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I bought this tea back in March when DAVIDsTEA had their free shipping promotion, and I’ve gone through almost the entire 50 g, which, given the number of teas I have, is impressive. This is partly because it’s a good chai and partly because it’s one of my better decaf options. I steeped around 4 g of tea in a 355 ml mug at 200F for 3.5, 5, 8, and 10 minutes.

The dry aroma is of cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, cardamom, ginger, and licorice, and the flavour reflects those notes. This is a particularly spicy chai, and the cinnamon, cardamom, and pepper are prominent. I’m not sure what ashwagandha tastes like so I can’t comment on that. Sadly, the ginseng in this chai makes me think of licorice, which is not one of my favourite flavours. Some form of licorice seems to find itself in almost every herbal chai I’ve seen online, even though there’s no similar flavour note in regular chai. Maybe this is due to the assumption that decaf chais have to be sweet (which is annoying, as I’d prefer them not to be, and the cinnamon takes care of that anyway). Whatever the reason, this detracts somewhat from my enjoyment of this tea, though the licorice isn’t strong enough to prevent me from drinking it often.

This tea is quite resilient, maintaining its oomph into the fourth steep. As decaf chais go, it’s something I could buy more of, though I’m looking for an alternative that doesn’t contain that dreaded licorice.

This tea is from spring 2020. The curly leaves still have some give to them, which testifies to its freshness. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of honey, cocoa, and stonefruit. The first steep features honey, raisins, malt, muscatel, and peach. The second steep adds plum and more peach and muscatel, making it a jammy peach/raisin combination. This tea just keeps getting fruitier. In the third and fourth steeps, the stonefruit really takes off and the plums/peaches balance the grape/raisin notes. The honey and faint malt bring it all together. Steep five sees a return to the raisin/grape notes, and honey, malt, wood, and slight tannins gradually take over as the session goes on. The final steeps have notes of honey, wood, tannins, and minerals.

The love child of Doke Black Fusion and a black Dan Cong, this is a fantastic tea. If it has one fault, it’s that the stonefruit disappears too quickly, but the remaining steeps are still tasty and interesting. I’m glad I picked this one up.

After years of neglect, Steepster suddenly changing comes as a surprise. I hope that with the new owners, the community will get some love and some of the spam and posting issues will be resolved. However, I have an old computer and use IE11, neither of which are great for a flashy new site, so I thought I’d better post some reviews while I still can.

According to the owner, this oolong is from spring 2019. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of cookies, flowers, and candied orange. The first steep has notes of cookies, honey, orchids, lilacs, spinach, and cream—no orange to be found. The orange makes a slight appearance in steep 2, along with the promised cocoa butter, though I would never have made that leap without the website description. The third steep has notes of orange, honey, spinach, cookies, cocoa butter, and faint flowers. The orange continues in the next three steeps, and is joined by orange blossom, veggies, and grass. The tea fades quickly after that, though the steeps are still enjoyable.

This is an above-average oolong that I wouldn’t immediately peg as a Shan Lin Xi. I loved the complexity of flavours, though as with many high mountain oolongs, I only got five or six really good steeps. Contrary to my usual preferences, I liked the Alishan better, perhaps because it’s newer.

Each spring, I get caught up in the hype around the new green teas, even though I know I don’t particularly care for their vegetal, grassy profiles. This year, I managed to prevent myself from ordering large amounts of tea I’d feel guilty about not drinking, but still couldn’t resist the pull entirely. Hence this 25 g pack of Liu An Gua Pian, which is something that I liked before, even when I accidentally dumped boiling water over it.

That brings me to the other reason green tea and I don’t get along: I have a terrible time brewing it correctly. I don’t have a variable temperature kettle, so getting the water to 176F is a waiting game. I also don’t have consistent gongfu parameters. And I only have huge mugs or small 150 ml teacups, so I don’t even know where to start with bowl brewing. Also, I probably have the wrong water because everyone seems to have the wrong water.

I steeped 5 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot using water cooled to 176F for 40, 20, 25, 30, 40, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds. The first three times came from the owner; the last few are just my guesses.

The dry aroma of these long, curly, rolled leaves is of toasted pumpkin seeds, seaweed, and veggies. The first steep has notes of pumpkin seeds, spinach, cabbage, green beans, and iodine. The iodine and cruciferous vegetables get a lot stronger in the second steep, which also reminds me of zucchini. This somewhat sweet, vegetal profile remains strong in the next couple steeps, and then takes over as the session goes on, with highlights of spinach, broccoli, and kale. Nonetheless, there is not much astringency.

Although it has not made me into a green tea convert, this Liu An Gua Pian has the profile I remember and is nuanced enough to be interesting. Still, however, it’s a lot of work for flavours I don’t particularly gravitate toward. Maybe I’ll finally stop buying these types of teas every spring, or maybe I’ll eventually learn to like these vegetal notes. Only time will tell.

