Andrews & Dunham Damn Fine Tea

This smells rich and smoky and tarry and sweet but the taste isn’t as heavy as the smell. It’s silky and sweet and smoky and smooth. Seriously must order this tea.
9.9g/26oz

My head is killing me (I think I was grinding my teeth last night) and I’m really groggy. First order of business (okay, really second since I had to put a robe on) was to get tea. The hubby is in the shower but I’m too impatient to wait so instead of brewing two servings of morning tea, I’m being evil and only brewing one (I’ll make him something when he is ready though so I’m not that evil). I had this one next to my zojirushi and I thought it seemed like a great idea.

I was right. Smoky, smooth, sweet (hmm, how many s-adjectives can I come up with?)… This taste of this is striking and strong enough that it is pretty much like a nice cup of morning coffee for me. One I don’t have to sugar or cream to death (I have heard that lapsang souchong is good with a little milk and sugar but I haven’t tried it… however if that is true, I’d imagine it’d work in this tea too even though it is a blend). This tea simultaneously wakes me up and makes me want to cuddle with it.

Cup’s empty. Need more. But at least I feel alive now.

I’m seriously in love with smoky teas. No, correction: I’m seriously in lust with them. It’s a physical craving. None of this emotional, touchy feely crap. We’re talking pure, visceral enjoyment. That being said, yeah, I’m looking forward to trying this tea.

The leaf smells awesome. Sweet and smoky – a bit like a sweet barbecue sauce. (That’s a good thing, in case you were wondering). So hello lapsang souchong! Once I’ve poured it into my cup, it smells a bit earthy, like a good Yunnan. I have no idea if there is Yunnan in here, but I do get something that smells like it. There’s also something that smells a lot like Jackee Muntz, so some Keemun.

The taste is much less smoky than the smell… there’s got to be some Yunnan in here. Because that’s the main taste. A nice, smooth, clean, earthy black tea. That’s not to say it isn’t smoky. It is, but the smoke doesn’t overpower (for me). Then there is a little chaser of high, sweet smoky (I’m going to say this is the lapsang souchong) and a darker sweet but still smoky taste (which reminds me of the Jackee I just had so I’m again going with Keemun) sort of wraps around the whole tea taste.

This strikes me as very coffee-like. Not in taste so much as overall taste intensity. Very dark flavored. Sweet on the edges with an acidic smoothness (is there such a thing?) and richness to it. Not a chewy tea, but there is definitely some weight to it. The husband, on the other hand, is reminded of barbecue sauce (which I can totally see). He says that this is something he’d like on meat, but not in tea. Then he had me smell the pecan-smoke Liquid Smoke and while the Liquid Smoke is much smokier smelling, with the sweetness I can see a similarity even if the tea is lighter (not light, just lighter than the Liquid Smoke).

So yeah, I love this tea. It’s dark and broody and smoky and sweet and perfect for an overcast rainy day like today.

Some of this on a warm summer afternoon? Lovely.

Hello Jasmine!

This is very jasmine. The aroma in tin and in brew sings from the mountain tops – I AM JASMINE, HEAR ME BE FLORAL. And yet, it’s not too much in the tea. It’s a bold tea. And it’s good. I like it a lot.

Bom bom bom! Bom bom bom-bom! Bom bom bom, bom bom….
Smoke on the water…. and fire in the sky

I’m working from home today, so I can finally get to try one of my Damn Fine Teas (I don’t drink caffenated teas after work, or I don’t sleep). So I decided to start with Caravan. I opened the tin without reading the description and WOW, it’s smoky. Like I’m outside by a campfire, smokey!!

It was a lighter color tea than I expected once brewed. The aroma – still all smoke.

This to me is a real man tea. It’s not soft, sweet, or flowery. It’s warm, and slightly mossy (in a good way) and rugged.

If there are other flavors in here other than tea and smoke, I’m losing them, but you know? The smoke and the tea? It works. I don’t know that I’d drink this every day, but I’ll definitely have days where I’ll want this tea. I’m definitely liking it today.

I was at a loss. I wanted to try this tea really badly, but I also had to go to class. And then I remembered that I had that travel tumbler from Teas Etc. that Steepster Select ran a while ago.

Crisis aborted.

Class actually wasn’t bad, but I was going in sleepy and I credit this tea to keeping me fully awake for three hours of lecture. This is going to have to become a regular practice of mine.

So, the tea.

The tea kapowed me in the face with scent when I opened the tin. I almost half-expected to see a little cartoon splat with WAP! in it. It was almost stronger than Samovar or Harney & Son’s Jasmine Pearl teas smell, which is kind of impressive if slightly overwhelming. I was a little bit afraid that the tea would judo chop my taste buds, but I steeped it, dumped it into my travel tumbler, and headed out into the cold.

