Teabox

After a hectic day in the city with my 5y daughter i really felt the urge for some tea to wind down. My choice fell on this wonderfull autumnflush, been my AF of choice for the last two years.
I used the breakfastpot 450ml ceramic thing with nice glace and stuff that i picked up in beijing some years back. Retains heat very well so i do like to use it for long infusions. Looks nice when serving guests as well, matching cups and all. ;)

Anyways the tea for me really taste AF, somewhat light yet with a bite. There is a good balance between a sweet body and a slight astringent aftertaste full of citrus.

This will be reordered year after year as a sure win. :)

Brewed in a glazed ceramic pot.

I do think i like the new steepster. :)
The tea is very clean, slight astringancy and perhaps a bit lemony on the aftertaste.
Flowery would be a good description just like the name implies.

3g / 200ml glaspot
5m @ 100C

I know i promised myself to drink up my spring teas before 2014 harvest is availible. However i just realized i restocked the -13 harvest of my previously favorite Autumnflush. Just had to try it out and found it was pretty much identical to the -12 harvest.
Very classic darjeeling flacour, flowery ^^ Slight astringancy.
The Jungpana Special Autumnflush has a bit more oomph though.

7g / 400ml ceramic pot
5m @ 100

Had to try this one brewed stronger/hotter. The result was surprising. Very little astringancy yet strong body. Sweet almost malty like an assam. This tea just went from decent to good!
Been sipping this one all day at work. A good thermos is every tealovers friend!

3g / 200ml glaspot.
4m @ 100C

Hmm classic darjeeling, nothing fancy but still decent.
Was perfect as a late night cup after a long visit to the gym ^^
Rather mild flavour, will try 100C next time.

3.5g / 200ml glaspot
4:30m @ 100C

this is a very nice powerful cup. A little bit to much astringancy, will brew 3g @ 4m next time.
However the body has a very clean thickish sensation, the flavour is malty, full, slightly sweet.
Will have to make another cup to get all the flavours, this one went down in a jiffy with some homemade banana chocolate cake from last nights getogehter. :) Where i also managed to convince my friends to try a chai tea ^^

7g / 450ml Glazed ceramic pot.
5m @ 100C

Very powerful cup. Yet it is well balanced, malty with an astringancy that balances the sweet undertones of honey and ripe peach. Wonderful tea.
The is just a hint of a dry grainy feeling to the body, otherwise this tea would be a perfect cup. As it is very inexpensive I might get a bag of this ^^ Best assam i´ve tried so far.

3.5g / 200ml glaspot.
4m @ 100C

Slightly bitter, would have to try 90C perhaps.
The tea taste very badly to me compared to any AF ivé ever tried.
Its like a mix between light oxidized oolong and autumnflush darjeeling. flavour is dry, perhaps a bit ruined by my to hot/long steep.
The wet leaf are very nice, small whole leaves.
I will not finish of this sample.

3g / 200ml glaspot.
5m @ 100C

WOW, this tea is very very good according to my tastes. Powerful with a briskness. A very noticable astringancy on the aftertaste mixed with a small bit of sweetness, i think of blueberries with honey ^^
Will be sure to remeber this one!

3.5g / 200ml glaspot
4m @ 100C

More leaf seems to add a bit more flavour. Still it feels somewhat of. Flowery with some astringancy, not a good balance. But better than previous tasting.

5g / 400ml ceramic pot.
4m @ 90C

Light but flavourful. Very like a first flush. Slightly sweeter with perhaps a bit of citrus?
Decent but lacks the oomph i want in a second flush.

5g / 400ml ceramic pot.
5m @ 100C

Decent breakfasttea. Remind me of a lowland ceylon of better quality.
Sweet but powerful. Somewhat uneven flavour.
Ripe fruit.
First of a whole bag of assam samples. Gonna find the perfect breakfast tea!

6g / 400ml ceramic pot.
5m @ 100C

This time around i used my normal water/leaf ratio for AF darjeeling.
The result was a slightly more orange brew and a sharper taste. Still very light and lowkey compared to my favorite AF badamtam flowery!
But it is more then decent.

5g / 400ml ceramic pot
5m @ 100C

Sample from Teabox. Classic darjeeling, astringance balanced by a fresh citrus, dry on the tip of tounge. Somewhat on the light side, will use less water in next pot.
First of 15 autumnflush samples! jummy!

I don’t have any experience, at least as far as I know (some tea shops just offer one “Darjeeling” or Nepali tea and don’t give any information about whether it’s a blend or what flush or any of that), with the less well known/celebrated autumn or third flush darjeelings, so this is exciting. And I’m quite surprised to find this is in fact markedly different, like different enough that if given a cup of this without knowing what it was I’d never initially guess darjeeling—it is very malty and rather bread-y, more like the chewy rich Chinese black teas I’ve had from spots like Teavivre and Verdant albeit with that woody darjeeling edge in the lingering aftertaste. It’s a bit like Assam too actually, given how it retains some astringency at the tail end of the sip. It would be good in a breakfast blend (and now I’m wondering if some of the delicious unusual breakfast blends I’ve had with darjeeling listed in them use autumn flush ones), smells a lot like some of my favorites (The Black Lotus comes to mind!).

