Unknown

I’m thinking the store may have switched up—or mixed—the leaves in my favorite cheapie bulk bin oolong. This batch wasn’t as large and stemmy as I usually expect, but still a nice green-and-brown blend. Yard mulch. Steeped up light and nutty for a morning-long writing session yesterday; the rest wasn’t bad chilled. And still 31 cents an ounce, bless the store. Can’t beat that.

This was one of the first things I picked up on my first re-stock the pantry run to Fox Farm (local health food and goodie store). Price hasn’t changed for months. Just a good, tawny, tasty oolong. And I still haven’t remembered to ask what the brand was…

This still continues to be my favorite cheap-keep-the-canister-filled-at-all-times tea; someday I shall ask to see the bag so I can actually see the brand. (Yeah, I’m sure the store clerk will enjoy toting a 50-pound feed sack off the top shelf just to entertain the customer…)

In the meantime, I played a bit this morning and did 2 parts shaved unsweetened coconut chips to 1 part of these oolong leaves. I believe I’ve found a new favorite blend-in. Coconut and …. any suggestions?

Still haven’t unearthed the brand of this nice (and wonderfully inexpensive!) bulk tea from favorite local store, though I see big ol’ 25-pound bags on their shelves with characters I can’t deciper. It looks a little leafy and woody and stemmy dry, but is still a good pantry staple, especially on days when you want to be tugged awake instead of booted out the door.

We buy this in bulk…about 31 cents an ounce…at local health food store. Can’t beat it for the price! I’ll have to see if I can associate it with a brand. The leaves are big and loose and … well, leafy instead of tea-ey. It has a nice wet-earth sort of aroma and a hearty brown (as opposed to golden or black or chartreuse) flavor. Ices pretty well in the summer too.

I need to get more of this. A small-leaf tea with roasted rice (some bits popped like popcorn) in it, I love this for relaxing. The smell is sweet and not very grassy, and the liquor is a pale gold. The taste is smooth and has a nutty undertaste that’s very subtle, almost like a cornsilk infusion.

I may be pushing the limits with this one. I debated whether or not it belonged on the board or in one of my own posts, but eventually I decided that since it’s made of primarily real tea and it’s built pretty much like my other posts so here it is.

Once upon a time I was in a travelling teabox, the very same that inspired the one I’m organising here (note! Sign up for the Travelling Teabox by emailing address and steepster username to me at iarnvidia@gmail.com before dec 31st! Guidelines for participation can be found in this thread (http://steepster.com/discuss/102-travelling-teabox) on the board) and someone added these candies that I nabbed a couple of. Two red ginseng candies from Korea, containing sugar, maltose, red korean ginseng chunks, raw honey and peppermint, and two oolong tea candies from god knows where in Asia and containing oolong tea, maltose and sugar. (There were also a couple of maple candies which I’ve eaten long ago)

I’ve never had the guts to try either of these, but tonight I happened across them and I was feeling brave. It’s a sort of greenish dark grey colour and it smells vaguely of tea. It definitely does taste like a sweetened proper oolong tea, though. It’s like a dry cup of tea. It’s like…. sucking on the leaves after brewing. It tastes like the inside of the pot smells after a number of good steeps. I wish I could get my hands on more of these, because they’re really kinda yummy! One is definitely enough, but I could get addicted to these things.

(The ginseng ones didn’t actually have tea in them, smelled rather bad, and tasted worse… it was like sucking on a bit of dry toothpaste. The less said about those the better.)

Very nice and very unique tea I keep having at an Italian restaurant here in Kyoto. Unfortunately they keep their teabags in a glass jar so I can never find out what brand it is but the tea itself is lovely with a definite but subtle pine flavor. I believe it also contains mint and some other root like substance but I can not place the taste exactly. It certainly keeps me coming back again and again.

This has green tea and good sized chunks of strawberry and there is apple in it. It mostly smells like green tea and strawberries. I steeped this a short time. This has a natural tasting medium apple stawberry taste with green tea. I think this I’s good.

Has anyone tried the Respiratory Rescue Tea ?

I brought this tea from a vendor at my local farmer’s market. Either I don’t remember the brand or the vendor blended it herself. After the first few tries, I decided I didn’t like it much so I haven’t drank it in awhile. It tastes mostly of chamomile with something else that is not distinctly citrus-y.

I made my husband a cup tonight since he has been drink teas in the evening with me when I offer to make him some and I’m trying out different kinds of tea to figure out what he likes, which is so far everything – he did particularly like a spicy holiday bagged tea last year though I can’t remember the name now. He rarely drinks a second cup unless I make a pot which he will keep drinking, even more than his fair share sometimes. So I brewed it again for myself. In a lighter version, it’s actually not bad but I’m not sure I actually like it still.

2nd brewing: 1.5 tsp.

Mystery tea/tisane. Found in bottom of box of random rooibos I was given by Angrboda, about enough for one pot, wrapped in cling film and labelled “durban”. Apparently this is a town in South Africa, so possibly this is the point of origin.

Smells of something apply or peary, albeit faintly. Taste is not as strong as I was expecting. In fact, maybe this is plain rooibos. Any pear smells may be from cohabiting in a box with some very fragrant neighbours :-)

Anyway. Not a bad choice for winding down after a rather trying journey on public transport. Goodnight Steepsterites.

This has long been my favorite tea. I purchase it loose these days from a local tearoom; I’m not sure who produces their tea for them. It’s intense and smoky and I’ve had it branded “stinky tea” when I’ve had it at work. As others have said on other lapsang boards, it’s the type of tea people either love or hate. I love it.

I really enjoy it at the evening.

Very, VERY different—you definitely get the grain taste. Picked up some experimentally a couple summers ago and discovered I liked it iced better than hot. Supposed to have lots of health benefits, though I can’t remember any at the moment.

