Love is Tea (LIT)

I got this as a sample from my recent swap with LIT:) It’s decent. I taste more black tea then blueberry but I didn’t get any bitterness at all. It was smooth. I sooo tried this one first from my package as soon as I smelled it. It smells so wonderful!

This tea is okay. Nothing special. The taste is pleasant, but definitely not the best raspberry tea I’ve had. The dry smell is faintly creamy but it doesn’t seem to translate into the taste.

So I didn’t get around to drinking this until it was lukewarm but that’s okay, that seems to be how I drink most of my tea. The flavouring in this is at a pleasant level, not too weak and not too strong and the base is…okay. Just there with not much going on. If you like passionfruit tea, you’ll probably like this, I find it just okay because passionfruit is not something I go out of my way to get under any circumstances.

This one has that flavour again, like the Yunnan Imperial from LIT that I had this morning. That…muscatel? flavour I think it’s called, like with Darjeelings that I really don’t like. I can’t say I’m enjoying this tea much at all. I don’t know what’s up with these because they don’t taste like Yunnan teas at all to me.

Sipdown, 182, just kidding, 181. Found a tea in my cupboard that shouldn’t have been there!

Headache, exhaustion, dry eyes, and I have to go to a seminar on morphometrics in a half an hour. Ugh. Decided to sipdown this one in the hopes that it will give me a boost.

Wow, this is suuuuper sweet today. Like liquid honey, or more like liquid honey-soaked sweet potatoes. Steeping it at a slightly hotter temp than I did last time really made a difference. Very nice. Wherever yssah sourced this one from, it is a very good tea.

Thanks to yssah for a sample of this tea! I didn’t see her temperature recommendation before I brewed this one so I went conservatively. I never know how bud-based Chinese blacks are going to respond to full boil water.

The dry leaf of this tea is very golden with very squiggly leaves. Steeped, it smells way less hayish and woody than the Pure Gold Yunnan from LIT. Instead, it has more honeyed and sweet potato notes to it. The taste is smooth and sweet, with flavors of sweet potato pie. This is definitely more similar to the Dian Hong Golden Buds from Teavivre than the other Yunnan. It’s quite tasty, though a little thin, which is like a result of slight understeeping. Still, this a nice dian hong and a good example of the type of Yunnan black tea that I really enjoy!

Got these in a swap from yssah They’re pretty solid little jasmine pearls! I’m only on my first steep now. Hopefully they will hold up for many steepings like my Butiki pearls do :)

Well, I’m actually surprised this is a Yunnan because it almost tastes like a Darjeeling to me, it has that faint sour grapey-ness to it that I really don’t like in Darjeelings. It’s very malty as well. Not much cocoa at all or pepper notes that I usually expect from a Yunnan black.

Sipdown,183. I made a big pot of this tea this morning with my sample from yssah. Thanks!

All of the Earls that yssah sent are super duper bergamotty in scent, and it seems like they carry that over to the taste as well. The level reminds me of Todd & Holland’s double bergamot, it’s that strong. Obviously that works well for me, who loves bergamot. This Earl I went into somewhat blind as it was only described as having flowers and herbs, but I was intrigued. It is very herbaceous, but difficult to discern individual herbs except a lot of lavender and perhaps a bit of rosemary? I’m unsure. I am not the biggest fan of lavender in teas, but I don’t hate it either. This is fortunately bergamotty enough to balance them out so it doesn’t get too perfumey or soapy. It’s not so much for me just because of the lavender, but it is otherwise quite a nice blend.

Yeah, no. Sorry yssah, and thanks for the sample, but my keemun confusion continues. There are teas I LOVE with 100% keemun bases. But straight keemuns elude me.

I did ask yssah for a sample of this after she offered because of the fact that I can never seem to figure out keemuns. And I think this is probably a decent example of a keemun. It’s very English Breakfast, bold and robust. A hint of smoke, which is something I have tasted in other high-quality keemuns but something I basically dislike. This would probably be fine with milk and sugar, but at the current steeping parameters it is too strong for me. Slightly bitter and astringent, but it seems like those are things some people look for (or at least don’t mind because they milk and sugar their tea.

I have a sample of Butiki’s Congou Keemun coming and I’m interested to see how I react to that. If I don’t like that one I’m pretty much giving up on straight keemuns :P

Okay, I’ll just plain say I didn’t like this. The base is mediocre and doesn’t add any real flavour except generic ‘tea’ flavour and I’m not even getting anything I would identify as orange from this, just vaguely fruity tasting. I have no patience with anything today so I’m not even going to finish drinking this.

I got a sample of this tea in my recent swap with yssah and had to add it to the database without any other information other than it is apparently a Yunnan golden buds type tea. Also I don’t have a clear method for steeping golden yunnan teas, so this is kind of an amalgamation. Hope it works out! I do have enough for another cup.

The leaf on this one is really pretty. Lots and lots of gold everywhere, and nicely long with a bit of fuzziness. When brewed there are a quite a few hay-ish notes in scent of this that I have been noticing in Yunnans lately. The flavor is slightly sweetish, with some earthy sweet potato to it. A bit of hay and woodiness in the flavor as well. It’s kind of thin, so perhaps I should have steeped this one longer; I’ll try 3 minutes on my next go. Overall a decently tasty Yunnan but I would have expected perhaps a bit more (sweetness, yamminess, honey/caramel notes) from such a nice looking gold tips tea. Then again I tend to prefer Fujians to Yunnans so I don’t have as much experience with them.

