Various Artists

I have this very long list of things to do before I leave town, & I already know I won’t be able to do all of them, but I’m trying to pick the priorities at least.
Today a friend came over that loves tea. We drank Ciel Phantomhive, an adagio fandom blend, but from what I don’t know. I received it from Sil, who got it from Shmiracles.
That was hours go, so I really have nothing to say about it, except it was drinkable & it was a sip down. We also drank a pot of Golden Monkey Imperial Yunnan, by Tealux. This one also came from Sil, but originated from TeaFairy. I can tell because of the cute little flower, & by the way TF, those flowers are all being used to decorate my desk bookshelf. I’ll try to post a photo when I get back in town.
My friend that was visiting loved flavored teas, so I hooked her up with the rest of the fandom blends, because I’m just not into them. I also gave her a few other things from my cupboard, so that counts as sip downs for me, with a resulting total of 378, I think!

So far I ate breakfast, took my son Drew on the garden tour to make sure he knows what to pick & where to pick it, because he has an eye detail & he’ll be in charge of picking produce & dealing with it while I’m gone. I also packaged up 2 copies of my CD, Cynical Serenity, for distribution! Yeah!

This review is regarding a tea from Life in Teacup that isn’t listed in the database, but it’s also no longer listed on their website, so rather than create a listing for a one time review, I’m just putting it here. It’s a 10G sample of 2013 Yunnan Black Pine Needle, & I’m using half of it for a gongfu session, & sending the other half to my tea sister, Sil.
Dry Leaf: No noticeable dry aroma, well…maybe some faint malt & hay. The appearance is very autumnal, with flat pressed needles in shades of tn, charcoal, wheat, brown, & black.
15 sec – mild & tasty honey wheat breath broth with a homey comforting feel
30 sec – The front of the sip is super clean & shiny, like hand blown glass…or the sound of a glass flute. The back of the sip is rich wood, honey, & melting caramel as it spreads out across my tongue & plate. Immediate good tea vibes.
45 & 60 secs, combined in one cup – I feel like I’m drinking a pure rain water that was stored in an oak tree stump. That probably sounds gross, but it’s not. I feel like I’m an old oak tree, after a summer rain, drinking in that rain that fell over night & filtered down through ever older layers of leaf & forest floor debris, absorbing animal, vegetable, & mineral. I’m that tree, sucking up that heavenly life sustaining elixir through my roots, & it is heavenly.
2min & 3min – Kind of a savory dark chocolate pumpernickel vibe…& my crown is glowing, I’m sure you could see it if you were sitting here.
The next couple of steeps reminded me of White Willow bark tea, kind of bitter.
Onward through the fog…

We started painting my front porch yesterday. I had visions of completion today, LOL, but of course, that ain’t gonna happen. I’m one of those people (thanks to little terri) who is endlessly optomistic (unless I’m depressed, but luckily that doesn’t really happen often anymore). So no matter how long previous experience has demonstrated that it will take days to complete a project, I always think it will be done in hours. I have the same ‘time’ problem with pretty much everything. Even though I know how long it takes to get from my house to some other location, I always think I can get there in 15 minutes. I have to set multiple alarms on my calendar to remind me of things like ‘driving time’. Chalk it up to being a right brainer, I guess.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been patching & sanding, & if you’d like to see the ‘before’ pics, they are on my FB page https://www.facebook.com/terri.langerak
Yesterday the boys (who are actually men now) & I started with the white paint. We put the first coat on the ceiling, railings, & anything else that’s going to be ‘ultra white’. Today we’ve been adding a 2nd coat to the white paint, & laying down primer for the places that won’t be white. I’m not really done with the primer, but it keeps acting like it’s going to rain, so we’re taking the afternoon off.

Tea…yes…I drank lots of tea yesterday & today. The purpose of THIS post (before I got sidetracked) was to mention a cold steep from yesterday. My student who’s mom is from Taiwan sent over a Wulong Jasmin cold brewing tea bag from an unknown company. I left it in the frig in a qt jar over night & it made a very refreshing tea to drink while painting yesterday!

The mother of one of my harp students is from Tiawan, & a few months ago she went for a visit to see family & friends. She wanted to get some teas to share with me, & I told her I really liked sunmoon lake assam.

