Featured & New Tasting Notes

Yum! I made a small pot of this, and my espresso drinking husband even requested some: “a big mug of it, please!” So I guess I’ll be making another small pot by the end of this evening. :)

I really do love this tea. I’m a big fan of Genmaicha in general. When I finish up this batch, I’m going to give Samovar’s Ryokucha a try. I’m looking forward to seeing how the two compare.

This is the first [and I believe only] Chinese green tea that Samovar carries [online, anyhow], so when it popped up I was intrigued and wanted to give it a try. I should note at this point that what I got is a sample, and that I steeped it through four cups.

Chinese greens are a strange thing. When I try to peg down what I get from Japanese green, I can see it rather clearly in my head and typically am able to identify flavors with relative ease. When I think about Chinese greens, it’s much more difficult for me because I’ve had such a varying range of flavors when it comes to them [and not all good], so one set group of flavors doesn’t really jump out at me when I think about Chinese greens.

I also don’t drink Chinese greens as much as I do Japanese because the Japanese tend to have more buttery notes, which my palate thanks me for drinking. I like to keep my palate happy lest it garotte me in my sleep.

This tea is helping me nail down some of the differences that I haven’t been able to solidify previously. For one, both greens tend to have vegetal qualities to me, but with Japanese greens it’s more of a spinach-y, even seaweed kind of taste and with the Chinese it’s more akin to the celery end of things. This tea in particular reminds me of both celery and bok choy – somewhere in between those two. And I hadn’t identified it until I read the description, but there’s definitely an asparagus note in there.

Japanese greens [the ones that I consider good, anyhow] are usually rich and deep tasting. There’s some heft in what they have to offer, and the taste is opaque. Chinese greens, even when they are strong in flavor like this one is, tend to be a bit lighter in their flavors, with some lightly salty qualities ebbing in and out of the sweeter tastes.

Lastly, while they both have sweet qualities to them, the Japanese greens have, again, that heaviness around it. Like when you walk outside to just-mowed grass, or if you’ve ever found yourself in a field of freshly cut hay. The smell is strong and sweet and almost gritty. Chinese greens are lighter, and perhaps leaning more towards the floral end of things. Like when you catch a hint of blossoms on a spring breeze. Or maybe smelling your neighbor’s just-mowed lawn a few houses down the street.

As for this tea specifically, it’s strong. The taste, the smell, all of it. At least in the beginning. And in the beginning, it smacks you with that vegetal bok choy/celery, asparagus quality. I found almost no sweetness in my cup until it had cooled substantially. It reminds me of when we went over to a family friend’s house one time and their grandma offered me a soda with Korean characters all over it. Turns out that soda was carbonated celery water or juice or urine and it didn’t really matter because it was HORRIBLY OFFENSIVE to an eight-year-old kid who had been expecting a sugar coma. The first leg of this tea reminded me of that, without the carbonation, so I can’t say that it was an extremely enjoyable experience.

Once it had cooled, and on subsequent infusions, the sweeter components of the tea began to make themselves known a bit more, and my palate decided that it would leave my death for another night. Overall, the tea tasted fresh, with lighter strains of that vegetal taste that shifted into more of a green bean/edamame type flavor and some floral, grassy notes.

So, if you’ve read all of this and those flavors sound appealing to you I think that you’re going to really like this tea. I’m beginning to acknowledge that I am harboring a great love for Japanese greens, so this won’t be hitting my tea shelf in the near future. If you’re looking to try a solid Chinese green tea, though, check this one out.

Tea bag version. Smells really good. Very caramel-y and rich smelling. I poured the water into my cup and let it sit for however long it took me to refill the kettle and take the cup to my desk, then I put the bag in the cooled water. Not sure on the exact temperature so I’m guessing. I did realize though that I probably need to descale my electric kettle here at work. Yuck.

Anyway, decreasing the steep time and temp makes the tea less biting in this. It’s more of an accent on the caramel. It’s not quite caramel chew but close – more like unsweetened caramel chew blended 50/50 with tea. There is a burnt caramel aftertaste that is a little bitter but in a nice way. I could see this easily being a caramel and tea flavored chew.