This is an amazing milk oolong, it’s a little bit less creamy than the quangzhou milk oolong from DAVIDsTEA, but, it has a somewhat better quality I can’t describe very well to it. It’s smooth and silky to drink and resteeps for many cups of delicious tea. Thank you very much to Yssah for sharing this with me!

Peachy Keen! I am not a huge fan of strawberry peach flavoured tea, or strawberry peach flavoured anything, but this is pretty good. The peach is up front and present from the very beginning and the strawberry kinda sneaks through the back door at the end of the sip and in the aftertaste. I could wish the black tea base were less fade-into-the-background but it’s very generic. Not terrible in a flavoured tea, but it would be nice to get some impact from it. Guess I’m just spoiled.

Got this as a sample (among MANY) from yssah a while ago. Slowly slogging through them (there are a lot). Perfectly cute little baggies they’re in, though there is a bit of scent contamination. Nothing that obstructs the flavours so far.

The flavouring is certainly strong on this one. I’m not sure it shouts ‘Mango’ to me, but it’s definitely fruity. Then again, my sense of what mangos taste like is mostly through other mango flavoured things like Naked Juice bottles and such. And dried mango, I just remembered, I used to buy a lot of that. Anyway, this tea is nicely fruity but I wouldn’t rely on me to say if it’s ‘mango’ fruity.

Thanks for this sample, yssah. I dumped my whole sample into my teapot and I was impressed with the scent of it, very very cherry, though it reminded me of cough syrup a little. The taste…very cough syrup. The cherry is tasting very artificial to me. It’s also kind of weak so I may have added too much water to this.

I don’t have much to say about this, my teas all got tainted by the flavors and smells of the other teas in the package so this just kind of tasted like a weird mix of fruit and flowers. All of them tasted the same so I had to get rid of them. Also my desk drawer smells like the fruitpourri too.

Well, I just ate a Thin Mint so that’s bound to affect my perception of this tea, but at least it’s complementarily minty! Actually, I don’t think that’s a real word. New word!

Sharing this one again with my coworker, so I have a smidge more than one mug’s worth of this. Added milk and sugar as is my wont. Actually, after the thin mint, this one doesn’t taste nearly as sweet as it should. But I’m not going to add more sugar. It’s still good though. The mint in it isn’t as strong as, say, the mint matcha I had this morning, but it’s stronger than the ChocoMint LIT that I had earlier this afternoon. Nothing really special about this tea. Just black tea and peppermint.

Drinking this right now from a trade from yssah. Just enough for a pot-ful. I love it when I can use up all of a sample on my first try. Except when I mess it up, of course.

This tea is definitely minty, but I can’t taste much chocolate at all. I can vaguely taste the tea base and it mixes well with the mintiness so this is decent as a mint tea, but not so much as a mint chocolate tea. I’ve been consuming a lot of mint today, just had a mint matcha latte.

ETA: I shared some of my pot with a co-worker and he said he tasted the chocolate right up front, so it may be a taste bud issues. I’m beginning to suspect that I don’t taste chocolate very well in general.

First one to do a tasting note on this one I guess, since I had to add it to the database. Thanks to yssah for the sample. She sent me a giant pile of what I think are almost all of her black teas so I’m going through them now.

This…isn’t terrible. I’ve drunk a lot of peach tea over the years so I have pretty high expectations on what I consider a ‘good’ peach tea and this one is…probably middling-high on my scale. The peach flavour is a teensy bit artificial, but otherwise pretty juice and true. It’s quite strong too, in my little sample. The black base is subdued and a little overwhelmed by the flavouring. This one is worth trying if you’re looking for a peach tea.

Well, this is nice. The flavour is definitely apple. But it’s still not my perfect apple tea. There’s no real ‘juiciness’ here, if you know what I’m saying, it’s quite flat. I hate to put a bad review out there as the first review to a tea, but this one is just okay. The blackcurrant I tried this morning was much better and I actually shared it with one of my coworkers and he discovered a new love for blackcurrant from that tea.

Got this as a sample from yssah in a humongous pack of samples. Thanks so much!

Blackcurrant isn’t my favourite thing by any means, but it’s not bad. This is, for a flavoured tea, quite good. The blackcurrant is nicely strongly flavoured, no chance of missing the flavour in this tea. It’s not overpowering though, just very present. The black tea base sort of fades into the background, supportive but not pushy. And I got the perfect amount for exactly one pot of tea!

I love Thai tea at the resturant, and upon drinking this I found it to be about right. Beautiful flavor and color. First glass was drank plain, the second I added a splash of soy milk to make it a bit more like the Thai tea latte’s I’d had at the resturant. Lovely stuff. The smell in the bag is actually rather tame compared to the flavor in the glass. I’ll be getting more of this soon.

This smelled amazing both in the cup and in the sample baggy. I loved the flavor though I could have a more potently nutty flavor and I’d love it. The smell is a bit of a tease compared to how potent the flavor was. And upon the second attempt to steep the leaves, I got very little flavor. I’m not sure if that was the tea itself or the fact that I left it steeping for longer then intended.