A Dark Kitchen Sink!

Another share from White Antlers :)

Smells kind of fishy from the shou when brewing but that does not come through at all in taste. Kind of thin but lots of sweet notes. I mostly get caramel-honey mixed with redfruit syrup and liquid vanilla marshmallow cake if that’s possible. Some wood, cocoa and pecan in the mix. A gentle bite in the throat. Plenty flavorful when cold but does turn a little toward bitter earth.

121/365

Figured it was about time I tried this one, since it’s been sitting in my cupboard for literally ages. I loved LP’s French Toast Dian Hong, so I’m pleased to see a return of the vanilla from that blend. It’s deliciously creamy here, and more prominent than I expected. I’d go so far as to say that it’s the main flavour – sweet, heady vanilla. There’s also a fair hit of caramel, and a touch of pecan – and both of those remind me of Swann’s Way, which I finished up recently. Thankfully, the mixed base isn’t as conflicting as I feared it might be. The black sunmoon lake is most noticable to my tastes, but there’s a light, sweet, roastiness from the oolong and a mild earthiness from the pu’erh.

If this is what you get when you mix a few teas together, then it’s something that ought to be tried more often! I can pick out the flavours and characteristics of the original blends, but I think only because I’ve tried them. Overall, it’s more cohesive than I expected – and delicious!

Another hot tea this evening.

A nice base with delicious (but subtle) undertones of dates, candied pecans, honey, something floral in the base is detectable. The sweetness is very subtle, but it is there for the tasting. I was hoping the flavours would be a little bit more noticeable, though.

Sweet chocolatey aroma and a nice, rich taste to match. The cocoa and nuts really stand out in this. Great choice to end the evening on, and I’ll have to give it a more dedicated solo session soon.

I’m back drinking tea after 7 days off—I had a kidney stone. Though I do wonder if tea would have helped flushed it out faster.

Anyways, I’ve been wondering what this blend tastes like for a while, and finally decided to purchase some with my last order. I’ll be the first to say I’m not a fan of ripe pu, but this wet leaf smells rather fantastic and…it tastes good too!

Lots of flavors going on. First two that come out to me are vanilla and nuts. A bit chocolately and some raisin notes are there too. 2nd round of steeps reminded me a lot of LP’s Swann’s Way. I did notice that there was some of the sunmoon lake black tea in it.

For throwing lots of left over tea together, this was good. :)

My daughter just started her first day of 4th grade today in a new school. The really cool thing about that is the school is a block from our house so we were able to walk her there and she will be able to walk home. Pretty neat and exciting.

To celebrate this event, I decided I needed a complex and possibly special tea. I chose this one. I was really torn on whether to gong fu or western brew this. I went with gong fu.

8g is more than I would normally use but there was a large pecan in there so I figured I should put a little more in to balance it out. The first steep went 30 seconds. I decided not to do a rinse because I didn’t want to wash out any of the flavors. The first steep is a light hazelnut brown. The liquid is slightly thin but creamy with hints of vanilla and… is that… raisins? Almost reminds me of a very light/faint custard. There is also hints of nut as well. Really good preview of what will hopefully come out more in the next few steeps.

Before the second steep (30 seconds) I put my nose in the leaves and the brewed liquid and took a sniff. The leaves smelled like a perfect blend of puerh and an earthy black tea. The liquid was a bit more puerh but with some vanilla notes. The flavor of the liquid on this steep is much more puerh with earthiness and a hint of vanilla.

3rd steep, 45 seconds The leaves are… woodsy. Wet wood is what comes to mind. Maybe like a vanilla oak. I’m not 100% sure but that is what popped in my mind. The liquid is a bit thinner so perhaps I should have upped that time but the good news is that it is smooth and more vanilla and nut has returned.

4th steep, 1 minute. Talk about your rookie mistakes. I didn’t see until after I poured the water from my electric kettle that it had shut off and the water was reading out at about 190 degrees. Weeellll… let’s see what happened, shall we? Interestingly, the black tea flavor seems to stand out a bit more alongside the vanilla and nut.

I’ll stop the review here because I need to attend to other things however, I can say that this is a fun and flavorful tea.

I actually am going to use it as one of my tea pairings for this months book club. We are reading Furiously Happy. It is a woman’s take on her different mental conditions by using humor. It has both very real and heartfelt entries and also very humorous entries. I think the Dark Kitchen Sink will go well with some of the darker sides of mental illness addressed in the book.

This is a very nice dessert tea. Chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, smooth, with nuts at the end. Some earthy puerh comes through on the second steep. I would have steeped it more, but I fell asleep before I could do so.

