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Drinking Golden Snail has had me thinking about Emperor’s Red! I hadn’t had any in a while and wanted some today. Yes, it is just as good as ever. It is a milder tea than Golden Snail, but still roasty toasty delicious!

Tea party day! Today we had Belgian Cream Puffs and Pirouettes, Ginger Lemon Cremes, and Rich tea biscuits with four teas. The first one was Emperor’s Red and it was delicious! It has a rich, full, cocoa-y aroma and wonderful body with no astringency. It goes with EVERYTHING – savory, sweet, or just a cuppa. It tastes great sans additions or with milk and sugar. (We take it sans!) We keep track of the teas we try and special desserts in a little book. Our tea party guest said, “We’ve had this one before. It needs to have a star beside it in the book!” This is one tea you should always have on hand.

Thank you thank you thank you to JacquelineM for this tea! We made this today for “tiny tea time” and when I announced what was in the grown-ups’ teapot the mom cooed, “Oooo, we’ve had that one before!” I drank it sans additions and every drop was wonderful! I had my daughter save the leaves so we can resteep and have some more.

Bwa hahahaha! Yes, I said I was out of this, but I saved that last little basket of used leaves to rebrew another day, and today was the day! I had enough to make a 20 oz. pot and drank it all sans additions. Ah! It is definitely weaker, but still has lovely notes. The color is pretty much unchanged from the first steep! Enjoyable.

It is 75 degrees and sunny. We had a dozen harrowing errands to run so I told the girls we would have a picnic tea when we got home! We chose Emperor’s Red to go with our plate of Danish Wedding cookies.

I have always found it to have chocolate aromas but today when I lifted the cup to my lips I thought, “Wow, there is a fruity note there I hadn’t picked up this strong before. Maybe baked apple?” Then I saw Jacqueline’s post today where she referred to it as fruity as well! It was delicious as always, and like Jacqueline, this was the last of my leaves! We had Sandy on speakerphone to "join " us for tea since she got back to the states yesterday. She said that she had already had to endure the sorrow of seeing the last leaves…we are thinking about starting a support group.

When a water main breaks and your city is put on “boil water” status for three days what do you do? You make tea! I was disappointed because five minutes of boiling is supposed to make the water a bit flat since so much oxygen is dispersed from it, but my tea was yummy anyway.

This is a wonderful tea that to which JacquelineM introduced me. It has the aroma you would get if you made a plate of Pepperidge Farm dark chocolate cookies and some of the chocolate melted on your hands. I supposed that is what they call unsweetened cocoa notes. It was wonderful with my Everything Bagel, sans additions. I usually add milk and sugar to my breakfast tea “just because” but I had this one without because that is how I normally drink it in the afternoons with my cookies. Ah. Nice start to the day.

Thank you to JacquelineM for this tea! I didn’t realize I hadn’t added it to my cupboard until I sign on to add a tasting note.

Hubby and I split a toasted Everything Bagel with cream cheese for lunch today, and this was my lovely, lovely, chocolately roasty tea to go with! I drank the whole pot by myself, and fixed a pot of Marco Polo for hubby (I am adding a tasting note from him for that tea) since that is his new favorite. Merry Christmas to all the Steepsterites!

Yummy! This was the first tea party tea today, and was very well-liked. So smooth, chocolate-y aroma, and honey notes. Delicious just as it is!

