Numi Organic Tea

I enjoyed this, which I was kind of surprising. Normally I like a strong flavored tea- so I typically stay away from whites, but I was feeling adventurous and felt like my afternoon should be accompanied by something light. It didn’t have too strong of floral notes whic I can appreciate, just nice and light, all I can really say :)

Finished up the last bags of this this evening. It’s a good one, not quite up there with the Chinese Breakfast, and not as good as the loose leaf genmaichas I’ve been trying lately, but for a bagged green tea it is pretty darn good. I’ve been drinking it a lot today and it’s a pretty consistent mild, savory taste from cup to cup. It’s almost as though there’s a little salt in there with the toasty rice, though I doubt it as otherwise it would make me thirsty and it doesn’t.

I’d buy this again if I found myself needing a bagged green tea and it was available.

I feel sorry for this tea. Le pauvre.

If I’d tasted it before I tasted the Den’s and the Samovar, it would have gotten a better rating. It’s pleasant enough. Smells of toasty rice, as it should, though not as toasty as some. Tastes of toasty rice and a bucolic, green tea that is both sweet and a tad bitter just around the edges, and even has a silky, thick mouth feel.

But alas, I am fast becoming spoiled and the tea, while it isn’t unidimensional, isn’t as multi-faceted as others I’ve tried. It’s like a singer who is a tiny bit flat, almost not enough to notice except to someone who has spent a lot of time listening to really really good singing.

Looking over other reviews, I wonder if I need to use more leaf because overall this felt/tasted rather thin. It did have a nice chocolate taste as well as a dry sweet hay taste that I seem to associate with pu-erh so that was nice. It was definitely better than The Tea Spot’s Bolder Breakfast (another chocolate pu-erh blend) – the chocolate wasn’t so dry tasting – but it wasn’t as good of a chocolate tea as Lupicia’s The Au Chocolat – which still wins as the best chocolate tea I’ve had. But this one was mild, smooth and had a nice depth of flavor (Bolder Breakfast can seem a bit flat) so while the chocolate wasn’t a rich as I might have expected (though there was a nice, almost just-finished-a-milk-chocolate-candy-bar aftertaste going on), the overall experience was enjoyable.

Sipdown no. 82 of the year 2014. Two sipdowns today and neither were samples. Yay!

If I needed an easily portable jasmine green with a Chinese green tea base, I might consider buying this again. I am, however, slowly perfecting the balancing act of steeping loose leaf at work which is where I find myself in the most difficult conditions. Travel isn’t hard compared to work, though of course I don’t do any traveling that is too rustic.

Because I don’t really have the need of a bagged jasmine green I suspect I won’t buy this again. But I’m nostalgic about the sipdown because this was from my original “getting into tea” purchase and it’s tasty enough. More sipdowns of the original group on the horizon, which can only be a good thing…

I can’t call this a sipdown yet because although I drank the last of my work stash, it seems I still have about 7 bags at home.

I oversteeped because someone stopped me on my way back to my cube, but even with a longer than optimal steep time this wasn’t bitter or otherwise horrible. Like the Three Kingdoms Mao Feng I think it deserves a slightly better rating. Still not as good as some of the other jasmines I’ve had lately—the underlying tea is neither really taste-able nor does it add much to the flavor. The overall impression is heavier than the Kusmi and the jasmine isn’t as wonderful. But not a bad work tea.

The flavor of this is what I think of as “Chinese restaurant tea” as it seems to be a staple at the Chinese restaurants in this area, only this version is even more jasminy than the norm. The aroma and flavor are very, very jasminy which is a big plus as I love the smell of jasmine.

The tea base is what keeps this from being spectacular. It’s only just peeping through the flowers, and though it is pleasant and mildly sweet, it could announce itself more. Then I’d be able to tell how good this really is — either it would score points or fall down if the tea wasn’t up to at least par. The downside of the intensity of the jasmine is that it masks the tea, and I feel a little like I’m being asked to judge a photo after it’s been airbrushed to conceal all the flaws.

