A C Perch's

Drank a cup while eating vegetarian egg rolls for lunch…yum

Finishing up my stash. Next up…I’m ripping into some TTB Teas!!! WOOT!!!!

Another Angrboda Tea! Thanks!

Light in color and in scent. It’s a nice thirst quenching type green with no funky after taste. Semi-Sweet-Floral, almost. Maybe a bit nutty as well. I agree that it’s a ‘clean’ type taste and I like it!

I found a little bit of this leftover in a random HOME stash and had it cold brewed in my Steep & Go! Apparently I was NOT using the Steep & Go properly so NOW I am having much more luck with it! YAY! Duh…me! Anyhow…I don’t really think Cold Brewed is the way to go with this one. I do – however – LOVE this one HOT – and will keep the rating as-is.

I really love this…really…I might have to up it to 100…I think I will.

It ages well too! YUM!

I almost forgot how much I loved this one. I had some last night after I logged off so I am backlogging. It kind of smelled like Raspberry Chocolate Truffles! Ahhhhh…Heaven!

It’s been too long since my last cup of this liquid gold! YUM! I even had a chunk of raspberry in this bunch of loose leaf! YAY! This made my mid morning a happy morning!

2nd infusion…
light in color and raspberry smell but still strong in raspberry taste to sip.
YUM…great flavored Oolong…will hike up my rating a few more points…

Angrboda is awesome!!!!
Another Angrboda Tea!
YAY!

This smells like Oolong and Raspberry – simple…
The taste is great! It’s a true flavored oolong and a flavorful-flavored oolong! It’s very good! Very good indeed! I’m infusing this again for a 2nd steep right now…had a little mishap with the last one…ended up on my keyboard after 3 sips! Oops!

I am totally digging this Oolong! Thanks Angrboda!
Will be reporting back shortly with the 2nd infusion results…

So… confession time.

I don’t normally drink loose tea. Or rather, I didn’t until now. Back when I lived in the UK, I would drink bagged exclusively, and this carried over when I moved to Denmark, in the form of several large boxes.

However, as time has gone on, my stocks have dwindled, and Angrboda has introduced me to the varied delights of loose tea. So, this is me taking the plunge, having run out of bagged tea entirely, and bought a stack of loose to keep me going. Will I be able to operate loose tea brewing at 7am? Only time will tell…

So, this is my first attempt at brewing Lapsang Souchong in some sort of basket contraption what goes in the teapot. First impressions – these leaves look funny; smell great; I wonder how much…?

Maybe this is a slight understeep – the smokiness is only barely detectable in the aroma. There’s a note of it in the taste, along with some mild astringency. Overall, a nice refreshing cup, and a non-disaster to start out my loose tea experiment with! :-)

Far Too Good For Ordinary People.

I’d nearly forgotten this one. I was shaking tins to see if there were any that I might be able to finish off all quick-like. Preferably today, to be honest. My Lockdown criteria are very nearly met. One more tin to empty and then I’m allowed to buy some tea again. That means stocking up on two Kusmis and looking to see if I can get a third easily around these parts. After that, I expect I’ll do another Lockdown round because this first one doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent, especially not in the samples. I want to get the supplies good and low before I do anything else than simple re-stocking.

Anyway, I found this one and made me a good strong cup with a generous helping of honey. On its own I tends to have a fairly prominent honey note, I think, and adding real honey to it seems to bring it out more. It’s one of the few teas where I’ll automatically add stuff to the cup without thinking too much about it.

Apart from that, it wasn’t a very successful cup today. I used more leaf than usually (I’m trying to empty the tin, remember!) but it still seems a bit watery and weak in flavour today. Odd. It actually tastes a bit as if I used less leaf than normal which just doesn’t make any sense at all.

I did turn the steep time down somewhat due to the extra leaf, but not that much.

Maybe it’s a good thing this tin is nearly done. I don’t think this is one I’d be stocking up on. It’s not my perfect Assam.

Goodmorning Steepsterites.

sigh

I have NOTHING to DRINK!!!

I briefly considered trying one of the remaining Auggy-teas, but eventually came to the conclusion that early morning boredom wasn’t really the right circumstance for that. Considering how quickly the cardboard-y note incarnation of the Tan Yang Te Ji vanished yesterday morning, I eventually decided to let myself be inspired by that and make some real Assam.

Ouch, hot!

Yes, it’s definitely reminding me of yesterday morning. A bit stronger perhaps but very similar.

I checked that I took the right tin yesterday.

But can we ever really be completely certain?

