teabento

Went for a tea party at a friend’s house and I got her a bunch of green teas (And a few oolongs and blacks) from Tea Bento for Christmas. Anyway, we steeped all of her teas (10 total) in my small green tea pot (350 mL). 78-80 deg. C water, ~1-2 tsp leaf, 30 seconds to 1 minute depending of the tea.

My friend found this tea fruity, flavours of chocolate.

I noted this has a lot of cocoa/bittersweet chocolate flavour but also roasted leathery flavours. Malt, baked bread, and roasted barley also. I’m not really huge into the leather notes, but I love the chocolate.

Not sure what’s wrong with me. Either my taste buds are on strike or I’ve forgotten everything I knew about tea.
This was another sample that I received with my teabento order. This is two in a row that wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
Plum and brassy – that’s how I feel. Pale liquor with a thin mouthfeel. This is way more like an Indian than a Chinese black. I don’t really like this one either….
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc0X5JJhf5a/?taken-by=dex3657

I received my teabento order today. Not happy with the outer packaging – my box was ripped and squashed. All the tea is here but I think some of it might have been a bit crushed.
Super Spiny was one of the free samples included with my order.
This one confuses me, it’s not really what I expect from a Keemun. The liquor is a beautiful deep dark red. It looks like a big bold black tea, but feels really light and thin in the mouth. The first couple of steeps sweet, fruity, with just a touch of smoke. The next few steeps were really fruity – light grape, sweet, maybe a hint of honey.
This isn’t for me, it’s way too light – I really prefer bolder black teas.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcyouKfB9tA/?taken-by=dex3657

I don’t know why Japanese green teas don’t get more love. At their best, these teas are like matcha without all the prep and labour. Maybe the price is daunting for someone who isn’t really into green tea? I completely empathize with that. If I wanted 100g of this it would be a $40 CAD investment… which actually isn’t too bad, but I’m not in a place in life where I can justify that much right now.

Anyways, to my untrained palate this Uji Sencha is one of those aforementioned best- aka you can taste a hint of Matcha goodness! Buttery, floral, crisp, bright green powder goodness… I haven’t had a proper cup of matcha since my trip to Japan over a year ago (a pedestrian cup after hiking back down the Fushimi Inari trail), but this is the next best thing!

Steep Count: 4

90s, 30s, 40s, 60s~ It’s still going strong too.

This is another sad sipdown. Earlier mornings and the most basic of basic kettles has suddenly turned me into a black tea enthusiast..

Also this tea is just ridiculously forgiving and resteepable. You only need to steep it for 45s to get good flavour, but forget about it for 30 minutes and it still comes out tasting like hot malty cocoa water.

Notes of cocoa, roasted nuts, grain malt and marshmallow waft from my cup. Does it taste as good as it smells?

Yes.

I’m never forsaking black tea again.

Free Sample from teabento with our order. I’ll be sending the rest over to VariaTEA . This isn’t a preferred tea for me – i’m not the biggest fan of oolongs, though some are delicious. This one is ok but has that taste that i’m not a fan of when it comes to oolongs. It’s an almost floral, mineral like taste. A decent cup but i’m good with this one cup :)

Final cup of this one today! I’m ok with this one being out of my cupboard. I enjoy it but it’s not top of my list to keep in my cupboard as i work to getting my “regular” teas down to 25.

drinking tea…organising the house, cleaning things up….oh what fun this last day of the year is haha. I’m also working on drinking a few more of my teas that are close to sipdowns before i do my final, where am i at for 2017 :) Enjoying this one, though it’s not really LB….but i still like it.

Went in to the office today, so not much in the way of tea drinking today. But i ipcked this one out since it’s close to the end of the bag AND because i needed something different from my tea from the past few days. Still enjoyable, though it’s not quite LB.

my cup is empty…i guess this is just what i needed this morning lol

mmm this one is tasty but it’s my least favourite of the 4. It’s smooth, there are cocoa-y notes in the background and it’s an enjoyable cup…but it’s not as LB as i want it to be.

this is closer to LB when it’s hot. As the tea cools, it is much more “grainy” as my swedish chef put it…and there are just hints of cocoa happening. It’s still a tasty cup of tea, but it’s not an LB replacement. I’ll enjoy it for what it is though :)

this one is really different from other pearls that i’ve had. It’s lighter, brassier…no real hints of malt…it’s sweet and tasty…but not what i would think of when thinking about dragon pearls. :)

mmmmm another tasty sample i picked up from teabento. this isn’t as rich, thick of malty as the dragon balls that i’m used to…instead this is a lighter brew that is almost honey like…with a bit of malt. Still delicious, and i like the difference to it…just not what i was expecting :) happy to try this one!

