Joy's Teaspoon

This was my first time making matcha at home. I used this matcha in some muffins a couple of weeks ago with much success. I mixed up a tablespoon of matcha and some hot water with a small whisk and it frothed up quite nicely. I also whisked up some almond milk to add to it. I made enough for my brother and I to each have a latte. I added a spoonful of alfalfa honey to each.
The matcha was pretty smooth and my brother who has had more matcha then I have thought it was better than even some of the restaurants he has been to, even if it wasn’t the best of the best. I might try sifting it next time round. It had a strong, leafy green tea flavor that reminded me of green tea ice cream. I could definitely get used to these lattes.

So tonight I’m doing a comparison of this tea and a 2011 Noble House Riesling. I steeped this tea at 180 degrees this time and it came out even better than before! It brings out the creaminess of the tea and the grapes. The best thing is that it does taste like the riesling! They both are light, sweet, fruity, a tad tart, and a little dry in the aftertaste. They both hit smoothly in the middle of the mouth.

The biggest difference is that the tea is creamy, while the wine of course is not. Also the riesling has that alcohol flavor, which I probably wouldn’t want to try to copy in a tea anyway because it would probably taste artificial.
The grape taste in the tea is made fuller by the berries. If I hold it in my mouth I can differentiate between the grape and berries, but only slightly. The base is amazingly creamy, just the teensiest bit astringent, which frankly works here because it gives it that slight wine-like dryness.

I’m quite enjoying this comparison! Too bad I don’t have any more of this tea!

So far this is my favorite from the Joy’s Teaspoon sampler I got it. The smell of this tea is intoxicating and fruity! Even though I steeped it in boiling water because I didn’t remember it was a white tea (I was too lazy to look up steeping directions on the website), it was still very yummy! The base tasted to me like a buttery green tea. The fruity tones were very prominent, maybe a little more raisin rather than grape. It was a little dry feeling in the mouth, but that works if you’re trying to imitate a wine. I have just enough for one more cup at a lower temperature steep on another day. I’ll look forward to that.

Annnnd, another sipdown!

I probably shouldn’t have had three cups of matcha because I feel a bit outta it now. Too much, man, that was too much!

This was a lovely tea that I’ll miss. I added a bit more leaf and steeped it a bit longer and it tastes more like pastry than it did before. And it’s almost like baked goods cinnamon (instead of fake cinnamon). Very nice!

I’m also a bit wigged out atm because we have movers in our office and they seem like idiots. They’re complaining a lot, and looking around at everything. I was pouring hot water into my timolino from the fancy coffee machine and the one guy just stared at it, and flicked my mug with his finger as he appreciated the machine. NO TOUCHING! :O Bah. Time to go home soon anyway or I’ll get trapped on the stairs while they move stuff around.

Thanks Melanie!

This is a pretty tasty tea for when I’m craving cinnamon but don’t want cinnamon-orange. I even get some of the pastry notes. As it cools it reminds me more of a cinnamon roll.

Smells so, so, so good. I love a good pear as much as and sometimes even more than a perfect apple (seriously, I think 3/4 of my dessert recipe files are pear-based), so I had high hopes for this one. Also some trepidation though, ‘cause I’ve found I can’t stand apple in tea for some strange reason (despite loving apples otherwise). So I was a little afraid. This has the juiciness and magic of a pear combined with lots of warm holiday-ish spices, particularly cinnamon. And…I don’t hate it, I like it a lot! Yay! That painful astringency apple tends to bring doesn’t show up here. Eventually you even get the slightly reed/woody mouthfeel of having eaten a juicy pear (which some of my friends hate but I adore). This is a tea that automagically puts me in a good mood.

Aw man, this tea psyched me out—it smelled (and looked!) so good dry and brewing I had to will myself not to eat it, super toasty almonds and cinnamon, drool. Then I took the infuser out after the (quite unorthodox I must say!) 10 minute steep time and was surprised to see a very bright, almost pink red cup of tea. And it tastes fruity-astringent, very apple-y, in a way that reminds me of oversteeped Celestial Seasonings teabags from my youth—exactly the sort of thing I wish to avoid now. Alas. That said, it is still OK tasting—there’s still wafts of that toasted nutty deliciousness, and it smooths out that apple-tartness some both in flavor and mouthfeel…even the apple astringency is of a more authentic, crisp-real-juice sort, reminding me in an excellent way of coming home from middle school in the fall in upstate New York and eating warm empire apple crisp before doing homework or raking leaves for my father—but next time I’m going to see about steeping for much less time and see if I love it more. And here I was, all excited at the notion I’d found my no-caf answer to, say, Della Terra’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. But this smells like its namesake to the max, and then tastes more like something called, say, Cinnamon Apple Nut Crunch.

Still, the longer it lingers on my palate the more I recognize it’s pretty much a quintessential fall tea, evoking memories up the wazoo for this upstate gal like a madeleine might for a Frenchman. ;)

…

This also tastes a little like some baked good I must’ve eaten or maybe even made once, a soft fat cookie thing where the center had some sticky spiced applesauce-y filling, and the rest of the cookie or cake was pillowy, slightly chewy spiced dough studded with nuts or oats or something. Maybe an Archway thing? Hm.

