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I got two new white teas to try from my swap with TastyBrew

I am going to compare them all here (with my original white tea) and post the same note to the others.
I brewed 2 tsp of each in small teacups, steeped for 3 min at 180F

Monkey Picked White -The Tea Spot: Still my favorite white. It has the most pale liquor of all three and the most amazing creamy texture, with just a hint of citrus. When I say hint, I mean that it is so slight that I don’t always detect it.

White Symphony – Adagio: is this even a white tea? wow, the liquor is really dark golden and the flavor is strong of hay and barley. It kind of reminds me of brewers yeast (I had a lot of that (mixed in cups of water) growing up because my father was obsessed with the stuff). I actually like this one, but I don’t think of it as a white tea. It’s in a unique league of its own. I don’t know that it’s a tea that I’d want all the time, but I could be in the mood for it sometimes.

Snowbud – Adagio: My least favorite of the three. Liquor color is in between the other two. Flavor is slightly bitter and its not as creamy as my Monkey picked. There is another flavor, I don’t know if its nutty or mineral, maybe a blend of the two?

I got two new white teas to try from my swap with TastyBrew

I am going to compare them all here (with my original white tea) and post the same note to the others.
I brewed 2 tsp of each in small teacups, steeped for 3 min at 180F

Monkey Picked White – The Tea Spot: Still my favorite white. It has the most pale liquor of all three and the most amazing creamy texture, with just a hint of citrus. When I say hint, I mean that it is so slight that I don’t always detect it.

White Symphony – Adagio: is this even a white tea? wow, the liquor is really dark golden and the flavor is strong of hay and barley. It kind of reminds me of brewers yeast (I had a lot of that (mixed in cups of water) growing up because my father was obsessed with the stuff). I actually like this one, but I don’t think of it as a white tea. It’s in a unique league of its own. I don’t know that it’s a tea that I’d want all the time, but I could be in the mood for it sometimes.

Snowbud – Adagio: My least favorite of the three. Liquor color is in between the other two. Flavor is slightly bitter and its not as creamy as my Monkey picked. There is another flavor, I don’t know if its nutty or mineral, maybe a blend of the two?

I got two new white teas to try from my swap with TastyBrew

I am going to compare them all here (with my original white tea) and post the same note to the others.
I brewed 2 tsp of each in small teacups, steeped for 3 min at 180F

Monkey Picked White – The Tea Spot: Still my favorite white. It has the most pale liquor of all three and the most amazing creamy texture, with just a hint of citrus. When I say hint, I mean that it is so slight that I don’t always detect it.

White Symphony – Adagio: is this even a white tea? wow, the liquor is really dark golden and the flavor is strong of hay and barley. It kind of reminds me of brewers yeast (I had a lot of that (mixed in cups of water) growing up because my father was obsessed with the stuff). I actually like this one, but I don’t think of it as a white tea. It’s in a unique league of its own. I don’t know that it’s a tea that I’d want all the time, but I could be in the mood for it sometimes.

Snowbud – Adagio: My least favorite of the three. Liquor color is in between the other two. Flavor is slightly bitter and its not as creamy as my Monkey picked. There is another flavor, I don’t know if its nutty or mineral, maybe a blend of the two?

Thanks for this sample cheetah_pita!

This one has a lot of ingredients that I don’t like. I don’t like floral flavors and I don’t like Earl Grey. But this certainly isn’t a traditional Earl at all and the dried leaves smelled strongly of frankincense rather than of flowers. I was uncertain how I’d feel about Frankincense as a flavor, but it was worth a try.

I brought it over to my parents house so that they could sample it too. Once brewed, the frankincense aroma was completely gone. All I could smell was a cup of flowers. My parents agreed. My mother was happy with it because she likes floral teas. My father said that the flavor was tolerable but that the aroma smelled like ‘ladies perfume’ and that he could probably do without a second cup. I, myself, didn’t finish my cup. I could have, as I’ve learned to accept floral teas when they are already in front of me, but I gave the rest of mine to my mother as I knew that she would appreciate it more.

Although it didn’t turn out to be my cuppa, I’m glad that I had the chance to sample this unique blend.

Thank you Schmiracles for this sample :)

I haven’t been a fan of Della Terra teas as far as what I have tried so far. My mother seems to like them a lot, so I gave her most of my left overs.

This one really isn’t so bad as others I’ve tried. It’s a tolerable comforting drink, but probably not one I’ll go out of my way to get. I think its real redeeming quality is strawberry. I like strawberry flavored teas. The chocolate in this one is still as flat and boring as I remember from previous Della Terra teas, but it keeps it’s distance and doesn’t over power.

Maybe I am not being fair to Della Terra. Admittedly, I haven’t found many chocolate flavored or blended or even ‘noted’ teas that I like (chocolate peppermint blends being the primary exception). It could be that chocolate in tea isn’t for me, but I’m not ready to give up on it just yet. In fact, I remember that there was a pretty good chocolate cherry blend from The Tea Spot that I have on my shopping list.

This is a decent green tea. I think after my encounters with Laoshan green, I’ll rarely be so kind with my descriptions of other greens.

This one has a delicate vegetal flavor. It’s not bitter or astringent. A good every day green.

Here I am sitting with my tea for my 100th tasting note and I realize that I forgot about it! Thank goodness it’s still reasonably warm. I think Laoshan green is my number one favorite green tea right now. This is the autumn harvest and I can definitely tell a difference between it and the brand new spring harvest that I had the other day, both in freshness and in seasonal flavor notes. Still love it, fresh or not. A tea worthy of my 100th note.

Brew Notes:
3tsp/20oz (made a cup for my man too)
1min steep @175F

Thank you TastyBrew! After much deliberation, I decided to try this one first from the samples that you sent to me.

This is a very rare sort of tea that actually tastes better than it smells. It smells like caramel-apple-cardboard-style. I was prepared to be disappointed.

It’s quite tasty, but doesn’t taste like a caramel apple to me. It does taste sweet, and it tastes like assam, but I’m not exactly picking up individual flavors beyond that. I much prefer underachieving dessert flavor than over anyway. This makes for a good biscuit-dunking tea. I have teas that I drink alone and teas that I reserve for my most favorite Biscoff biscuits.

This is definitely a tea that I’d like to have around, but I don’t know yet if it will become a regular.

UPDATE 5/25/2013: I found another tea that better fills my niche for this one (Macaron -Mariage Freres) as it smells and tastes good and I like the apple flavor of the new one better.

(Oh darn-it, I went and put this log under the wrong company and didn’t catch my error before at least a couple of you read it. Oh well. It’s where it belongs now.)

What a neat looking tea. The pearls are much bigger than I thought they would be. I wasn’t sure what an appropriate serving size would be, so I just went with a default teaspoon which fit about 5 pearls. I steeped them for 3min30sec and it made a very strong smelling cup. It smelled like a black tea alright, and a bit earthy too. Something about it was even reminiscent of a pu-erh, but not quite. The flavor is quite malty, but not quite as sweet as other malty blacks (like the Hong Jing Luo also from thepuriTea). It’s a good robust cup of black tea nonetheless.

EDIT: as I near the bottom of my cup, I can’t help but think that this tea really could use some sugar or honey. I prefer my tea straight, though, and would rather drink a cup that doesn’t ask for extra frills.

I had to try Milk Oolong sooner or later just to know what it’s all about. This one had spectacular reviews, so I went with it. I didn’t expect to like Milk Oolong based on descriptions, and, unfortunately, it turns out that my expectations were right.

I can now officially say that Milk Oolong isn’t my thing.