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I wound up making a big pot of this in the morning. This is the third time I’ve had this tea; I still can’t decide if I like it or not.

I think the smell is what keeps me from making it on a regular basis. The dried leaves smell exactly like fish. The nice thing about this tea is that it won’t oversteep. I was okay with the flavor at first, but it’s growing off me a little; it’s very mossy without being smooth like the other black teas in Adagio’s Silk Road Sampler. Think I’ll finish off what I’ve got left and call it done.

EDIT: Yep, I’ve decided. I don’t like this tea. This is only my first pu erh, so I am by no means an expert. I’d have to try more to see whether it was the flavor of this particular tea I disliked or if I’m just not a pu erh fan in general, but this just didn’t win my favor.

Ice cream for breakfast + gloriously terrible Les Miserables anime (yes, it exists) + yunnan jig = good start to the day before I have to open at work (yuck.)

This is one I’ve had kicking around for a while. This time, I kept the water temp super low so as not to burn the crap out of the leaves like I did last time I made it.

It’s a decent tea, at least by my newbie standards, but I… I fear I’m starting to lose my taste for bergamot. I don’t know why, I think the astringency is starting to get to me. But it’s the only white tea I have (there’s my cue to try some new ones), and after a long day following a shitty night’s sleep and having taken two Excedrin earlier this evening, I figured I needed something that was a little lighter on the caffeine than my standard green tea.

There’s not really a whole lot else I can say about the flavor, apart from a lighter bergamot twinge than the Earl Grey black tea from the same company.

Understeeped it for once. Tastes like lightly flavored water. My fault, since I’ve made it taste like real tea in the past. Whoops.

Woke up to a gray, yucky-looking morning on my day off. Almost made myself a cup of Black Dragon Pearl, but decided to let it stretch a little longer and revisit my English Breakfast. This is one of those teas that I’ve been going back and forth on. I got it as a part of Adagio’s Silk Road Sampler of Chinese black teas. At first I was underwhelmed, then I kinda liked it, then I was kinda underwhelmed, then…

The leaves are dark colored with a deep, sweet smell, and the liquor is the gorgeous reddish hue of any good black tea. As one of the other Steepsterites pointed out, Adagio’s teas tend to brew a little light, but I’ve found that if you give them a little help (or time, if it’s a tea that won’t oversteep), the color becomes what it should. Sliiiiiiiightly earthy/mushroomy twinge in the same sweet aroma that I got from the dry leaves.

This is one of the “earthy” teas. I saw the words “damp,” “woodsy,” “earthy,” and “mossy” come up in a lot of the reviews I read of this tea, and I find myself agreeing. The image that comes to mind is (I’m so original!) the mossy floorbed of a deep, dark forest. Slight astringency, if that’s the right word. If it tasted like it smelled, it would probably be one of my favorites; as it is, it’s a decent tea but I don’t think I would buy it again.

EDIT: I’m currently on cup three of the same brew, same first infusion. But now I’m getting a little more malty? Perhaps it’s because I’m not eating a Nutri Grain bar at the same time. :P This is more of the flavor I like.

So I think I discovered the secret to this tea: make it, then let it sit for a few hours. I’m not sure why (perhaps it’s just the cooler temperature bringing out more flavor complexity), but it seems like every time I make myself a pot of this and have one cup right away and one cup in the late afternoon, the second cup is the one I end up craving.

With this tea, the instructions are to let it steep for five minutes, but even after four the tea is always kind of a pale yellow liquor. I usually find myself swishing around the strainer, or pouring and repouring the water over the leaves to speed up the infusion process. Maybe I should just learn to be a little more patient. Still delicious either way.

…Oh, and on a side note, I think I’ve discovered why my past several teas keep tasting like metal. It’s the damn strainer I keep using in place of my teapot! Maybe because I haven’t truly washed the strainer with soap yet (I always rinse it off after I use it to make tea), but the past several times I have tried to use it to make tea, the tea tastes metallic, and the past several times I have used the pot, the tea tastes delicious. Nrrrrrgh….

Had this tea this morning as my wake-me-up comfort tea. This is my favorite black tea, and possibly my favorite tea…

I’d been curious about it, but I didn’t know what I was missing until my boss let me have a sample of some of hers. You know, so often the item descriptions on Adagio don’t match my own experience with the tea, so when I read “subtle notes of cocoa” I thought, “Riiiiight.” And then I made myself a couple of cups, and lo and behold, what was that subtle little aroma? Honest to god, it really does smell a bit like cocoa. Easy-to-handle large pearls (do 2-3 per cup), pretty reddish brew, smooth and malty flavor. Not astringent at all. It’s the tea I crave when I’m not having tea. Will definitely be buying the bigger bag of this stuff.

Backlog!

This is what Teavana always sends out as their free sample when you do an online order, so I have about 6 oz of this stuff sitting around, completely by accident. It had two things going against it for me: 1) it’s an herbal tea (OK, a white and herbal tea), and 2) it has orange, and I dislike orange.

So it was quite a surprise when I discovered that I liked this tea! The orange is very light, not a smack-you-in-the-face citrus, and it’s a little sweet. I imagine it would make a great iced tea (hmmm… summer’s coming up. Maybe that’s how I’ll sipdown those 6 oz. sitting around…)

Alrighty, Calm the F*** Down Tea, do your magic!

… But not in a cup that tastes like this afternoon’s Hojicha.