Featured & New Tasting Notes

I must say that I’m feeling a lot better this morning. I felt a lot better yesterday afternoon, actually. I obviously can’t get into too much detail, but suffice it to say that the entire world seems like such a different place when you are disabled and actually have the tools to do your work accessibly. i was in a right panic yesterday morning, and was on the verge of a most unsightly meltdown (those are necessary sometimes, actually), but managed to resolve the situation without feeling like running away to some sort of Victorian novel fantasy island. But when isn’t that in the works? haha.

I’d read such amazing reviews on this tea, and charlotte0 was so thoughtful to include it in the package she sent me. I have to admit I was a bit hesitant, simply because I think I largely fall into the “if i want to be drinking chocolate, I’ll have hot chocolate with all the fixings!” category. But I also know that MF knows what they’re doing, so I took a chance. Brewed it up for about four minutes, threw in some milk and sugar, and set to work enjoying it. And my my, this is a most delicious cup of tea. The chocolate blends so perfectly with the base. By that I mean that you know how with some teas, you’re like “oh hello flavour. Oh, hello there, base!”? but with this, I knew I was drinking a chocolate flavoured tea, but the base was just there, all unobtrusive and coy, and not being like “ooooh! guess what base I am! guess guess! where am I from? what do I do? who do I know??!! come on! heelloooooo!!”. And the chocolate tasted as though it was of the highest quality and I felt quite spoiled indeed.

Thank you, charlotte 0. This is going straight on my shopping list for my eventual mf haul!

oh bother. It’s official. these are finally finished up, out of my cupboard, possibly never to be seen again. sad. but happy. but sad. Seriously though. Favourite pearls ever. there’s just something deliciously wonderful about how malty and rich and yummy they are. If garett ever finds some again, they will be insta-buy. even if they won’t be exactly the same.

edit: also drinking this so early in the morning means i can resteep it aaaallll day! oh happy day!

I took a sip of my matcha milk today and got the caramel, as I expected I would, but was also surprised to get a hint of saltiness that reminded me of the caramel popcorn flavor. I actually had to do a double-take to make sure I grabbed the right package. However, after confirming it was just plain caramel and being confused for a moment, I realized I had just had peanut butter and the saltiness was remnants of that. Nonetheless, it made for a pretty tasty treat.

The first few sips: Hmm. This is ok . Dark. Rich. It’s decent.

The next few minutes: OMG. Something smells amazing. It’s like fresh baking. And like fancy whiskey and other dark earthy things. Tobacco. Gun oil.

After: It’s the tea? Oh wow. Now that it’s cooled I taste far more cinnamon and puerh. The mouthfeel does suggest a warm pastry. Excellent.

Will have to re-steep this one as well. Today may be a day of many resteeps and less variety but that’s ok. I want to experience this tea completely.

ETA: So far I love Lupicia. What don’t I love? Their 50g bags aren’t resealable. Also, they don’t ship to Canada and when I emailed to ask if they had any plans to change their international policies I got nothing. Nothing but heartbreak.

I really, really appreciate the free monthly samples that Red Leaf Tea is offering. It’s giving me a chance to try things I might have otherwise put off or ignored completely.

Hmmm, this was delicious but it tasted very similar to the caramel matcha. It was creamier and maybe even a little sweeter, but a bit less buttery. It definitely had that burnt sugar caramel/toffee note going on, though. I didn’t really pick up any chocolate like others are mentioning, but with the sweetened vanilla almond milk I tried with it, I definitely got a delicious nutty toffee flavor.

While I really enjoyed this one, I think the caramel inches it out as the better dessert matcha for me (And the acai one is still my favorite overall).

For a variety of reasons (some of which make sense and some of which don’t), the past few days have been really difficult for me. When Stacy said they were pulling this tea, my immediate reaction was to panic and horde what I have. But when deciding what to have with breakfast this morning, I realized that the only tea that could stand a chance at helping me out was this one. And it was just as lovely as it’s always been: just as full of innocence and promises and hope and comfort. I can’t tell you how distraught I am over the pulling of this tea. I even contacted naivetea, who also make a rose violet calendula oolong, but they, too, have pulled it.

Have a good day, guys. Things have to get better eventually, I tell myself.

