Numi Organic Tea

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Ehrrr … I am not kindly disposed to this one. It will have hibiscus — ugh. And adding flavbouring to Darjeeling is risky, at best. Darjeeling is so wonderful on its own — and can be hard to get, so why wreck the limited supply with flavours?

But I digress. I might even be wrong.

Steeping the bag in a clear glass mug … um, yeah, it looks like it’s bleeding, not steeping. Damn you, hibiscus!

Decent muscatel scent, though a slightly earthy one.

If you want to give a vampire tea party, this is the tea to make. Quite striking — and bloody, really — against glass. I would imagine it would be so agasint white china, too.

First sip: all hibiscus.

Second sip: 90% hibiscus, 10% stale tea.

Berries? Where?

Like I said, I was prejudiced against this blend from the start, as I strongly dislike hisbiscus. It’s a bully!

Third sip: 60 hibiscus, 30 getting-bitter tea, 10 sharp mystery dirt.

Steep time: 2:30. I imagine the tea will develop and battle the hibiscus, but the tea’s already bitter. (Darjeeling, bitter? WTH?) Must go water a plant.

If you don’t mind hibiscus, maybe try this one at a very short steep. It shoudl yield you a cup of hibiscus water with a faint black tea infusion.

Not for me.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

(Backlogging)

I like honeybush. This is a bag of honeybush. Therefore it was quite good. What makes it good is that it’s honeybush. It’s like chamomile and peppermint that way, pretty standard across the brands, provided the leaves are treated nicely.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Spicy scent when I opened the bag morphed into full-on GINGERBREAD once the water hit the leaves. (MKust be the clove and allspice.) Seriously. It needed a good long steep to taste of anything, but the aroma was lovely. The ginger and cardamom lend the blend some good heat. I don’t really taste much red rooibos, but at least the rooibos is neither woody nor minty. Good. Better than I expected.

Out of the Numi sampler box – refreshing lemony taste, but not much else in there. Sweetened with a bit of stevia in an attempt to bring out more flavour. I enjoyed the cup, but likely won’t buy again; there are many better (that is, more intense, as is my preference) citrus/greens out there.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

I love the floral scent, which is hard to define. Almost a spicy floral — I guess that’s the osmanthus. The taste is a bit different. A fairly subtle but not boring white tea. Delicate. Slight touch of apricots on the aftertaste. Very pleasant.

For a quick puerh fix in an easy-to-transport tea bag, this tea does the trick.

I am also happy to see puerh making its way into the market; one of the first puerh tea bags! The quality of this tea is good enough to help people cultivate a taste for puerh.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare. Numi recommends cooling the water a bit after boiling — good. It makes me cringe when white and green tea packaging exhorts the use boiling water. Yeesh, way to ruin white and green tea for first-timers. But I digress.

For a white tea, this one gives off a slighlty leathery atringenct scent that I normally expect from a first flush Darjeeling. Or is that part of the rose I’m catching?

The rose is gentle aqnd very soothing. I feel like keeping still within a comfortable chair. The different scents encourage mindfulness and rest, and that is very good.

A four-minute steep gives a pale brass-cloured liquor and a really different rose scent. Not powders and perfumes at all, but instead very classic, even a bit sharp. The astringency reminds me of the Body’s Shop’s Tea Rose perfume oil (which I love but gave up wearing because wasps and bees like it, too; guess which insects I have a phobia of), though the tea for sure does not smell as rosy as that perfume.

Really good. Especialy for a bagged white. I’d love to try this one loose.

I really like samplers. Ya like some, ya don’t like some, but it’s a great way to meet new tea.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Awww, come on.

It’s a blend of Assam, Keemun, Ceylon and Darjeeling. All I can taste is mediocre Ceylon — even after leaving the bag in extra time after tasting it at 5 min. No body, just tea-flavoured water. It’s not bitter or astringent, and, given its lack of body, quite easy to drink, but I certainly would not go out of my way for this one again.

I used to really like this one, before I got serious about good whole leaf.

Wondering how these boxes ended up in the retail graveyard that is Winners … The tea’s not stale. Best before date is Nov 2013. Interestingly, the Morning Rise foil was impossible to open without scissors; maybe this lot of bags didn’t get nicked.

I expect I’ll binge later on the Chinese Breakfast in the second box, then continue to take my chances with the others. Hey, Numi’s Aged Earl Grey and Monkey King Jasmine are good.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Where’s the tea?

A pleasant vanilla taste, not perfumey, not fake, with creamy finish that reminds me of unsweetend soy milk.

But where’s the freakin TEA? I’ve kept the bag in the cup long past the recommended 5-minute max.

Vanilla-flavoured hot water. I kid you not. Grand if you want vanilla-flavoured hot water, which is soothing in and of itself, but I wanted tea. I won’t bother with this one again.

2 bags for 500mL water @100C, steeped 4 minutes, drunk bare.

I scored a box of this at the office this morning, and I’m quite pleased. Numi Tea is very hard to find in my city; one coffee shop stocks it, but not this one.

A decent Yunnan. Honey and malt notes but no astringency. Livelier than the Wild Black Yunnan from DavidsTea. Yum.

1 bag for 450mL water, bare.

Trying the teabag in my larger travel mug this morning.