While in Taiwan, she visited this awesome place, & got some teas from there:
http://rtaiwanr.com/104/Taiwan/sun-moon-lake/sun-moon-lake-antique-assam-tea-farm

This tea farm has been there since 1899, & you can go there for tours, purchase tea, etc. They do also have a website for tea sales, but the only words I could read there were ‘non-GMO’. Anyway, it’s looks like an awesome place to visit!
So the first tea I’m sampling is a Deluxe Assam Black Tea, Natural Farming No. 8.
I prepared the tea like I have steeped some of the other sun moon lake assams I’ve had, using roughly 1 Tb to my standard tea mug for 3 minutes. It’s a light, fruity, & refreshing tea, definitely more of an afternoon cup. In some ways it has more of an oolong quality to it, subtle layers of flavor, the most prominent being dried peach, or peach fruit leather maybe, with a growing tanginess in my mouth. The flavor is very light, in spite of the fact that the color of the brew is fairly dark, & there is a faint essence of leaf hopper.

One of my adult students came for a lesson after Lisa left & I invited him to pick something from my main tea shelf. He picked this one. He picked the oldest one. This tea has been on my shelf for YEARS, so long that it predates Steepster I think, & R of T probably doesn’t even have it on their website anymore.

Anyway, we shared a pot, & he loved it, so I gave the rest of it to him. Sipdown!
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Getting ready to load up for a wedding. This has been another weekend of 2 weddings (the 2nd one is tomorrow) in which the bride requested almost all tunes I don’t know, & although most of them have been relatively easy to put together due to my ‘fly by the seat of your pant with a lead sheet’ mode of doing things, there have been a few that required a little more effort. None the less, I love my ‘job’!
The highlights of the weekend? I get to play “Crash Into me”, which I’ve played before, but never at a wedding, & “Feel My love”. Both are songs I love.
Teas sipped today:
Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black – Butiki
Numi China Breakfast – we went out to breakfast. WHY can’t waitresses EVER actually bring HOT water to the table?
Crimson Horizon – Butiki
Organic Superfine Keemun Fragrant Black – Teavivre
Lord Petersham – Devotea

I’ve reviewed all of these many times, so I’m just putting them all in one place.

I’ve been drinking An Xi Tie Guan Yin from Life in Teacup for the last hour or so. It’s from a sample that KS shared with me awhile back, & it’s really lovely, a golden liquid that is gently sweet, kind of brings cream of wheat with honey to mind.

I posted it here because I did see a listing for it, & I’m too lazy to add one, especially since it’s a sipdown.
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I only have a few minutes between students, so I’m cramming several sipdowns into this post. The first one is from KS.
Affair of Shui Xian & Rou Gui – Life in Teacup
I know it is lame of me to post it here, but there isn’t an entry for it, & I don’t really have time to create one. So lets just say that I’ve been drinking it for a few hours, & since I do enjoy both Rou Gui & Shui Xian oolongs, it’s no surprise that I also enjoyed this one, which features a blend of both.

My other sipdowns (so far) for today are not true sipdowns, as I’m not drinking the teas, I’m sending them on to a friend, but I’m still counting them because I’ve drank them plenty of times before, & they will no longer be in my cupboard:
Longyuanhao Yiwu Limited Pressing 06 – Verdant
Haixintang 06 Stone Pressed Sheng
Moonlight White Pressed Cake
Tian de Ren Bulang 06 Sheng
First picking Budset Jingshan Green
He family 2st picking Laoshan green
Ms Li’s 1st picking shi feng dragonwell
he family Hand pressed 1st picking laoshan green
Only 336 teas to go!
Oh! & autumn harvest laoshan green, so make that 335!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms, past, present, & future!
Everything I’ve drank today is something I’ve reviewed several times, all favorably, so I’m just gonna post a list:
- Imperial Breakfast Blend – Verdant – enjoyed in bed, while reading another tale of Sherlock Holmes, I’m about 80% done with the collection.
- Malty Irish Breakfast – Butiki – with the breakfast Tony made: a scramble of eggs, green onion, asparagus, & lettuce (all from my garden), & a side of bacon. (no pancakes…)
- Laoshan Black Chocolate Genmaicha – Verdant – I made a cup of this to take along & drink during the Mother’s Day Tea I played for at a local nursing home.
- Finbarr’s Revenge – Devotea – I treated myself to a few gluten free cookies & a pot of this tea. A perfect after-the-gig late afternoon pleasure.

