Zen Tea

So I guess this may be cheating but in effort to remove things from my cupboard so when I add my newer teas it does not seem out of control for me(still nothing compared to a lot of ya’ll) I’m finishing of teas I don’t have much left. Only problem is I’m having the worst seasonal allergies I recall ever having leaving me not able to do a fair review on this tea.
I received this as a sample when I ordered 200g of the famous EGC that I still have not sampled, opened or put in my cupboard.

It’s a good light bergamot Earl, I don’t need to add milk which is a good thing because I’m out and I probably don’t need the dairy right now. I know I enjoyed this in the past but don’t recall anything special about it.

Drinking this right now, and it’s absolutely perfect. I had planned on adding cream and sugar to it, but after taking the first sip, I decided to forgo those plans, since it’s so creamy as it is. :D
My kids are watching the earlier episodes of Naruto Shippuden, which I’d watched years ago. Each time I revisit that series, though, I’m reminded how fantastic the soundtrack is… I found myself searching for a specific track after hearing it, remembering that it was one of my favourites… The only version I could find, though, had english dubbed voices going over the music. argh!
Anyway, this tea is really lovely for today… creamy and bergommoty and just plain great…. the perfect companion to anime soundtracks and knitting projects. :)

The leaf smells absolutely fantastic! I’m so in the mood for this today, and the cornflower petals are so pretty (ahhhh, pretty tea…).
Oooooh! I really like this one. (after the first sip)
The cream is so lovely…… I feel like this cup of tea can melt the slush outside of my window. Yes. It’s got those types of powers.
Light bergamot with comforting cream….
If someone tried to take this mug away from me right now, I think I’d react like a feral dog protecting its pups.

Wow. For some reason I didn’t quite expect it to taste like it smelled. Boy, was I proven wrong xD It’s a great tea for coconut-lovers! I would definitely recommend!

This tea comes from Zack. Thank you!

This tea was the main reason for reaching out for the swap. I got to try this in the TTB last spring and loved it. I almost fell for the Feb 40% off but I haven’t drank through all of my EGC yet and I am really trying to stick to my tea budget this year. So I will enjoy the few cups of this I have from Zack for now. But this cup, this cup confirms this tea needs to be in my stash. With even more experience in the world of straight blacks a year later this is even more solidly a LOVE. There is a roasty toasty java hint to this black tea. It is malty and chocolaty without the brighter fruity notes that seem to get in the way for me with black teas. I just hope the 2015 crop maintains some of the same characteristics:)

TTB&C #5

This TTB may end up proving a bad thing for my tea budget. So far I have LOVED every tea i have tried. It will be a struggle to convince myself that I can live without xyz tea for awhile. This is yet another one that I did a very big happy dance when I pulled it out of the box. After I had placed my order with Zen Tea in Feb I saw a discussion mentioning this tea as a must try from Zen, and of course it was not in my order.

This tea is AMZAING! Sweet, rich, chocolaty, malty. It is a cup I could curl up too, but it also tastes like it would rock your socks off iced with lemon. There is quite a bit of this tea left so I think I might indulge in 2 cups! I haven’t looked into the origin of this tea, but Thank you to whoever included it!

Oh My Goodness!! This is a tasty treat to start my day. Rich, sweet flavours. A hint of tobacco. Some grain. Perfect, because I’m too lazy to make breakfast right now, so this will do until I can get my lazy self off the couch.

Thanks Dexter!! This is sooooo goooood.

hum. how could my three minute steep have been too long for this? it has a truly bitter twang =0(

tiny bit of my sample left, i’ll have to try again. as it stands right now though i have a harsh green kick with a side of nicely roasted rice. humph!

This is a really quite good coconut oolong. I still prefer the one I get from SOKO, because that one is even more floral oolongy with baked coconut flavours.

However, this is a good, slightly less expensive alternative. Definitely something to consider throwing into a future order! I’ll have to see how this one cold steeps, too. :)

Thanks, Cavocorax! (I swear I’ve tried this before, but no note? IDK. My mind is so lost right now.)

Sipdown!! (179)

So Kat_Maria sent me so many Lupicia samples and yet somehow I managed to not try a single one when I made three cups of tea. Instead, I went for the caffeine free options which turned out to be two teas I have had before.

I said goodbye to this one not too long ago and since I enjoyed it, I did not mind seeing it again. It is yet another tea that has an amaretto flavor though I think I prefer this one to Apricot Amaretto. I can’t quite put my finger on why though. Anyways, thank you Kat_Maria for sharing this with me.

Sipdown!!

Thank you Dexter3657 for sharing this tasty tea. It has an almost cherry-like quality while still staying true to its name. Very good for anyone who is a lover of marzipan. Personally, I enjoy it from time to time but am not so in love with the flavor that I need this stocked. Although, I wouldn’t turn down a cup if it were offered.

