Tea At Sea

This tea is really really good! So many awesome things going on – first off, really attractive packaging. Mountain Organic Indonesian Black also smells fantastic while being steeped – the smell filled my entire kitchen!
The taste was like a journey, each resteep being different. The first steeping was malty, rich, smooth, cedar, sap, amber, honey, spicy and smokey. The resteeps got sweeter, smoother and creamy. Very nice tea. I hope I remember to buy a tin after I try their Oolong and I clear out my stash.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/mountain-organic-indonesian-black-tea-tea-sea-oolong-owl-tea-review/
Pics of the Tea at Sea sail boat!

this is from the sample they sent me….and now i’m going to have to go buy me a tin-full. this is quite good, enjoyed it for my AM tea today – two steepings, no milk and sugar even! although next time, i may try it that way, just to be decadent. at any rate, i’ll write a better tasting note at some point in the future when i have more time…

This is a delicious floral and creamy oolong. A tea you can savor. I was able to steep it 3 times Western style.

Normal Black tea

I’ve been drinking a bit of this since Christmas but never got around to reviewing it. This was part of my Black Friday hoard, I got one of each tea to try and ended up doubling up on this one as my cupboard doesn’t have many nice blacks. I thought it was worth the try anyway, I love the tins.

It has a beautiful red/brown colour once steeped with a thick malted scent. I am partial to a nice pot of Assam and by smell alone you can tell this would be a treat.

The is moderately malted with some honeyed sweetness and thick spicy elements. Also rather dry in after taste but not unbearably so. Though it is rich it’s also very smooth and easily drinkable. Also a little smoky in the after taste.

I really do like this one, glad I took the chance and got two tins worth. Assam is usually a morning or early afternoon style tea for me but this one I could drink throughout.

I got this as a free sample from Tea at Sea last week. They seem like an awesome company, I actually found out about them through a steepster discussion feed where they said they would send free tea samples in exchange for reviews. I feel like that’s a pretty fair deal, and I’m always happy with free tea.

They sent their Mountain Organic Indonesian Green and Mountain Organic Indonesian Black. I figured I’d start with the green. Overall, it was a perfectly enjoyable experience. It was not by far the best green tea I’ve ever had, but it still tasted great. It actually reminded me a lot of Sleeping Dragon by Adagio, which is kind of my go-to “nothing fancy” green tea.

It had a smooth, buttery nutty taste to it – not grassy or vegetal at all. Towards the end I could KIND OF detect a hint of the fruit notes they claimed, but honestly, it’s really hard to tell.

So, honestly, I probably won’t be buying any more of this, but I was very grateful for the opportunity to give it a try, and I wish Tea at Sea all the best.

This is some seriously tasty tea! I brewed up a pot to sip this afternoon and it was gone very quickly. It has a nice smooth taste and just really makes a delicious cup of tea.

Tastes like a sweeter taiwan tea crafts baozong green.

Finished this sample today. It passed the PBJ test – but just barely. I prefer something with more guts to stand up to peanut butter. Nice tea but maybe with cookies instead.

OK, let’s be honest. The first thing I did after opening the envelope was put the sailboat together. Who doesn’t love a cool cork sailboat? It is now proudly displayed but not in a bottle because I lack the patience and attention span – squirrel. I love the packaging except once you cut the top you remove the tag with the tea name, so open one at a time.

I am not a big fan of assam type black as it is too hard on my stomach. Not being sure how this black will react I held the steep to 2 1/2 minutes. I had no ill affects – yeah. Prepared as I did I found this to be light-medium bodied. Malty, smooth, silky, and pleasant with a nicely fruity aftertaste. I enjoyed the cup and look forward to trying it again.

2/8/14 Sipdown. 3ish g/ 6ish oz/212F/6ish minutes. Good. This tea showed much better with a western brew then it did with the gongfu brewing I tried earlier. It’s a basic black tea – lighter then I expected, even after the steeping time got away from me. Not on par with their green tea.

2/6/14 Evening gaiwan. 3g/100ml gaiwan/212F This tea didn’t show well brewed gongfu style. The leaf is inconsistently sized, so I kept getting little tea particles in my cup. Happily, it’s a seven gram sample, so I have the perfect amount to brew to my western standard another time! Despite the flaws imposed by the brewing technique I chose, this had a pleasant smooth aroma and taste, and was full of of wisps of flavor that I think will show better with a different brewing technique.

Well. I seriously enjoyed this cup. Yum! Thank you Tea at Sea for the sample.
It’s very crisp, the way I’ve noticed high grown or first flush teas usually are. I see this level of quality more often in Darjeeling teas, so it was nice to see it applied to a different region.
At first, I tried it straight. It was quite nice. But I found I preferred it with a bit of milk. It seemed to bring out the mild malty note hanging way in the back. Almost like a “green” tobacco, the way it was paired with the apple note I noticed every now and then. I like it!

