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Kristal drank Irish Eyes by Steepers

415 tasting notes

I finally went to my local tea shop- Steeper’s! (See my profile for my review of the shop). They didn’t have too many greens I was interested in, but this was an exception- I believe it’s supposed to be an earl grey green. I wish the package had a weight on it and a full ingredients list. I did weight the bag and it says 99 grams, but of course that doesn’t take into account the weight of the bag. The bag I bought came to $13.25; it seems quite expensive to me but then again it’s a local shop and it seems to be a higher quality tea (on the bag it says it’s “pekoe gunpowder”: can anyone explain that to me?).

When I smelled the leaves dry they smelled quite like bergamot and vanilla-. I brewed the tea up about 2.5 min (5 grams of tea and about 650 ml- 2 cups worth for my husband and I) in 175 degree F water. The brewed tea tastes strongly of vanilla from the bergamot, and I can see how it almost tastes chocolately as well. I am getting a little bit of a drying out affect as an aftertaste from the green tea, but that may have been me overleafing the tea.

Overall Steeper’s did a great job with this flavoured green- it definitely reminds me of Irish cream. I wanted an early grey green tea and this most certainly does the job.

Flavors: Bergamot, Chocolate, Vanilla

Preparation

175 °F / 79 °C 2 min, 30 sec 5 g 22 OZ / 650 ML

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I used to drink coffee, but it started to hurt my stomach so I switched to tea. A friend of mine introduced me to DAVID’s TEA and I couldn’t stop after that! I’ve now been expanding my scope beyond DAVIDs away from “candy-like teas” into more natural teas or flavourings. Current favourite stores include International House of Tea (iHOT) and Verdant Tea.

When it comes to tea ratings, I usually only ever rate them once. I know a lot of people on steepster do many tasting notes for the same teas depending on their mood, but I prefer to rate once and if my opinion changes, I will delete the old note and rate again. How I rate teas goes as following:

1-49: Teas I won’t buy again. Either the taste is disgusting to me, or it’s too bland, etc. I’m most likely not even going to finish the tin/bag.

50-59: Teas I wouldn’t buy again; I have to force myself to drink the whole cup to not waste it.

60-69: I’ll finish the cup and even the bag/tin, but I wouldn’t buy these teas again. Teas of this rating are “lacking something”.

70-79:Teas that are pretty good and ones I might buy again. Usually these teas are ones I have to be “in the mood for” and drink occasionally.

80-89: Great teas! Ones I will drink several times a week and often have in my stash :).

90-100: Favourite must-have teas!

My favourite types of tea are green tea and different types of “natural” herbal tea (different herbs, natural flavourings, etc). I cannot drink black or oolong teas due a sensitive stomach. I don’t really go for white tea due to its cost and the fact that it has just a little caffeine (if I want caffeine I’ll just go for a green tea and if I don’t I’ll go for a herbal-no sense on just having a little caffeine). I also like to do iced teas in the summer time, and then I’ll gravitate towards herbal fruit blends that are bagged to cut costs and convenience (it’s easier to throw out bags than clean a filter). Flavours I don’t care for include anything too tart, bitter, artificial, overly spicy or overly sweet.
Also, when I have time (usually when I’m not working much) I like to make tea lattes out of different rooibos blends.

My everyday green tea is Gunpowder since it is strong and not sensitive to temperatures or steeping time which is something I cannot be bothered with when I’m getting ready for work. Other greens I enjoy are dragonwell, sencha, and different Chinese greens. I’m not the biggest fan of yunnan greens since they are so finicky (although I do like gyokuro)

On a day to day basis I usually have 2-3 cups of green tea and several more cups of different herbal blends.

Besides tea I also work at a couple libraries (I am finishing my library tech diploma),am in my early 20s and got married in Oct 2014.