I decided it was safe to make a whole pot of this today since my new tea should be here tomorrow! I gave some of this to my tea padawan and told her it was good plain or she could add sugar. (For the non-Star Wars fans out there, a padawan is like an apprentice and is wholly unrelated to the gaiwan or chawan.) She sipped and mmmm’ed, and said, “This IS good plain! It doesn’t need anything….” We had it with Rich tea biscuits. Lovely tea…

This was the first tea served for the Wednesday tea party, and the favorite. There were lots of low, moany groany noises as it was sipped – it was a hit! The description does not do it justice – this tea smells the most chocolate-y of any I have had, and it so wonderfully smooth. It has a great range of flavors, mostly low notes if I understand how they rank that sort of thing. Sometimes chocolate-y drink doesn’t go well with chocolate-y food, but today this went very well with our cookies. Good, strong, and relaxing, like a shoulder rub from a big, strong man with big hands – and I should know. Hubby is 6’4" and his hand spans my whole back. That is what this tea is. It is THAT GOOD. The tea party guests agreed it was the more flavorful of the two unflavored teas today, the other tea being Keemun Hao Ya A by A Southern Season which is far milder than the one by Harney and Sons.

Overslept this morning and needed a really good pot of tea. Youngest daughter and I made a little bowl of cheese cubes and brewed a pot of this. Aaaaaaah! This is even better than I remembered. Last time it was a little on the weak side for me, so I increased my steep time to 4 minutes. Again, the aroma of cocoa was AMAZING! This is probably the most chocolately smelling tea I have had, excluding those that have chocolate flavor added. This time I also detect what I thought was a light vegetal note, perhaps what the company is describing as fruity. It is just a hint of what I taste strongly in Ruby #18. Very complex, very smooth, very, very satisfying. Thank you, again. Jacqueline! I had been wanting to try a Red Robe style tea for some time…..

Thank you, JacquelineM for this sample! I made two separate pots of this today for our little tea party. I made a plate of fudge covered grahams from Keebler and Pepperidge Farm chocolate assortment to go with our tea. As I poured the tea, I thought I was smelling chocolate – but surely it was on my hands from the cookie plate? But I had never noticed it before. Smelled my hands – nothing. Smelled the tea – there it is! I have heard of teas having chocolate notes, I’ve even tasted unsweetened cocoa notes in some teas, but this smelled CHOCOLATE! It is a good, smooth tea. I think when I serve this in future it will be with a cheese plate to complement the chocolate notes instead of having chocolate-y cookies that compete with it. Very nice premium tea from Premium Steap! I think it could withstand an even longer steep time if you like your tea stronger.

At last, I have reached what I hope will be the pinnacle of my coconut journey. I’m really excited to try this one given all the love it has here on Steepster.

Also excited because I can’t remember whether I’ve had Nilgiri before. It might have shown up in a blend somewhere along the line but I don’t recall ever having tasted it straight before.

The coconut in here, being toasted, looks different than the coconut in other blends I’ve tried recently. It’s in long thin strips that look a little like flower petals in tea. The Nilgiri leaves are big, dark and sort of coarse looking. The fragrance of the dry mix is intense. Very volatile, almost alcohol-smelling.

After steeping I can really smell the tea more than coconut, though there’s a coconut note there, for sure. The tea’s aroma has a really pretty floral note to it that I wasn’t expecting. The liquor is medium-light amber.

I should say that I steeped this according to Premium Steap’s directions and put it at boiling rather than at a lower temperature, which I’ve been doing with other flavored blacks, mostly because it seems sometimes to bring more flavor out. Other times it doesn’t or doesn’t make a difference. But I wanted to go according to the book the first time with this one.

And yes, there’s a difference in flavor between toasted and nontoasted versions of coconut black tea, though not as much as I had expected, and though I’m not sure how much the Nilgiri contributes to the mix since I’m rather a Nilgiri neophyte. I have to say the American Tea Room version was pretty impressive notwithstanding its nontoastedness. That said, I’m really enjoying the macaroon flashes I’m getting from this, especially as the tea cools and especially in the minutes after sipping.

To me, the most impressive part about this is the blend. It’s not a black tea with coconut sitting on top so much as it is a tea that seems to be imbued with coconut flavor. Like they can’t really be separated from each other. I’m always pretty impressed by teas that manage to do this as it seems much more difficult to accomplish than just flavoring tea (though I have no idea whether this is true, it just seems that way because it’s rarer than an obvious flavoring).