For something that seemed so initially disappointing out of shock this sure is sticking with me.

Doing a comparison between this and Harney and Sons Earl Grey Supreme. Dry, I think I like the smell of this one better; it’s gentler and sweeter. The H&S dry hits you over the head with bergamot.

Brewed, they look identical, a lovely ruby hue. The Joy’s continues to smell mellower, though the aroma of the H&S has backed off a bit now. The flavors match the smell impressions; Joy’s is gentler, softer, but still full of flavor. The H&S isn’t bad at all, but in the context of such immediate comparison it comes off as far more bitter, though still full of nuance. The Joy’s is easy and enjoyable to take straight whereas the H&S can handle a healthy splash of milk. This leaves me conflicted because I tend to add milk to my afternoon Earl Grey just out of habit, so while I like the Joy’s more here the H&S might be more appropriate for how I tend to use EGs. Hm…

Nearly as good as Della Terra’s Lemon Chiffon, which is saying something coming from me…gets the creamy sweet lemon thing right in the same way (smells wonderful dry and brewed), smooth, not too astringent. The one tiny edge DT Lemon Chiffon has over this is that it has more of that buttery lemon bar crust element than this does (not surprising or a failure on its part really, as the name doesn’t indicate anything about trying to taste like lemon pastry). But the mouthfeel and flavor and aroma are scrumptious. And something it provides that Lemon Chiffon doesn’t, for better or worse, is a transformation as you finish the cup: as it cools, it gets less rich and more astringent, more like the puckery juiciness of straight lemon zest (yay accurate naming), though never reaching an unpleasant point. I do enjoy teas that change throughout the experience of the entire cup provided I like all the steps involved, and I do here, so it’s fun. The aftertaste/mouthfeel finishing the cup is more like you’ve been drinking uber-fresh lemonade or ODing on lemonheads than eating a lemon bar, fresher, intenser, more immediately lemon-y, less sweet. The lemon flavor lingers vividly in the mouth for quite a long time afterward too, complete with the oiliness (might sound bad but is great). I welcome both types of lemon experiences.

I’m going to think of this as a very decent back-up plan or occasional substitute for novelty’s sake, something I could order if for some reason DT ever didn’t have Lemon Chiffon available (the horror!).

Was a bit worried this would go the way of the dessert-flavored stuff I tried from Culinary Teas (not bad, just disappointing, with an unsatisfying tea base and more aroma than flavor) because they both have ceylon as their foundation, but no! This was surprisingly yummy, and a lot smoother and silkier than the CT stuff. The cinnamon smells and tastes like true cinnamon, strong and not sweet, and the tea base is actually quite decent, round and satisfying, and seems to go well with the cinnamon flavor. I would definitely drink this again! Takes well to some milk and raw sugar.

This is one of my favorite teas. The best part is the after taste. I love how the ginseng lingers on your taste buds. It’s such a smooth tea it’s easy to drink at any time. The pre-brewed smell is a little funky.
The version I have is not Joy’s tea brand but I am not sure of who made it cause I can’t find it in their online store (Cooks of Crocus Hill – Goods and Goodies)

Now this is a good tea. Really good. I don’t tend to like fruity teas, in fact, I generally avoid them. I got this because I needed one more for my ocho sample so I threw this one in. The only way I can describe this is in terms of Jelly beans. But this isn’t an overly sweet tea. Just sweet enough. It tastes as though I have both a juicy pear jelly bean and a cinnamon jelly bean in my mouth. And those happen to be 2 of my 3 favorites (the other being the popcorn jelly bean—anybody found a tea for that one?). I will definitely be re-ordering this. So far I’ve really liked 3 out of 4 of the joy’s teaspoon teas. Not bad!

Thanks to Sil (and technically Azzrian) for a sample of this tea :)

The aroma is very similar to DavidsTea’s Orange Blossom, IMO, except perhaps a bit more orangey, and maybe a bit less creamy. I wasn’t hugely fond of that tea, though it wasn’t terrible or anything. Flavourwise, I have the same feelings – much like Orange Blossom, but perhaps more orangey. I haven’t had OB in a while, so can’t really give a good comparison, but as I’m passing off the rest of it to Sil shortly, I’ll try to have my last cup of it in the next couple days so that I can try and figure out what the differences may be between these two blends! I do definitely enjoy the flavouring here, I just wish it was on a different base. Fingers crossed for Della Terra’s Orange Cream! (I know, still rooibos, but hopefully better?)

Thanks to Sil for a sample of this one (via Azzrian, I see!)

