Various Artists

A contender from the mystery group buy, all it says is “A piece of the 200g Iceland sheng ball from Aliexpress.” Hm. Mysterious. Smells like strong sheng, why not give it a whirl?

Wasn’t sure of the age, so let’s go light on the water temp, about intense oolong temp, fast bubbles coming up in the pot (too lazy to take exact temp today). Hm, starts of kind of not doing much, although quite a mouth drying feel to it for not much flavor for the first two steeps. Gaiwan smells very camphorated and unpleasantly medicinal. Hm.

And then things took a steep downturn. WTF, even more astringent and the tea smells kinda… smokey and…. tobacco-y. But not in the good way. The gaiwan smells EXACTLY like an ashtray. EW. As the tea cools, it tastes less like cigarette butts and more like gross medicine with a burnt tobacco aroma and gross smoker’s breath on the aftertaste. Dumped it out after this, couldn’t keep going, need to wash out mouth with bleach, ASDFLKJASDLKFJASL,

Trying a vaguely worded sample thrown in with some other tea today, says “Liu Family Traditional Tieguanyin” on the very nondescript black bag. It’s greener than I was expecting since I thought traditional roast was a little heavier on TGY, but has a roasty smell.

Tea itself brews up fruity with a bit of a musty iron tinge and some after tastes of mineral rockiness that is so strong in yancha. Nice roast taste to finish, and decent number of steeps at four-five, although it does start to get a bit dry towards the end of the leaf life. Overall, I enjoyed this, although it didn’t stick out enough to make me put on my detective hat and hunt down the origins of this mysterious Liu family, haha.

I am trying to use up my older teas, so I make a chocolate milkshake with 3-4 tbs of matcha. "I will not be sleeping any time soon, but it made a really tasty dessert. Culinary matcha has limited uses, so a milkshake is the perfect way to make a dent in it on a hot day. If I had any other type of ice cream, I would choose vanilla (next time).

I don’t dare put this under any particular tea, since it was more like “use up plain black teas in my cupboard from travelling/hotel” than properly brewing teas. I ended up making a sweetened iced tea with lemon. Unfortunately my Lipton (decaf) teabag + Trader Joe’s Irish breakfast (decaf) teabag was not enough because it was a coldbrew. Next time I’m going to use more tea when making a pitcher. I also made it too sweet. It’s a work in progress, but it was sure nice to have a cold iced tea on a hot day.

I tasted a few new teas here in San Fransisco. Thought I might just log them here so I can refer to this when I scrapbook/for the interest of others.

I tried a dark oolong with dark plum and brandy notes, heavily roasted, slightly tannic and a touch of bitterness. It was roasty, there were some mineral and toasty roasty notes in there. Raisin, metallic, not bad but I’m not much of a heavily roasted oolong kind of gal.

My lychee bubble tea was a lychee green with no milk and lychee jellies. It was tasty, but way too sweet.

I also picked up some high grade yellow tea from Vital-i-tea and it smells delicious. Can’t wait to try it!

I don’t remember where I got this flowering tea, but it is a brand called Technology scented tea. My tea ball did open up to have an orange lily in the centre, however it isn’t jasmine or rose scented like I had hoped. It tastes like a typical Chinese black (reminds me a lot of YS Golden needle/tippy Yunnan blacks). Some Earthy notes that make me think of a Yunnan puerh, but not as pungent.

While I normally resteep flowering teas, I will not be resteeping this one. It wasn’t a bad cup, but I wanted a delicate jasmine green or white tea.

This is an older sample from the GCTTB and it was about time to finish it off. It was labelled a bit messy so I’m not sure what it is called, but it looked like “Bao dao shan 2016” (sheng?). I hoped it might be an oolong from the look of the rolled leaves, but it turned out to be a young sheng. There is a mellow hay flavour, some light petrichor and moss flavour, it tastes like a fermented tea. I do get some hints of bitterness in the later steeps, but overall it was a pretty solid drinker. I did 3 steeps in hot and then a cold steep (~250 mL cup).

I drank another cup of genmaicha, which I drink very frequently. It is a homemade blend of 2/3 toasted rice from Yunomi ($10 for 2 oz) and 1/3 decaf green from Davidson’s ($20 for 4 lbs). Overall, I make a very cheap genmaicha without the caffeine, but with lots of rice. The only issue is I don’t like the green tea used (astringent, bitter as many greens are). I’m thinking kukicha genmaicha next time. Meanwhile, I have an enormous bag of green tea I don’t like sitting in my room. . Anyway, at least I’ll have genmaicha for life.

Drinking “bulang ball” from Rasseru’s Singapore group buy.

