Featured & New Tasting Notes

I don’t get any smoke from this. It’s a pretty mild shou, much like one of the other descriptions. A little nutty, a little creamy, a little sweet, a little woody. Definitely no icky wet taste, which I’m really appreciating.

Still prefer the nuggets I have to most shou’s I’ve tried lately. IDK what’s up with that.

Edit: Also salty. That’s very true. Thanks to Morgana for mentioning that in her tasting note. (Her note wasn’t about this tea tho. It’s just a note I feel goes with shou in general.)

I enjoyed this tea. It is, however, different from many ripe puer. There were no notes of chocolate in it. Instead there were notes of camphor, spice, and a little bit of wet wood or wet storage taste. It had a fair amount of fermentation taste in the first few steeps. This taste was a little more unpleasant than some ripes but not out of bounds. In the end I will neither recommend or not recommend this tea. It is really a matter of taste. Some will really like this tea, some will hate it. It was cheap. Dragon Tea House sold it for around fourteen dollars. While I don’t classify this as a bargain find as I do a cheap brick I recently drank from Yunnan Sourcing, it wasn’t bad. It’s in the eighth steep now and I am enjoying it so it isn’t all bad. Just if you buy this don’t expect too much from it.

I steeped this eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 9.7g 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, and 30 sec. Judging by the color of the brew I’d say that I would get another four or so steeps out of this if I wanted to continue.

Taking a break. I have been working on putting together Christmas chord sheets and learning to play carols since before Thanksgiving. Then in my free time I have my, much neglected of late, tea blog, and several forums I frequent, along with my Kerbal Space Adventures game to which I’m addicted. Somewhere in there, needs to be some tea, just for the pure enjoyment, time.

I finally set everything aside and dug into the mountain of tea until I found Zombie Pearls. I love this stuff. With the first steep, the little bug shaped pearls barely open. This always tastes crisp and clean. Today while this was steeping I grabbed a big spoon of peanut butter. As I was enjoying it, I thought I might be ruining the tea I desperately needed. Instead I accidentally stumbled upon the most perfect pairing, at least to my uncultured taste buds. The cucumber and other white tea notes rose above the peanut butter and really shined through.

If you haven’t experienced this tea type I highly recommend it – and peanut butter (in my case Great Value brand with the red lid). Yum!

Trying this in the gaiwan today. Have just enough left to do something else with it. Not sure what. Maybe try it in the yixing again.

I am somewhat intimidated by pu-erh, though I like what I’ve had of it generally speaking. I’m just never sure I’m “doing it right” and since pu-erh can be pricey I’ve been reluctant to start with some of the things I know to be good in my stash.

Let me say that another way. It’s more accurate to say I believe them to be good based upon the word of the companies I’ve patronized because, as recent threads here have indicated, there’s a lot of room for everything from misunderstandings to getting ripped off particularly with regards to pu-erh. Which is one of the reasons it intimidates me.

In any case, most of my experience so far has been sort of the toe in the pool method rather than diving in head first. Because intimidated.

So here’s another toe in the water effort. I went for very short steeps after rinsing. Starting in the immediate range (1-3 seconds) and increasing by five seconds each time.

1. Very dark and opaque, like black coffee. Smells like a saddle. Tastes a bit salty and a little like potting soil. I think this is what tasters mean when they say mushroom, as raw white mushroom doesn’t taste like much to me except a little like dirt, and that’s what I’m getting here.

2. Same look to the tea, if anything a bit darker and a bit more opaque. Rather like flat cola. Still some leather in the aroma. But smoother and something else, too. Tobacco, maybe. The flavor is less salty, and actually quite smooth. It just doesn’t taste like an awful lot to me.

3. Color is the same. Less leather and more earth in the aroma. Gosh, this steep still doesn’t taste like much but it’s weird. It’s like the tea is trying to taste like something but can’t quite pull it off. A little like meat, maybe, but not in a lapsang sort of way. More like a shroomy meatiness.

4. No change on the color. No change on the aroma. Flavor is still trying to be something more than it is. There’s a tad of sweetness this time around.

