandma: I made a ‘12 Days of Tea’ Green Tea sampler for her & matcha infused baking.
She wanted to see/learn more about what I’m studying.

Dominic (Older Step Nephew): Goosebumps Merchandise and Candy.
I showed the books to him one summer and he’s never gotten over it.

Gabriel (Younger Step Nephew): A few different Play-doh kits!