This is a really nice sheng. Dry, it doesn’t smell like much, but it is very flavourful after steeping.

Steep 1:
Some bitterness at the end of each sip. Some licoice flavour, but without the metallic licorice root taste or the sweetness. Some mild puerh flavour.

Steep 2-5: Well, that got bitter fast. Had to resteep a few times in cold water until it was drinkable again.

Steep 6: This is definitely sheng; I can taste the bitterness of young pu, but it has none of the fermented taste of shou. I get anise and licorice taste mostly, followed by petrichor and loam/sand stone. Some hints of dried apple when I smell the liquid.

Rasseru mentioned fudge and caramel notes in this, but I didn’t get anything like that. I did, however, appreciate the strong licorice flavour. (side note: this was not stored with any flavoured teas). I am not much a fan of bitter teas, but several of the steeps had little to no bitterness (first steep and later ones). Overall, it is a solid 78/100

So I don’t know what company made this tea, as the label is in Japanese, but it is pretty damn tasty. It is a herbal blend that smells of coconut, papaya, and peach. Brewed, I can really taste the white peach, a touch of hibiscus, stonefruits (apricot or some generic peach type of flavour), papaya, not getting much coconut. It made a fabulous iced tea, one of the best peach herbals I’ve ever had for sure, I think the distinctive white peach flavour + peach blossom in the background really does it. Why is it always the unavailable ones that end up tasting the best?

Sipdown of my strawberry Chinese rolled green of unknown origin. It was an older sample, however I enjoyed it iced. Really smooth (slightly vegetal|) base, sweet strawberry flavour. Plain, but tasty.

Finaaallly getting around to trying “Hong shui #1” (a Taiwanese oolong) from Liquid Proust (a fun mystery guessing game that I never got around to).

I drank this hot. 88 deg. C, 2 tsp leaf (maybe 4g ish?) to 550 mL water. Steeped 4 minutes until the liquid was aromatic. At first the roast was a bit much, but it got better every sip. 80/100 overall.

This was a roasted oolong made of rolled leaves attached to a stem. As it steeped, the leaves (a dark brown/roasted oolong colour) unfurled to reveal orange amber stems. It was very pretty. Also, the stems in this case gave a really nice light woody finish to the brew. Besides the roasty toasty flavour inherent to roasted oolongs, I’d say this is really smooth.

I don’t taste spices exactly, but the toasty/doughy mouthfeel reminds me of ginger cookies right out of the oven. It is very thick and smooth. Light sweetness. Very complex, it seems to change every sip. Nothing floral or fruity. Notes of toasted grain and pastry dough.

A rolled Chinese green tea with sweet, mellow strawberry flavour. Tasty cold brew – not astringent or bitter. The leaves are really beautiful in how they are full leaves loosely rolled. They unfurl into full leaves when steeped. Not much to say about the tea because it just tastes like a nice green with strawberry flavour. Simple, but satisfying.

Custom blend to imitate “Zen” by Tazo. It is a spearmint, green tea, and lemongrass blend. I mixed Davidson’s decaf green with DT’s organic spearmint and some freeze dried lemongrass in my pantry. It needs a little bit more lemongrass and less green tea, but it after I level it out a bit, it will be pretty close to perfect.

Had “toasted rice tea” at a vegan Buddhist (no garlic/onions) Chinese food restaurant. Lotus Pond also offers some various other greens (the rose one looks good), and an oolong. The toasted rice tea was really good, though. It was genmaicha with green tea + toasted rice. The toasted rice cooked/got hydrated in the tea and I enjoyed eating the little rice bits at the end of the cup. It was soo good. One of the better genmaichas that I have had.

Cold brew of Teavana’s Wild Orange Blossom (herbal) + Teavivre’s Jasmine Flowers (herbal) + Damman Freres Noel a Paris. Black cherry, tangerine, fruit punch. Not in a tea mood, but need to keep hydrated and this is mighty tasty.

GCTTB round 6
“Black tea with flower petals” – unknown tea company

75/100 Very tasty, but not very original/memorable

Loose leaf looks like black tea with wilted/brown flower petals, doesn’t smell like much.

Brew: Distinctly floral, a nice black base with lots of tannins, abeit slightly bitter. Slightly sweet, flavourful. This is your standard floral tea.

First taste of an on-going experimental blend!

I took one fragrant dried vanilla pod and broke it into three pieces. The base tea is chamomile and rose (also did the same with a puerh/white tea blend separately). The vanilla pods have been infusing flavour into the flowers for 24 hours now. I’m very impressed at the vanilla flavour. I used a very high quality fair trade vanilla pod, so I imagine the quality of the vanilla would affect this a lot.

