Various Artists

Charcoal roasted tea from TTC and 2013 Tie Guan Yin from Yezi. Sacrilege, but a good combination.

Unknown, green, curled oolong. Extremely buttery, floral, sweet, and creamy.

Homemade genmaicha: Standard gyokuro from Yunomi.us blended with toasted mochi rice and tokachi black soybean from Yamane-en

Cheap – yet, oh so perfect – po lei at dim sum yesterday.

Backlog –
Superfine Long Jing blended with Charcoal Roasted Jin Xuan

Backlog –
Master Grade TGY blended with Charcoal Roasted Jin Xuan

Back log -

Arnold Palmer made with Yezi Teas’ Jin Jun Mei and fresh lemons

Recipe:
Squeeze the juice of 4 lemons into a 2 liter pitcher
In a gaiwan, brew 4 infusions of Jin Jun Mei (gongfu style) and pour all of the infusions into the pitcher with the lemon juice
Add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the tea and lemon juice while mixture is still warm
Stir with long chopstick or spoon until the sugar has dissolved
Add 1.5 liters of water to the tea, lemon juice, and sugar mixture
Serve

Backlog – Self blended genmaicha made from Kurihara heritage gyokuro from yunomi and toasted mochi rice and tokachi black soybean genmaicha ingredients from yamane-en

14 bowls of matcha… in one sitting over a few hours from Red Leaf Tea. I’ve never had so much energy in my entire life. XD

(I’m really behind on notes… I have a list of about 100 teas that I have had since my last tasting note two months ago… yikes…)

Blended Yamane-en’s ‘Toasted Mochi Rice & Tokachi Black Soybean’ with Meng Ding Huang Ya from Sun’s Organic here in NYC. I’m a crazy genmaicha person. This completely confirms it. Why make a genmaicha with a yellow tea? Why Tea Pet? It makes very little sense…. But gosh darnit, this genmaicha is so good! It’s such a soft and subtle tea. A good amount of malt and earthiness, with a lingering vegetal note. This is a perfect tea to calm down with. Kudos, me. :p

Blended “White Vanilla Grapefruit” and “Winter White Earl Grey” from Harney and Sons while at my bestie’s house for MLP DnD. Oddly enough, it was a great combination.

Used my An Ji Bai Cha and Yamane-en’s ‘Toasted Mochi Rice & Tokachi Black Soybean’ pack to create what I called “East of East” genmaicha. (Named after my favorite comic: East of West)
It was a nice combination. Though the more that I fool around with a pan-fried green base for genmaicha, the more I realize how much I prefer a steamed green base.

Made my own genmaicha today and yesterday…

Used a shade grown green tea that my best friend received from a relative in Japan and Yamane-en’s ‘Toasted Mochi Rice & Tokachi Black Soybean’ combination. It was quite amazing.
While my adorable Tae Kwon Do Master bestie kicked the life out of some martial arts pads, I made tea for us both and watched her with pride. We make the best duo. :p

I did something… well… slightly nuts.
I had brewed my lovely An Ji Bai Cha and had that in my tumbler. However, I was in the mood for Jin Pin (as I usually am XD) and thus I brewed some up in my gaiwan. I didn’t want to go all the way to the office kitchen to pour out the wash and so I poured the wash into my An Ji Bai Cha.
Utter. Blasphemy.
The result: AMAZING. I could not believe how well the two teas complimented each other. The notes of the tea are so rhythmic, at first it’s the vegetal note of the An Ji Bai Cha and then it mingles with the malty Jin Pin which takes over as the prominent note, and then again, the vegetal note comes back. I have to do this again! I hope that the Tea Gods are merciful and do not punish me too severely for this…

A daily health concoction recommended to me because I am vegan.
- 1 date
- Ginseng extract
- Goji berries
- 1 tsp ginger powder

Bring the date, goji berries, and ginger powder to a boil in 1.5 cups of water. Pour into a cup with strainer. Add ginseng extract. Drink.

The taste is very sweet. The aroma is much better with the added ginger!

A daily health concoction recommended to me because I am vegan.
- 1 date
- Ginseng extract
- Goji berries

Bring the date and goji to a boil in 1.5 cups of water. Pour into a cup with strainer. Add ginseng extract. Drink.

The taste is very sweet. Completely different than the aroma which.. smells like a savory broth.