Overall very enjoyable and supereasy with the whole tea bag thing – it works out very nicely for work (though every time I say ‘tea bag’ I think not so tea-related things… I blame my husband’s old fraternity). I might have to get more Lupicia bagged teas (ah, much better) for a work stash.

ETA: Second steep at 5:00 and it’s pretty light. The taste is still consistent with the first steep but it is much lighter in color and flavor. I was tempted to do it another minute but I’d rather have it light than bitter. But the first steep was really quite nice so I’ve upped the rating a bit. At a lower temp and shorter steep time, this is a tea I’d buy again.

This was my first ever tea from Samovar and I was quite excited to have this experience!

I rinsed the leaves like Samovar suggested, then let the 2nd infusion steep for 3 minutes (Samovar suggested 2-5). The resulting liquid was deep, deep brown. Unfortunately, I smelled the fishiness that some people have talked about. Not so much just fish, but a whole seafood store whose air conditioning broke in the height of summer. And some seaweed.

From experience, I knew that smells can be very deceiving when it comes to tea, so I wasn’t afraid to take a sip.

This one is a bit difficult to describe, as well as being surprisingly tasty and very complex. It is earthy, dirty, but not in bad way at all. It works for this tea. It doesn’t taste sweet right up front, but the aftertaste is lovely and lightly sweet, just enough to make you want to take another sip. And of course, the fishiness isn’t a part of the actual taste, but the seaweed is.

Overall, this is probably the most complex tea I have tasted to date. And I like it.

Oh, and if your immediate thought after hearing that the tea tastes like seaweed is one of revulsion, don’t be turned off! Seaweed is an ingredient of ice cream, after all.

Steep Information:
Amount: 2 heaping scoops (i didn’t want to use all 3 in case i messed it up)
Additives: none
Water: filtered boiling 1 teapot, set to cool a few moments until it was around 195
Steep Time: a little over 3 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: sweet baking coconut
Steeped Tea Smell: baking coconut (not like fresh coconut milk), grassy, vegetal (like some kind of buttered stewed leaves), maybe even a little nutty
Flavor: watery vegetal, again like buttered stewed leaves, very silky smooth mouth feel though
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: coconut, sweet
Liquor: nearly clear, yellow-brown

This was a gift from SoccorMom!

I have never had a Pouchong before. Pouchong – Wikipedia suggested following the directions for Oolong tea.

The tea was very natural tasting, not like two distinct flavors (tea, coconut) being put together, but one flavor that was both tea and coconut.

The vegetal that I dislike in greens was not a negative thing, it was more a nice cooked side dish of greens doused in butter and silky smooth.

The steeped leaves unfurled into beautiful green full leaves! I could swear they were just picked.

I am glad I got to try this as it was good and different, but not a favorite that I would stock up on, but I certainly wouldn’t mind having it again.

I never even knew there was such thing as Pouchong before, and I think I preferr this to green now that I know it exists!

Post-Steep Additives: none

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/02/golden-moon-tea-loose-leaf-pouchong-tea.html

As the leaves are so large and airy, I doubled the amount of tea I used to 2 teaspoons per 8 oz and the resulting cup was liquid honey. The liquor was a deeper gold and the sweetness was much more pronounced. Floral honey and apricots. Tao of Tea recommends 1 -2 teaspoons. I think 2 is the winner. This is how I’ll be brewing this tea in the future.

I was slow to taste this. Firstly, I do love cucumbers and I love melons. They are clearly related in texture and affect: how they do love to return! Green tea is not my favorite. But yesterday I had an impulse to try this. 52teas has never led me astray nor have I ever had one of their teas that was not flavored brilliantly.

And this is another winner! The green tea leaves are large and unfurl beautifully. The melon and cucumber tastes nicely complement each other. On a cold February day, it felt like a perfect antidote to the grey-flannel sky.

The tea is remarkably full-flavored for a green tea and it will have me revisiting my prejudices about green teas. 52teas has done it again. They never stint on flavor.

