Numi Organic Tea

I’ve tried all sorts and brands of green tea and Numi Gunpowder is still my favorite. Nothing beats that mellow, smokey essence. So relaxing.

Spice Quest Episode XII: A long time ago in a tasting note far away…

…a wizened-up, weary Jedi clerical worker was freezing in her hundred-year-old office, buried under a pile of second semester paperwork and 1099 proof forms, barely breathing out of only one nostril, and was delighted to dig through the rubble and find one tiny packet of Turmeric Amber Sun imported from the spice mines of the far West…

OK, enough. Sorry.

Courtesy of Michelle, this was a nice, warming afternoon change of pace, although I agree with previous reviews. It isn’t what you expect. It doesn’t lead with the heat, it’s significantly more savory than you’d think, and is much improved with the contents of a honey straw. However, it warmed the bones and opened the throat. Mission accomplished.

I found a bunch of neglected tea bags from various companies, and I’m hoping that one or more of them will satisfy my cravings for a strong, robust cup of tea. I decided to start with Numi because I’ve fond memories of this company from happy college cafeteria days (this is the brand UVic carried when I attended there; I always went for the Gunpowder or Mint though).

Even though my nose is super muted, I still can smell a touch of delicious, caffeine-filled black tea (bliss)! To taste, I still manged to get “sweet potato” and “malt” from this bright, bitter, slightly sweet tea – which is more than I hoped for (you can tell Numi includes Chinese black tea in this blend). It’s a lovely tea bag that’s as satisfying as turning rich, fine loam in the garden – but it’s possibly too lovely to add the planned honey and lemon.

Also, despite steeping the bag for 5 minutes in a tiny mug the astringency is more minimal than I was anticipating – something that only asserted itself after I finished my cup. But take that with a grain of salt; my head is currently cotton mush.

Classic, bit of warm spice to it.

So, since early spring 2020, I have been the only person consistently in the office. Which means I can spend days, sometimes even weeks, pretty much alone. As an introvert, this isn’t much of a problem other than I start to develop some very bad habits, such as cooking steaks in the breakroom’s toaster oven.

As I was dealing with the most recent crisis of the missing master key, I did a lot of searching in nooks and crannies of the office that I had never bothered to look through before.

(I actually spent a week on this futile task before someone finally approved a locksmith to come out and open the door. At which point I discovered that the missing key was not only inside that room, but it was also inside a locked fire proof safe. And I did not have a key to said safe and the locksmith couldn’t open it. Thus started the new quest to find the key to the safe. Wait a minute, has my life turned into an Adventure game?)

Among the interesting things I found was the cabinent where we keep our overflow of coffee beans and bagged teas that I usually ignore. But I was bored and frustrated and annoyed, so I just started looking through the offerings and there wasn’t much of a surprise in what I found. Primarily mint or green jasmine, a few other tisanes that I have no interest in. Mostly the usual office crap purchased from an offcie supply store by people who don’t actually drink tea but think they need to try to be inclusive to the tiny portion of weirdos who don’t worship at the shrine of the coffee bean.

And then I ran across a box of this in the back corner. I almost ignored it. While I love almost all of the usual masala chai ingredients, I really do not like clove. And most masala chai style teas contain massive amounts of clove. Blech. But, I was bored and frustrated and decided I would rather look at bagged teas over searching for a key that I suspected was inside the locked room.

And, much to my surprise, NO CLOVE!!!!!!!!
So today I decided to give it a try. (Man, what is it with me and long stories lately.)

And I can taste and smell cinnamon and cardomon and ginger. Not sure on the anise. I expected it to be stronger, but I don’t necessarily find that a bad thing. And there’s no clove! (Queue hysterical laughter)

The down side is that the spices really over power the base tea. I wish it stood out a little more, but its not a major deal breaker. And hey, it looks like you can buy this in loose leaf in units of, holy moly, one pound! I could drink nothing but this for a year and still not be able to go through an entire pound of it.

I can stick with bags. I don’t see this as a staple so much as something I will be drawn to when the rains come and the winds are wet and cold. Oh man I am so ready for the rains to come back. Seattle shouldn’t be as dry as a tender box.

Oh, and I stole the box of tea and put it into my desk drawer with all of my other teas. :D

Another tea from Madeline I let in my cupboard for an year or so. I had to find out, if it has got weird crayon taste or it was just her. Thank you anyway! At least a new tea bag in my collection, which I have been sorting yesterday and it is not done yet. And it won’t be.

Anyway, I have tried it and honestly, something was weird with this tea. It brewed strong green tea taste, very thick feeling. The jasmine was there, but not much present, rather geneal florality, athough based on the smell, it was clearly jasmine. I can notice that wax note if I was searching for it and certainly I had better jasmine greens. It was, even with the jasmine, weirdly thick and uncommon for jasmine tea which I usually associate with lighter taste.

It wasn’t my cup of tea. That heavy thick feeling is off-putting it for me.

Day 8 of Devon’s Advent calendar.

I am not fan of gunpowder at all, it tends to be usually mineral, stone-like, sometimes bitter and smokey and this one is no exception.

I am glad I did only 2 minutes steep with even colder water than I usually have for greens.
It turned out indeed quite mineral with smoky notes however with some sweet notes that were fine, and it was somehow smooth and mouth-coating, but without long effect.
Fine, but nothing to necessary re-try.