Lest I mislead, this is better than standard restaurant tea in my view as it is more floral and actually more flavorful (I steep mine pretty strong, and restaurants tend not to), but I’m guessing there are better jasmines with more robust bases out there.

UGH.

I got this from my local coffee shop when I went with a friend and didn’t feel like a rich latte after a big meal. It sounded like it would be refreshing, cleansing maybe, just what I needed.

Not sure of water temp and I just left the bag in the cup. The smell was exactly like that NeoCitran lemon drink you make when you have a cold, which for me is a good thing as I always thought that hot-lemonade taste was great.

With high hopes I take my first sip and initially it’s fine. I get a nice tart lime flavour that gives my taste buds a tingle. And then I swallow and I get…chemical? Like serious, metallic, tastes-and-feels-like-its-got-to-be-poisonous chemical flavour on the back and sides of my tongue. It sort of makes me think of when you’ve touched coins and then put your fingers in your mouth, that sort of tongue-puckering metallic taste. In a hot cup of tea. Yeah…not so good.

Because I didn’t make this myself I can’t say whether something went wrong in the preparation but I certainly hope so. Otherwise this tea is supposed to taste like this.

UGH. UGH. UGH.

I’m going to go brush my teeth now.

Finishing the last of this this morning. Oh, the clean, fresh feeling of more room in the tea cupboard! O joy! The rating and description is as I recalled from my previous note. Not something I will seek out now that I have been spoiled by some terrific loose leaf breakfast blends, but I appreciate its role in my continuing evolution in tea appreciation and admiration!

I thought it would be interesting to try this side by side with the Numi Chinese Breakfast. And it was.

I like black tea, this much I know. But I haven’t yet spent a lot of time analyzing whether I like some black teas better than others. I do like the malty, sugary flavor of some blacks but I’m still too early in my journey toward (what I hope will be) eventual sophistication to be able to tell a Yunnan from an Assam from a Ceylon from a Keemun without reading what I’m drinking on the container it came in. I can sort of tell Darjeeling most of the time, but found it interesting when I was reading about Darjeelings that they’re sort of in their own category as they generally aren’t fully oxidized though they are considered blacks. Hmm.

Anyway, this is a blend of Assam, Ceylon, Keemun and Darjeeling, while the Chinese Breakfast is pure Yunnan. The Chinese Breakfast steeps up the more aromatic of the two, with a sweet, brown sugary smell. The Breakfast Blend has some sweetness too, but it is a paler, and less sweet aroma.

Compared to the Chinese Breakfast, this has a less robust flavor, which wasn’t at all what I expected. I was expecting that between the Assam and the Darjeeling, the Morning Rise would be more intense. Morning Rise is pretty ordinary and so there’s not a lot to say about it. It doesn’t stand out, even among other bagged black teas. I didn’t love Awake, but it had more flavor than this even though it wasn’t as smooth and well-blended. I’d pick Chinese Breakfast over this given the choice.

Hat trick! The third from my original group of “starter tea” boxes I’m saying goodbye to in one day. Woot!

This is not one I will likely revisit, now that I have a better idea of what I like in chai, even decaf versions.

I had high hopes for tea notes this evening but they were dashed. My kindergartener’s homework (!) was to write a story about his week with the class mascot (a stuffed Clifford the big red dog) and illustrate it with photographs of the two of them, and of course we left it till the last night. Partly this was because we barely have time to do his other homework as it is, what with both parents working and all, but mostly it was because I got a new camera and couldn’t get the printer to work with it. Ugh. Anyway, I finally figured it out, story is now done and child is in bed. Whew.

So I’m backtracking to another bagged hanger on that I haven’t yet written about.

This is a serviceable spiced rooibos, but I’m not sure it’s a very good chai. I haven’t had a lot of chai, so what do I know. All I can say is I’ve had a really good one. Part of what made it so good was the richness the milk imparted. This doesn’t stand up to milk. Another thing that made it really good was the black pepper kick. There’s no black pepper in this. And another thing that made it really good was a really luscious blend of spices that gave it a lot of character and depth. This has a sort of generic cinnamon-spicy thing going on.

