New Tasting Notes

3.5g, 70 mL TWL gaiwan, boiling

Was a bit dry in my plastic sample box so I let it sit and steam for a few minutes in the gaiwan atop a sieve strainer atop the boiling kettle.

Decent texture, 7-8 steeps before stew taste. A bit of drying cherry, sweet, floral, some mint and cooling in finish. Some heat, rising feeling. Doesn’t go very deep, but very nice for the 15c/g I paid for it four years ago. Maybe I should’ve picked up more from TU before they closed shop. I only have this and a random autumn cake. This is much better than I gave it credit for back then, and I’m sorry I ever compared it to the “04 youle gushu,” a tea that is actually nearly undrinkable. Insert Shaq “I apologize” meme

The taste is not as full as it could be, but the perfumed florals are quite decent given it’s not some $/g boutique. The material is pretty enough and leaves are mostly intact, not choppy like a XG tuo or anything. Some mushroom taste in finish starting to develop. Will be nice to see how this continues to develop.

July Sipdown Challenge Prompt July 3 – Air Conditioning Appreciation Day: drink an iced tea

Sipdown

I had this hot months ago and didn’t make a note here and have forgotten what it was like hot. I remember thinking the orange flavor was very mild. I also remember thinking I really wanted this iced because it sounded like it would be so good that way.

Today I used all the remaining leaf to make a half gallon of iced tea. It is very good, and has so much coconut in it that the coconut oils are floating around a bit in the ice cold tea. That’s not a problem, though! It tastes great. It is really smooth and creamy, and I think a mild vanilla flavor perhaps dominates and the coconut is close behind. Orange is a distant whisper to me. Though there is black tea in this, I don’t get black tea flavor, just the shou mei, which I really enjoy.

It is so smooth, I think I could down the whole pitcher this afternoon. As it is, I chugged twelve ounces at lunch, sitting in the house enjoying the a/c on this cooler day with a heat index of merely 93F. I will leave plenty for Ashman to enjoy when he gets home!

Another one from the summer subscription box.

This is okay, but not my favorite. I don’t tend to like hibiscus and cinnamon together. The combination here reminds me of some sort of blueberry crumble or pie, since it has sweet and tangy blueberry with the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutty notes. But the description compares this tea to trail mix, which doesn’t make sense to me given the strong pastry and cinnamon notes. (shrugs)

Anyway, into the rehoming box it goes!

I REALLY like this one. It’s rich, creamy, minty, and has a touch of cocoa in the background that I love. I think it’s one of my favorite mint chocolate blends now. I’ll definitely need to re-buy this before the holidays.

This was super simple as I didn’t even need to boil separate water after cooking the corn. I just took one cup of hot water per cob from cooking the corn and steeped the corn silk in it. While it is still a mild tea, the cobs definitely added some flavor and sweetness that the cornsilk doesn’t have on its own. I made this in a pitcher from 8 cobs of corn. The kids and I drank some of it hot with dinner and chilled the rest to drink iced. It was a refreshing summer beverage!

This has been… okay I guess? It’s not really strong of any flavor. I’m not sure if it’s watery or under steeped so I am going to try it again later. Going to be sad if I splurged on Tea Forte and it ends up being mediocre.

The mint is bright and nice. It’s a bit chocolatey and pleasant cold, though it could be a lot bolder. Not the best and not the worst chocolate mint tea I’ve had. Nice to try from the TTB!

Long Jing Dragon Well. Tealyra.
FB: 11-2026.
This is a fresh, new supply of my favorite green tea, just before Tealyra sold out of it. Prepared as directed, Western style, with 2.5g leaf in a stainless steel infusion basket with 8 oz spring water at 175°F for 2 min. Delicious and every bit as good as the Adagio dragonwell I reviewed yesterday, so I’m raising the rating to 84, to match. A resteep at the same temperature but running 15 min. was equally wonderful. Comments in my prior review four months ago (of a very old bag) hold true, http://steepster.com/TeaEarleGreyHot/posts/457401 .

Do you ever have those times where you start feeling like the sneezing isn’t from allergies, and then suddenly you feel warm and just kinda meh? That was me yesterday. My immediate thought is always elderberry syrup. (If you get some, make sure it doesn’t have sugar!) I swear by the stuff. We didn’t have any, but I do have this tea.

