Bird Pick Tea & Herb

Very nice, indeed. Deep, rich and delicious.

I found the aroma of the dry leaf to be most intriguing, there were notes of cocoa along with a faint hint of black licorice. I’m not sure exactly why I got that note, but, I liked it. Alas, the licorice does not translate into the flavor, but that’s alright because I quite like the flavor the way it is.

This is one with which I shall enjoy spending some time.

Forgot to backlog this sipdown last week…I miss this already. I see a Bird Pick Order in my future…

3rd Infusion…

Again completely different from the previous infusion! WOW! What a cup! This is still intensely flavored but this time around it’s more of a grassy green with slight buttery notes underneath. It still ends rather smooth and I would still call it silky but a grassier silky instead of a buttered popcorn silky/creamy…maybe more like a broccoli type!?

LOVE YOU Silky Green!

2nd infusion…
completely different than the first but far from disappointing!!!!

This is MUCH sweeter and MUCH MORE silkier and creamy and sooth the 2nd time around! This tea is VERY memorable and I’m truly amazed by it!

It’s less buttery and more sweet with the 2nd infusion. It’s still FULL of flavor tho and a wonderful tasting green!!!

Oh.My.Gawd. This has an AWESOME aroma! It’s like nothing I have ever smelled before – in tea form, that is!!!!

The only way I can describe the dry loose leaf aroma is intensely buttered flavored popcorn – I think I can even smell a little naturally salted flavor – unless I just am associating the aroma with buttered popcorn so much so that my mind is playing tricks on me! Whatever it is I have to say I would easily give the aroma on this one a 100!!!!

Now…on to the other notes…

These are some wild leaves and I am LOVING watching them in my new Libre Tea Loose Leaf Glass! YAY!

Post infusion I am STILL sniffing this awesome aroma of buttered popcorn! It’s VERY aromatic! And I mean VERY!!!!

YUM!

Buttery! Buttered Veggies, Buttered Popcorn! It’s semi-sweet and a very flavorful green! The more I sip it the more sweeter it gets! This is smooth! It reminds me of a milky oolong but then it reminds me of a buttery green! It may be somewhere in the middle – regardless I am REALLY enjoying this one!

Probably one of the most memorable greens I have had in a LONG time! WOW!

backlogging from yesterday…SIPDOWN…I will miss this one too! This is really tasty! See my other notes :)

The aroma of this one reminds me of one of the Charcoal Oolong Offerings that Life In Teacup offers.

It tastes different tho.

This specific tea tastes like a nice, flavorful oolong, yes, but it starts off earthy and leafy-like and ends sweeter and more refreshing. It doesn’t seem to keep the charcoal traits I thought it would based on the aroma…not that that is good, bad, or indifferent, just something I noticed.

This is a really nice oolong. Nice and strong!

SIDOWN. I had 3 cups today. Until the taste didn’t taste any longer. Boo Hiss…this one, I shall miss…sigh…

Backlogging a cup and a 2nd infusion – both were great! See previous notes.

SIPDOWN! I’m bummed I am out of this…sigh…
it was good while it lasted
See previous notes

Started my day with 2 cups of this! Nom! I have LOTS of backlogging to do and will do that later!

VERY fine/thin/long leaves – lovely! This infuses to a wonderful dark brown color! As I opened the pouch I thought I could smell a hint of cocoa – almost like a dark hot chocolate powder of sorts. After infusing It was a solid black tea with earthy characteristics throughout. This is a great, bold black tea – not astringent tho! It has a slight chewiness to it and I can pick up a hint of a nuttiness taste right smack dab in the center of the sip. It has a flavorful but smooth ending tho. I really like this!

Finally finished this sample. Thumbs up! If you’re looking for a nice, deliciously sweet gyokuro, this is a good one!

The first infusion is really incredibly creamy and sweet, not a hint of bitter at all.
The 2nd and 3rd are still good, but the distinctness of the first infusion disappears. I am trying to compare this closely to Den’s Gyokuro Suimei; so far I am more impressed by this one (Bird Pick, but again, on the 1st infusion only). Den’s seems to have a more vegetal/marine quality to it, which I like. After the 1st, both teas become very similar and hard to distinguish (but both very good). I will have to continue to try both and see if I can tell any other differences or if my tastes change.

As opposed to my first trial of this tea, this time is it awesome!
Very sweet (but not at all sickeningly like fake sweeteners), but also has elements that remind me of sencha, the tastes that made me love Japanese greens in the first instance (steamed veggies, thick, lingering aftertaste, slight bitterness, etc.)… but this has no bitterness of course. It also has that marine/seaweed flavor that to me is really delicious.

As I drink this, I finally have that moment of, ‘Aha! Now I see why gyokuro is (typically) prized over all other kinds in Japan.’
Before this (and of course the sample of the Award Winning gyokuro I had earlier this year), I wasn’t really sure why it was considered better… rather than just different.

Very good; so far, after only 2 trials each, this beats Den’s Gyokuro Suimei….we will see after a few more!