It is good. Thought it tasted more like a light oolong

I have bad news, sadly it is another one of those days where I cannot think of anything witty to open today’s tea review. I just found myself staring at the screen and nothing of note came to mind. It would be best to assume that since the world outside my window is covered in snow that my brain decided to hibernate. Perhaps I have been spending so much time researching lately that my mind fizzled, that means that tonight I will be spending folding stars.

Today’s tea is Mountain Organic Indonesian Green from Tea at Sea. Grown on the Halimun Mountain (800m above sea level) and fed with spring water and mountain air. Very similar to the Mountain Organic Indonesian Oolong I reviewed the other day. In fact at first glance I thought they were the same tea, but on closer inspection the color was a bit more vibrant for the Green tea and the aroma was subtly different. At first I noticed the creamy, sweet, honey notes blending with baking bread and a touch of floral, similar but stronger than the Oolong, but there is a kelp and lettuce undertone giving it more of a vegetal quality. It is less heady and more fresh vegetation than the Oolong.

Once the tea leaves relax in their hot soak (the term agony of the leaf seems so incorrect, it always looks to me like the leaves are relaxing and stretching out to enjoy a hot bath) the aroma is a bit mineral at first with a touch of fresh kelp. It then fades to a mellow sweetness with a very gentle citrus note, like orange blossoms. The liquid without the relaxing leaves has a very faint aroma with honey tones and a very faint hint of vegetal.

At first sip the taste is fruity, like biting into a juicy plum. After the initial fruity sweetness it fades to vegetal tones and ends with an aftertaste of sweet cherries. The more I sip the more little hints of flavor pop through, a bit of mineral here and bit of baking bread there, quite tasty!

Giving it a second visit I notice the aroma of the leaves steeping and the tea is for the most part the same except it has more of a delicate quality. The taste is also more delicate losing most of its fruit notes and leaving subtle sweetness and notes of artichoke. I found this tea fascinating, it was so similar to the Oolong that I tried earlier and yet was different enough that you could clearly tell it was a different tea.

For Blog and Photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/02/tea-at-sea-mountain-organic-indonesian_5.html

I received a free sample of this from Tea At Sea. Thank you for allowing me to try this tea.

This tea arrived at my door in very cute packaging. I received two samples and they were in small sample size packets with the company’s name and a tag attached to the package that described the tea and gave temperature guidelines for steeping.

I am usually more of a dark oolong verses a green oolong person. This tea is a less oxidized oolong. It steeped up with a yellow/green color. It has a flowery, green, honey taste. This is really nice! Some of the more green oolongs the floral notes over power the tea for me and I have a hard time drinking them. This one the floral is there but is well blended with the honey sweet notes. The sip also has a creamy/buttery feel and taste to it. I don’t think this is a milk oolong, but this has some of the same feel to it.

The way I rate tea is based on my personal preference. It is based on if I am driven to drink or buy a given tea again. In this case I will definitely finish this sample and would consider making a purchase from Tea At Sea to own more of this tea.

Brilliant tea. Tastes like the regular Ceylon black, but with an extra forest flavor. This flavor eludes me, as I can’t quite recognize what it is. It’s refreshing and forest-y and I feel as though I’ve tasted it in an asian dish long ago. Maybe someday I’ll have a moment of clarity and find out just what it is.

You can really taste the quality in the tea. It’s cool watching the oolong knots unfold, and it was nice getting a taste of real original tea! Very smooth taste.

Wow! This has some intense honey notes. There’s also some caramel, cocoa, wood, bread…and the aftertaste is almost fruity. Very interesting. Reminds me of some kind of mix between a Ceylon and a Yunnan. I’ve never had anything quite like it, but it’s really good.

I received a free sample of this from Tea At Sea. Thank you for allowing me to try this tea.

This tea arrived at my door in very cute packaging. I received two samples and they were in small sample size packets with the company’s name and a tag attached to the package that described the tea and gave temperature guidelines for steeping.

The leaves were in great shape, little curly black leaves. This tea was a medium bodied tea with hints of fruit. The taste reminded me of some of the Ceylon teas I have had. Before I started drinking loose leaf teas I loved Lipton yellow label. Lipton yellow label was “normal” black tea to me. This tea has a very “normal” flavor, but very smooth. I liked this tea. It would be great iced, it would be good with lemon or ginger added to it, and it is also good straight.

The way I rate tea is based on my personal preference. It is based on if I am driven to drink or buy a given tea again. In this case I will definitely finish this sample and would purchase this tea again if I happened to be buying other teas from Tea at Sea.

I enjoyed this green to quite a bit. Not a huge fan of green teas but I am really trying :-) I can see my self craving this green. I got the fruity flavor slight veg taste plus a sweetness Nice refreshing clean taste I steeped at 185 for 2 min
Second steeped 185 for 4 min
Third 195 for 6 min
All 3 steeps were successful and juicy

Very satisfied with the quality of this black tea, I have now found my distributor for organically grown, high quality teas. I have only tried their Oolong and this Black, but will be sure to try all their organic ones as soon as my cupboard needs some replenishment! I can’t wait to try their Green! I should mention that my girlfriend flipped out when she saw the packaging and the little sailboat! She’s not a big tea drinker, but she really wanted some of this!