Opening up the tin, I got a whiff of something rather floral, yet still fruity. Not really plum, to me, but I figured I’d try it anyways. So I wasn’t expecting too much of the tea, which was probably for the best! I have yet to have a tea that really comes off to me as “plum”, and although this is probably the closest I’ve tasted, it still falls much more into the realm of “generic fruit” than plum. Thankfully, though, it isn’t particularly floral, and as well, it is quite smooth, so even though it doesn’t taste like plums, it’s actually quite a pleasant tea to drink! I might try overleafing a bit next time to see if I can coax out a bit more flavour (although I’m a bit worried about making it bitter by doing that).

ETA: Tasty re-steep with similar flavour profile.

Thanks Keen
This is a whole lotta HERBAL.
I usually don’t got for those type of tisanes.

This is pleasant. Not my fave but ok. I will say after I had a cup I was STARVING…lol…

Cold Brewed.

so-so

It’s tongue dancing flavor changing little green leafs were so great I had to brew up a large pot in the timolino gravity pot. It’s like a real fancy grade jasmine with all this great stuff in it not in the least too flowery, but then again jasmine from fujian is my all time favorite and staple tea. Were I to be brief I would call it intoxicating, see other notes, I’ll get many drinks per day out of this

This tea is everything I want in a ginger tea. From my first whiff the ginger convinced me I had to try it, but it was the mysterious peach undertones that kept me transfixed.

I forgot to make note of my steeping time because cleaning up the dishes from dinner distracted me….so I’m sure it was well over 8 minutes. However, when I returned to my tea I was delighted to see that the leaves had all unfurled along with a little white flower that looked a little like a miniature dandelion (I’m guessing it’s one of the marigold blossoms). It was quite unexpected, but really fun.

I’m somewhat new to the loose leaf tea experience and the only peach ginger tea I’ve had was my standby Celestial Seasonings. Let me tell you, this Jinja Momo a world apart from that!! Instead of being hit full force with ginger, the ginger in the Jinja Momo slowly snuggles up to you. It’s like the difference between an awkward prom date aggressively rushing the romance versus a smooth talking player whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

The deliciously subtle ginger flavor is paired beautifully with the peach. Since I’m not really that experienced at tea tasting I had trouble figuring out that it was in fact peach I was tasting; I almost thought it tasted a little like anise, but I knew that couldn’t be right. However, when you smell the brewed tea it’s mostly peach with just a hint of ginger you smell. And now that I know it’s peach I can’t imagine why I thought it was anything else.

The chamomile quietly works its magic in the background sort of pulling everything together and making this feel like a very distinguished and refined ginger tea.

Overall I’m very pleased and I know I’ll be having more of this delightful ginger peach green tea.

Something about this didn’t sit right with me. It’s got a lemon flavor, but doesn’t really seem like a real lemon flavor/smell. It’s oddly flat, making it seem fake. I think some of that comes from the earthy, sweetness of the rooibos, but still kinda weird. It feels like it’s sitting between the two different teas that it should be but can’t make up its mind, so it hangs out in the middle not really embracing any flavor.

Pretty nice blend. I’m not getting a ton of tea green/black base blend and actually would have thought it was an tisane had I not looked here. But the sweet fruit is at a good level, nice and tangy but not overly so in an artificial way. It’s got a little more body to it than some of the other really fruity tisanes/7 treasures I’d compare it to.

ok

This tea smells like a plum…one of those plums that you know is just going to burst when you bite into it and leak juice all over your face. I just wish it tasted as delicious. Azzrian sent me this sample for which I am totally grateful :) I’m thinking maybe I brewed it a little hot so I’d like to give it a try changing the brewing parameters before I rate it – maybe even do a cold brew.

All that being said, it’s not a bad tasting tea…the scent just doesn’t jive with the taste :)

I got this as a sample from Joy’s Teaspoon a while back. Thanks!

First off, this tea really does smell like plums. Fresh, sweet, juicy plums with a hint of some spice to it. Plum jam then, I guess.

The tea does taste rather like plums, too, but lacking in the sweetness… I probably should have added some sugar, in retrospect. As in my last note, I was tempted away from my tea by freshly baked goodies from my suitemates. Half of us decided to go off the meal plan to save money and hopefully eat slightly healthier. I guess the problem is that all of us like to bake things on top of cooking (each of us a different item, too— I deal with pies, another deals with cookies and brownies, and the other any random recipe she can get her hands on). So, if we keep it up at this rate, we’ll have enough baked goods to last us through a zombie apocalypse, heh.

So anyway, the tea was cold by the time I got back to it. I finished it up, and I have to say, I’m pretty sure this would taste wonderful as an iced tea. The one major thing I thought of when sipping it was the poem “This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams, which I’ve cut and pasted here:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

So I’ve been trying to get to at least 2-3 samples a day whenever possible. This was another from Azzrian which smells divine! On the downside though, I’m not sure how many of you out there were ever given triaminic as a kid, but they had an orange flavoured one that was my FAVOURITE! I’d sneak tastes here and there whenever i wasn’t sick because i liked the flavour so much.

Where was i going with that? Well this tea? It tastes exactly like that lol. Now of course, i’m older and much wiser, so the taste doesn’t appeal to me quite so much. This would be an excellent summer tea imo though. :)