And so I sat in class, listening about the physics of acoustics, and I unscrewed the lid on my tumbler.

Smells good. Strong, but good. It didn’t have that artificial tinge that some jasmines can have, which was a very good sign. Good good good good good.

Took a sip, tentatively. It was in that lovely temperature between hot and lukewarm that tips just a little bit closer to hot. The taste of jasmine filled my senses and, after it had been downed, that lovely perfumed sweetness tickled my breath when I exhaled. I had to suppress a little giggle and concentrate on standing waves for a bit, before returning to the tea.

I managed to time finishing the tumbler with our break in lecture [for which my bladder thanked me] and found myself wishing I had more to sip on during the rest of the lecture. It probably ended up working out well, though, because the caffeine kept me awake and I would have been wired if I’d had enough to last me through the end of class.

Jasmine Green wasn’t pretty strictly jasmine tasting, and it was not a quiet, lullaby-like taste. It was more Whitney Houston power ballad – you know, old school Whitney. I Will Always Love You Whitney. This doesn’t have some of the other notes I’ve gotten out of jasmine tea – like the cocoa notes I sometimes get in Samovar’s; it’s really a solo act. But like Kevin Gillespie in Top Chef has proven – keeping things simple and doing them well can be pretty damn effective. And this tea plays that hand with skill.

Series three has hit the ground running.

Quantity matters as much as steeping time: last time I steeped exactly 4 minutes, but went a little overboard with the leaves (I usually like my black tea strong) and it came out harsh; this time I used an even teaspoon on an 8oz cup, and with a bit of milk it’s just perfect. Warm, malty and satisfying.

I gave this another try after Takgoti’s temp/time/cooling suggestions and she’s right! You do get caramel! I tried this at 200 and 180-degrees as well. If the water’s too hot you lose it and if it’s too cold it there, kind of, but it tastes like wet newspaper.

There’s still something off about this keemun to me and if I really wanted caramel tones, there are other teas I’d go to before this one. Maybe just I’m just not a fan of the smoky/burnt sugar taste that others have mentioned. Still, I’m bumping my rating for Jackee up a few ticks.

The dry leaves provide an aroma of freshly dried leaves in Autumn, wheat toast and hints at hay. Once brewed the aroma sweetens and a more chocolatey vibrant scent seems to emerge. This tea brews a vibrant caramel liquor.

Jackee Muntz seems to bite a little. There’s certainly an astringent kick in this tea’s taste. A bit of toasted bread with fired notes and a panopoly of lesser notes including a honeyed edge in the finish which is very nice.

The leaves for this black tea are twisted and curled roughly 1/16 inch in length and a brown-black hue with occasional lighter (as in whiter) leaves mixed in. I did not see any buds or stems.

The aroma is hayish with light toasty notes when dry and sweeter, like peaches after steeping. The liquor is a very dark amber and produced a malty aroma with peach notes and hints of honeysuckle.

On the palate though, the flavor is more subdued. There’s a minimal drying of the tongue and roof of the mouth. Some astringency and pucker finds its way into the mix with notes of peach and maybe nectarine and a malty texture in the finish.

Smoky
Caramel
Honey
Bitter
Thick
Chocolate
Cocoa

These are some components that I have found in unflavored black teas. If you stripped them from all of their respective counterparts, I’m pretty sure that Ceylon is what you’d be left with. It tastes like black tea without the cool stuff.

And yet, there’s something really compelling about it. It’s plain, yes, but it’s comfortable. It’s familiar. And it’s smooth, smooth, smooth.

This tea is Doug Funny.

Chik-a-pa chik-a-pa chik-a-pa boo-shwaaaaaah.

Most black tea I’ve tried has this really distinct flavor that I can’t seem to pick apart, so in my head I’ve just labeled it as “black tea flavor.” This tea has that. I took a sip and it was all, “O hai! I’m in ur cup, blackin ur tea.”

It doesn’t have any smokiness, but it doesn’t quite read as “smooth” to me. It’s somewhere in between the two, which would almost be unsettling if it wasn’t sweet. It’s a pleasant kind of sweet; I enjoy it. And it helps with the bitterness that greets you at the tail of the sip.

About halfway through the cup I started to notice that it was drying my mouth out a bit. Not a ton, but enough to be noticeable. Also, the cocoa started to really come through, especially when combined with that bitter taste at the end. It was much more noticeable when I was inhaling, and if I kept my mouth closed and breathed in through my nose I could taste it a bit, too.

The last little bit of what I had in my cup got rather cool, which confirmed my suspicion that this tea runs best for me when it’s between hot and lukewarm. Overall, a pleasant tea that doesn’t really stand out all that much. Might be good for a lazy afternoon spent perusing the newspaper.