I’m not sure what I’m drinking next, but I’m gonna grab something & take it over to Tony’s.

My 2nd & 3rd sipdowns of the day were combined into a jar overnight for a refreshing cold brew:
Silver Buds Ya Bao – Tea Source through Steepster Select
Silver Buds Yabao – Verdant TOMC from some month or other last year
The other visual difference between the 2 teas is that the Tea Source buds were longer & thinner. Otherwise they smell about the same.
The resulting cold steep? I think I like it. Not enough to purchase more of either tea, as I just haven’t found yabao to be all that interesting, at least for my tastebuds. It’s interesting to sample, but one of those novelteas that wear out quickly.
This cup is not particularly flavorful, but does have a refreshing woodsy kind of quality to it
356 to go.

I’m not going to go into any detailed reviews here, because it’s been a busy day. I managed to have a 2nd cup of tea before I left to play the wedding, a cup of Crimson Horizon.

Short story about the wedding: Usually I play solo, but today I played with trumpet, oboe, guitar, & 2 vocalists. It was a Catholic full mass, & I was suppose to play classical solos for the first 30 minutes while the guests were arriving. Then we all played together, in various combinations. The Oboe player is an older gentleman, & is friends with the bride’s family. He is very good, but maybe a little out in left field? While I was playing my solos, he was messing around with his oboe, making little nasal tweet sounds, with no regard for the solos I was playing. I’ve never had that happen with another musician. I kept thinking maybe I should politely ask him to knock it off, as it was distracting & disrupting. Did he realize I was suppose to be playing? Then the trumpet guy whispers to him, “hey man, why don’t you practice later? She’s playing, ya know?” So he stops, & they are whispering back behind me in the musicians area, which doesn’t bother me at all. Next thing you know, he’s back, making little squacks & sort of half-ass trying to play along with me. I looked over my shoulder at the trumpet guy, he shrugs & mouths, “I tried”.
Thank god, the wedding finally started. I also played a few solos at the end, but he was packing up to leave, so he left me to it.

I am accomplishing nothing today, it seems. It’s a gorgeous day, I only have 1 student at 4:30, & I could be doing great things in my garden. However, yesterday my allergies were so horrendous that even though I finally broke down & took a Zyrtek, which I reserve for emergencies, I just can’t bring myself to go outside. So I’m sitting here in my PJs, drinking tea. I did prune my lime, meyer lemon, & kumquat dwarf trees, all in the sunroom. I watered a few plants.

I’ve also been sipping a pot of Nettles, a natural anti-histimine herb, which usually calms things down, but was no help yesterday. I added some Lapacho powder to it today, on the suggestion of the Herbalist I get my herbs from, to help balance out my immune system, so hopefully (over time) it will quit over-reacting to everything in the air.

Earlier today I was in the mood for some Shu, so I reached into my box & came out with this one. I can’t find a listing for it, & so here we are again, in the Random Steepings page:

Palace Grade Puerh Lincang Gong Ting – Silk Road Teas

I originally kept this tea from the first TTB I was part of, a year or so ago. I was pretty new to puerh, & honestly by the time the box got to me, it was about the only thing in there that was interesting. Anyway, I went a little heavy on the leaf, as I was close to a sipdown with this anyway. It’s earthy & a little musty, but no ammonia or other horrible aromas, LOL. I packed it into my yixing, gave a rinse, & multiple short steepings. Nothing particularly special stood out, but I got some good energy from it, enabling me to be a lively & good humored harp teacher all afternoon!

I’ve been SO busy this week, but it was a good busy! The weather was beautiful all week, & Tony was in Michigan, so I spent every waking hour that I wasn’t teaching or playing in my garden, planting stuff! Broccoli, Brussels, Cauliflower, lettuces, various greens, radishes, turnips, beets, etc. In some cases I planted plants (instant garden!), & in other cases I planted seeds.