5. Still dark brown but no longer opaque. There is something that makes me think of gravy in the aroma, though I’m not sure why as the salt and leather is pretty much gone. Perhaps its flour? The flavor is sweetening up some, and becoming leafy. There’s no leaf flavor listed among the options except autumn leaf pile, so that’s what I’ve picked.

6. Color similar to 5. I no longer think of gravy when I smell the tea. The flavor is brighter, and I can taste the water through the tea, which I think is a signal to me to stop here. I suppose I could push it further and see if anything miraculous happens in later steeps but I’m not excited enough by this to do that.

I have to rate this less as compared to other teas since I haven’t had many pu-erhs (certainly not many recently) and more on an absolute scale.

Assuming I’m doing it anywhere close to “right,” even if this tea was still available I can’t imagine buying it again. It’s not offensive, it’s just not really there. (The Numi bagged pu-erhs have more flavor than this does.) It makes a better cold brew than hot, and it’s hard to imagine that is how a pu-erh should be.

I’m rather gratified that other reviews didn’t find much flavor in this either, so I can’t conclude it’s just me. I want to develop a taste for puerh and I’d be horrified if I was missing the necessary taste buds to do so.

On the upside, it does seem to have made my digestive tract quite happy.

I have had a tin of this for a while and the best before date on it is September 2015. However, the tin has never been opened so I hoped being in a sealed bag in a tin would mean it was fine. So, I brewed it as an eggnog latte and though it was okay, there was definitely flavor deterioration. The chocolate banana flavor was present but much more muted than usual and instead the base was taking center stage which is rather unfortunate given the Lupicia black tea tends to have a dirty quality to it that is hard to get past. I guess that’s the risk of buying ALL THE TEAS and then not drinking them.

Thank you to the Steepster friend who gifted me this tea. This is one tasty tea. There was virtually no bitterness and little astringency. I detected no malt in this. The Steepster description of chocolate and raisins is fairly close to accurate. There were a variety of sweet notes to this tea. This is my first taste of Joseph Wesley teas and I like it. I will have to add their name to my list of companies to order from. This is I have to say one of the smoothest black teas I have had. No unpleasant notes to it. It was clearly processed right.

I steeped this ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 7g leaf and 200 degree water. 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 tea was not done at ten steeps but I am at my caffeine limit for the day. This tea keeps going more like a puerh than a black tea. Quite nice.

Yay, a green rooibos. I get mostly pineapple from this one, with maybe the slightest hint of banana. I could see papaya being really good in here. I also wish I could have gotten the coconut. I don’t really taste it. But granted, I have a cold right now. Maybe I’m not getting the most out of this. I also let it steep for close to ten minutes so the flavours should be as strong as ever.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy more but it’s really good for what it is.

I like it!!
Thank you Sil & MissB :)
Pear is a flavour I really do enjoy when done right, and I find that this tea has a great balance. A little sweet, a bit tart, and the chocolate accent really pairs well. Adding just a bit of sugar cuts down on the tart and brings out more of a caramelized pear note.
So yeah. Compared to the other tea I just tried, this is a welcome cuppa heaven!

I’m still trying to finish samples I received this time last year (I know, I know). I’m almost caught up, and I’ve had the chance to enjoy little gems like this along the way. The apple flavor is delicious, and I appreciate how the spices (cinnamon, ginger, and clove – I think) are used to enhance rather than overpower the fruit flavor.

This is definitely a good way to beat back the Monday morning blues.

It’s a good thing that I didn’t write a review on this tea right away yesterday. The first mug/impression wasn’t the best.

The dry leaf smells amazing. So many spices going on here. Ginger, then pepper, then cloves and cinnamon in unison, and a sweetness dancing around these other notes.

Yesterday’s Nordic mug got 6g of leaf and it was so weak. Watered down spices and sweet licorice root. It just wasn’t balanced. Seeing that I bought 16g, I thought I’d polish off the rest today just to get it out of the way. Putting 10g of leaf into the mug ended up being the best thing because I noticed that it’s better balanced now. The spices intensified while the licorice stayed the same. It could very well be that there simply wasn’t as much licorice ratio-wise in the remaining 10g but it seems that more leaf = stronger spices in general which = balancing out the sweet licorice, which can only reach a certain level of sweetness. I don’t know. Maybe I’m nuts.