It’s taken me forever plus three days to get around to logging these suckers. I’d sat down to do it one day and then realized that it’d been too long since I actually drank them and wanted to wait until I tried them again before logging them.

Now that that incredibly boring explanation is out of the way, on to the tea.

This Dragonwell rates a solid second on my Dragonwell scale. It’s not a light, dancing, happy sweetness like that darned Dragonwell Spring that Carolyn sent me. It does, however, have some sweetness to it.

The first thing that struck me is that this tea brewed up into a very light yellow color. I don’t know why I made a note of this, but it was very, very light. I’ve had a lot of teas that have been brewing up near colorless lately, but it’s still novel enough for me t notice it when it happens.

Also, the leaves, and this is gonna sound kinda crazy, smelled like turkey when I sniffed them from up above. It took me a while to place it, but when I realized it I said aloud, “Holy poop, turkey!” [Except “poop” was replaced with its four-lettered cousin.] Curious, I sniffed them again closer, through the infuser, and they smelled like green beans – specifically the canned variety.

It had been long enough since I’d tried this that I couldn’t remember exactly what to expect from this [secretly, I’m using these tea logs to replace my BRAIN]. The biggest taste that I got from it was, perhaps not surprisingly, green beans. Fresher green beans than what it smelled like, but green beans. A little salty, more sweet, though. And maybe with just a hint of smoke.

I’m going to try bringing the temperature down to 160 and see what that does for it. I’ll be able to compare better now that I have it in my brain.

I love the look of this tea’s leaves: A nice mix of cocoa, green and gold that just begs to be steeped. The smell of the leaves is on the subtle side, with hints of cocoa and earth. When steeped, it turns a nice caramel color that’s dark enough to imply flavor, but not so dark that it fools you into thinking the taste is going to be stronger than it is. The aroma is equally subtle, with just a bit of spice and a smoky/earthy side to it. I accidentally steeped this one for two minutes too long, so the taste is probably a bit more on the bitter side that it was supposed to be, but even still, it’s very mellow with just a hint of bitterness and spice. Summing it all up: Good tea, but not one that will wow you. Just a solid black tea that’s hard to go wrong with.

My logic in picking this tea is this: as soon as I got home from work, I fell asleep. While napping, I was dreamt about tea. Andrews and Dunham tea. Not this tea, though. Jackee Muntz. I woke up fully and decided to get some tea. I was going to get some Jackee, but this tea was sitting on the counter and therefore much easier to find than Jackee. So I made some.

It was only when I went to log it that I realized I had never had it before. I’m not sure how I could have let those lovely leaves escape me for so long. Seriously, I love the leaves on this. The brown, gold and copper little squiggles. So pretty.

It smells like a cocoa-infested Darjeeling. It’s got the bright smell of a Darjeeling – the one that makes my mouth water but that can also come across as bitterness – but running under it there is another smell of fuzzy warmth. It’s quite lovely.

Taste-wise, it’s not quite as comforting as it’s smell but it is nice. There’s a hop-y taste that makes me think of beer but it’s not strong enough to turn me off (sorry, not a beer fan). It’s got an overall dark, fuzzy taste to it with highlights of an almost green rawness (related to the hops flavor, I think). Normally that rawness doesn’t work for me but here it mostly does, probably because of the other feelings/flavors this has going on. The edges are smooth with none of the sharpness that can come up in these types of teas but as it cools a menthol-esque bitterness starts to show up in my mouth after a sip and the fuzziness decreases a bit.

I’m not totally in love with this tea, but I do like it. I’ll probably try a lower temp next time to see what that does to the raw highlights and if that keeps the bitterness away once it starts to cool. If I can decrease these two things just a bit, my rating will go up.

i used to not like this tea at all when i first got this set. But it has grown on me. It’s a good cup of tea for a monday morning ( isn’t any tea a good cup on mondays though??). It is a ittle drying in the back of my throat but that could also be because I am fighting getting a cold.

When I first recieved this tea, I tried it out and being a bit new to “real black teas” (versus flavored teas), I was not a fan of it at all. However, this past weekend, I retried it after some time and maybe my palette has changed, but I absolutely loved every sip of this. It was strong, a bit smokey,yet sweet at the same time. Funny thing is, my brother, who I just got to start drinking tea about 1-2 months ago hated this tea and said it tasted like he “just ate dirt”. I wonder if in a few months to a year if he will enjoy this tea as I did months later. :)

this tea is absolutely delicious. it has been my favorite out of all 5 of the tea’s Andrews & Dunham has released. However, I no longer have any of this tea left and I missed the re-release in December of their series one! I really wish I knew where it came from so I could hop on a plane and buy it! :)