I have a sample of this, and so finally wanted to try it out. This is Bird Pick’s more expensive gyokuro (out of 2 or 3 available).

I tried cold water brewing, first using near-freezing water (steeped for 7 minutes), then 140, 160, 180 steeps. (Not sure how long I let it steep at those temps, probably between 30 seconds – 1.5 minutes).

This had a nice marine-like taste to it, but it was sickeningly sweet; I thought about what the sweetness was like and I figured it out – it tasted just like fake sweeteners (not sure which one) – sweet n’ low, equal, or splenda. I HATE the taste of diet soft drinks or coffee with fake sweeteners. They have a very sickeningly sweet taste, and unfortunately, this tea reminded me of that flavor. I’m sure a gyokuro (or diet soft drink!) lover out there would find this tea delicious, but I didn’t particularly enjoy this first trial.

I am going to hold off on rating this one, as I want to try a regular brew first. Perhaps one reason I didn’t enjoy it is because it was very intense – not only cold-brewed, but 4g of leaf to 4oz water.

I don’t have much experience with gyokuro, so hopefully as I try more I’ll get an idea if I just don’t like gyokuro, or if it was simply this one. And perhaps I’ll even enjoy it with a regular brewing. I really want to like it.

I happened to pass their store today and stopped in to check it out. They were giving away little samples of this tea (like, 5 sips or so) as their tea of the month. Lucky!

Definitely sweet and light with a fruity aroma. It cooled pretty quickly since I had so little, which made it really refreshing on a rather hot day.

Somewhat buttery, deliciously fruity. I did 4 infusions and probably could have done more.
I don’t have a lot of experience with Oolongs (especially green/non-roasted ones), but it was very good. I don’t know if I’d buy more, but only because there are so many Oolongs out there to try.

Maybe I wasn’t using enough leaf before? This evening it was really good! Upping the rating a bit.

Hard to rate this one; I think I might like it more if I tried it more often. I just have a sample of it, with probably one more multi-steep serving left.

The first steeping I haven’t liked so far (both times I’ve brewed it), being that the flavor each time was mostly pan-fried or stir-fry flavored. But with the 2nd and 3rd steepings, it really took on a nice sweet, almost umami-like flavor. I was recommended this white tea out of the others to try at the store because it is rolled up more like an oolong and therefor has more flavor that traditional white teas. I don’t have any other loose white tea experience to compare this to, so I wouldn’t know, but it does seem to have plenty of flavor.

This has some similarities to the pi lo chun and long jing that I’ve tried recently, but is definitely unique. I don’t think I’d buy a whole 1-2 oz bag of this, since there isn’t enough time to enjoy everything good in this world (ie, there are other teas I’d rather drink), but I do like it.

If I were rating teas just by name, this would get 2 thumbs up from me, as it SOUNDS like the coolest tea ever. Well no, if a tea was named “Trogdor the Dragonator Long Jing” or something like that, that would be even cooler.

This tastes like a weaker, and far less tasty version of the Shi Feng Long Jing (the only one I’ve had is by Tea Valley). It does have a faint sweetness at the end that is pleasant. But as the description states, it is smokey, and that flavor comes through, especially once the tea has cooled off some. Not a fan. I’m glad I just have a sample, and that I could satisfy my curiosity about this tea cheaply.

I went into a new store they opened in the area, and decided to get some samples. I love being able to try new teas and not pay shipping!

The brewed leaf smelled like some kind of delicious fruit aroma. It really surprised me because I was expecting a more roasted-like smell (I hadn’t read the description of the tea that they have on their website; the store just had the name and the price).
BUT, it tasted like strawberries! This could be called “Strawberry Oolong” (in my opinion) though, there are of course no flavorings. Because of this, it seemed like a really high quality tea, but that wouldn’t matter if it didn’t taste good. Well, it was very good. :-)

Deliciously sly this one is. It parades itself like any other taiwanese tea, unassuming, docile. But don’t let it fool you.

This is one of the best teas that they carry in the store. A few leaves are all you really need to start since they are so full. The flavor profiling on these have got to be a cross somewhere between butter, pumpkin, spice, and a medium body oolong. It also has a bright gold brew that looks beautiful after a 5 minute steep. Additionally, the second brew is my favorite, because that’s where the leaves begin to open and really let out the pumpkin notes.

If Lychee Black tea were a woman, she’d be intelligent and highly opinionated, gorgeous with a heart of gold…. and she’d have an afro. Of this, I am quite certain.

If you’re the type to expect bland flavors and a lot of fragrance, this is not the tea for you. The label says “Lychee Black Tea”, but what Bird Pick really means is (now this is where you envision Ms. Foxy Brown from Austin Powers) “THIS IS LYCHEE…black tea” *snap snap.

It’s a self-righteous tea that screams sweet fresh lychee without a hint of artificial flavoring. It’s got a heavy body, and the lychee is definitely the most prominent flavo r–jumping out with its unexpected sweetness. It’s also wonderful with creme, since it doesn’t need any extra sweeteners.

This tea is so good… it makes me giggle.