Sipping on some Alishan Honey Black from Floating Leaves, courtesy of phi (thanks!). I wasn’t entirely sure how to prep this gong fu style and the internet was surprisingly unhelpful. The tightly rolled leaves and the fact that it’s a black tea made me decide on boiling water. I just went with my instincts on quantity of leaf and length of steep time. The first few steeps had the usual honey and bread notes you’d expect in a honey black tea. The latter steeps get pretty interesting with notes of dark bread, malt, sweet potato, and a hint of sweetness. Not sure how many steeps I got out of this; maybe 5 or 6 before it started to lose flavor and I’ll give it an overnight steep to get the last of the flavor out of it.

It was too cold to go out for my birthday, so instead a few friends came over and we ordered Indian food for dinner. We had Calabash’s Idris chai before dinner, which blends really well with Irish cream, coconut rum, rice milk, and/or chocolate almond milk (we may have experimented a bit). Everyone was very full after dinner so I made a pot of T2’s Lemongrass & Ginger to settle our stomachs. It’s nothing special but does the trick. Now that they’ve left, I’m closing out my birthday with a good book and a really special tea: white lotus from Tea Dealers. It’s easily one of if not the most expensive teas I have but I decided to indulge for my birthday. I don’t even know how to describe the flavor because it’s so different from anything else I’ve had. The closest I can think of is slightly sweetened sticky rice but even that’s not really accurate. It really is special though and I intend to savor every sip.

I don’t have time to enter it into the database, but I just had Cusa’s mango green tea and it is delicious! Hat tip to Oolong Owl for featuring this powdered tea company on her blog, because that’s how I found it. The powder dissolves in cold water better than any other crystallized/powdered real tea I’ve tried. It really was effortless. I like that the serving size is 12-14 oz, because that’s more realistic to how I use these teas – in a rush, often on the go in a travel mug that is definitely bigger than 6-8 oz. The flavor of this blend really shines; it’s like drinking mango juice without the texture. The mango flavor and sweetness are spot-on, not over-the-top or artificial-tasting. Just yay.

Sipdown number 12 is a 2014 Eight Immortals Wulong courtesy of Phi. It’s rocky but also weirdly sweet and honeyed. Basically it tastes like an Oriental Beauty oolong with strong mineral overtones. Pretty different from any other rock oolongs I’ve tried. It’s intriguing.

I spent twenty minutes last night writing up a review of my trip to Alice’s Tea Cup. Then I accidentally closed the tab without saving. So that’s twenty minutes of my life wasted, plus the time I am taking to write this otherwise unnecessary tasting note. Here are the highlights:

My partner and I celebrated our 12-year anniversary with a trip to Alice’s Tea Cup. We like to linger over their unlimited tea service. It’s called the Jabberwocky, because of course it is. We were surprised to see that the price has gone up – it’s now $100 for two people – but we had been looking forward to it and decided to treat ourselves. We ended up going through four rounds of sandwiches, scones, and tea over the course of 2.5 hours. Did I mention we had barely eaten all day?

The sandwiches are fabulous, but you’re here for the tea. I had the Alice’s Tea blend, champagne oolong, French vervain, and Evening Comfort blend. My partner had the Mauritius and one of the berry blends. He enjoyed those teas, especially the berry one, but I did not get around to trying them.

I was completely enamored of the Alice’s Tea blend a few years ago. It was my happy-place tea at a particularly hectic point in my professional life. There’s something about the natural sweetness and lingering rose flavor of this blend that just centers me. I was very happy to revisit it. If I ever get my stash under control (famous last words), I’d like to keep this blend in stock.

The champagne oolong was interesting. I remember thinking that it would probably be better enjoyed on its own, gong fu style so I could focus on the flavor profile and how it develops. It was good though.

The French vervain was a new flavor for me. It tasted like a mix of lavender and lemongrass. Not quite lemon but lemon-adjacent and slightly savory. Not something I would go out of my way to buy but quite pleasant.

The Evening Comfort blend is an herbal combination of peppermint, lemon peel, and ginger root. It made for a good, stomach-settling, refreshing post-meal drink. But the real winner was a blend of the already-steeped French vervain and Evening Comfort. The resulting beverage had the slightly sweet apple and savory notes of a good chamomile up front with a minty note that came in mid-sip and lingered. The savoriness was a little deeper and more complex than chamomile, though. I think this would be really tasty iced.