But with fat-free creamer, taste-wise, the spices are layered in the same way as they smell. That is, the ginger is the strongest, followed by pepper, etc. This tea got terrible reviews but I don’t seem to mind it this way. Would I buy more? Probably not. But it’s not bad at all. Perhaps it depends on how sensitive you are to licorice root. It is sweet, yes, but I’ve tasted licorice root-laced teas which were by far cloyingly sweeter and imbalanced.

1000th tasting note! It only took me six years to get here. :-)

I wanted to steep something really special for this occasion. I thought about one of the various wonderful French teas in my cupboard, but decided I had had enough flavored black for one day. I’ve been on a Yunnan kick for a few days now, so I thought I’d look for a highly rated Yunnan I have but hadn’t yet tried.

I have tin no. 23 of this limited edition of 150. Inside the tin, long forest green leaves predominate with some lighter blonde colored tips adding visual interest. The dry leaves smell a bit chocolate-y, a deep, dark, rich fragrance.

I decided to steep at the average preparation parameters rather than the five minutes at boiling recommended on the tin.

I got a clear, dark maple colored liquor with a warm sweet aroma — a bit less sweet than the other yunnans I’ve tried recently but still reminiscent of molasses with some chocolate notes around the edges.

The flavor is quite smooth. No back of the throat grab with this one. Medium bodied, and a bit lighter than I’d expected (might try boiling and longer steep next time). The flavor isn’t overly sweet or sugary in the sip, but has some sweetness in the finish and aftertaste. The funny thing is, I can’t really identify a flavor note in this. I can mostly define what I don’t taste. Unlike some yunnans, I’m not getting a peppery flavor, nor am I getting something I’d call malty. There is something bready about it, maybe a rye note, and while the cocoa note in the aroma gets stronger as the tea cools I only taste it a tiny bit. I’m not getting tobacco or cannabis or any of the other things folks have mentioned.

Some of the other yunnans I’ve tasted recently have had more depth and complexity, but part of that could be preparation, and a lot of it could also be that my expectations of this one were exceptionally high. I’m going to withhold final judgment until I’ve played with it more, but right now, I’m thinking this is quite good but not as spectacular as I was hoping. Ah, well.

Backlog from a few days ago.

I took part in the Toronto Tea Festival’s recent promotion to try a bunch of tea samples for free. The tasters were told to rate each tea so that the festival could determine a “best” tea and give the winner an award.

I ended up getting 6 samples to try. There was a lot of variety, but ultimately I found the whole thing to be really disorganized.

So I wrote about it: http://booksandtea.ca/2015/12/toronto-tea-festival-tasting-set/

Guys, if you’re trying to get a random assortment of people to choose a “best” tea, don’t go about it ass-backwards like the Toronto Tea Festival did.

pulled this out today – so many teas and now i’m going to see how long i can go without making a purchase. No trips planned and i just got my order in from bellocq, so i think i can do this. Ideally i’d like to get my cupboard down to the 50 that i wanted it to be at by the end of the year, though that isn’t going to happen anymore (i’ll be lucky if i can get to 75 which is what i started this year at). I like how this has changed since it came out. Much more delicious now that it’s a little older – smoother and maltier :)

So I brewed up about 7 grams in a 100ml gaiwan at about 210f. Two customary rinses to get the funky junk of the pile off. This tea has lost that fermented smell and wasn’t funky at all. I see some reviews saying it is fishy but I imagine these are older tastings and this tea has had time to mellow out. I did quick steeps at first at about 5-8 seconds. I find this ripe to be a light smooth mouthfeel but not lacking at all. I brewed a bit heavy to see what it had. I noticed a really nice caramel flavor or honey sweetness on the back end. It has the traditional coffee-esque bite that a good ripe has. Definitely a good morning tea. A medium energy to this one. Not too strong, not too weak. It didn’t give a ton of infusions like some other ripes but gave enough to enjoy. Not a bad tea. More age will make it even better.

Holy f-ing f. This is AMAZING.

So spicy and rich.

I don’t even know how to describe it.

I got this as a bonus sample in my order. It wasn’t something I’d order as I see coffee and run.