Hooray! This finally came in the mail yesterday! (I say “finally,” but it really didn’t take long to get here at all, haha. I’ve just been craving this tea since I had the sample that it seemed like a long time. :P) I even get to try out my new steeper mug to brew it! Yaaay!

It’s just as delicious as the last time! :D I could’ve done with less sugar this time, though. :P

Another Traveling Tea Box Tea!!!

Delicious! I taste a molasses-y raisin-y darkly sweet flavor. It’s full bodied enough to drink with food – it is getting along rather famously with my bagel and cream cheese! Excellent with half and half and sugar.

I also have to say that I’ve been reducing my coffee intake and replacing it with black tea, and I LOVE the calm focused energy I feel (rather than the scattered energy I feel after what I’m finding is Too Much Coffee for my system (errr…approx 24 oz – all within the first half hour of waking). I love coffee and plan to keep drinking it, just Not As Much!

I really need to stop discovering so many amazing teas!!! I think April’s tea budget is going straight to Rishi :) I love their whites, greens and their rooibos too!

It’s a beautiful tea with long leaves that you can watch unfurl as you tumble boiling water into your glass. The tea is a wonderful amber-orange color, with a very smooth and clean taste. The recommended brew time is two minutes, but I left the teabag inside while I enjoyed my cup. I normally find this makes black tea too bitter but Bengal Breakfast is simultaneously bold and mild and there is the slightest hint of silky sweetness in the aftertaste. I have been looking for a good AM tea and whereas Teatulia’s Neem Nectar was a little too sharp for me, Bengal Breakfast is perfect.

When I opened the tin to this tea I couldn’t quite place what it was I was smelling but it definitely was the most powerful, in aroma, white tea I’ve come across so far. I’ve recently received my Perfect Steeper from EightCranes.com and my electric teapot from Adagio, so I was eager to try it. I was surprised how the aroma subdued only a little and the taste had what one drinker described as buttery. The first three sips I wasn’t sure but once I added a little of Splenda, I can say I like it. No it’s not at the top but it’s a little bit above average.

I’d decided to use the Perfect Steeper’s steeping time where white teas are steeped for 1-2 mins and it came out great. This will definitely be a regular :)

Bought this with my Tencha-Kuki Houjicha. I felt like I almost had to, haha. In the spirit of spring! We may not have many cherry blossom trees in New Jersey, but somehow my spring experience is incomplete without sakura something. I always found it amusing, though, how Japan has so many sakura-flavored things in the spring. I’ve had sakura-flavored Kit Kats… probably sakura-flavored Pocky, too.

Anyway, back to the tea! The leaves smell really, really nice! A liiiiittle bit like candy, but really it’s more like a light sweetness. This is definitely not what one would consider “cherry flavor,” but then again, “sakura” doesn’t mean “cherry” in the fruit sense. It means “cherry blossom” or “cherry tree.” (“Sakuranbou” is the fruit.) Definitely still smells like sencha underneath, though!

The package says to use a higher temp for a more fruity flavor, and a lower temp for more of a sencha flavor, and I used a bit of a low temp, thus resulting in mostly a sencha flavor. There’s a tiiiny bit of sweetness on the end, though. It’s yummy, but I’m looking forward to trying it with a higher temp, too. :) I want to try to recreate the scent of the leaves.

I should mention, too, that as the tea cools, a bit more of the flavoring comes forward in the aftertaste. It’s like floraly sweet.

I’m discovering that there is a difference between teas made at home and made at work. At home, I have my Zojirushi, usually set on 208° and I rarely reboil or even preheat the pot when making something that requires ‘boiling’ water. At work, I use a little quick boil kettle so things that call for boiling are actually made with boiling. I think I prefer teas typically made with water just under the boiling point. The only possible exception to that is Samovar’s Scarlet Sable – the flavors might pop a bit more made with fully boiling water (though I’ve only brewed it at home once to it is possible that other issues were in play).