I love how much flush matters, tasting that firsthand—I’ve had 2013 spring, summer, and autumn flush Jungpanas now with other conditions fairly well controlled for (all the same FTGFOP grade, from the same website, sealed the same, obtained at the same time) in the course of two days and it’s been marvelous seeing, smelling, and tasting how the tea changes over the seasons from lightly floral and green tea-like to sparkly muscatel brown to this bready satisfying chewy black.

I’m probably gonna be logging a bunch of these sans any real notes, and while normally that could seem suspect (like “this tea was totally unremarkable but I’ll note to myself I tried it for posterity so I don’t try it again sometime”) given current busy-ness it doesn’t mean that at all. I haven’t had a darjeeling from this kit yet I don’t like, phew.

I’m probably going to refrain from putting steeping parameters in my notes ‘til I perfect my Breville adjustments on a scale (ho hum, more nerdy archival neatnik tendency) and post them at some point, from then on putting the recommended steep times I’d use traditionally (for helpfulness’ sake) knowing I’ve adjusted for the Breville if I mention it or as a given.

Yummy yummy. A little more green tea-like veggie flavor than other FF darjeelings I’ve had. Made in the shiny new Breville (!)—I’ve quickly learned what some have hinted at about needing to adjust by easing down a bit on temp and brew time to compensate for the fact the tea steeps at a constant high temperature and the leaves, while not steeping after the cycle, hover above in the residual steam. With that adjustment though this makes good tea, better than I was expecting (I knew it’d be mad convenient especially for less finicky flavored stuff like we have for weekday afternoon tea, and the “wake up to warm freshy steeped tea” feature is priceless, but was a little nervous about overall quality of a cup). Still super busy, alas, but I have time to at least say hooray!

This is admittedly not going to be so much a specific tasting note as an exclamation about this whole deal and my surprise at it.

sunshine5150 helpfully mentioned Teabox (formerly darjeelingteaxpress) was having a half off sale on most of their big sampler kits about a week ago. I was really not in the mood to order more tea given my Black Friday sales hangover (har) but I looove me some darjeeling, this is the time of year I crave it most, and when I saw what the darj kit entailed my eyes figuratively popped out of my sockets—over 70 (75 actually, as they threw in 3 extra freebie samples) 10g samples, with a bajillion different estates and styles and seasons represented (I did a breakdown and you get the survey experience of first, second, and/or autumn flushes—and sometimes extra grades of each—for a number of estates/regions, among them Jungpana, Giddahapar, Goomtee, Thurbo, Margaret’s Hope, Avongrove, Sourenee, and Himalayan, along with stuff from Namring, Castleton, Puttabong, Arya, etc., some unusual twists on darjeeling in the form of green teas, whites, oolongs, blends represenative of each flush period, and unusual extra grades or especially muscatel stuff), for $56 with shipping included. Ain’t a pittance granted, but for what you get, the size and scope of the thing, if you’re a darjeeling lover it’s pretty irresistable (I worked it out and it’s like less than 15 cents a cup and less than $2.16 per ounce, which for samples as opposed to bulk ordering is very good).

I had trepidation thinking maybe the reason it was such a good deal is the teas, especially first flush ones, are old/stale, and maybe they skimp on quality and packaging, but no. Arrived in well under a week via FedEx and I am very impressed with the sample packaging—the bags block light completely, not just on one side, are resealable, and include lots of info individually labeled about steep time, date, source, etc. All of the teas I’ve tried so far at random (3 or 4 today) have been from 2013. And I realize I’m some kind of underleafer sometimes (it never feels like it though…I use an accurate measuring teaspoon and round the top of it to start) but I’m getting 4 solid cups (sometimes with a bit leftover even) of tea every time. Awesome!

With SO MANY darjs to try with similar but not quite exactly the same details (I’ve done this kind of “by estate and season survey” sample thing before with other spots, Upton comes to mind, manually) it gets really overwhelming, and since it’s constantly changing a while back I just decided to roll with it and enjoy darj samples each year without worrying too much about specifics, you know, a sort of “just going along for the ride” attitude. That said, so far these Teabox samples are much, much better than Upton’s were—better packaging, fresher, better tasting. And cheaper, man! Steepster makes my life better all the time, I tell ya.

BTW, I painstakingly added all 75 Teabox teas from this package to the DB this afternoon (yes I am that OCD), but I can’t for the life of me find URLs for the tea images that play nice with Steepster’s pic grabber. If anyone knows how to add those pics, let me know or feel free of course to add the images…sad without pictures!