The true test of this one will be tasting it in isolation without earlier coconuts still in my tastebuds’ memories, but so far it’s in front, with the ATR close behind. I could see this and the ATR coexisting in my cupboard much in the same way I can see The du Loup and Florence coexisting as though they’re similar, they’re different enough to be… well… different.

I am drinking Emperor’s Red in honor of Ashmanra’s mole!

I ate a protein bar with it – no waxworms or earthworms!!!!!

It was really satisfying despite my lack of worms. I think I’ve been very sloppy with my steeping parameters lately, and have been having weak tea! So I measured my leaves carefully, and made sure I did not put in too much water, and ahhhh! There’s my roasty, tangy friend!

If you haven’t seen this cutie yet:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackiemania/5850807458/in/photostream

!!!!!!

I’m having the “I just had a three day weekend and now I’m back to work” blues. Not only did I need a staunch cup of this, but I added extra leaves to my second steep – something I rarely do. These extra leaves seem to be doing the job, because I now feel vaguely human. Thank you, Emperor! I think I’ll have one more steep!!

I had some of this today, and AGAIN was craving a little more assertiveness. For my second steep I added a half teaspoon of Harney & Sons Hao Ya A and was so pleased with the resulting flavor that I mixed in the rest of the dry leaves from my sample packet into the Emperor’s tin! The Emperor was not happy about this but I have opposable thumbs, and he does not, so I can do what I want!! ;)

So I’m drinking my friend the Emperor here, and…gasp. All I can think of is Keemun Mao Feng! The Emperor is certainly a delicious cuppa, and I’m enjoying him immensely, but… but… Keemun Mao Feng just heaps it on! Unforgettable. I’m going to be swooning over it until it comes and lives in my cupboard methinks.

Now that I think of the Emperor as a lighter tea (!!!) I will certainly be enjoying him all summer with much pleasure, but I have to admit he has been knocked off his throne a bit!

Hello everyone! I’m going to change the way I do tasting notes, and wanted to let you all know :) I’ve decided I’ve learned enough about my daily tea habits to start logging only when I try a new tea, or when I have something exceptional to say about a tea that I’ve already logged. I’ll still keep my cupboard up to date, and be checking in regularly to see what you are all drinking!

This was my cup today, but in the spirit of my new system, I’ll refrain from saying mmmmmmm roasty and delicious for the 29831982301238 time ;)

Some of the Emperor and an Everything Bagel! Heaven!

Made some corn muffins for breakfast, and this went really well with them. What doesn’t this tea go well with? :) :) :)

I needed something good to go with my breakfast (bonus picture of my breakfast:
http://www.spo.gs/RetroCamera.html?img=cIip It’s a lemon curd muffin with coconut shavings I made with hardly any sugar and…olive oil! You’d never know – they’re very delicious!) and the Emperor came to mind. It can do no wrong, so I was confident it would pair well with this slightly unusual muffin. Yup, super yummy, and will provide all the good roasty flavor and get up and go I need for the last work day of a very intense week!

Had an enjoyable three steeps of my good friend the Emperor! Always flavorful and satisfying. Never bitter. Seasonless! ♥

Today I forgot to bring in a spoon to measure my tea…and then I got on a call just as I was pouring my water and couldn’t time the steep…and it’s still excellent :) :) :) Gosh Emperor’s Red, how do you do it?!?!?! :)

Roasty fruity goodness! I was just typing with ashmanra on PM, and mentioned that I think this latest batch is fruitier than the last. A tangy fruity. I don’t know if it’s a new harvest, or just incredibly fresh, but whatever the reason, it’s sure enjoyable!

I baked chocolate chip muffins for the office, and at first I was sad that I didn’t have enough hands to carry in some milk and sugar for an Indian tea, but y’know, Emperor’s Red is one of those all purpose delicious teas that taste good with sweets, food, and is just perfect when you simply want a cup of tea. It can do no wrong in my book!