So, this morning, Casey, my boyfriend of 10 months (8 months of which we were cohabitating) decided to break up with me. We weren’t even fighting. I asked him how he was doing this morning and his answer was (to put it only slightly more succinctly than he did): “not good”. And then he packed a bag. Life is weird sometimes. It was literally only yesterday afternoon that I booked us tickets to visit my father in New York on Easter weekend. I was encouraging him to stay at home because the tickets are expensive, he has limited PTO at his new job, and the trip isn’t exactly a vacation. But he told me that he wanted to go because he wouldn’t be able to sleep without me. He referenced a night recently when I stayed up all night working in our living room and he told me that he missed me in our bed and that really wanted to be on couch next to me all night…And less than 24 hours later, he spoke the words that amounted to he never wants to sleep next to me again.

I’ve been through enough in my life to know that I am okay being alone…But I loved and trusted this person more than anyone else. I always knew that, emotionally speaking, he wasn’t getting as much out of the relationship. He had a very hard time opening up and putting his feelings into words, but I thought that pushing him would only make things worse, and that it would get easier for him with time…But now our time is up.

Tea was fine.

“I invoke the *Principle of 45/15” Ms Theresa yelled at the top of her lungs as we were finishing up with breakfast.
“So what the hell does THAT mean”, you ask.
The Principle of 45/15 means that we’re actually working today: 45 min of actual work, 15 minute break. Then another 45/15, etc.
So far all the house plants are watered, & one of them was ‘groomed’ a little. The kitchen is clean, the sunroom & kitchen are swept & mopped. The blankets from my bed are being washed.
We’ve been listening to Bach all the while, as I find his music to be energizing, & drinking this wonderful tea during my breaks. little terri got a little over-exuberant, as she often does, & put a lot of leaf in our teeny tiny 4 oz teapot, so even with very short steepings this has been a potent brew!

little terri is also trying an experiment today: she filled the 1 Qt crockpot with vanilla almond milk & added Chai. We’ll check it during out next break to see if it’s ready. We’re thinking a long steep in the crock on low might turn out to be an awesome thing.
Hopefully it won’t be an epic fail….

WOOOO!!! I got the shared tea orders from VariaTEA today! Butiki (which needs to be shipped off to Amarial tomorrow), and Cornelia Bean. And some samples. I see what you did there, VariaTEA. :)

So this is the first one I’m trying. Next up will be a white chocolate raspberry and cream matcha latte, I think. Mmm…

Right. Back to the tea I’m with now. This is definitely an assam. I sniffed it dry and brewed, and it’s very… assam-y. Yeah. There is some vanilla in it, both a hint of alcohol-based flavouring and the bean. Takes milk well.

So yeah. This is pretty good. I don’t really think it’s spectacular, but it’s tasty and nice and strong. Not too fussy of a base, and fairly mild flavouring. It’s mostly enough vanilla to take the edge off and supplement the flavours of the base. Makes the tea a little creamier.

Well, I made this in my timolino for work – but then when I got home I fell asleep for a straight seven hours (just like I did yesterday), so when I cracked the timolino open to try this highly raved about tea, it was stone cold…

I’m not really getting a ton of flavour from this now that it’s cold; maybe some cinnamon in the mid sip, and a little more of a baked bread kind of vibe in the aftertaste. It’s really disappointing, actually – I feel like I’m totally missing out on something that’s supposed to be so good!

I have enough leaf left from the sample that Courtney gave me to give this one more try tomorrow; fingers crossed I don’t fuck it up!

For now – leaving this ratingless…

Sipdown!! (160)

I was not planning on drinking the whole sample in one shot but my roommate and friend chose the tea and this is the one they went for. Sipping on it now, I am sad to see it go. It has a nice fruitiness that borders on the line of caramel (I know that doesn’t exactly make sense but go with me on this). It is also not a particularly dense tea while still maintaining to be flavorful. Consequently, this is DEFINITELY something I will be restocking when I do (eventually) place a RiverTea order. Thank you Roswell Strange for introducing me to this amazing tea and sharing samples so I didn’t have to go without it.

Keychange sent this one my way the other day and i’ve been saving it. It was nice to have this back in my cupboard as i thoroughly enjoy this one. I added a splash of maple syrup to this one to give it just a little more of a kick and it was fantastic…brought out even more of the pecan flavouring for a happy cup of tea while watching a few shows and waiting for my other half to get home from work. :)

Recently, I bought 50g of this which I’m splitting 50/50 with VariaTEA – I hadn’t tried it before, but she said I’d like it so I took the plunge since it was pretty affordable, and I’m not going to be stuck with a ton if I don’t.

