Featured & New Tasting Notes

This should be called “Clove Tea” and nothing but! :)

The flavor is predominately cloves…maybe with a smidgen of cinnamon and orange peels scattered here and there as garnish.

I noticed that there are rose petals and carrots on the ingredient list, but I taste them naught. Perhaps as the tea cools I detect a hint of floral?

But if, at some time, you are craving the taste of cloves (Djarum cigarettes maybe? ;) ) drink this and it’ll do in a pinch!

I love that this company is eco-friendly, focus on health, buy and support local ingredients, and the blender is VERY creative and a nice/gentle soul! :)

As for the tea…this is very pleasant. MOSTLY minty but I can also taste the fennel. In the aftertaste I can also pick up on a hint of lemon balm.

This was a pleasant surprise and made good on it’s word!

So I finally bought the famous Milk Oolong from thepuriTea and I have to say it’s simply amazing. What a tea. I’m so happy my Steepster buddies came through and suggested this tea. I steeped it using the gong fu or flash method as suggested in their preparation tab.
Tea: 2 healthy tea spons
Water: 180
Steeping: Rinsed the tea once. 1st Steep: 1 minute, 2nd Steep 1.5 min and the rest between 1.5-2. Got about 7 steeps out of it.

Great tea. I can’t wait to try more of their teas!

Well, it turns out that I really needed to follow the instructions on the packaging. I’ve been playing around with this tea at my office with minimal results on the “tasty meter”. It turns out that this oolong truly needs the boiling water to make it sing. Previous efforts yielded decent yet average results in the 70-75 range. Kind of bland…not what I expect from Samovar. The tea tasted more like charcoal than “roasted”. The phrase, “Taste the meat, not the heat” comes to mind. No matter how long I steeped, I ended up with blasé charcoal water.

Boiling water made all the difference.

Everything about the tea improved. The smell, the taste, the color of the liquor…all drastically heightened. The liquor is darker, the taste more complex. Now Samovar’s description is making sense. Earthy (I’m guessing this is where the peat notes come in), nutty (especially in the aroma), light barley…but more charcoal-y in my opinion. Much more robust! Now we’re talking! Sometimes it pays to follow the instructions.
But not always. :)

I’ve not had a good night’s sleep in almost a week. Each night I wake at 3 am and obsess about stressful matters at work and then don’t get back to sleep until 5:30 am. Since I must rise for the day at 6 am, this is completely inadequate. As a result of this lack of sleep my husband told me this morning that I look like a particularly ill raccoon.

I pulled this tea from my collection of samples because it looks like it can work caffeinated magic on my sleepy soul before a critical vendor contract meeting this morning. Straight from the envelope it smells strong and bracing. The malt rises to my nose and slaps me around a bit as if to say, “Wake up, Sleepyhead!” Once in water the flowery fragrances of Darjeeling mingle with a musky tea aroma. It smells appealing.

It brews up into a dark burgundy liquor with a nice no-nonsense sharp malty flavor with very little bitter and no astringency. I can feel it filling my veins with liquid power enabling me to negotiate well.

It is not a Dawn substitute since I wouldn’t want it strong musky malt every morning, but it’s great for mornings like today when things must get done and I lack the strength pre-tea to do them. This is truly a sturdy cup of tea.

Backlogging Wednesday

Inspired by reviews read early in the morning, I decided to do my blasphemous cold-brew for this Milk Oolong. The sample pack contains two individual servings like the others, so if it goes awry, I can try again later. The scent of the dried tea is very light, a slight creaminess, a hint of fruit – strawberry maybe, and a toasty oolong aroma.

As I said, blasphemous: full serving of tea, no additives, ¼ cup hot water, rest cold water, infusion time 3 hours before I got to it. The brew is similar in aroma. The taste is creamy and slightly nutty with a fruity and sweet end-note.