I would have the Tazo Decaf Chai over this if I was looking for a caffeine free chai in a teabag. It stands up to milk, it has black pepper. Two out of three ain’t all bad.

Sipdown no. 86 of the year 2014. Four bags left. Four people in the house. Breakfast!

This is one of my “starter” teas that I’m really going to miss. It’s a Numi I’d consider stocking.

A few months ago I was at a pizza place near work and ordered iced tea to drink. The tea was incredibly tasty and asked what it was. It was this.

Wonderful, deep, malty, sweet flavor. Yum. Bumping the rating.

This has really grown on me. I’ve been drinking it in the mornings, and I’m down to my last few bags. This one I will miss when it is gone.

Very rich, sweet (yes, it really is sweet — for whatever reason it didn’t seem that way to me when I wrote my first note, and it isn’t consistently so nor is it overly so, but on subsequent tastings I’ve found it to have a malty sweetness), full bodied, and otherwise yummy, though I don’t yet know how it compares to other Yunnans. It’s better than any of the other bagged blacks I’ve sampled, and it’s so good at what it does that it deserves to be kept in reserve for those times when a teabag may be the only viable tea delivery vehicle.

Bumping the rating.

Ahh. Wednesday. A work from home day.

Which means my overflowing shipping boxes full of recent tea deliveries are surrounding and beckoning to me. Yes, that’s where I’m now reduced to collecting (I won’t say storing because that might mean it would become a permanent solution) my tea deliveries, one for each type from black to white. On second thought, beckoning is the wrong word. It sounds gentle and polite, or at least resistible.

But first, I must not ignore my crusade to drink up the bagged tea to make room for all the new stuff, lest the boxes indeed become permanent. The good news is that though there are still way too many, I’m finding that I’m running out of ones I haven’t written notes on.

This is one. The bag has a deep “black bagged tea” smell, a bit like the Numi pu erh bags but minus the leathery/earthy notes. It steeped to a dark brown. I used 2 bags in 14-16 or so oz of water which likely resulted in a darker liquor than would be typical.

The tea smells much nicer than the bag; it has something similar to that sweet, brown sugary/malty smell I detect in a lot of the black Samovar teas and that I just love.

The sweetness isn’t as apparent in the taste, unfortunately. There’s a tiny bit of sugar in the finish, and a full, malty flavor with some astringency. It seems better than many of the bagged blacks I’ve had. But it lacks the depth and smoothness of the loose blacks that are my frontrunners at the moment. I’d be afraid that steeping any longer than 3 minutes would turn the corner into bitterness.

I’ll finish this up and would choose it over other bagged blacks in a pinch, but there are better teas. I’m spoiled by Samovar and Mariage Freres and look forward to more spoilage as I work through the contents of my shipping boxes.

You need to like very flowery teas for this one, but if, like me, you do — it’s a great tea.

I keep buying this because it sounds good and I keep remembering that I don’t like it. Where’s the vanilla flavor? Completely unsubtle and just not that tasty.

Sipdown no. 41 of 2016 (no. 252 total).

Downed the last two bags at work today. Pleasant, greenish floral aroma and flavor. I steeped on the short side, so not a lot of heft from the puerh, but I could tell it was there.
I like this better than I rated it. Bumping a few points.

Still, not likely to revisit it as there are too many other teas to try and though pleasant, this wasn’t a standout.

I’m coming back to this one to try the same experiment I tried last night with the Mint Puerh. Since this one actually has green tea in it as well as pu erh, I’m wondering which version will come out better.

Two identical glass cups, roughly the same amount of water. One steeped green-tea like for 2 minutes at 175, the other steeped pu erh like for 3 minutes at boiling.

The longer steep, not surprisingly, resulted in a deeper color. But even the shorter steep is a deeper color than the mint of yesterday. They’re both orangy-brown and clear, the longer steep is browner while the shorter is more orange.