Dry aroma: Cinnamon. Cinnamon bark, more specifically. And a hint of lemon.
Flavor: This is a pleasant blend. A bit spicy and a hint of woodiness. But overall, cinnamon. If you don’t like cinnamon, you will hate this. But if you enjoy cinnamon like I do you’ll find this quite pleasant.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon
It’s all about the cinnamon.

3.5g, 70 mL gaiwan

Good texture and active taste first few steeps, stopped at steep 5 or 6 after the leaf taste started to show. This tea remains quite green (unfocused, dispersed, and chaotic) in its feeling and is uncomfortable to drink even at a reduced gram amount, and this is my conclusion after several sessions of varying ratios. Had to take a couple snack breaks at work to avoid getting dizzy, was sweating/burning up throughout the day despite usually running cold, and then had to take tums before dinner to stop the burning/almost reflux feeling. Safe to say I will not be tempted by this again for a good while.

I heard good things from others who also purchased cakes from TJL, so I’m not sure what’s wrong with mine. This cake is one of the reasons why I will no longer try to save a few bucks instead of purchasing from tried and true vetted storage, and why I’m now wary of storage/source changes even when purchasing a tea from the same vendor. I assume from what I read online that this will probably course correct will some time, since puerh is pretty hardy. Will have to wait a few years and check back.

Sipdown of an herbal tisane for ashmanra’s sipdown challenge. This was a sample with my order back in May. It’s still not up on the website, but is currently still available on the rewards page, labeled “sneak peek.”

I’ve been enjoying this as an oat milk latte. Creamy, cinnamony, vanilla, sweet. Pretty good pastry vibes, especially for an Adagio blend. This flavor profile is right up my alley. It would probably be good with a dash of maple syrup too, but I didn’t think of that earlier!

Sipdown. I didn’t take good notes while drinking this, but it isn’t my favorite 52teas blend. Rum is the dominant flavor here, and I do enjoy the taste of rum, but somehow it didn’t seem quite right. Maybe a stronger base, or the addition of some vanilla, chocolate, and/or cinnamon flavor, would have given the blend a bit more balance. Not terrible by any means, there are just other 52teas blends I enjoy more.

Sipdown of a fruity tea for ashmanra’s sipdown challenge. This came from a TTB a while back, so thank you to whoever put it in there! I didn’t take a proper note as I was drinking it, but I remember this being interesting-in-a-good-way. The goji berry and chrysanthemum were definitely prominent flavors, making it both sweet and earthy. Not in the “this tastes like dirt” way that pu’erh sometimes does; more like “combination of savory and floral.” Very curious to try Paru’s other blends.

Sipdown. I’m trying to get caught up on tasting notes tonight – I’ve literally got a little stack of empty pouches that I wanted to note before tossing.

This one came from a past Tea Thoughts countdown box., though I’m not sure which one at this point. It’s been very hot lately, so I used the whole pouch for a cold brew. In retrospect, probably not the optimal brewing method for this particular tea. Straight from the fridge, it tastes rather thin. After warming up at room temperature for a bit, the flavor opens up and it’s a malty, jammy situation. But that feels weird to me as an iced tea, and now I’ve used up all of it on the cold brew and can’t test-drive it hot. Lesson learned – don’t use up all the leaf for a steeping method that might backfire!

… it did help with the heat, though

I accidentally made a duplicate entry of this as “Strawberry Cupcake” and now I can’t delete it. Does anyone still have admin access to delete duplicates and, if so, could you please delete it?

This is a sipdown of my oldest green tea for ashmanra’s sipdown challenge (or at least a very old green, I probably have some bits of Butiki still hoarded). This blend is 8 years old! I’m just glad that it didn’t spoil or mold. It’s not as good as it was years ago, but still a pretty enjoyable cuppa! Broadly speaking, the flavoring held up better than the base. The base has gotten a bit of an edge that I don’t remember being there before. The creamy vanilla and sweet strawberry are still good though! It’s “crunchy freeze-dried strawberry” more than it is candylike or fresh and juicy. I added a bit of honey, which smoothed out the edge on the base, made a tasty cuppa, and gave this blend a proper sendoff. Since I was drinking slowly, the tea cooled before I reached the bottom of the mug. I topped it off with seltzer and got a good tea soda out of it!