Unrelatedly, my TTB participants can look here (http://iarnvidia.livejournal.com/) for the first part of a couple of posts about the box. The second part should be up soonishly, I hope. (Yes, I know it was posted ages ago, but I thought it would be used for someone else so I didn’t tell)

Stomach is fine now. Head, not so much. A good strong black is needed, to-be-finished pile be damned. Nothing is working properly inside my skull today. I tried checking my dashboard, and JacquelineM’s post about the (by now) infamous and tres yummy raspberry oolong was on top. After that one though, I suddenly found myself realising that I was just scrolling and forgetting to pay attention.

This has a strong wood-y sort of aroma which promises a kick in the rear and a clearing of the mind. After brewing the aroma turns towards the sweeter and more honey-y, but still as strong, and still definitely the same smell as the dry leaves. Just altered a little bit.

I’m suddenly beginning to understand what Auggy means when she says Assam has a cardboard like flavour. There is a strong unmistakeble cardboard flavour here. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just… odd. This is uncomplicated. It’s an Assam that tastes of Assam and that’s really all there is to it. If I had been more in favour of Indian teas over Chinese, I’d probably have rated this better.

Not sure if it really helped my mental state much though. It might be just placebo.

Really messy post, this. I’ll just stop it here and go away and go back to being a sporadic presence for another few days. I’m sure you won’t mind.

I’m falling asleep at my keyboard here, and I need a pick-me-up. So, a strong black tea, yes please. So I picked this one.

It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised that this was the tea that I had yet to manage to brew successfully. This time I was careful not to oversteep though.

This tea has two very distinctive primary notes, and they are entirely, it seems, independent of one another. There’s a very sweet, honeylike smoothness and then there’s a somewhat astringent malty kick. It kind of feels a little disjointed. As it develops, the malty note starts to take over, but with the promise that the sweet will be back with the addition of a little milk to smooth the astringency.

(Given how sleepy I am as I’m writing this, there’s NO WAY I’m adding milk to this. That would knock me out for sure.)

I met a friendly kitty on my way home from work today. That saved the otherwise seriously boring day.

It put me in the right frame of mind to do a proper first-time review of a tea and I remembered this one that I got from Lexitus for Christmas and didn’t have the energy to review properly the last time I had it.

I did today. But then I got distracted and it oversteeped, resulting in a rather bitter bite.

So, still no rating, still no review. Just steeping fail.

Goodmorning Steepsterites.
The last of the three Lexitus-teas.

Somewhat oversteeped and gone a bit cold due to me being distracted, so I’ll have to try again for a proper post and rating later.

The initial impression is promising though, and it may indeed live up to the ‘Deluxe’ and the *F*ar *T*oo *G*ood *F*or *O*rdinary *P*eople.

I decided to experiment a bit with this tea and steeped it for less time. I can taste quite a bit more raspberry flavour this way, although the oolong base seems a touch bland. Still it seems like a 5-5.5 min steep is the way to go.

On an un-related note, I got a mysterious, yellow package in the mail from Ricky today….maybe I should call the Bomb Squad. ;P

2nd Steeping.
The tea is lighter but I can actually taste the raspberry a bit more clearly, oddly enough. I’m also definitely noticing more of a vegetale flavour.

My second shot at this tea. I think I might have ‘over-cooked’ the leaves a bit because they’re a bit bitter-tasting, though it’s not too bad. Angrboda, how long/at what temp do you normally steep this tea?

I’ve noticed that, unlike many of the oolongs I’ve tried, this has some similar notes to a green tea, so maybe the steeping temperature should be lower accordingly. I wish I had more experience with oolong teas.

This is the 3rd tea I got from Angrboda and I think this might be my favorite of the three. The steeping instructions recommended 8 minutes in boiling water, but I’m a bit leery of using boiling water for oolongs (I’ve wrecked a few that way) so I dialed down the temp to 90 celcius.

The smell is wonderful, I kept hovering over the mug while it was steeping so I could inhale the scent of sweet rasperries. By the way, this tea gets major point for NO HIBISCUS – I like you already AC Perch, even if the shipping you charge is insane for anyone this side of the Atlantic. ;D

The tea itself tastes quite light, a little surprising for me who was expecting something a bit more full-flavoured like the Tung Ting and the Ti Kuan Yin I’ve been drinking. I wonder if I just didn’t added enough leaf or maybe I should have steeped it in boiling water. Hm. At least Angrboda gave me a generous amount of this tea, so I’ve got room to experiment. :)

The raspberry is faint but it’s also quite distinct to my senses and it leaves a nice, lingering sort of aftertaste in the back of my mouth. It gives the tea a slightly astringent quality, but nothing powerful or unpleasent.

I’m rating this tea at 75 for now, but it’ll probably be subject to change once I get a chance to muck around with some of the variables.