This is my first oolong from the 2020 spring harvest. Yay! I ordered some tea from Cha Yi a week ago Friday and it arrived the next Monday, which is amazing in this time of long shipping delays. Canada Post is really doing its job! I usually don’t go for Alishans, but the owner recommended it and it was the only spring high mountain oolong available, so I took a chance. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of heady flowers, egg whites, candied tropical fruit, and honeydew melon. The first steep has the buttery Alishan florals (orchid, lilac), plus sweet melon, cookies, and grass. It has a nice, heavy texture and no astringency. The second steep continues to be floral, sweet, and a bit vegetal, with slight tropical fruit. The description mentions cocoa butter, and I can kind of see where they’re coming from. The next few steeps continue with the fruity/floral/buttery profile, although the vegetal notes get stronger. By steep six, the spinach and umami are starting to overpower the fruity florals, but this tea retains some sweetness until the end of the session.

This is a high-quality Alishan with many of the fruity notes I like. Although the oolong fades quickly, those first few steeps are great, which is sort of what one can expect from this type of tea. I look forward to trying the two winter 2019 oolongs I purchased from this company.

I’m surprised I’ve never reviewed this tea before. It was the tea that initially attracted me to the Eco-Cha Tea Club, which I still regret leaving. It was made in the winter of 2015 and I’m down to my last couple sessions. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of charcoal, roast, honey, grains, and flowers. The first steep has notes of honey, roast, smoke, autumn leaf pile, wood, and grains, and is not as sweet as many bug-bitten oolongs. The second steep is woody, roasty, and drying in the mouth, with the honey mostly in the background. The third and fourth steeps develop a sharper woody and sappy character, although with a lovely honey and floral aftertaste. The honey, grain, wood, sap, roast, and autumn leaves persist through the next few steeps. As expected, the finish is woody and roasty.

When I first had this tea, I was blown away, but either the roast has grown more prominent with age or I’ve become used to drinking sweeter bug-bitten oolongs. Still, as perhaps the second bug-bitten oolong I ever drank, it holds a special place in my heart.

I got this tea with my unfortunate teapot purchase late last year, so I assume it’s from 2019. It was kind of Beautiful Taiwan Tea to include a sample. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of sweet cream, flowers (osmanthus?), cookies, and vegetables. The first steep has notes of cream, butter, orchid, osmanthus, custard, veggies, and grass. I get artichoke and bok choy in the second steep, along with a subtle fruitiness that I can’t pin down. The fourth steep makes me think it might be honeydew. The creamy notes fade as the session progresses, and the floral, honeydew, and vegetal notes take over. Even at the vegetal end of the session, there’s a nice sweetness.

This is a solid Jin Xuan, and while it isn’t my favourite type of Taiwanese oolong, I enjoyed it, especially the surprise fruity note.

Wow! It’s been a while since I posted a review. I’ve been drinking teas I’ve already written about and wondering why I bought so many of them in 50 g packages. This is yet another 50 g pack of tea, which was harvested in 2015 (yikes!). Maybe I was intrigued to try a black Jin Xuan, or maybe I got it as a mystery tea. Who knows at this point?

I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds. I debated brewing this as an oolong and might do that in a future session.

The dry aroma is of dark chocolate, honey, and malt. These flavours appear in the first steep, along with some sourness and plant stems. The second steep has more pronounced malt, honey, cocoa, and wood notes, with a bit of dryness and a lovely cocoa aftertaste. There are slightly more dryness and tannins in the third and fourth steeps. I also find a pronounced grassy flavour that is typical in many oolongs. By the sixth steep, the chocolate starts to fade and the honey, malt, and grassy notes take over. The tannins are making this tea taste a bit metallic. The final steeps have notes of malt, tannins, minerals, and faint chocolate.

This was an enjoyable, if not very nuanced, tea that petered out quickly and had some off notes as the session progressed. The first few steeps were pretty good, though. I’m not sure how much of this is due to age, so I won’t be giving it a rating. Next time, I’ll try using longer steeps to see if I can maximize the chocolate.

I actually bought this tea from Tealyra, but am using the Tealux page for convenience. I steeped around 2 teaspoons of leaf in a 355 ml mug at 205F for 3.5, 5, and 10 minutes, respectively.

The dry leaf smells promisingly spicy, with notes of black pepper, cardamom, ginger, licorice, and cinnamon. Sadly, the black pepper and licorice predominate in the taste, which is unfortunate since licorice isn’t one of my favourite flavours. If you can ignore the licorice, this is a nicely balanced chai that is definitely on the spicy side, with a bit of woodiness from the rooibos. It leaves a strong peppery and spicy aftertaste.

I would be a lot happier with this tea if it had more ginger and cardamom and no licorice whatsoever. My search for a good decaf chai continues.

I took a chance on this tisane because it looked interesting and because I like the combination of ginger and citrus. I used two teaspoons of material for a 355 ml mug and steeped it at 205F for 3.5, 5, and 8 minutes. The ingredients were in fairly big pieces, which made it difficult to get a good balance of flavours.

Upon opening the bag, the lime hits me in the face. The taste, however, is surprisingly mild, with lime, tangy orange and hibiscus, some sweetness from the aloe, and a touch of ginger. The mint is totally absent.

I honestly wish this mule had more of a ginger kick. As is, I won’t have trouble finishing it, but it probably won’t be a repurchase.