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I put a whole one of these in the 50 ml gaiwan, which is probably overleafing by a bit. I rinsed and then steeped at boiling for 10/10/20/30/40/50/60/120/240/300/360

The dry nests have a heavy, whiskey-like aroma. The nest fell apart fully after the first steep.

This one followed the pattern I seem to be observing where the first steep had a slightly lighter mahogany color, then the steeps darkened in color to a coffee color through the fourth steep and then began to lighten to a dark amber with each subsequent steep.

The first four or so steeps smelled of cocoa, coffee, molasses, and a little leather. It tasted like it smelled.

Around steep four, the flavor started to fade some and an earthy note came out.

Another observation: the shu pu erhs I’ve tasted mostly don’t really change all that much except for a shift around steep four when the start to fade. I tend not to really enjoy the later steeps that have less flavor as much. While I’ll continue to steep them through 10 steeps to be able to compare more accurately for initial note purposes, if I were just drinking for the sake of it, I’d probably stop after steep 5 in most instances.

Through steep 5, this was a nice tea with rich flavors, and no fishiness. I enjoyed its departure from the usual mushroom notes I get with shu.

Now that I’ve done some cupboard purging to get rid of things I seem to no longer have, I can report that the current status of teas in the cupboard with no initial notes is:

1 black caffeinated
1 black decaf
7 oolongs
6 pu erhs
2 herbals
5 blooming individual servings

It was bound to happen. As I started to get to what looked like the last few oolongs, I found I hadn’t entered this one into my cupboard. Sigh. So now I have more tea than I thought I had.

But perhaps the good news is that I may have less than I thought I had. I haven’t been able to locate in my stash a couple of the teas that were already in my Steepster cupboard. Unless they’ve been put somewhere I wouldn’t ordinarily put them by someone else in the household, I’m throwing in the towel on them, on the theory that I sipped them down before without recording them. Or just entered them by mistake, which seems more likely. One was a Lupicia “milky” oolong and it’s possible I entered that under a more generic entry at first and then entered it under its actual name later. Same with a Chicago Tea Room tieguanyin. Who knows.

In any case, this tea. You’re going to think I’m weird, but when I stuck my nose in the packet, I thought “peanut butter.” There’s a nutty smell that has a toasted edge to it. On further consideration, it is likely almond. This is all very interesting, because the dry leaves look like your standard green oolong. Varying hues of green, rolled into balls.

Gaiwan. Rinse, 190F (still can’t get the Zo to heat up to 195F today for some reason), 15 seconds +5 for each subsequent steep.

This is a really, really nice tea. It’s color is definitely that of a green oolong, a medium yellow, rather than that of a dark oolong.

It smells a little nutty, a little fruity (peach?), and a lot honey — not roasty toasty like a dark oolong or floral buttery like a green one. It seems to exist in a sort of in between the dark and the green. The flavor is just like the smell. It’s mild, light bodied, and easy to drink.

Giving it high marks for being unusual (and tasty).

When I read “infused with the creaminess of milk” I thought I would dislike this. I’ve not had the best of luck with so-called milk oolongs with an exception or two. I have come close to gagging on some of the heavier ones.

So when I smelled the dry leaf of this in the packet, I was prepared for the worst. It has a sort of sprayed on buttery thing going on, like the butter flavor in butter flavored popcorn. In the packet, it smells to me like white rice as a butter delivery vehicle.

Gaiwan. 190F (for some reason my water isn’t heated all the way to 195 in the Zo), rinse, steep for 15 seconds plus 5 per steep for four steeps.

The first steep is pale yellow, which darkens to a champagne yellow and is clear. The third steep darkened to a yellow that was as buttery as the aroma.

The steeped tea’s aroma is also very rice-butter but the flavor is much milder.

There is definitely milk and cream, and maybe a little butter, in the flavor but there’s a sweetness that keeps it from heading toward buttermilk. It’s actually a pretty unique flavor, one I can’t recall tasting in other oolongs. It doesn’t really present as fruity to me, but perhaps that’s what I’m tasting, the hints of passionfruit and mango, and I’m just not recognizing it as such. The caramel is more apparent to me.

It’s always fun when you go into tasting a tea expecting to be horrified and you’re pleasantly surprised. While this is a shadow of the The O Dor, it’s one of the better milk flavored oolongs I’ve had, even with the “infused” bit.

Sipdown no. 17 of 2019 (no. 505 total). A sample teabag.

It turns out I have two sample teabags of this, but in the spirit of EVERY CONTAINER COUNTS for sipdown purposes, I decided to treat them separately.