I received this one year ago or so from Madeline, so take note how to not take care about cupboard. Thank you, if you ever read this.

I am sleepy today, although I slept fairly well and better than last days. I woke up as usual at 4 am, but I felt back asleep quickly. But still tired…

This tea I have prepared mostly because I wanted a caffeine boost and without fuzz. Honestly, the tea bag delivers both.

I had about 76°C water prepared in glass mug when I have added the tea bag. After short, two minute steep, I got a cup of nice grassy and full-bodied tea, but somehow flat. I guess it is because it is plain green tea and tea bag.

I haven’t noticed any smoke as many others, it was rather similar to oolong with mineral notes.

I found another bag while cleaning up my desk and thought… matcha toasted rice… so, like genmaicha but with matcha instead of sencha? No, it uses sencha. So… poorly-labeled genmaicha, lol.

This has a very roasted toasty flavor, with hints of popcorn. The sencha flavor is either a bit weak, overpowered by the toasted rice, or both. I’d prefer a more balanced flavor, but if you like your genmaicha heavy on the toasted rice flavor, you’d probably like this one.

My go-to loose leaf breakfast tea

Tea box sample. The main flavor here is chocolate. It’s mild and pleasant. I don’t really notice any puerh flavor. The chocolate isn’t the richest or tastiest, but it’s nice with milk. I feel like I taste a few spices in there as well. Really, it all goes together pretty well and has a bit of depth I wasn’t expecting. The resteep was decent as well. Before this, I didn’t realize Numi made loose leaf.

A decent bagged tea with enough bite to let you know it’s black tea, but not so much as to need sweetener or milk. It’s so blended I can’t really pick out any interesting flavors, it’s not a tea I’d reach for again, but it’s not the worst bagged breakfast blend either.

At some point I bought another package of this… so even though I think turmeric tastes of dirt, I like this enough as a latte to keep buying it. Idk.

Anyways, I had it as a latte today. 50/50 with milk, and with a small spoonful of honey (to help the medicine go down?).

Just another herbal thing I’m trying to drink up. Even though turmeric tastes strongly of dirt to me, I do like this one with the vanilla and cinnamon.

I usually drink it as a latte with a touch of honey, and tonight is no exception. Just need to finish it before I ensconce myself in bed, because my duvet and sheets are all white… very aesthetic, but not very practical.

I was actually very surprised by this tea. I usually don’t like rose flavored things because it tends to punch you in the face, like potpourri or some old perfume. However, I was looking for something low-caffeine in the afternoon and had this.

The flavor is really quite delicate and not overwhelming at all. You definitely get the rose with some very slight earthiness from the white tea. I found myself reaching for a packet of this quite often.

I would recommend and will pick it up again.

Consider this teabag is from an ancient teabox.  I was intrigued – a savory tea.  Numi has (or had) a line of six weird savory teas. This one wouldn’t have been the one I most wanted to try… As I was debating what tea to have, I noticed that there were staple holes in the wrapping, which means the wrapper had been partially opened for all these years.  I’m not sure if this is why this tea now tastes like a compost pile?  Or if it would have tasted like that anyway?  The black tea didn’t taste like decaf, but it didn’t taste like a robust black tea either – more like an empty palate base for this weird flavor.  Both steeps tasted the same. Of course, I knew when I took it from the teabox that I would regret that it would take me forever to try such a unique tea.  But probably, if I want soup, I’ll just eat soup. I feel like I want to live on tomato soup all winter but I can not stand normal tomatoes. So that’s weird. I get all my tomato in soup and KETCHUP.

Just got this from amazon. Hoping for a cheaper/easier-to-brew alternative to my favorite jasmine pearls.
Opening the bag, I got a very strong jasmine smell, which was promising. I was expecting to smell less jasmine. Right away, the tea started turning a deeper yellow than the pearls when I started pouring the water. After two minutes, it’s a strong, bright yellow color. The smell is weird, though. There’s some sort of chemically-ness or sharpness. It kind of reminds me of crayons, weirdly. Like, melted crayons. Maybe candle wax, kind of chemically and burnt. Weirdly heavy and not good. The tea itself is stronger and more bitter than the pearls – a little earthy/grassy. Overall, not an enjoyable experience. My beloved jasmine pearls would never do this to me. Definitely a sign I need to quit dilly-dallying and just order more pearls already!

Update: My girlfriend can’t smell the crayon thing I’m complaining about and says it just smells like green tea, so maybe it’s a personal thing.

Another tea bag from derk, but tea maybe from White Antlers.
Apparantly, they use some new packaging I haven’t seen before and is is wonderful one.

But it is pretty much average tea. I haven’t expected much of flavour profile, but I expected to taste the base at least! I haven’t noticed rooibos, it was quite savoury. And although there should be many different spices, I noticed almost only ginger and allspice. Maybe some cardamom in the background, but none of nutmeg, cloves, or cinnamon. The rooibos was weak as well!

Not for me…

This tea is good, but after drinking so much of the milky oolong and jasmine pearls, I have to bump it down a couple notches. I appreciate the caffeine though!

Woke up at 4:45 am for no good reason, and this tea is keeping me awake! I like this tea a lot. Getting wet earth/warm/mineral flavors and a lot of caffeine :)