Needless to say, I’m so behind on my tea logging, that I’m just gonna post a list of the highlights from the last couple of days. I hope nobody will mind, but they are all teas I’ve reviewed pretty extensively by now, I think. In no particular order:
Double Knit Blend – more woody than I remember it
Premium Taiwanese Assam – so good
Devotea’s 1910 English Breakfast – So awesome with brekkie
Butiki’s The Black Lotus – ditto
Upton’s Russian Caravan – not as smokey as I seem to recall
Teavivre’s Rose Dian Hong – to share with a student
TTC’s 2005 aged songboling oolong – sipdown
YS’s Imperial Gold Needle (sipdown) & Imperial Mojiang golden bud
Verdant’s Zhu Rong Chai – my crockpot method reigns supreme!
Verd’s Fujian White Jasmine – with a friend
Peach Rooibos – trail lodge tea

This morning I had Teavana’s black dragon pearls, & I’m having Ms Stacy’s Irish Breakfast with my breakfast. I am hoping to play catch up on reading everyone’s reviews later today, but now I must rush off to play a wedding! It’s a beautiful day in St. Louis!

I spent the late afternoon & early evening drinking a tea from Sil. It’s one of the teas Verdant sent out as a ‘reserve’ tea in their rewards program.
Xuejiao Longcai 2010 Sheng
4G + 4oz yixing (rinse) 10sec/20/30/etc on & on…
This started our pretty mellow, with a mild citrus & chalk taste. The wet leaf on the other hand had a very vibrant herbaceous sinus tingling aroma, perhaps eucalyptus & tangerine.
Throughout the steeps, the tea energy built quickly, I could feel it moving through my lymph glands. The tea became a beautiful amber color, lightly sweet with a slight bitterness. Over time it developed a cashew milk taste, mineral chalky taste, and lime, but here I’m talking about limestone, not limes (the fruit).
I would say overall that although there were some citrus elements to this tea, I would consider it to be a alkaline brew. It had a ‘matte’ quality, in the way that paint can have a matte finish. I know that probably doesn’t make sense to normal people, but that’s my experience. And it’s a sipdown (324)

Yes, I drank tea today. Yes, I am lazy, but I was also busy all day, so in an effort to not post lame reviews about teas I drank hours ago, & have reviewed plenty of times, I am once again going to lump them all into one summary. And here it is, at least in order:
- Irish Breakfast – Butiki – I’m not totally sure, but I think I like this one better than Malty Irish Breakfast, but then again, as I said before, I love the one I’m drinking while I’m drinking it.
- Elderberry – Cheryl’s Herbs – This morning I woke feeling a little flu-like. Elderberry rocks!
- Golden Monkey Black – Teavivre…sigh…oh, beautiful delicious tea…
- Black Beauty – Mandala – oh, other beautiful delicious tea…
- Premium Taiwanese Assam – oh….you get this picture here, right?
I pretty much made a point of pampering myself with delicious teas, good food, & just chilling out doing office work all day. Now I’m drinking a pot of Pumpkin Spice (Rooibos) from Harney & sons. My only complaint is the gross ‘silk’ bags. I hate those.

A really busy day, even though I’m self-employed & was working for myself, I actually worked & got some things done. I also drank some tea, but & don’t really have much to say about the teas I drank. I enjoyed them, I’ve reviewed them before, so here they are, because I’m lazy:
Tiger Assam – Andrews & Dunham – yup, it’s still damn fine tea!
Double Knit Blend – also Andrews & dunham, & damn fine!
Yunnan Forest – Traveling Tea – Traveling Tea is a local company. Her shop is 3 minutes or less from my house. I’m pretty sure she gets most of her teas from The Art of Tea. I used to order from the Art of Tea, & have enjoyed some of their teas quite a bit. This one doesn’t resemble any of the yunnan teas I have at all. I’m not getting the rich yunnan taste that I’ve come to expect. It’s not bad, it just lacks personality. I’m glad I only bought a sample, & I’ll send the rest to Sil (hahahah) & see if she likes it better. So there’s a sipdown!

I have a new student who’s Mom is from Taiwan. When she found out I was a tea drinker & saw my collection of teas & tea paraphenalia, she said, “I will send you some tea.”

Yesterday her husband & child arrived, bringing a bag. In that bag there was a lovely stainless steel tea caddy (although the inside of it smells as if perfume has been stored in it), a pretty glass steeping lid, & a 200 gram (maybe 250) foil bag of Taiwanese Oolong, that has already been opened, but is still mostly full. I think it’s a medium roasted dong ding type, or maybe a gui fei, although honestly, I’m no expert! The only writing on the colorful package that I can read says ‘from Taiwan Tea’. This was my first tea of the day, & it was a pleasant series of cups, with the earlier steeps having essence of honey & peach, & a toasty flavor. There is a hint of bug-bite flavor, & a bit of a citrus edge.