So, this is my tasting note for my homemade blend of “Chamomile Rose Vanilla”
Steeped 1 tsp of rose buds/petals and chamomile (did not steep any vanilla pod), brewed 3.5 minutes with 600 mL of 81 *C water. Brew has a strong taste of natural vanilla and flowers. Both the rose and chamomile come through well. The chamomile blossoms at the bottom of the bag are mostly pollen, and I find the whole blossom vs loose pollen have different flavours. I used about half chamomile blossoms and half loose pollen from the bottom of the bag with equal amounts of rose vs total chamomile. The chamomile gives a slightly lemony dried hay taste. The rose used is very perfumy, which lends itself really well to a blend.

At this point in time, I’d rate the blend 80/100.

Drank an unknown genmaicha at my favourite sushi restaurant. So this review is for whatever green tea (genmaicha) they serve at Azuma sushi restaurant.

Weak green base (buttery, light, not vegetal or grassy at all), light toasted rice flavour. I mean, it isn’t an amazing genmaicha (I’d rate it a 50/100 for being too weak and not very remarkable), but it’s free and kept me hydrated while I enjoyed my lychee peach martini and amazing sushi. I absolutely love sushi, but since I became a vegetarian, my options are slightly limited since I’m also intolerant to garlic/allium plants. I had cucumber rolls, inari (sweet tofu skin dumpling with rice in the middle), agedashi tofu (deep dried tofu in miso broth), and I split a tomago roll (sweet cooked egg omelette with rice vinegar cooked into it). The fried egg + rice + seaweed with a touch of pickled ginger…that’s what I live for. Of course, I know the ginger is a palate cleanser, but I like it on my sushi sometimes. There is no wrong way to enjoy your food or tea, eat/drink what makes you happy.

Drinking a cheap pu’erh I bought online. I have no idea what flavour it is supposed to be, or anything about how it was made or stored.

Broke apart the mini cake (individual serving) and rinsed in water for 10 seconds to rid myself of the dust and tiny bits. I didn’t use a proper instrument to break apart the cake, so there were lots of tiny bits.

Steep 1: Boiling water, 100 mL, 20 seconds (which was too long and I had to dilute it with 50% water)
This is the smoothest pu I’ve ever had and the only one without that spicy burn-my-throat sensation I get at the end of each sip. Strong flavour of tea, minerals, very Earthy like peat moss or forest soil.

Steep 2: 100 mL almost boiling water, 10 seconds
Earthy flavour, more puerh tea flavour, no bitterness or astringency. No icky storage taste at all. When I first got these, they smelled so terrible I had to plug my nose to open the package. I let them sit out in my bedroom (in the cold basement) for six months and they are fantastic now. I wish I could remember who I bought them from on ebay, I still have 10 left, but I want to buy more.

Steep 3: 100 mL hot water, 8 seconds
It tastes like the smell of the beach (the smell of salt, although this tea is not salty, seaweed, wet sand).

Steep 4: 50 mL boiling water, 8 seconds
More of the same, but with some toasty notes.

Steep 5: 150 mL boiling water, 12 seconds
Definitely a distinct ocean/beach taste and smell, but still very Earthy. Slightly toasty like a toasted oolong or green tea. No vegetal notes, but I would describe the Earthiness as a cross between wet sand and dried moss.

100/100 I absolutely love this pu’erh, and intend to drink it frequently.

Taking a caffeine break and steeping a tea I bought from some cheap Chinese ebay shop. Who knows what pesticides and what not are contaminating this, but I’m drinking it anyway because its cheap and I like the thrill and danger of cheap ebay tea. Did a 20 second rinse in cold water before steeping though.

Steeped 6 bright red rose buds /just/ between bud stage and fully open flower stage. They are smaller like buds, but are not tightly close/unopened.

Steep 1: Very fragrant and floral. I would describe it as distinctly rose, but one of the extremely fragrant older varieties. The heritage breeds aren’t always as pretty as the new hybrids, but sometimes you can’t beat a flower bred for hardiness and smell alone.

Steep 2: red apple, floral rose

Steep 2: perfume “rose” taste (artificial), mildly vegetal

Really, really tasty. It also tastes a lot different than a rose bud tea I bought from GrandTea. My other one is also fragrant and rose-scented, but different. I guess each variety of rose will taste different.

Drank “Deep Purple” (Green tea with common mallow) last night. I got the sample in a sample exchange or sale earlier the year, but I can’t remember who it is from or which company. It doesn’t seem to be on steepster.

Very pleasant sweet-floral taste. The green is a calm one, not bitter or astringent. I don’t know if this is related to the marshmallow plant, but it has a Germanium-type floral note combined with a distinct marshmallow taste.