Featured & New Tasting Notes

This was only a good tea. Wanted to try it simply because of a licorice craving. The licorice flavor was subdued by the black tea and needed longer steeping to bring it out. Of course, by then, the tea was too bitter.

Need to experiment with steeping times. At 2:30 minutes the licorice taste was too week. At 3:30 minutes it was stronger, but often black tea starts to get bitter right around then.

Not the best licorice tea out there – doesn’t really satisfy the craving for it. Otherwise, it is an ordinary tea. It seemed to taste better with a good chocolate bar than it did with a cookie. Licorice is too refined a taste to accompany a cookie.

This is pretty true to it’s description. It’s smells like plum and cinnamon…plain and simple. It brews quickly. You can primarily taste the black tea with cinnamon first and then plum and it ends with cinnamon too. It’s not overly cinnamon but the cinnamon taste does seem to morph as you sip. And the cinnamon isn’t a candy-like cinnamon it’s a true cinnamon spice flavor but the plum cuts it down to size and it blends well. This tea surprised me with it’s taste. Fairly bold for a cheap bagged tea.

Yummm. This is the perfect dessert tea. The sweet/tartness of the strawberry with the richness of the chocolate is amazing. I can get two good steepings out of it. It’s a new favorite I’ve had 4 cups in the last 24 hours.

Even though this isn’t an option, I typically steep this tea at 140 degrees for about 2 minutes. I find this tea to be a great example of a fukamushi sencha, and I typically enjoy everything that I buy from yuuki-cha

Chris and I share a pot of Blood Orange Black this morning.

I’ve had this tea for awhile and did not like it. I had been trying to drink through it so not to waste tea because it wasn’t awful. The blood orange had just been coming out so bitter and astringent that I had been picking the pieces of orange peel out. I was left was an okay orange-y black tea.

Since Steepster, I’ve been experimenting more with tea steeping times, water temperature – which dramatically changed my liking for different types of teas, and amount of tea used. I tried brewing the Blood Orange Black at only 3 minutes instead of 5 – I used to think I liked really “strong”, longer brewed tea before the above experimentation – and it was like drinking a different tea. It’s still not a favorite but it’s immensely more drinkable and one of the few blacks that remains in my tea cabinet. I have been hinting to my husband that I’d like the Damn Fine Tea duo that has gotten some rave postings here for our “dating” anniversary on the 17th.

Cold, wet, rainy, and mopey….feeling low enough I really could’ve used a cup of coffee (sorry, sacrilege!) but a cup buzzes me clear to the ceiling these days. So this is a fair substitute with a little half-and-half. The chicory has a nice chocolately sort of feel.

Good lord this is delicious! No bitterness for miles.
Uh oh, dangerous that I’ve discovered it now _ watch out, office tea supply.

Well, this tea is especially exquisite, a first-place competition grade tea. Definitely one of, if not the finest green tea I’ve experienced. While I’m not too much of a green tea enthusiast, as my tastes lay more in the realm of the broad boldness of Oolongs rather than the more piquant flavor of its less oxidized cousin, there’s nothing I don’t adore about this tea. A very full flavor, while remaining light – airy rather than watery, if you get what I’m saying. Not astringent, very mellow, and… well, I have little more to say. It’s one of those teas you don’t just enjoy, you completely embrace it, and it affects you with tea’s intoxication. Simply, Elegance (with the capital ‘E’) in a cup.

Surprisingly good, mostly Jasmine with just a hint of orange. Loosely rolled green tea in a pyramid bag.

Sweet and nutty and a little salty. I’m really enjoying this tea. It’s got a lot of depth to the flavor. Lots of things going on in a sip, but not so much that I feel bludgeoned with contrasting tastes. It goes from an initial sweet grass/seaweed taste into a sweet/tart nutty then into a slight salty for the finish.

Last time DH only smelled the tea. This time, I made him his own cup. He gives it 4 out of 5 stars, which is pretty good for him… he usually gives everything a 3.

Steeped 3 minutes…not enough…so I am waiting another 2 minutes…this Primula Bloom looked different prior to blooming compared to the others I have tried from them so far. This one was more narrow and a tad longer prior to the bloom. OK…after it finally bloomed I must say it is one of the most wonderful blooms I have seen so far!!! No scent, however. The color is that of a dark green looking or a light oolong looking color. The taste is much more pleasant than the Floral Passion…Thank God! It’s floral but a little sweet for a nice blend of the two. It’s on the lighter side and NOT Bitter. I like it eventho it’s not very strong.

Not bad, but it seems like it has too much going on. Here are the ingredients: red clover, peppermint, green tea, eleuthero, alfalfa, cranberry flavor, nettle leaf, and lemon flavor. The peppermint is overpowers just about everything else.