This was all in my travel mug, so I actually got the chance to brew up another cup using these leaves. I was surprised that after such a long infusion this morning, I could STILL get flavor out of these leaves. All hot water this time, again, no additives, infusion 5 minutes. This time, I drank the tea hot, it still have the nutty and creamy flavor and the strawberry finishing note, but the sweetness had subsided. So as the tea was cooler and infused longer it got sweeter – NOT more bitter, very nice.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable tea, the next purchase I make from thepuriTea will have to include more of this…

Decided at some point that perhaps my shivering isn’t from chilliness but from caffeine overdose (seems unlikely unless my hand shook while scooping matcha into my smoothie, but better safe than sorry!) so I’m switching over to decaf for a bit. Have a surprising amount of rooibos samples left over from my teafrog order from the beginning of the summer, so may as well make some headway there.

I like love, but I like caramel cream more. Maybe it’s the orange, perhaps I do not like the combination of orange and rooibos as much as I thought I did.

Yes indeed, this tea is somehow some kind of melody. A bit reminding of those chewing-gums which make great bubbles … but the delicious green tea adds a very nice tea-“Spirit” to the musical play. In the end it lacks a bit depth, but still is overall a good tea, which i like especially for watching TV series – did someone hear “soap-opera”? ;)

Wow this is strong tea. You’d almost think I’ve been drinking oolongs all day! ;)

As others have mentioned, it’s a tiny, tiny leaf. Almost worse than rooibos for getting through filters. The first time I brewed it, I went for 3-4 minutes, and it darn near killed me. This time, I went for about a minute and it was just slightly under-brewed. It smells wonderful. I’m not as fond of the taste as other teas, but it’s not bad at all.

I’d like to try this iced. I think this would make an awesome iced tea.

Backlogging. Sunday afternoon.

Three tasty steeps reminded me how much I like this tea. =)

But the more exciting news is why I no longer have to “ration” (tea really good, don’t have much left) this tea. My mom told me last Friday that she’d brought me a large tin of Harney and Sons’ Earl Grey for $2.99 on sale at William and Sonoma (it turned out to be an 8oz tin, which I will be splitting with grandma and her as that is waaay too much tea for just me). She told me she’d brought it about a week and a half ago and didn’t think there would be anymore left but that there was a lot of loose tea on sale. I happened to be going nearby the William and Sonoma on Saturday morning and thought that it wouldn’t hurt to look in case there was some left. Indeed there was! I got two tins of this one, Rishi’s organic Earl Grey, Rishi’s organic Emerald Lily, Harney and Sons’ Tower of London, and Harney and Sons’ Canton Green all for 50-75% off. Quite the exciting tea sale find!

1st steep: 3 min.
2nd steep: 3 min 15 sec.
3rd steep: 3 min 30 sec.

I’ve never had currant before, but between this having a white tea as a base, and all the positive feedback I decided to try this out. The tea smells great, i’m sure it’s the currant smell.

The tea is very light with a hint of the currant. I like how the bai mu dan is the dominant flavor, even though the smell of the currant is so strong. I was worried that it might be a little bitter, since a lot of the teas ive had with berries in them have gotten bitter or sour really fast. But the flavor balance is really so good, i’m already halfway done with my cup! I’m loving it.

This tea’s leaves are perhaps 1/2 inch long at most. The dark forest-green leaves have some lighter tinting in spots that make them very nice to look at. The loose leaf aroma is smooth and deeply vegetal with only slight hints at the bergamot fruit’s citrus.

Once brewed the leaves produce a smooth, even keeled brothy aroma and a clear yellow liquor. With scents of spinach and avacado this lightly vegetal tea smells very promising.

Drinking this brew is a pleasure. The smooth vegetal notes flow over the tongue lightly. It almost reminds me of a light oolong. You catch the oil of bergamot in the finish more than the initial sip. This is a well balanced tea.

I am having a very enjoyable day sipping this oolong! After a quick rinse, I enjoyed many delicious steeps! It went from dark and roasty and almost tarry, to more nut buttery. I expect to get a few more steeps before the day is through!