For this particular tea, just a hair under boiling seems to make the tea feel a little richer and make it where the tea is an under-note to the chocolate. At a full boil, it seems that the tea flavor is just a hair stronger than the chocolate one and there is a little dryness hanging out at the end of the sip. Still a very delightful, grown-up chocolate drink though. Soon I want to try this with sugar and milk to see if that does delicious, decadent things to it.
3g/8oz

Not going to rate this now. I’m going to sit down with a cup of it next to a cup of GM’s lapsang souchong a little bit later and see which comes out on top, because it has been long enough that I’m debating with myself here. Plus…I’m eating this alongside my lunch of Singapore street noodles, which is obviously a strong enough dish to make this more for my own reference than anything else.

The primary difference between this lapsang souchong and the GM version I have is that this one seems to be far more intense in the ‘ash’ or smoke portion of the flavor than the other. Once the cup was brewed, I was surprised at how light it was in color (keep in mind that I choose to brew Samovar’s blacks at two teaspoons for 16 oz. versus the tablespoon that they recommend, just because this is the amount to which I’ve become accustomed with most teas, and usually the saturation of flavor is more than enough for me). The scent was…strong. Strong enough that the smoke aspect was acrid and slightly sharp, and gave me a creeping sensation of scratchy throat. I won’t say that it was unbearable, but I didn’t find it particularly pleasant. The taste seemed to be more mild than GM’s, and less sweet. I enjoy the mildness, but I miss the sweetness.

The good news?

Adding a little bit of fat free half and half completely eliminated the very ashy, sharp-smoke quality from both the flavor and the smell, and resulted in a more mild, balanced, and extremely pleasant cup of campfire tea. It’s the perfect accompaniment to my noodles, and I’m looking forward to having it when my palate is more sensitive so that I can really explore the nuances, because I feel like the flavor of this one has some unlockable depth.

Stomach is fine now. Head, not so much. A good strong black is needed, to-be-finished pile be damned. Nothing is working properly inside my skull today. I tried checking my dashboard, and JacquelineM’s post about the (by now) infamous and tres yummy raspberry oolong was on top. After that one though, I suddenly found myself realising that I was just scrolling and forgetting to pay attention.

This has a strong wood-y sort of aroma which promises a kick in the rear and a clearing of the mind. After brewing the aroma turns towards the sweeter and more honey-y, but still as strong, and still definitely the same smell as the dry leaves. Just altered a little bit.

I’m suddenly beginning to understand what Auggy means when she says Assam has a cardboard like flavour. There is a strong unmistakeble cardboard flavour here. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just… odd. This is uncomplicated. It’s an Assam that tastes of Assam and that’s really all there is to it. If I had been more in favour of Indian teas over Chinese, I’d probably have rated this better.

Not sure if it really helped my mental state much though. It might be just placebo.

Really messy post, this. I’ll just stop it here and go away and go back to being a sporadic presence for another few days. I’m sure you won’t mind.

Another Traveling Tea Box Tea!

It is a dreary rainy day here, and I thought something berrylicious would perk me up :) Time to try the Raspberry Oolong! I was delighted to see raspberry pieces in the tea – and is that a blueberry too!?!?!?

1st steep – I decided to be conservative (for once in my life!) and try 5 minutes instead of 8, and use 190 deg water and not boiling. Gorgeous fragrance of tea and berries! It was VERY hard to wait for this to steep because it smelled so good. OOoooh I get to pour now!!! sip sip sip WOW! This is SO DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A really great sweet/tart thing going on, but mostly sweet, and 100% natural tasting. The oolong is a winner – no bitterness. I love it!!!

2nd steep, 6 min: Very similar to the first! Still getting luscious berries and the wonderful tea taste. A+++++

I am soooo thrilled that I got to try this, AND that I have just about another teaspoon for another pot! I am going to save it for another dreary day so that I can have a bright spot.

(I love the Traveling Tea Box!!!!!!)

On Saturday I peeped into my mailbox, and there was a Tiger in there!!!!!!! Ricky was kind enough to send me some Series 4 :) I gave the tiger his own little area in a nice basket in the tea cabinet so he wouldn’t hurt Florence and Marco Polo (Thomas Sampson and Jackee Muntz acted all brave but I could see it in their eyes that they were a little scared – what with that blue tongue and pointy teeth!).

