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Sipdown! (154)

Aw, the last of my little sample packet from the 3rd anniversary sampler. Thanks again to TeaVivre for letting us humble tea-drinkers try so many of your teas for free! You’ll always have a following here on Steepster because of your delicious tea and awesome service!

As much as I enjoy this tea, I don’t really see it being something that I’ll order, simply because it’s one of the priciest black teas and there are others that I like just as much. I’m really glad I got the opportunity to try it, though! :)

Sigh… So I’m feeling pretty cheated by the Blends club this month… I was so excited for the premise of vanilla-centric blends. They reeled me in! And then they gave me a licorice tea and a floral tea. The third tea sounds like it’ll be good, but vanilla is not the main flavor there either. Ugh!

So I figured I’d get this one out of the way already, since I hate licorice root. Honestly, the dry scent isn’t horrible, but there’s quite a bit of ginger and I can definitely smell the licorice. And it actually smells really nice when brewed – like apple cinnamon oatmeal! Yum.

Unfortunately, it’s very licorice. I can’t stand that weird sweet aftertaste that licorice gives, it makes me want to gag. The other flavors in this tea aren’t bad, and I might actually enjoy it if it hadn’t been ruined by the evil emperor himself. I’m not going to rate this considering there is a large amount of bias in play here.

So, straight into the rehoming box it goes. If anyone is interested in trying this, just let me know, I have an ounce of it.

Daily Summary: 4 sipdowns, 155 teas remaining in cupboard

So after having a nice little conversation with Sarsonator, I decided to break open one of my many puerh samples from TeaVivre. She recommended a pseudo-gong fu method of combining three steeps into one mug and then repeating that. The dry leaves are in small chunks and flakes from being broken off of a cake. The color ranges from dark evergreen to slightly purple. Dry scent is rather strong smoke, which surprised me! Also eucalyptus or menthol and slightly mushroom notes.

So, I did a 10s rinse. Then 10s, 15s, 20s steeps combined into one cup. After that I did 30s, 40s, and 50s combined. I found then to be quite similar so I’m just going to consider both cups as one experience.

Brewed aroma was pretty much the same as dry, but much milder on the smoke and methol. The taste was much lighter than I expected it to be. There’s a mild hay or grassy flavor that forms the base, and I can definitely see the “barnyard” descriptor here, but in a good way. The smoke and the menthol hit at the back of my tongue and throat, along with a slight peppery taste. All three are quite mild. There’s a definite dried fruity flavor, comparable maybe to dried apricot or prune.

I got an interesting tingly feeling in my mouth that I wasn’t expecting! I wasn’t sure whether I enjoyed it or not, to be honest. It somewhat made my tongue feel like I’d eaten too many sour candies… And I could definitely feel it making a difference in my heart rate and a little bit in my head. Interesting! Now my chest kind of hurts, so not sure what that’s about…

Thanks Sars for all the advice! :) I’m really unsure how to rate this, so I guess I’ll just go for it?

I’ve been holding onto my Shang white tea samples for a while, and I’m not sure why. I guess I’m just not always in a white tea mood. Well, today I am! There is a ton of tea in this packet and it seems like way too much for one cup, but I’m going to trust the instructions and go for it anyway. The leaves are large and overall, this tea looks similar to bai mudan. Dry scent is lovely sweet hay and oats. I decided to go with a 2 minute steep – I would generally go longer, but I was afraid considering the volume of leaves.

Oh, honey honey! The aroma smell deliciously of honey, which is not something I’ve really found in white teas before. There’s also an interesting sweet and slightly fruity scent that reminds me of juicy sweet grapes or a sweet Moscato. The flavor is classic white tea, but with a little bit of extra. It has the usual hay or straw flavor, along with a nice light graininess that reminds me of oats. The texture is creamy and lovely, it reminds me almost of soy or almond milk. Over everything is that amazing sweet honey that I was smelling in the aroma. I can taste the honey throughout the entire sip, from beginning to end, but it’s not overpowering of the other flavors. There’s a wee little bit of cucumber that pokes its head out near the end, and it adds a nice refreshing element.

Overall, a lovely and delicious white tea with an amazing amount of (unexpected) honey flavor. :)

Wow it’s amazing how much my palate has changed… When I had this tea before, I thought it was super strong and heavy, I even listed smoke. What?

85?! WHAT?!

Now it tastes like lovely grainy deliciousness. No smoke, no earth, just amazing chewy raw grains. And It’s not heavy at all!

I ADDED SUGAR TO THIS?! x.x I plead insanity.

Putting this into the “permanent” cupboard and bumping the rating from 85 to 90…

Another sample from Stephanie! I generally like to jump on any chance I get to try one of the famous French brands (Nina’s, Mariage Freres, Fauchon, etc) because they tend to be a pain in the ass to get ahold of. Although this is not true with Nina’s anymore, since they have a lovely new store website (http://www.ninasteastore.com). Flavored green teas aren’t generally something I ever consider when purchasing tea, just because I usually only drink green tea as a digestive or palate cleanser. But I love pina colada, so I had to try this one! The leaf appears to be sencha. It smells quite sweet and vaguely coconutty.