This smells citrus and peppermint to my nose. I steeped I’t for a few minutes. This taste like citrus more then anything with some peppermint. Good.

I read that you should take this with sugar, I did and I regretted it. I suppose I must add too much or my palette just doesn’t agree with it, but so far I’ve never enjoyed sweetened tea. Regardless, this is a powerful lavender. The smell is unbelievable and the taste lingers around in your mouth well after your last sip.

Backlogging this – I decided to try steeping this at a gentler temperature, more like a white tea,as the base is white tea, green tea and herbals. It really did not provide a satisfactory steep. The same tea that tasted delicate and flowery when brewed at boiling temperature tasted weak and watery when brewed at lower temperature.

Ok, take two.

Smell of leaves dry…amazing.
Smell of leaves wet…still pretty fantastic.
The tea steeps up all nice and dark…still smellin’ fab.

The taste is just not there! I can taste the angel food cake and bavarian cream flavors just fine…but that’s it. NO STRAWBERRY! And I see big ole hunks of strawberry floating around! If this tea was labled as “White Angel Food Cake” it would be spot on and I would be fairly impressed. Also, this go round, I steeped the heck out of it. Like 10+ minutes while I walked around the office making sure everyone knew it was Friday. Which it is. Which means that I will have a box full of tea at the foot of my door when I get home from work. Which is SWEET!

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend full of tasty teas!

I normally make my tea right before I leave for work, but this morning DH had to leave early, so I did it right after getting out of bed. Not the best plan since I was basically still asleep, just ambulatory.

The choice of this tea today was influenced by 2 things: 1) I didn’t have it yesterday and 2) it was on top of the front stack of tea. Yes, I have very demanding prerequisites for my tea first thing in the morning.

I did manage to put the right amount of leaf in (though it was a close thing – forgot I had to measure and just started spooning leaves into the pot – it took a bit for my brain to kick in this morning) and remembering that this tea tastes lighter than the dry leaves smell like it should, I added just a tiny bit of sugar and milk (though the thought process of ‘lighter = more or less milk?’ took quite a while).

So even though I was still asleep, I did manage to brew this tea without any big screw ups. Yet this tea is still very light. Or rather, the lemon flavor of it is. There’s a lemon scent to it (thankfully not like a cleaning product lemon but a lemonade lemon) but just a hint of the flavor, mostly at the tail. It’s a soft tea, not very bold. Sort of plain if not for the light lemon flavor which, since it is so light, really just adds a bit of a fresh taste to the tea. Not a lot of depth of flavor (though more dimension than some flavored teas – Adagio’s Blackberry, I’m looking at you).

I’m not in love with this tea but I do enjoy it. I think I would enjoy it more if the dry leaves smelled differently – it’s SO strong! The superlemon scent hits me as soon as I open the tin so I end up anticipating that scent to translate to flavor in the liquor. But it doesn’t. Which is probably a good thing but then the light flavor become almost confusing. Nice. But confusing.

After all these experiments with questionable tea bags (I said three out of five, earlier but it’s really just four) I still have one left, the supposedly plain white (Ha!) but I’m going to save that for later. I’m in bad need of some proper tea. One that I can drink more than a cup of.

So I turn to this new discovery of mine. Yes. It’s still awesome.

A surprisingly light and fruity tea. No hint of bitterness to the cup.

Opened the package and it smelled wonderful! The spices (and cinnamon) are just right, not overpowering. Slightly sweetened, with milk, this is a treat for a rainy day.

This has black tea with carmel pieces. You can see the carmel pieces in the black tea. I steeped I’t up. I smell the black tea and a buttery carmel note. This tastes like a nice black tea with some buttery carmel. This I’s pretty good.

Opened a new bag today and found it (based on the first sampling of it) to be disappointing. If I were blindfolded I’d say it wasn’t the same tea. I’m not sure what happened but it wasn’t a great taste, the maltiness I’m used to in this tea wasn’t there. I’ll hope for better results next steeping.

MY 1st EXPERIENCE W/ MATCHA! I had this at a new cafe my mom and I tried for dinner last nite… AMAZING! light and a touch grassy topped w/ a light froth that did not collapse when my lips touched it much like cappuccino or beer foam does. There was a little bit of delicious grassy sludge as I lovingly called it that I washed down w/ just an extra spash of water. Lovely. My new addiction.

My first oolong, and I have to say, it was quite delicious. I had this in the teabag format. The flavors were very soothing, extremely smooth, and the mouthfeel was not astringent at all. It’s a quiet, mild cup of tea, one that I could see myself drinking on a somewhat regular schedule. Was it anything to rave about and call the relatives about? No. But there were some complexities that I can’t even begin to describe (as a newbie tea-drinker), and it intrigued me. I’ll be having another cup of this soon!