He brewed up so dark and strong! Almost like coffee! I was frightened out of my wits! Imagine my surprise when I took a sip, and found out he’s just a pussy cat!!!! A bit feisty (I am definitely getting some pepper!) but purrrrrringly smooth and sweet. I of course used some milk, him being a cat and all. A little sugar too. Very very delicious!!!

2nd Steep – 6 min It’s Grrrrrrrrreat! (Tony the Tiger humor! Please forgive me!)
just a little lighter in body and taste, and no pepper. Thoroughly enjoyable.

The Tiger is now curled up in the basket in my tea cabinet. (There is enough for at least one more pot!!) I saw Florence furiously knitting him a toy, and Marco Polo somehow produced some catnip (most likely from his vast spice travels around the world). I was totally SHOCKED to see Thomas Sampson and Jackee Muntz huddled over the basket talking “wickle puddy tat You so cuuuute awwwwwwwww!” baby talk to the tiger! NOW I’ve seen EVERYTHING!

Probably one of the best teas I’ve ever had! Its good with a lot of tea ( like a heaping tablespoon for 6 oz steeps) and long steeps with low temp (170ish). Tastes like toasted pines needles and chocolate when steeped right!

This is fantastic. I love the Bergamot in Earl Grey teas. The combination of the richeness in the darjeeling leaves and the citrius notes coming from the bergamot creates a well rounded flavor. A friend of mine loves to use a warmer water temperature and then add some soy milk to it, she finds the flavor to die for. If you are looking for a rich and deep flavor, deffinately try this one out.

This is my second try today with this tea and I had much better results thanks to Cofftea.
My first steep was for 15 seconds and then decanted the tea. Then I steeped for 20 seconds and the results I had were much better. The tea still had a grassy hay smell. It almost taste the same way, at least it didn’t taste like muddy water like it did the first time. This tea was slightly sweet on the edges of my tongue. This is not my favorite type of tea, but I just have to try everything. So I need to up my ratings since my first steep didn’t do this tea justice.
2nd steep;
The tea seems to get a little sweeter. It still has the hay notes, but its a little smoother and is easier to drink and enjoy. I steeped for 45 seconds with 195 deg. water.

Okay so I’ve had this sample sitting in my cupboard for a few weeks now and to be honest I was kinda hesitant of it by the smell and me and rooibos can go either way. There’s not really much to say about this tea blend it taste mostly of rooibos and the nose to it smells like apples to me (I know it says orange) but I get apple for some strange reason but mostly just rooibos and I think I just figured it out maybe the orange mixed with the chamomile creates an apple smell hmmm. It’s not bad but it’s not something that I would ever crave. So I will rate it according to the accuracy of Adagio’s description and not by my own feelings (which are subjective and would therefore be very low)

Tea bag. Dry, it smells peachy and juicy with a little extra something that is coming from the oolong. Yeah, I know Lupicia says to use boiling water, but I can’t. So I didn’t. Brewed up, the peachy and the floral of the oolong seem more evenly balance with perhaps the floral being a little weightier. Taste-wise, this strikes me more as yellow peach than white. A little bolder in peachy taste. Very yummy peach. Matches well with the floral taste of the oolong to make something that tastes like it came right off the tree in the middle of summer. Mmm.
2.2g/6oz

This is the second in the Introduction to Oolongs sampler and an interesting comparison to the Formosa Fine Grade. The dry leaves are very different in color and texture. Much bigger and formed into curls, whereas the Fine Grade ones are much smaller and less formed. They smell less toasty than the Fine Grade; actually the smell reminds me of champagne. The liquor, too is reminiscent of champagne; a lighter, yellowy-amber than that of the Fine Grade with a more delicate aroma that is warm and slightly fruity. The taste is more delicate, too, and I have a feeling there is a lot more to be discovered here on subsequent tastings. The flavor is pleasant and mild, and as noted by others, nutty. The leaves uncurl during steeping until they are surprisingly long and pretty. I can see myself spending quite a bit of time with this one.