Interestingly, there is not nearly as much difference in the taste as there was with the mint, and as I expected here. The shorter steep is a lighter version of the longer, and I preferred the longer as the taste of the pu erh was more prevalent. This may have more to do with the water temperature than anything else.

The main difference is that the floral quality I described in my earlier tasting note is more present in the shorter/cooler steep. This makes me wonder whether it is really magnolia so much as the green tea influence on the flavor. While I preferred the taste of the longer/hotter steep generally, I was hoping for a more floral quality from this given its name. As it is, it really does seem like Emperor’s Lite. And I’d probably just drink the Emperor’s Pu erh if I was in the mood for that flavor.

Working my way through the Numi puerhs…

I wasn’t really sure how to prepare this one. The instructions said use boiling water, but that didn’t sound right to me since the main ingredient is green tea, though I know higher temperatures are recommended for puerhs. For my first try I went with a lower temperature and shorter steeping time on the theory that this was mainly a green.

At that temperature and steeping time, this seemed to me to be essentially Emperor’s Puerh lite. Same leathery smell and flavor, but less so. There is a softness to the flavor that is probably the green tea, but could also be the floral influence. I grew up around Magnolia trees and I’m not picking up a distinct Magnolia quality, but there is definitely a floral note in there. The green and floral notes are most noticeable in the aftertaste, where they provide a fresh, gentle uplift to the intensity of the puerh.

I am going to try this again at a higher temperature and see what difference that may make. I’m not ready to rate this one until I think I’ve arrived at the best preparation technique.

It’s like a kick in the face of ginger, I was expecting a little more lemon flavor, but added some honey and it sort of balanced the flavors out.

Sipdown no. 48 of 2016 (no. 259 total).

The second to last of the Numi bagged pu-erhs in my stash. I made this my go-to work tea for the afternoon after the magnolia pu-erh.

My parting reaction, on the occasion of this sipdown, is largely the same as the reaction I had to the magnolia. Which is to say, it was pleasant while it lasted, but I don’t see myself buying it again. It was fun to experiment with when I was starting out, but I’m ready to get more serious about pu-erh.

Having some of this to counteract whatever I did to my stomach last night that resulted in the feeling of a rock sitting in it for a good 12 hours so far.

It might have been the latkes. Or maybe the brisket I had for dinner at the local place that’s the closest thing we have to a deli. It was a bit on the fatty side but I was hungry, so…

In any case, this is making things feel a little less weighty.

After the first time I tasted this I’d been meaning to go back to it and play around with it a bit. While I liked it, second only to the chocolate among the Numi pu erhs, I wasn’t sure I’d steeped it correctly the first time.

The instructions on the bag seem to suggest it ought to be steeped as a green tea. I found this confusing, because whereas others of the Numi pu erhs do seem to be blends of other teas with the pu erh, this one’s main ingredient is “green pu erh” and its only other ingredient is mint.

So I decided tonight to give it a side by side test in identical glass cups. I brewed one as a green tea, with a 2 minute steeping time and 175 degree water, and the other for 3 minutes with boiling water.

Let me back up for a minute and say that the bags smell quite nice. Very minty, with the barnyardy/leathery scent of the pu erh as almost an accent, keeping the mint from being too candy-like.

The longer, hotter steep yielded a darker liquor; more tawny/tan yellow than the other, which looked very like green tea liquor, a greenish yellow. The aromas were interesting to compare. The longer steep brought out more of a pu erh smell, while the shorter seemed almost like a minty green oolong, with just a hint of the earthy tone of pu erh.

Taste-wise, the comparison came out similarly. They were both nice cups. The longer steep was heartier, and had more in common with the other Numi pu erhs I’ve tried. Leathery, barnyardy, earthy. The mint is a nice contrast to this, a fresh high note that would probably be appealing to people just starting to experiment with pu erhs and those who are looking for a counterpoint to the dark, pungent flavor. The shorter steep was heavier on the mint, thinner on the pu ehr flavor, but tasty in its own right.

The digestive aid properties of this one are not to be underestimated. I felt rumblings in my intestines almost immediately upon starting to sip this…