Thank you Dexter3657 for sharing a sample of this. It is 100% marzipan. Smooth and nutty with an almost cherry-like essence. Quite delicious. I am not sure if I would stock this just because I don’t know how often I would reach for this flavor due to personal tastes but I would not turn away a cup if offered.

T&C TTB 4/23

I like unflavored black tea but I still have a hard time picking out and describing the different notes. If you told me a year ago I would be drinking hot black tea I would have told you “Your crazy black tea is for iced tea”. With that said I enjoyed this cup of black tea that for now until my palate improves, taste like naturally sweet iced tea but hot.

Thanks Nicole for setting this box up and sharing your tea!

NayLynn sent me a variety of Earl Greys to help me on my search for “the one” Earl Grey. Thank you NayLynn!!

This is possibly the most delicately flavored Earl Grey that I’ve tasted… and I mean that in a good way. I used 1.5 tsp of tea and was worried that it would be too strong for an 8oz cup but it turned out nicely. Usually I prefer an Earl Grey with a lot of body but somehow this works and would be a good transition tea for someone who hasn’t tried Earl Grey.

Dependable as always. I love this one in the mornings.

Argh I oversteeped it. It was still nicely sweet with the coconut, but the green was sad and unhappy.

We have this weird thing happening in the lab where the hotter the external temperature of the building, the more the A/C blasts inside. This is pretty OK for the main areas/cubes, but in the labs where we should be at 19-25*C it’s been a chilly 17-18*C at times. For the moment I’ve been bringing both cold and hot tea with me everyday.

So a tsp of this for a bullet thermos worked out well last time, but I kept getting coconut bits stuck in the top. This time I put maybe 1.5 tsp into a cup travel thermos with a few cubes of ice and 195*C water on top. It was still good at 3 hrs. At 4 hrs it was a bit oversteeped, and because the weather was so miserably hot today I didn’t finish it and it was ridiculously oversteeped by the time I brought it home from work. Lesson to be learned: don’t thermos steep for more than 3 hrs?

Yet another lovely tea from Zen Teas that seems impossible to oversteep. This one has actually been in the big thermos since yesterday and is still going strong, despite adding more water 2-4×.

It does have a caffeine element to it, which I wouldn’t expect because the tannins weren’t particularly strong. It contributes a nice mouth feel that isn’t overly sweet nor bitter, and not at all dry. The coconut in this one is lovely, and really not quite the same as in the Coconut Oolong, but I’d have to sit down and have a tea session with this one to isolate it. It’s been doing good as a workhorse so far though. Interesting enough to enable commentary, standard enough to not have to think twice about. The green tea is the main note, but the coconut is still visible. It’s actually kind of cute how the little pieces of coconut keeps escaping the thermos into the cup.

I received this in a package from NayLynn and her son. Yum! Nice mild but tasty chai with a good dose of chocolate. I could drink this a lot! I used a little sweetener (I use stevia vanilla drops) and it was very satisfying! Resteeped once, still good.

I woke up because I thought I heard a baby crying last night. But with the oddest stops in the sound. Turns out the cat wanted attention.

My friend was over yesterday and I let her choose the tea. She selected this one. This genmaicha is mostly short skinny leaves and very tiny brown rice kernels. They look like broken rice, but brown/toasted, that’s how small it is, but once brewed the kernels puff to a normal rice size.

The first and second brew liquors were extremely green. The third brew not as much. The smell starts out very creamy and floral smelling with a creamy green flavor, the second brew was more green smell and taste and the third was more roasty smell and taste.

The only thing that annoys me about this one is that the brew temp is extremely low comparatively.

I picked some of this up because of JustJames. I was so excited to get it that I.. erm, ate most of it, accidentally?

I did manage about two cold steeps though and they were awesome. The hibiscus is at an acceptable level, and the rose isn’t domineering. The variety of fruit make a refreshing and sweet cocktail. The aloe, my other main reason for picking this up, is subtle but present.

Fruit blends go too quickly.

TheTeaFairy wrote that this was included in my swap package because “my favorite and the fact that it is so smooth”
Ok fair enough – I may not like Earl Grey because I haven’t had the correct EG yet.
LOL That might be true, but this isn’t it. Sorry nope still don’t like it.
Thanks TheTeaFairy for trying. :))

Sipdown!! ( 201 202 because apparently I didn’t add this to my cupboard)

Thank you Roswell Strange for a sample of this tea. I am realizing I am a fan of hojicha because it has the roasty-toastyness of a genmaicha without any rice. This is no exception. Delicious and warming. A nice tea however I have so many genmaicha teas to achieve this flavor that I doubt I will be ordering any of this in the near future.