Brewed aroma is mostly coconut. I added a little bit of sugar (and noticed there was still golden Yunnan fairy dust on my teaspoon, cute!) just because I almost always end up adding it anything with flavored teas. Hmm… I’m finding the flavoring to be fairly light, which I suppose I should expect from French teas. The coconut is very present at the front of the sip, and then I start to get pineapple near the end. The base tea itself tastes grassy and has a slight autumn leaf element.

Overall, quite lovely and light for a coconut tea, and I do enjoy that little hint of pineapple near the end, but I wish there was more pineapple in general!

This is the first of five free samples that I requested from teasenz. If you haven’t received samples from them yet, it’s a great value. No cost to you and the sample sizes are huge! Here’s the link: http://www.teasenz.com/free-tea-samples-with-free-shipping

Anyway, I was looking through my straight black teas this morning for something to try (I recently organized my teas by type, hooray!) and saw this pouch. Now, as anyone who has tried a few Yunnan teas knows, the descriptor “gold” doesn’t generally tell you anything. It can mean any amount of golden tips, from the very few to the many. I must say, I was shocked when I opened this pouch! When teasenz says “gold”, they mean it! This tea is a fuzzbud™ variety, meaning it consists purely of giant, fuzzy golden buds. I was expecting at most a large amount of buds mixed with leaves, so this was a very pleasant surprise! The inside of the pouch is covered with lovely golden Yunnan fairy dust. Dry scent is sweet and honeyed with stonefruit and light malt notes. I didn’t look up the recommended parameters, but did my usual straight black tea method of 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The brewed aroma has surprisingly strong cocoa notes! And then there’s also the expected honey, malt, and stonefruit loveliness. This tea is rather simple, but delicious. It’s a lovely melange of creamy and grainy flavors. There’s nice crusty toasted bread along with light and airy puff pastry flavor. Then I also taste a bit of raw grains, along with hot baked sweet potato. I also get a sweet hay-like note near the end and into the aftertaste. Of course, there’s honey over the top of everything, and the whole result is quite creamy and delicious. I wish there was a little bit of that nice stonefruit flavor in here, but this tea is very tasty even without it.

Overall, this tea is quite light and a lovely mix of grainy, creamy flavors!

(I don’t generally add links to the product, but it was mentioned on the free sample page so I figured I should comply since they sent me such lovely samples. I hope this is okay/allowed!)
http://www.teasenz.com/yunnan-gold-tea#.U-ZwU_ldXX8

This sample came from the generous and lovely Stephanie. Must try all of the Butiki teas! Especially the straight blacks. :D This looks similar to the Taiwanese Assams I have from Butiki, it has those “creepy tree branch” leaves. I wondered how this differs from other similar-looking teas, so I looked at the website. Apparently this tea is a cross between Assam and Keemun, which is very cool. I don’t really get any smell from the dry leaves. I noticed that the website recommends 2 teaspoons per 8 oz, so I “underwatered” a bit for my sample, as it looked to be about a teaspoon.

The brewed tea smells lovely – apricots, dark dried fruits, and honey. My first though after tasting this was… yum! Lol. This may be the fruitiest black tea I’ve had yet. Very strong apricot and plum flavor with a generous amount of honey over the top. There’s a little wisp of floral near the end of the sip, which I have found in a couple of Keemun teas before. At first, I didn’t think I was finding a lot of Assam in here, as I’ve found more fruitiness in Keemuns I’ve tried. However, as the tea started to cool a bit, I started to taste that amazing pastry-like waffle flavor that I found in the Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black yesterday. Oh, hello Assam! So I would recommend trying this tea warm for a different flavor profile. :D

After trying the Carrot Curry savory tea, I was excited to get ahold of the others. Luckily, my sweetheart was making an Amazon order a couple of days ago, so I added the variety box to it. I’m not sure why I chose this one to try tonight, it just sounded so interesting and I figured it would be somewhat sweet considering it contains beets. The dry bag smelled strongly of cabbage and savory spices.

Whew, the brewed tea smells like cabbage soup! Luckily, I don’t mind cabbage, though it’s not my favorite. The flavor of this tea is much more subtle than the aroma, in fact, it’s almost too subtle. The main taste is boiled cabbage, and there’s a sweetness from the beets. The spicing is very mild, though I do get warmth from the clove near the end of the sip. I can definitely taste the parsley, and it adds a nice fresh flavor. Overall, I do enjoy the flavor, but I wish there was more of it. Perhaps next time I’ll steep this with less water and see if that improves the strength. I find that I really enjoy these savory vegetable teas as a caffeine-free nighttime option.

In other news, this is my 300th tasting note. Huzzah!

So… I figured I would give this a try, even though I’m not a fan of ginger. I figured, why not, what if it’s really good and you never try it? So I tried it.

NOOP. Pure ginger tea, ick. Not going to rate it. Into the rehoming box it goes.