620 Tasting Notes
1 bag for 250mL water, bare.
(backlogging)
I am totally spoilt. Loose leaf forever.
This bagged Gen Mai Cha is a competent version, but it’s lacking something … body, nuance … I feel like I’m being very hard on Numi lately. I used to think much more highly of their bagged teas. Have they gone downhill, or have I gotten pickier?
Pleasant green tea that will get bitter if the water’s too hot. Nice enough toasty rice. But there’s no oomph to this, nothing to make me choose Numi’s Gen Mai Cha over anyone else’s.
Preparation
1 bag for 250mL, bare.
Watching tea or tisane steep in my dear old clear glass mug is great pleasure for me. Red rooibos is especially pretty to watch.
The initial scent of Numi’s Red Mellow Bush is that nuttiness some red rooibos has — and sunshine. I mean that exceptionally clean scent of sunshine — laundry dried on a clothesline, conifers in summer, sparkling rocks … that sunshine. No mint and no wood. The taste is a little dull, but i think that’s due to the relatively stingy teabag portion and not the leaves themselves. Rooibos needs a good 5 minutes to start developing its flavour, in my experience. I rarely take my rooibos leaves out of the cup before finishing the tisane.
Like Numi’s Bushmen’s Brew Honeybush, this is very competent. It’s a red rooibos I wouldn’t hesitate to give a first-time sipper. A good example of good rooibos.
T
Preparation
1 bag for 250mL water, bare.
Ehrrr … I am not kindly disposed to this one. It will have hibiscus — ugh. And adding flavbouring to Darjeeling is risky, at best. Darjeeling is so wonderful on its own — and can be hard to get, so why wreck the limited supply with flavours?
But I digress. I might even be wrong.
Steeping the bag in a clear glass mug … um, yeah, it looks like it’s bleeding, not steeping. Damn you, hibiscus!
Decent muscatel scent, though a slightly earthy one.
If you want to give a vampire tea party, this is the tea to make. Quite striking — and bloody, really — against glass. I would imagine it would be so agasint white china, too.
First sip: all hibiscus.
Second sip: 90% hibiscus, 10% stale tea.
Berries? Where?
Like I said, I was prejudiced against this blend from the start, as I strongly dislike hisbiscus. It’s a bully!
Third sip: 60 hibiscus, 30 getting-bitter tea, 10 sharp mystery dirt.
Steep time: 2:30. I imagine the tea will develop and battle the hibiscus, but the tea’s already bitter. (Darjeeling, bitter? WTH?) Must go water a plant.
If you don’t mind hibiscus, maybe try this one at a very short steep. It shoudl yield you a cup of hibiscus water with a faint black tea infusion.
Not for me.
Preparation
1 bag for 250mL water, bare.
(Backlogging)
I like honeybush. This is a bag of honeybush. Therefore it was quite good. What makes it good is that it’s honeybush. It’s like chamomile and peppermint that way, pretty standard across the brands, provided the leaves are treated nicely.
Preparation
1 bag for 250mL water, bare.
Spicy scent when I opened the bag morphed into full-on GINGERBREAD once the water hit the leaves. (MKust be the clove and allspice.) Seriously. It needed a good long steep to taste of anything, but the aroma was lovely. The ginger and cardamom lend the blend some good heat. I don’t really taste much red rooibos, but at least the rooibos is neither woody nor minty. Good. Better than I expected.
Preparation
1 bag for 250mL water, bare.
I love the floral scent, which is hard to define. Almost a spicy floral — I guess that’s the osmanthus. The taste is a bit different. A fairly subtle but not boring white tea. Delicate. Slight touch of apricots on the aftertaste. Very pleasant.
Preparation
1 TB for 450mL water, bare.
Cool enough water and a 5-minute steep bring out excellent nuances, without soapiness or bitterness. This oolong demands good treatment, better than I can generally give it with my basic kettle. (Oh, for a Breville!) But once I get the water right, this is a very fine, very refreshing gentle ooling. Not too buttery, and not too vegetal. The magnolia scent beckons but doe not batter. Mmmm.
Preparation
1 bag for 250mL water, bare. Numi recommends cooling the water a bit after boiling — good. It makes me cringe when white and green tea packaging exhorts the use boiling water. Yeesh, way to ruin white and green tea for first-timers. But I digress.
For a white tea, this one gives off a slighlty leathery atringenct scent that I normally expect from a first flush Darjeeling. Or is that part of the rose I’m catching?
The rose is gentle aqnd very soothing. I feel like keeping still within a comfortable chair. The different scents encourage mindfulness and rest, and that is very good.
A four-minute steep gives a pale brass-cloured liquor and a really different rose scent. Not powders and perfumes at all, but instead very classic, even a bit sharp. The astringency reminds me of the Body’s Shop’s Tea Rose perfume oil (which I love but gave up wearing because wasps and bees like it, too; guess which insects I have a phobia of), though the tea for sure does not smell as rosy as that perfume.
Really good. Especialy for a bagged white. I’d love to try this one loose.
I really like samplers. Ya like some, ya don’t like some, but it’s a great way to meet new tea.
Preparation
1 bag for 450mL water, bare.
Trying the teabag in my larger travel mug this morning.
It does best in 250mL / 8oz / 1 cup, I think. Here at 450mL, there’s almost no body, and the pepperiness gets diluted. (When buying tea at a cafeteri or coffee shop, I almosy always get a small, unless they offer a second teabag for the large. Teabags are stingy.) The scents remain: pepper, minerals, honey, malt, and smoke, but the taste is definitely watered down. Weh.
That’s it. I’m making a proper pot of Black Needles later.
All in all, a really good bagged Yunnan. Just don’t expect miracles from it. And don’t try steeping 1 single bag in a great big mug.