(Here I go complaining again) It’s very windy this afternoon, & the power keeps going off. It doesn’t stay off, but of course, the computer shuts off momentarily, & I’m trying to bake sweet potatoes for dinner, & the over keeps shutting off, even though it’s a gas oven.

I did fill my stove top kettle & light a burner with a match, so there is still tea, regardless.

I’m drinking another tea from awkward soul, this one is creme brulee black, by Simple Loose Leaf. Nobody has added it to the database, & I’m sorry for being a grumpus, but I’m not going to add it either. As for the tea, it’s ok. I’m counting it as another sipdown, since I’m sending it to Sil, mwahahaha

Other teas from Awkward Soul that are also going to Sil include a milk oolong, because she likes those, what’s left of the Ginseng Oolong, which I sampled awhile back, Raspberry Vanilla Mint Green, which I just can’t get myself to sample, & a few others that I haven’t tried yet, but will before I send them.

It’s been a busy day! I left the house at 9:30 am to go play for a lunch event, dragging the following teas along with me (all which I have reviewed multiple times):
Zhu Rong (Verdant) – to drink in the car, yes, I still love you
Caramel Vanilla Assam (Butiki) to drink during my first set
Laoshan Chocolate Genmaicha (Verdant) – in a thermos mug, to drink during 2nd set.

When I got home I also drank resteeps of all of them, LOL.

I want to apologize in advance, because there is not listing for this tea, & it’s been in my cupboard for awhile, sent to me from Sil. I’m busy being a desk diva, answering phone calls, emails, I’ve booked 2 gigs & now I’m printing hundreds of biz cards, so I’m just gonna use the random steepings heading for this one. Sorry!

It is sipdown no. 89 (yeah! only 11 to go to reach my goal!) & although it’s not bad, it’s not something I’d purchase, as is pretty much the same as the other Monk’s blends I’ve had from a few other places. Now back to work!

The Harp Society Tea Party was a fun time, as always. I passed around the printout of my ‘tea menu’, & had people jot down teas they’d like to try. Here is a list of what was served:
Bai Mu Dan – Verdant
Yunnan White Jasmine – Verdant
Spring Harvest Laoshan Green – Verdant
Wuyi Mountain Big Red Robe – Verdant
Two Tigers – the Devotea
Spring 2013 Premium Grade Jin Jun Mei – Yunnan Sourcing
Ginger Peach – Republic of Tea
Pumpkin Spice – Republic of Tea
Masala Chai – Upton Sipdown!
Orange Ginger Mint – Republic of Tea
Calm – Tazo
Peach Tranquility – Teavana Sipdown!

I’m at 354 teas now. :)

So it snowed in St. Louis today. They were called for a few inches, which really doesn’t bother me at all, & I doubt that we even got an inch, the roads were slick or anything, but all of my students called & cancelled, one by one. To be fair, Tuesday is a pretty light day for me, & the students I have on Tues all have a pretty good drive, with the longest being an hour. So I had a very busy day, basically doing nothing, LOL. I did cook, & I went to the PO, & I entertained a friend of my daughter’s, serving him tea & chatting about mindfulness philosophy, & finding your own unique spiritual path in the world.

My sipdown extravaganza is going rather well! Most of the teas I’ve polished off are teas I’ve already reviewed, so I’m just going to list them here:
15 Wuyishan Black – Steepster Select
16 Obukucha – Steepster Select
17 Yunnan Beauty – Mandala
18 Noble Mark – Mandala
19 Bu lang Gong ting – Mandala
20 White Rhino – Butiki
21 Steamed Purple Green – Butiki
22 Laoshan Bilochun Green
23 & 24 were teas I posted this morning…
25 Justea Black (Thanks Sil)
26 Assam Mangalam 2nd Flush – Zen Tea – thanks for this one too!
27 Organic Long Jin #03 – Steepster Select

These teas were drank over 2 days, & actually some were passed on to a friend, who I hope will enjoy sampling them!