I’m bagging it this morning because as usual I’ve slept far too late and I dreamed something seriously strange that made me cry buckets (in the dream) so now I’ve woken up with a post-wail headache without actually having shed a single (real) tear. Lovely.

No matter how deeply mediocre and dull these bags are and the lowness of the supposed quality, it works for me in a situation like this. I think it’s because it’s so much easier and quicker than fussing with pots and leaves. I don’t really need something awesome right now. I just need to wake up.

Wasn’t around all day yesterday so I’ve woken up to 70+ notifications and who knows how many reviews. I can’t promise to be able to catch up with that, so if someone wrote something really interesting, could you link me please?

I’ve been gathering courage for this. After dropping a certain package off at the post office I was attacked by sudden drowsiness. Initially I thought, “bad time for tasting a new tea”, but then I thought, “half unconscious is probably a pretty good time for tasting a new and intimidating tea, actually…”

For Christmas I got this great big mug with the word ‘tea’ on it (which btw isn’t very good to drink from. Too large and unwieldy), some biscuits, a tea measuring spoon and a tin with these bags in it. I can’t find anything about which brand it supposedly is or which type of green tea it supposedly is.

It looks like dust and fannings in the bag, so I’m not getting my hopes up about the quality. Also, it smells rather a lot of salt water and seaweed. Like, when I smell it, I can almost hear the seagulls. It smells like something you ought to drink on a blustery day while standing in the dunes and looking out towards the sea.

Oh look, it’s radioactive green tea again! That must mean there’s a good chance for it being a japanese green, but then it quickly turned a much less amusing sunny yellow, so now I don’t know.

It still smells pretty salt waterish, but not as blustery-day-in-the-dunes-ish. It’s more like after you’ve gone home again and you’re feeling all blown through, so you need something warm so you can feel like a person again, while waiting for dinner to be ready. The dinner bit comes from a buttery note in the aroma.

Okay, there’s no way out, so I’m taking a sip. Aaaaaaaaand we’re back on the beach. Very strong note of seaweed in the flavour here. To continue with the blustery-day-at-the-beach scenario, a fricking seagull just flew off with my dinner so now I have to make do with seaweed in a cup! And not that fancy sushi stuff either. I’m actually finding myself wondering what it would have tasted like if it had been brewed on lightly salted water instead of just tap water. (I’m not even remotely dumb enough to actually test that particular theory out, though)

All that said, I’m not actually completely disliking it, it’s just different. It’s a pleasant enough sort of taste once you’ve reconciled yourself with it. If you expected something sweet and grassy, you would be hugely unhappy with this. But if something like this was what you were expecting, it’d probably be quite nice. Having remembered to take a good sniff at the bags before steeping, I had a fairly good idea of what I was in for, so I’d probably give it around 65 or so.

This isn’t the first unknown green tea I’ve had and others might need it too, so I’ll refrain from using the rating slider.

Huh. I’m drinking this one now because I couldn’t figure out how to add it so I could put it in my cupboard. So I thought, HA! I’ll just drink it, I will. Only had the one bag, see! Genious, I am.

Except too late I realised that I couldn’t log it without adding it. headdesk You would think that would be logical, but nooooooo!

Anyway, this is a tea that was given to me by a friend who had been on holiday in Japan. I haven’t the slightest clue of what it says on the bag, it’s all in Japanese. It only says ‘Green Tea’ and the name of the hotel in letters that I can read. There were these teabags in the hotel rooms for the guests. (There was also a super-foul …concoction that they claimed, apparently, was plum tea. It was a powder that you stirred into hot water, it looked like washing machine soap and it tasted like sweat. It was disGUSting!)

I’m pretty sure it’s Sencha. It’s light, like Sencha, and it would seem the obvious choice to give to the guests in Japan. It’s got a sweet, mild and nutty flavour, but it’s not really particularly interesting. No clue about the quality of this stuff, obviously.

Hello steepsterites!!

Honeymoon is nearly over and we are leaving Norwich after breakfast. I’ve ticked a few more of those Very English things off my list such as fish’n’chips and brown sauce with breakfast sausages. Also banoffee pie and a large number of J2O flavours.

Most importantly though, THIS was as close as I got to a real proper cream tea. I could have had it. I was supposed to have it. But I’d had a large lunch and I don’t know if you are aware of this.steepsterites but cream tea involves an awful lot of food. There are little sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and cakes, and I just couldnt eat all that without bursting, so we went for just tea and cake instead.

So clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches are still unticked but i saw someone else having it so I was definitely close.

I hope you all have been behaving yourselves in my absence. It was the plan to try and keep up womewhat with the phone but the B&B wi-fi is dreadfully slow.

Backlogging, yesterday during work.
Or, work and work, I was at a course all day and this is what I assume they gave us. It was definitely citrus-y and when you serve a citrus-y tea to a large group of people without bothering to tell them what sort of tea it is, this is usually it.

It was watery weak and synthetically citrus-y. Drinkable, but only for the lack of better. On the next course day, if we’re not having it somewhere where I can pop into my own lab and make me a quick cup, I think maybe I’ll just drink coffee instead.

This tea is best after it has cooled to room temperature. Drinking it cold doesn’t let all the flavors come out; same with drinking it hot. There is something about having a glass of this once it has cooled that is really refreshing.

Not complicated, but lots of fruit flavors. Definitely a must for blueberry fans. No sweetener needed – it’ll confuse all the natural flavors that are in it.

This tea was purchased from a Wegmans grocery store. At the time of this review it did not appear on Harney’s website.

This was decent.

This smells like black tea. You can see I’t when you look at I’t. This brewed up quick, I did not have to steep this long. This was really good.

The oolong with the tangerine but the vanilla was too stong.