I feel like this tea presented itself as a series of dessert flavors. What I got first was a strong brown bread flavor—the bitter earthy kind. There’s a figgy, raisiny kind of flavor that lends sweetness to the entire mix. I also got dark chocolate, but the creaminess of the brew made it taste almost like a chocolate fudge topping. Sometimes I got marshmallows, which switched my mindset from bread pudding to s’mores. . .fun!

As it cools, the vanilla makes itself more well-known, and many of the other flavors drop away. Now I’m drinking a creamy vanilla pudding, but that fig-raisin flavor is still hanging around.

I got a sample of this to try out and I have to say that this is a really interesting tea! I brewed this in boiling water for 3min. The resulting tea was very dark, quite strong, and tasted really earthy, kind of like drinking dirt… but in a good way(?). I wasn’t really a fan of it in the beginning, but as it cooled down, the vanilla note emerged. Subsequent steepings yielded a nice creamy vanilla taste, just like drinking vanilla ice cream! And as I was waiting for the tea to cool down, I kept on getting whiffs of a scent reminiscent of dark chocolate chip cookies. I think this is the perfect dessert tea!

Liquid Proust describes the taste profile as “vanilla, fudge, woodsy earth” which I think is spot on. I will have to get more of this tea in the future!

Ah, tournament time! Today and tomorrow is CEO, one of the big tournaments in the FGC and the last big one before Evo. Currently I am enjoying the finals for Killer Instinct, a game where I occasionally play a Raptor. Killer Instinct was a game I really disliked when I was younger, but the remake has really earned my respect, and not just because it is the first fighting game I have played in a while where my hands don’t lock up with tendon cramps. Not sure if they just got better or what, but it makes me happy.

Today I am looking at Liquid Proust’s A Dark Kitchen Sink, a blend of: golden pu’erh needles, loose ripe pu’erh, dianhong black tea, sunmoon lake black tea, vanilla bean (with flavor residue),roasted oolong, roasted pecans (unsalted), caramel (cane sugar, vanilla extract), cocoa nibs, Indian oolong ,honeybush (very very small amount)…it really is everything but the kitchen sink! The aroma of this tea is, to use fighting game slang, godlike. It smells like pecan pie, fudge, and a tiny bit of earthy loam. It is immensely sweet, caramel and chocolate dance with vanilla. and blissfully it is sweet but not grossly so thanks in part to the loamy notes and nuttiness. I might have drooled just a little, or a lot…either way, it smells really good.

I decided to gongfu it, the tea might be a blend, but it has tea that I frequently gongfu, so why not? I am almost at a loss for words describing this tea’s aroma once steeped. The notes are as expected, strong vanilla, caramel, pecan pie, fudge, loam, and malt…but trying to convey how mouthwatering sweet and rich it is, that is a challenge. The aroma of the liquid is also pretty intensely sweet, strong notes of vanilla and fudge with underlying pecan pie and loam. Super sweet and rich!

So, this is possibly the best blend I have had….ever. Seriously. It is dessert in a cup, like liquid Better Than Sex cake (making me calling it orgasmic not really an exaggeration) bringing in notes of fudge, vanilla, caramel, pecans, toffee, and a finish of earthiness and marshmallows…this is an intense tea. It hits all the right notes for me, it is immensely sweet and rich without being cloying, smooth as all get out, and just wow. Ben, being more diplomatic and not wanting to say it is orgasmic, says it is an epiphany in a cup.

You know, one of the things I love about being a person who has a sensory disorder, is how my strongest sensory input comes in the form of taste and smell…it is why I do what I do…sometimes I get overwhelmed by a taste or smell, it washes over me and drags me under, much like the undertow of an ocean wave. I don’t necissarily like the intensity of some of my other senses (looking at you sound and frequently touch) but I would not trade my sense of taste and smell for the world, especially when presented with teas like this! The second steep is pretty identical flavor wise, no real change in notes (except…I think the marshmallow finish turned into meringue) but the taste has become more intense.

Around steep three the rich fudge and vanilla notes, while still intense, are mellowing a bit, especially the vanilla. Now I get cherry notes (probably from one of the Hongchas) yams, still very rich nuttiness, and a richer loam note. Towards the finish I get a bit of molasses toffee and pie crust, with lingering sweetness. I got four good steeps out of this tea, and two moderately good steeps as I try to drag any bit of flavor I could from this…and then I needed to buy myself a pouch because delicious. Honestly, Andrew, this was one powerful concoction, bravo!

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/06/liquid-proust-teas-dark-kitchen-sink.html