However, this blend is hella smooth – the roasty oolong and chicory are great, the milky chocolate smooth it out, and there’s a bit of cherry in there. The majority of the taste is the oolong base. It’s got a bit of coffee aftertaste but it’s light. Very nice blend, I could be convinced to purchase it. Evil are these bonus samples!

Revisiting this one today for my first morning tea. I have very much the same impression that I had the first time around, which is that this is a tasty tea. But if I was doing a blind tasting of it, I probably wouldn’t identify it as an Earl Grey. And I certainly wouldn’t identify it as a creamy Earl Grey.

I might identify it as a fruity floral, in the same general category as one of the Kusmi black tea blends like St. Petersburg. I don’t taste vanilla or cream, I don’t taste bergamot. I taste something vaguely fruity that is more of a red fruit taste than a citrus taste, that starts fruity and ends floral. Almost rose-like.

Torn on the rating. It gets a lot of points for tastiness and smoothness, but it doesn’t taste like what it says it is, i.e., an earl grey creme. I’m going to keep the rating where it is. I really like the tea (points up). But it isn’t what I think of as an Earl Grey creme (points down).

This was the second tea from A Quarter to Tea that I drank. It was my favorite :)
The brandy taste came trough like someone split some alcohol in my third steeping of some DHP. However, I’m not sure if I wanted that low note of silk cream that comes out for the cheesecake. The apple brandy was enough for me with the oolong in the background.
I’ll probably get some more of this and infuse some apple cider with it during January because I do crazy things.

Not-so-morning pseudo-latte with fat-free creamer—and a dash of hyphens and dashes—to try to figure out if I really should take advantage of the last day of double the points. I’m tempted to grab more of this and snag a couple bars of the Cardamom French Toast chocolate if still in store. Hmm. This is so good with or without milk/cream and I have about 30g left. Perhaps I should.

I’m sick, with I’m guessing a cold, for the first time since February 2013. That was an amazing streak, if you ask me! The past how many times were just false alarms or allergies. So this cold is making me feel a little too lazy and unmotivated to go out. But tea is good for dat sickness. Decisions, decisions.

I see on the 52 Teas site that there was apparently a rather recent reblend of this, but that’s not the one I have.

In rereading my original note on this, I mentioned that as it was no longer available I’d have to husband my supply. That was the “old” thinking, the save the best for last thinking I’m trying to get away from.

Yay for teas you really really really like! Such a pleasure to drink them, it almost makes kissing all the frogs to get to them worth it. Though I still have tea coming out of my ears, once I get that under control (if ever), I think I’m ready to settle down and standardize on some things. Which isn’t to say I won’t try new things from time to time, just that I’m no longer so much about trying ALL THE TEA.

Which is why it’s unfortunate this isn’t available all the time. It would definitely be a standard in my flavored black tea cupboard if it was. Ice cream without the calories, what’s not to like?

This has been my tea of the week. I wake up thinking about it and am excited to get to work to make a cup. It has been the perfect addition to my morning. It even received tin status this week.

Equal parts Market Spice Butter Rum + Touch Organic Keemun x (a filter you used to make Marco Polo yesterday and didn’t rinse out very well) = a Bob Ross happy accident that sort of resembles warm root beer. Eh, I took a chance :)

My stomach has been feeling bad since I started taking the oral typhoid vaccine (going to India at the end of next week). I thought a pu’erh might be nice this afternoon so I grabbed this on my way to the office. I’m still leery of my puerh collection after my apartment got sprayed for cockroaches. The smell of bug spray was everywhere. Still it’s a hard decision to throw out what amount to hundreds of dollars of tea.

This sample was in a plastic ziplock bag so at least I think it was better protected than the pu have that’s wrapped in paper. I still haven’t decided what to do! Anyway this is a good shu, I have always liked it. Chocolate and velvety. Hope it does the trick to settle my tummy a bit.

i rather enjoy this tea….to the point where i think i should pick up a bit more before it goes away, but then i can’t help but wonder if i’ll get tired of the taste, since i don’t usually love david’s teas enough to go through 100g+ Still though, i need to try this one as a latte since that’s apparently the way to do it heh