At Tea Desire, in store, when you smell the teas they use this elaborate fan set up to waft the smell towards you (instead of smelling directly like you can at a DAVIDsTEA) – because of this, the scents usually aren’t so strong – so when I get an overwhelming smell of one of the teas, that’s typically a good indicator for me. This was one of those blends that just smelled intensely good; pure walnuts! And you’d hope so, right? The dry leaf is LITTERED with giant, whole walnut halves.

Now that it’s steeped up; it smells really nice – definitely walnut, maybe kind of “maple” like, and with aspects of something chocolatey. Even though none of those things are inherently related to it, I’m kind of reminded of Christmas. Hmmm…

Now that I’m drinking it; it is really good! VariaTEA knows my tastes so well; this really does perfectly capture the flavour of walnuts. Though is there really no chocolate in this? It’s not in the ingredients list, but man is it in the flavour. How peculiar. It almost reminds me of Tea Desire’s Oreo Cookie – but I think this is better. Also, echoing my ingredient confusion; there’s apple in this!? Totally doesn’t come through in the taste. Oh well; the walnut shines marvelously, and that’s really all that matters, right?

This is much better than the Walnut Orange I have from Tea Desire (which is what I was hoping); that blends captures the flavour of Walnut brilliantly too, but the orange completely and utterly detracts from it.

And now, I think I’m going to have a Vince Vaughn “Mini Marathon” and watch The Internship and Delivery Man – I’ve been dying to see them both for ages now.

Sipdown no. 144 of the year 2014.

I would have liked to hold onto this one a bit longer since T&H doesn’t offer it anymore and it’s one of the better decafs I’ve had, but I have to be ruthless where sipdowns are concerned or I’ll lose my momentum. ;-) I’ve come dangerously close to losing it a couple of times recently and I know it’s going to be a fight to keep going.

The rest of this isn’t about tea, so skip if you’re not interested in my philosophizing for a bit.

Overthem00n and I were talking the other day about “serial obsessions.” Those things certain personality types, such as mine, throw themselves into for periods of time then max out on for a while and move to the next thing. Mine seem to rotate though they don’t follow any particular rotation order. Fiction writing. Voracious reading. Tea. Computer games. Exercising obsessively (i.e., every day without fail even if it means I do it at midnight). Involvement in various types of social media. (There are also the one-offs that I’ve been obsessive about but don’t seem to be in the rotation, like knitting and other needlework and gardening.) I really should google this and see if anything has been written about it.

Anna’s recent post about not drinking tea because then she’d have to write a note about it reminded me of how my serial obsessions tend to peter out and then I find myself going on to the next thing. The feel-good pay off isn’t as present as a feeling of obligation, drudgery or frustration. The last time I fell off the Steepster bandwagon for an extended period, it was because of this exact feeling. More work than fun. It happens to me with writing usually after a much longer period of time, but it’s the same principle. It stops being fun and starts being “work.” (It’s always work, but usually it’s fun.) But the problem is that if I stop for a long time, then I never know what would have happened if I kept pushing. Like what if I quit each time, right when it’s getting hard—but it’s getting hard not because of why I think it’s getting hard, I.e., the usual writer frustration and self-doubt, but because I’m about to break through to a new personal best of sorts? What if I’m keeping myself from continuing to improve because I quit when it gets hard?

So this last time it happened, as an experiment, I decided to make myself push through. Keep going to my class, keep doing the exercises each week even if I wrote nothing else. Keep doing that until the enthusiasm returned, because it always does. It’s just that in the past, I’d stop doing it for years at a time until the enthusiasm returned. Okay, this last time I went on hiatus I had a good excuse, two kids born within 21 months of each other and a full time job. But when I think about all the books I read about parenting small children, I recognize that my activities during that period were rather part of the obsession continuum as well. Yeah, I made my own organic baby food. That sort of thing. I’d do it again, too, but in its way, it was part of the same channeling of passion in a particular way.

And I think it’s working. I can feel the enthusiasm for fiction writing coming back. There have been a few external serendipitous things that have worked to push me back toward the enthusiasm, but mostly it’s just time, I think. So I think I’m learning to turn my serial obsessions into something less serial and less obsession-like.

(Now watch me disappear from Steepster for months after saying this. LOL. No, really, I’m not feeling that Steepster is work right now. I’m feeling more that my body is rebelling against too much tea-drinking for some reason. Burn out is another byproduct of obsession, so I intend to push through on this, too, and just drink as much tea as feels right, and write about it if I have something to say. How normal that sounds!)

a number of years back there was a movie made called ‘being john malkovich’. i never watched it… i had no inclination. while i think he’s had the odd funny role i have no desire to imagine being him. in fact, the vast majority of famous people i would deliberately NOT MEET…. how could they meet up to the standard of their acting/singing/writing?