That being said, I have lowered the rating a little. I prefer the roasty flavors of Silk Road Tea’s Imperial Red or Premium Steap’s Emperor’s Red. I know they are technically a different kind of tea preparation (black vs. oolong) but I am comparing them by the roasty flavor profile.

The Imperial Red and Emperor’s Red are both are smoother, sweeter, and have that tangy flavor I love along with the roasty flavors. I will gladly finish the three or so teaspoons of leaves I have left of the Wuyi Dark Roast (thanks Takogoti!) but will not restock now that I’m familiar with the IR and ER!

I’m not a fan of Yogi Teas in general. Yes, I know tea is healthy, but I drink it for the taste and not the health benefits. Most of the samples I’ve tried of their teas have been, to put it nicely, unpalatable. It’s like you can taste the fact that it’s marketed to be a supplement.

I saw this tea at a holistic foods store in South Carolina. It sounded so good that I had to get and try it, despite my past history with Yogi.

To my surprise, it’s really good. Yes, it still has a slight “supplement” taste, but there’s definitely apple in there, and spices that remind me of Aztec hot chocolate. This is my last bag, sadly. If I see it again, I’ll probably buy more.

105 degrees (the air temp, not the water!). Made up a 24 oz tumbler of this for pouring over ice. Brewed it a bit longer than I normally would, about 4 minutes, to get a little extra dark. Poured hot over ice and immediately strained over fresh ice in a glass. Wow! nice clean and crisp flavor with a bit of astringincy. The tannins reminded me of a heavily oaked Chardonnay…kind of woody, clean and sharp. Tried with both a touch of lemon and plain…not much difference either way. I think this one would take well to making sweet tea.

I have been, not to put too fine a point on it, staggeringly jealous of the people who got to try the 52teas mandarin and strawberry matchas. And now I get to try it myself. First of all, it smells amazing exactly like strawberries and not at all like strawberry flavoring – as we all know, I’m sure, there’s a difference.

For my first try, I decided to just go straight. The matcha dissolved easily and was much darker in color than I’m used. I think someone else mentioned olive? That sounds right. This stuff seems a little more concentrated than my ceremonial DoMatcha – I had to add a bit more water than I normally did before the taste wasn’t overwhelming. The taste itself is, I’d say, mostly strawberry, kind of moderated by the matcha flavor, creating a well-rounded, although largely strawberry dominated, whole. The whole, however, at least in my case is better suited to being mixed with stuff (smoooooothiiiiiiiiieeeeeees) than in being drunk straight. I guess I’ve been spoiled by the amazing smoothness that is DoMatcha. Mind you, I don’t drink very much straight matcha unless I am really sleep deprived in the morning so I don’t really feel like this is a disadvantage. I would probably venture to say that this will be MOAR fun to mix with stuff than the DoMatcha was – if only so that I will no longer feel the guilt of mixing something labeled “ceremonial” with all manner of stuff.

So, from this tasting, I am mostly sensing potential. Delicious smoothie potential! Delicious lemonade potential! Delicious latte potential! So….gonna hold off on rating for the moment, since I want to have a clear idea of the full range of this matcha’s potential, because I think if I rated it now, I’d go lower than I’ll end up at eventually.

A Lovely Concept Tea – I guess you could call it or NovelTEA would be a better term to use here…it gets points for that! The contents scared me a little because of the Hibiscus! BUT…with the rose, strawberry, and vanilla – it seemed to defeat the hibiscus! I’m not saying that the hibiscus still isn’t noticeable – just not as much as I thought it was going to be! I really assumed it was going to be ALL hibiscus! Thankfully there is much more to this tisane!

I tried this HOT – plain. Pretty good…pretty tart but the strawberry is more tart than the hibiscus. COLD is better for this one – plain. I guess COLD or ICED I can appreciate the tartiness a little better.

This says to add sugar and milk to it. I might be daring and add Rice Milk just because I have it on hand but I don’t have any sugar at the moment. Might try and play with it later.