I bought the green version of this a while back, and I rated it an 85. I am pretty sure I’ll be revisiting that rating. I was feeling generous that day, but I remember that there was something that rubbed me the wrong way about the tea that makes me think I rated it too high.

The black version has a very strong cherry syrup smell when dry and an interesting smell after steeping that is less syrupy but not quite like fresh cherries. More like the candied version you find in the middle of chocolates, I suppose. Unlike a lot of other Lupicia flavored blacks, I smell the tea not at all after steeping. Just the cherry.

The tea is a dark amber/light chestnut color.

The flavor is surprising. I had expected something heavy and candied, maybe even a little bitter from the smell. But what I get is something much more like a fresh cherry flavor that I would have thought. The tea is barely present. It seems to be there mostly for ballast.

But weirdly, that’s ok with me because the cherry flavor is so unique. Not at all like a cherry flavoring agent. Not sweet, but not sour or bitter.

A very nice surprise.

Sipdown no. 16 of 2019 (no. 504 total).

This wasn’t a favorite after a first tasting, so it became a cold brew candidate.

Something about the cold brought out a bit more character in it, which had been my primary complaint (lack of character). But not enough to change the rating.

Another of the impulse buys in my last Lupicia order. I have one more caffeinated black after this, and then I’ll be back to having all the black teas in the cupboard tasted and with initial notes.

This is another tea that hasn’t gotten huge ratings here, but that I think is awesome. It might have something to do with the fact that I really love apples. It’s not just the flavor, it’s the way they’ve been part of my life since I was a little kid. Almost every day at school, the lunch my mother packed for me contained an apple. Apples represent mother’s love in my personal symbolism.

This has a strong apple aroma in the packet, which is somewhere between fresh apples and green apple hard candy. After steeping, the aroma loses its candy-like aspect and takes on a more baked one. Sometimes the aroma tends more toward fresh apple, sometimes more toward baked, but both are quite nice. The tea’s aroma comes through as well, adding a bit of heft to the smell and some malty qualities. The tea is clear, though it has some sediment at the bottom of the cup, and it is chestnut colored.

The flavor is more subtle than the aroma, but it’s still definitely apple. I rather like the subtlety. It gives the tea breathing room that allows the base to come through in a nicely balanced way.

What I also love about this is that it isn’t just a vehicle for apple pie flavors (cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, etc.) as so many “apple” black teas are. This one is pure apple and tea, which is a nice foil to the pure apple fruit tisanes that I love — for when I want the apple to be the flavor of the tea, not the tea itself.

Really glad I decided to buy this one even though it wasn’t a favorite here.

Sipdown no. 15 of 2019 (no. 503 total). A teabag sample. With this, I’ve met my sipdown goal for January!

I heated the water to 175F in the Breville first, then poured it over the bag and steeped for 1:30.

The tea was a pale lime green color and smelled and tasted just as I expect a sencha to taste. It was grassy, not vegetal, with notes of seaweed and soy.

It was nice for work.

Sipdown no. 14 of 2019 (no. 502 total).

This became my latest take it to work tea through the magic of the shake in the thermos method.

I hit upon 100 shakes as the perfect number. With 100 shakes, I never got any clumps.

Also key: don’t put in too much water. You need room to shake!

Trying to decide on my next take it to work tea. I might go with a sencha teabag from Harney tomorrow if I haven’t figured it out yet.

I had this again recently and, as with the Harney Yellow and Blue, I think I was overgenerous with the rating.

This one does have mainly nice, whole, chamomile blossoms in it, but it doesn’t have that sweet creamy flavor that makes for an exceptional chamomile. I think I’ve only had that once, with the Samovar.

I may never have another that was as good as the Samovar.

I feel like it’s time to revisit the rating on this.

I bought a huge bag of this. I’m not sure what possessed me. It might have been the only size available when I ordered, or something like that. But really, it is huge.

I’ve been whittling away at it little by little. It’s pretty much my go to for night time these days because I have so much of it.

I have two additional things to say about it after having had it so much.

First, I don’t remember the sample having such a dusty aspect. The chamomile in this, in particular, doesn’t really seem to be the whole flowers with the buds so much as a lot of straw-like fragments.

Which would be fine, if it wasn’t for item 2. It doesn’t have that creamy, sweet aspect that the chamomiles I’ve found less objectionable have. In my initial notes, I thought it did and that perhaps that came from the lavender tempering the sour aspects of the chamomile. And perhaps it has something to do with age, as I’ve had this for a while.

But while it isn’t awful, and is still better than a lot of chamomile blends I’ve had, it just isn’t as nice as I remembered.

After having it a lot lately, I don’t think it deserves the rating I gave it a while back. Bumping it down.