It does best in 250mL / 8oz / 1 cup, I think. Here at 450mL, there’s almost no body, and the pepperiness gets diluted. (When buying tea at a cafeteri or coffee shop, I almosy always get a small, unless they offer a second teabag for the large. Teabags are stingy.) The scents remain: pepper, minerals, honey, malt, and smoke, but the taste is definitely watered down. Weh.

That’s it. I’m making a proper pot of Black Needles later.

All in all, a really good bagged Yunnan. Just don’t expect miracles from it. And don’t try steeping 1 single bag in a great big mug.

1 bag for 250mL water, bare.

Got frustrated with the writing today and took a trip to a nearby mall, ending up in Winners, where I found some forlorn and battered boxes of Numi teabags. I bought the two boxes of “Numi’s Assortment,” mostly to get a few old faves in there; I adore Numi’s Aged Earl Grey and Monkey King Jasmine. A few others in there I really want to try, too.

To my surprise: one bag per box of Numi’s Chinese Breakfast Yunnan Black Tea. Oooh, a new China black tea to try.

Very good. Especially for a bagged tea. Bit of malt, faint bits of honey and smoke, and a nice pepper bite. Mineral finish. (I guess that’s what the Numi ad copy called “spring water” in the finish.) Refreshing. I love Yunnan black tea, and I really wish Numi was easier to find in NL. I will try to re-steep the bag, but my hopes aren’t high.

Did you ever see the movie Spirited Away? There’s a lovely little creature in there – it’s a dust bunny – here’s a link to a pic: http://kalafudra.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/spirited_away2.jpg

This tea looks like the dust bunny. Or a large sea anenome.

This was my favorite part of this tea. I didn’t steep it the 10-15 that the other people did, and maybe that was my fault. I steeped around 5 minutes. I found it kind of bland.

It was pretty tho.

Last sample from SimplyJenW… so much fun to trade with others! She threw this one in because she knows that I like chocolate… Well I absolutely loved the smell of this from the bag… it was a deep warm vanilla,chocolate, earthy smell. I almost wanted not to steep it because it smells so delicious.

After steeping the liquor is a really really dark amber color almost coffee color. The smell still has really earthy smell and not quite as sweet smelling now, more of a true dark real unsweetened cocoa smell with bits of cinnamon.

The first taste I was kind of disappointed… the smell is so much better than the taste to me. The earthiness comes out… I have never had a Puerh before, so not sure if this is how all of these teas taste but I feel as if this tea has to many flavors in it. You can smell the vanilla, and cinnamon, can even taste those a bit, but you also taste the unsweetened chocolate and then the earthiness… For me this mixture does not make sense.

After letting it cool a bit the flavors seem to meld a bit more and they are not so bad but I have to say that I think I won’t be buying this tea. I loved trying it though!

This tea was my everything while i was travelling in San Francisco- i decided to back pack. It rained the whole time- hot, humid rain. Lucky i stumbled upon this tea. It was so refreshing and cooling- that it became my beverage of choice. Each time i was out exploring, this tea was in my backpack. Just sips away.

Mmmmmm. I bought this one based upon reviews. I was looking for a tea that was deep in chocolate flavors, and i think this is it. There are just certain flavors that lend themselves perfectly to a certain type of tea….like grapefruit and white tea, peaches and rooibos, roses and black tea. I think chocolate, the deep dark kind, has found a home in pu erh. This is not your milk chocolate tea….it is dark and coffee like with hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange, but wonderful with a little sweetener and milk.

The resteep is not as good, but still pleasant enough to drink.

I am very surprised. I do not know what type of flower osmanthus is but I like it. It aroma turns into this apricot kind of smell (this is the closest description i can think of). I cannot taste apricots. It’s flavor is slightly flowery. It is definitely a different flavor profile for me. I will have to try it a few more times before I decide on whether or not I like it. I definitely want to try it cold. I have a feeling that apricot aroma may be more present in its flavor if I were to drink this tea cold.

Very spicy! I can’t even tell it is a red tea it is so spicy. Full of cloves. If you want a spicy chai tea, grab this one!

Although I admit that in many ways I am a tea “novice” of sorts, I believe I have been around Earl Grey for long enough to judge when I have tried a good one. I just did a side-by-side comparison with Twinings Earl Grey, and I came to the conclusion that I enjoy Numi’s more.
Numi’s is a brighter, almost red-amber color. The taste of the tea seems purer and less refined than Twinings’. The bergamot flavoring, however, seems less prevalent in Numi’s, which I attribute to the organic nature of the bergamot used; though less powerful, the flavor is still on-par with the black tea, where in Twinings Earl Grey the bergamot oil nearly overpowers the tea itself. Frankly, after the comparison, my mouth is a little dry and my stomach is a tad uneasy. I’d like to place the blame on the oil used in Twinings’, but it may have just been the end result of drinking too much EG in one sitting.
Anyway, this is probably my favorite Earl Grey thus far.

The aroma is very soothing. It did not taste like. I was drinking a flower. The tea was smooth and one cup got rid of an “excedrin level” headache!!!

I steeped this for 3 minutes.
This is the first gunpowder green tea that I have tasted. It is kind of smooth for a green tea. It is also not very astringent. It has a mild grassy flavor. I also did not taste any bitterness.
This would make a great base tea to combine with mint or citrus. Or great for people who do not like green teas with strong flavor profiles like Dragonwell.