This is alright…a fun tea but since I am not a girlie-girl and am not a Hibiscus fan it won’t make my top percentile. BUT…I’m sure glad I got to try this!!!

As with the other Mighty Leaf teabags I’ve tried out, you can see big leaves and chunks of fruit through the fabric. It’s got a very strong tropical fruit scent, along the lines of pineangouava, if such a fruit existed. After three minutes of steeping time, the liquor is somewhere between green and oolong tea in color, a light brown with a slight hint of green. The tea smells nice, but not nearly as strongly as the dried leaf.

The flavor isn’t as rich as I expected; if I didn’t know it, I’d say there was no tea in it at all, but rather that it was a tisane. It’s got a light, fruity flavor but very little body – I’m getting very little of the green tea base. Might be worth trying again with a slightly longer steep time, but in general I’m underwhelmed.

I have to thank Coftea for the suggestion to try this according to high quality Sencha parameters.

The apple flavor seemed a bit more subdued, but the natural sweetness of the sencha came through in such a good way, that it almost seemed to have a stronger apple flavor than when boiling water is used!
Besides, the sencha base has such a nice flavor anyway, you hardly need to have the apple for it to be enjoyable… though, the mix of the two together is what this tea is all about.

I’m glad Den’s uses high quality sencha as the base; it makes a big difference!

4g tea
about 5 oz water
Zealong’s website suggests about 5g per 5oz, so thats why the low amount of water.

Aroma is strong and nutty and finishes with a lingering sweetness.

The color is a light pale yellow. The leaves were rather large and dark, they have not unfurled completely.

This is a very smooth tea, the flavor does not come across nearly as strong as the aroma. There is no bitterness, no astringency. The subtle flavors may be overwhelmed by the stronger iced Assam i just finished prior. Will have to see if the re-steeps alleviate that and maybe adjust the rating higher.

I grabbed this tea bag on the way out the door this morning, throwing it into my thermos with some just boiled hot water.
An hour later, I could finally sit down and wake up with the cup.

hmmm. This is a strange tea. It definitely smells like licorice, and something else that reminds me of a flea collar. (eep!)

The taste is sweet and somewhat licorice-like. Perhaps there is some cinnamon heat. But otherwise I do not get any of the other flavours.

This is a random teabag in the cupboard and I will not be buying it, but for this one time, I’ll certainly finish the cup!

The liquor brews to a dark brown. New Vithanakanda describes it as a russet color, and after comparing the two, I have to agree. The steeped aroma from the spent leaves and from the liquor itself are remarkably similar to the dry leaf aroma with overtones of honey and only the faintest heat notes.

When drinking this tea, the light astringency sets in and excites the palate. The honeyed overtones remain, but accompanied by the astringency creates an interesting contrast.

This tea is good for two or three steepings with good flavor, but it does fade quickly after the first brew. Each new set of leaves provides a remarkably consistent flavor profile though and I’ve found I can count on this tea to give me the same experience nearly every time.

Got a new shipment of tea last night from the puriTea. Wow – that was a lot for not very much money.

This tea is neat and yummy. I need to play with it a little more to learn more about it, so I’m going to hold off on rating right now, but get dark cocoa from it and wow… very yummy.

Only problem I’ve found so far – the label direction say 5-7 minutes while the on-line say 3-5. That could cause issues.

Seeing the Canton Tea Co special offer today inspired me to have some pu-erh this morning. This time I gave the tuocha a quick rinse in hot water first, which puffs it up and helps it start to give off an aroma – the dry cake is almost odorless.

First steep at 90 seconds, and I’ve got myself a powerful cup! It is dark and soupy and full of earth and dry leaves. A bit of bitterness at the back end, but not unpleasant. It tastes like the tea has challenged me to a wrestling match, just to see what I’ve got. Bring it on, I say!

Second steep at 90 seconds is much mellower; the bitterness has vanished and now the flavor is wonderfully redolent of a walk in the woods in the middle of autumn. Very, very nice.