Finished this one up today. I’ll have to order more of this at some point because it’s quite tasty. Upside to this sipdown is that i received my LB order from YS today….so one in, one out! although 5g for 250 is maybe not so equal haha

want more of this. sad when i get through it.

oh this is what i wanted to start my day….slept in, we were supposed to take the dog on a morning afdventure and maaan neither one of us was up for getting up ha! Now that it’s practically this afternoon i’m working on getting going for the day. taking a break from baking today to go out and wander. this is the right balance of malty, hints of cocoa…smooth…yep. Kinda wish i’d picked up more than a sample of this one.

#adventageddon Day Two – 1/5

Started my morning with this advent selection – just hot and straight. I wasn’t thrilled to see a green tea selection so early in this advent, but at least this is one that I’ve had before and I felt like I knew what to expect for it. However, even still I found myself taken aback/surprised – the infused liquor was definitely a little sharper than I remember this tasting when I previously tried it, and it was really fruity! I couldn’t nail down exactly what the fruity note I was getting was, but it was hard to taste much else in the cup – though I do think there was some nuttiness happening right in the initial sip but it soon was taken over.

Not terrible – but I’m hoping for better tomorrow.

Sipdown (611)!

Well, glad that I’m confirming that the last time I made a cup of this I was just having a weird day because this doesn’t taste anything like mint this time around. Instead it’s warm, toasty peanuts and barley with grassy undertones. Also a little bit bean-y. I’m enjoying it; can’t say I’m crushed that it’s a sipdown though.

So, it turns out all I had to do to find a home in Montreal was complain on the internet about it – not even 24 hours after writing up my tasting note ranting about how hard of a time I was having apartment hunting I had managed to find and secure a place to live!

So, now I just have to start packing everything up and shipping it out to Montreal; I have a friend/coworker who has offered to hold onto stuff for me until my move in a month so I’m just going to slowly start sending stuff her way up until “Moving Day”. Now I get to deal with a whole new kind of anxiety; transporting my tea collection across the country through the mail. At least I found somewhere totally furnished, so I don’t have to worry about moving furniture…

(Can’t afford to have it professionally moved; mailing is the next best option since I don’t drive, and therefore can’t transport it myself that way)

Anyway; I drank this one a few days ago – and I swear something about my sense of smell and palate were broken that day because the dry leaf of this tea just smelled strongly and distinctly of mint chocolate chip ice cream. How weird and abstract is that!? At least, steeped up, it wasn’t as weird and wacky. I mean, I still swear that the tea had mint notes to it – but otherwise it was mostly very nutty with strong alfalfa hay notes and a bit of a “bluntness”/dull quality to the body. Just not a lot of bright or sweet characteristics.

Still decently enjoyable, though.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgEaJw1wEB0&list=WL&index=2

Midday cuppa.

So, I’ve tried a green Korean Sejak before but admittedly I’m not educated about most green tea at all – and especially Korean tea so I have absolutely no clue what the difference between the two actually is.

I’m enjoying sipping on this one right now though; it’s pretty smooth with a really nice toasty/nutty character to it in the top and body notes. There are also some more generic grassy green undertones, and notes of straw in the body that tie in pretty well with the nuttiness I’m getting in the top. Reminds me a little of roasted peanuts, in a way? Unsalted, of course. The finish is a little sweeter; more of like an ambrosia/nectar like fruitiness? It’s a little bit harder to place exactly what kind of fruit I’m reminded of though the one jumping to mind is Pluots – plum/apricot crosses. It’s been a LONG time since I had a pluot though, so don’t know how accurate that actually is.

Totally couldn’t drink this one often – but I’m happy with the sample!

Holy moly, this is hands down my favourite Teabento tea that I’ve tried, and I purposely left this one to try last because I had a feeling it would be my favourite.

While I was expecting some chocolate when I initially opened the packet, I didn’t expect this much. Seriously, opening it was like unwrapping a bar of dark chocolate with cacao nibs. Although I haven’t had it in ever, this totally reminds me of Endangered Species chocolate, in particular, this one:

http://www.chocolatebar.com/?portfolio=dark-chocolate-with-cacao-nibs-2

Look at that cute little bat. Just in time for Halloween too. But yeah, dark chocolate tea without the guilt. Brewed up, this has the thickest mouthfeel of all the ones I’ve tried, which is my thing. The chocolate notes are the strongest, followed by grainy sweetness. No bitterness whatsoever.

Thank you so much for the wonderful bento box full of delicious samples, Teabento! This brings me to the end of my sample bento journey, and I can definitely see myself ordering this one.