Zesty Zesty Grapefruit

Holy moly!

I made this tea, and it’s awesome! I guess having a variable temperature kettle makes everything better. :)

(With a little honey)

Thank you OMGsrsly !!!!!!!!!! After the Vancouver meet (that I sadly had to miss due to money issues/dog sitting) Heather was sent back to the Island with goodies for me. AKA The Vancouver meet group spoiled me and I’m now drowning in grapefruity goodness.

I LOVE grapefruit, can’t say it enough! OMGsrsly had some issues making this one work, so I jumped at the chance to try some myself! Pithy isn’t a bad thing for my palette, it’s one of the reasons why I enjoy grapefruit as much as I do! It has a wider range of flavours to it than other citrus, so it feels like it offers a lot more to different uses.

With the warning that this can be pithy and the black base can be astringent, I decided to play around with a smaller amount of leaf and lower temperature water to start, so I can make the most of the sample she sent me. So I used about 1/2tsp of leaf in about 5oz of water (eyeballed it in my gung fu pot, and then poured into a glass bubble cup from DAVIDs)and used water heated to approximately 185F (white tea setting on my Breville variable temp kettle). Steeped for about 2 minutes, and it’s perfect!!!!

The black base is definitely bold, with a slight earthiness to it that’s accentuated by the pithy grapefruit. there’s the tangy POP at the end of the sip that lingers a bit on the tip of my tongue. It reminds me a bit of Silk Road’s Golden Phoenix pu’erh, but without the spices that are in GP. It’s the same richness with the pop in the aftertaste.

I really like it, and see myself getting more if I manage to get over to Steam at some point. Might need to make it happen sometime between now and Christmas and pair it with a visit with my younger sister (who is over in Vancouver for her first semester of University).

Thanks a bunch OMGsrsly for this one! Can’t wait to see how it works cold steeped too :D

So I checked out Sil’s cupboard only to realize she is kicking my butt, as in she has almost 30 fewer teas than I do (congrats on being so close to 140 btw!). That put me in a little bit of a sipdown mode. However, I still wanted to try new teas and work on getting through some of my swaps. Luckily, this tea filled all three requirements. Thus, this is a

Sipdown!! (171)

Thank you MissB for sending some my way in a generous surprise package. It is a nice tea. Great grapefruit flavor that is reminiscent of Nina’s Paris The de Vendome, which I enjoyed. Though, at the end of the day, I just don’t ever reach for citrus tea often enough to warrant stocking a tea like this. It was still fun to try something new so thank you MissB.

Lastly, I know I said this yesterday but since I am once again writing about a surprise tea, I thought it is worth mentioning again… I AM MOVING IN LESS THAN A MONTH! The reason I mention this is because I know how generous everyone is on steepster. I never expect them but you guys have surprised me with packages time and time again. However, since MY ADDRESS WILL BE CHANGING, I would hate for someone to generously send tea that would just get lost in the world :(. Thus it is probably best that you DON’T SEND ME TEA to my Montreal address (except for the swaps I already arranged) as I don’t think I will receive it.

Zesty grapefruit, times two? Sounds tasty to me! Thing is, it smells like a black to me, and I’m getting little grapefruit out of it. Did I brew it incorrectly? Perhaps….? I always do my blacks at 2-3 minutes, even when 5 minutes is recommended, and I also used 2 tsp for 8 oz. as suggested on the package… I think I must have missed something. Still tasty, just not at all like grapefruit to me.

Thanks OMGsrsly for sharing this with me! :)