HOWEVER.

i would watch a movie about being stacy lim. what is it like to be her? i wonder. where some people have closets of hats and shoes, i imagine her wandering through a surrounding apothecary of teas….‘what shall i drink today?’ she wanders to the market in her neighborhood and sees a butterfly fluttering over a stand of fresh pineapples….. ‘i can capture that motion…’ she thinks and meanders away. a christmas gift of fudge, baked bananas and tapioca pudding…. scotch and a fine cigar….. everything is a challenge in the world of stacy lim. that’s a movie i would like to see =0)

i brought this tea to a coffee house for my team mates to try with me…. after giving away that amazing tea basket, they’d never tried butiki and this was a new one for me too. my africa calling team mates were wowed (to say the least) although the coffee house staff were underwhelmed that i’d brought my own anything, lol.

they gave me hot water and a criminal tea pot that spilled more tea than it poured…. but still, the tea….. oh the tea! a smooth green. no nuttiness, just a cool refreshing base. i would concur with the word buttery. the grapefruit astounds. the essence of peel, of fruit, even of pith— but with no bitterness.

at this point my imagination diverges; does stacy coax the flavour gently from pink grapefruit by whispering sweet nothings? or does she crush them and bludgeon them into doing her bidding without remorse? muahahahahaha?

stacy… remember i told you your teas turn me into a ham? yeah, well—

Back to the old stand-by this morning. I woke up this morning feeling really rested for the first time in recent memory. I also had an incredibly bizarre dream, which probably explains while I feel rested. I must have had some decent REM sleep last night.

Alas, I am now off my daily sipdown count again as I logged nothing yesterday. I only had one cup of tea yesterday and (horrors) some Diet Coke, which may also explain why I slept well. But I doubt this has much to do with it.

Not to worry, though, as I have two lined up for today, if I can stay awake long enough to do the decaf one tonight.

Today this is really nice to wake up to. Nice and brisk, and very flavorful. I appreciate it more when I don’t drink it daily. I find that’s true of some teas, whereas with other’s it’s the opposite, almost like you have to build up to a certain critical mass before your enjoyment of it peaks. I wonder why that is.

farewell banana tea! i will miss you! I had this one with caramel from tea G….and let me tell you…soo good! i didn’t have enough of this for a sil sized cup so i figured, why not add caramel for a caramel chocolate banana tea! To be honest, the chocolate is muted, so it was mostly a caramel banana….but still soo good. I’ll be getting more of this in future! :)

Sometimes I wonder how much our moods go into the experience of a tea tasting… for example, this morning I am grumpy. I know my apartment is a big mess but I haven’t been up to giving it a thorough cleaning since I broke my arm and that was back in February! I keep thinking I should hire some help but I don’t know if I should do that when I’m not working. The last estimate I got was $100 for one session.

Anyway grumpiness aside I was looking forward to trying this coconut oolong. I was just looking at my Steepter notes and evidently I tried this at the David’s Tea in Victoria last summer, I just don’t remember too much about it. I’ve had a few coconut oolongs in the past including Golden Moon’s and Rishi’s versions and I liked them both very much. This coconut oolong definitely tastes like coconut, but I also think the flavor is overwhelmingly artificial and obscures the natural flavor of the oolong underneath. I will definitely need to try this again soon but it would have been nice if I was getting any of the buttery notes I feel like I should be getting from the oolong itself. Maybe a shorter steeping time would help too. Or a cold brew? I’m already wondering how this would taste in a smoothie – lmao

I slept really well last night, but woke up with a resounding headache. Now that I’ve had my first cup of tea though, it isn’t nearly as bad. For some reason, I’d been craving the concept of this tea for the last few days, so dug this out of the suitcase of tea sil very generously sent me.

This tea is delicious. I don’t even know that I’d necessarily identify it as a chocolate orange tea, although that might be because I put in a bit too much sugar for the orange to really taste orangey, but it was still a creamy, slightly citrusy and lightly chocolate cup. I typically don’t like chocolate in tea because I find it to taste obnoxious, but that isn’t the case here. As usual, the flavouring was subtle but also creamy and delicious, and I love the thickness of the assam base. Way to go!

I have enough left for another small cup, and will be happy to polish that off. Thanks again, sil!