Da Hong Pao Superfine | Big Red Robe. Tealyra.
Lotsa names for this tea, but a rose by any name… or a turd by any name… smells the same. I brewed as directed, Western. I brewed gongfu. I went for multiple steepings. Yes, I could taste the “mineral” essence, and I definitely got the astringency. I did not get the promised sweetness. I did not get the floral notes in the finish. I did not get fruitiness as it cooled. I did not get the promised “mouthwatering” flavors. I really wanted to, and I’ve returned to this tea repeatedly across seven years, always wanting… hoping… praying… that it would finally pay off. It is said to improve with age. But in the end, I just feel duped. Minerality is another name for rocks (and one name for the tea is rock oolong); the effort of charcoal-roasting the leaves is another way of saying you tried to smoke-off the defects; aging the tea also ages the drinker, whose sense of taste eventually declines; multiple steeps extract out astringency, and the mouth feels faux-sweetness at the relief of not being puckered up by another cup of this swill. Ultimately I became tired of trying to find goodness in a mouthful of wet rocks tasting of carbonized wood. THE KINGS NEW CLOTHES ARE REVEALED! It is as if they took the discarded, spent leaf from an RTD black tea factory and baked it dry, then repackaging it for sale with a hundred promises and a fast getaway car on standby. This tea is a waste of time, money, and spring water. Do not buy this tea, which I rate as 15. Do not waste your money, time, cupboard-space, or friendships with this farm byproduct. I am not only disappointed, I’m angry.

RTD = Ready To Drink

After touring Arundel Castle, we found this tea shop while walking around the town. They say they make their own teas, so I bought almost all their herbal blends. This one is unfortunately not a winner. The fruitiness is just kind of chemically. Combined with the rooibos, it’s just fake and unpleasant. Cold with almond milk is the most palatable way to drink it.

a fairly okay brew, but what I need right now to get work done

dragonwell. Adagio.
Lot no. 90718. FB 09/2029

Brewed as directed, Western style, in a stainless steel infusion basket. This is a really good dragon well tea! I bought this bag at Adagio’s store in Naperville, IL. The aroma was vegetal and nutty, and flavors included chestnut, light grassiness, edamame, pleasantly astringent, and as the cup cooled, flashes of sweet fruit, possibly grape. Everything I expect from a lung jing! A re-steep was similar, but less potent and non-astringent but still enjoyable, probably because both steeps were 2.5 min. In the future I would simply combine both liquors and enjoy a large mugful, or shorten the first and lengthen the second, to balance it out. Recommended, and rate as 84.

I’ve been trying a number of different ginseng teas from Tealyra lately, and bought this Imperial Ren Shen Genseng Oolong because of its unique composition: rolled oolong, with a coating — almost a shell — of ginseng and Chinese vanilla. I steeped this as directed, western style in a stainless steel infusion basket, and re-steeped twice for a total of three clear light-amber infusions that each had some fines settled at the bottom of the cup. I don’t know how Chinese vanilla differs from other vanillas, but I don’t think I tasted it. Nor did I really get a strong ginseng flavor—just a bit of warm gensing in the aftertaste at the back of my tongue and roof of my mouth, following vigorous slurping and swirling. Only the mildest of toasted oolong flavors was to be enjoyed. The oolong aroma was better than the flavor. The first infusion had almost no flavor at all, and after steeping, the oolong leaves were still encased in the shell. In fact, the oolong leaf never fully escaped the shells, and that may have been an issue. So I smashed the spent material with a spoon and gave a fourth steep, which resulted in a very dark olive green liquor, muddy with fines, almost like a brown, gritty matcha. This 4th, final, steep had only mild woody oolong flavor and aroma when vigorously slurped, but did finally offer some ginseng at the end of the finish. I have attached a photo of the spent, smashed pulp, which did show some intact leaf amidst the debris. The net result of this experience was four disappointing cups of tea with few notes of oolong or ginseng and no vanilla, that represent a wasted quart of my spring water. I would not recommend, and will rate this 24. (And yes, this was freshly purchased, with a BestBy date still 15 months in the future.)