I have a box of this thanks to Angrboda, who at one point last year, had begged anyone with access to it, to send her some. I bought up what was in stock at a store down the street (five boxes), and sent her four, plus a handful of samples. While looking for Tension Tamer tonight, I found this (surprise!) and decided to crack it open and try it.

Wowzie wowza, no sweetener needed, this is one strong, sweet, vanilla/herbal tea. I grew up on plain Sleepytime, and loved it… this is quite different, yet still good. I taste more chamomile than in the regular blend, some sort of maybe berry leaf (I want to say blackberry, that’s what it’s reminding me of) and then kaPOW vanilla. It’s too sweet now because I added a touch of liquid stevia, however the smell is divine…

From the queue

A white tea that should be steeped with boiling water? WHAT????!?!? O.o Courtney shared this with me and these are not her instructions. These are Butiki’s instructions. There seem to be a general concensus on Steepster that Stacey knows what she’s doing, so… okay, I steeped it in boiling water, although it was very nearly physically painful to do so. It was certainly mentally painful. It goes against everything I’ve ever learned about tea and it just felt so wrong! Not wrong as in ‘oh dear, I shouldn’t do this’ but wrong as in ‘SELF! STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! STAAAAHP!!!’ In spite of so many people following these intructions with great success I’m still very worried that I’m about to have a very big cup of bitterness.

It smells like a black tea and it has the colour of a black tea. How certain are we that this is actually really white? I don’t even understand the mechanisms behind this. How can a white tea behave like a black?

The aroma is mild, but it still smells like a black tea. A very high-grown one like a high-grown Ceylon, maybe. Not Darjeeling, I don’t think, it’s not grassy enough for that, but it’s got that floral touch. It’s also remarkably fruity. Something along the lines of apricots, I think. Quite sweet. OOOH! You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of one of those oolongs with leafhoppers! Has this one had leafhoppers?

Okay, the flavour. Still not convinced that this is going to be a pleasant experience, I have to say.

It’s not bitter. HOW IS THIS NOT BITTER??? O.o I don’t get this tea. I simply do not understand one iota of it. Why is it behaving like this?

It’s actually quite sweet. Fruity-sweet again, like the aroma, bringing me back to thoughts of apricots. It’s got a fair bit of a floral touch as well, and I’m not too keen on that, but for me it’s mostly about the apricots with this tea. As it cools the floral tones get stronger, though, and I like it less.

It doesn’t taste like any white tea I’ve ever had before. If I was served a cup of this without being told what it was, I’d have guessed a high-grown Ceylon with natural notes of stone fruits (or possibly very lightly flavoured). I certainly wouldn’t have belived it was a white tea. Conundrum in a cup.

Not that I expected any differently, but this is a really nice chocolate orange tea.

The orange flavor is more on the orange rind side of things, but not in a bad way. It’s a bittersweet candied type flavor, and makes the whole cup remind me of our local chocolatier’s version of chocolate covered oranges (candied orange rind, and dark chocolate. Mmmmmmm!)

The chocolate flavor is more of a milk chocolate, and the nuttiness from the Zhen Qu adds a depth to it I wasn’t initally expecting. I didn’t pick up much from the marshmallow on this cup, other than a bit of fluffy sweetness kind of just chilling there and keeping me from even coming close to wanting to sweeten my cup.

Note that this tea is for: "For feeling stately, wearing top-hats, and building empires.”

Well, it’s Friday and I plan to be productive. Yep. Any minute now I’ll log off Steepster and be productive. Yep…

Sooon.

(This is better than that time I click on tumblr instead of twitter and lost an hour though)

This is a great tea. So smooth. Bold but not sour/astringent. I’m looking forward to this tin! Also, I should compare it with my Kenyan EG and Mount Grey from Andrews & Dunham. Yes… Eventually EG sipdown – this should happen.

See, I can be productive?

I have no idea what happened this morning, but this is in the running for the most perfect cup of tea ever made. It was oozing, overflowing, positively dripping with caramel vanilla goodness, and had a thick, buttery quality underlying the whole composition that made me want to snap my tongue greedily against the roof of my mouth. I also steeped for only three minutes and not four, and perhaps that’s where the magic happened? I should have known better than to doubt Stacy’s steeping instructions.

A computer guru is coming to try and remedy my computer problems this morning, and you know what else I’m going to get him to do? tell me who this recent tea box is from and help me identify each tea! someone sent me a box! I’ll find out who it is soon enough, but just in case it was you, and you used frilly-edged paper for labels, identify yourself at once! :)