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green mist in the air
scintillating spearmint leaves
shredded tarragon

lace doily snowflakes
candy canes and lollipops
freshest frosty air

It’s cold; I want tea, but it’s late. So in ferreting through my uncaffeinated (now out of decaffeinated options) stash, I happened upon a couple bags of Numi Bushmen’s Brew Organic Honeybush. It’s really just honeybush, no more and no less.

What to say about honeybush? I guess that it reminds me of carob and chicory in that it’s not really what it purports to replace. It doesn’t really seem like tea. Nor does it seem like a flavorful herb or flower. But it’s none of those things; it’s honeybush. Probably an acquired tasted. I just don’t like it very much. It’s potable, so I’m drinking it right now, but I won’t buy this again.

This must be the sort of offering which keeps companies such as Numi solvent. All they have to do is take one ingredient, honeybush, from God knows where (I guess it’s South Africa), and put it into a little bag for a 30000% mark up. Maybe if I weren’t a tea lover, I’d see the virtues in this. But I am, and I don’t. Something about the flavor reminds me of dirty water.

I decided to give this freeze-dried ginger-honey granulated powder another try since I have a couple of packets (of unknown provenance…) in my drawer. I find, again, that it’s too sweet for me, and also the ginger seems (logically enough) like dried ginger.

I added some True Lemon, which greatly improved the flavor, as it helped to reawaken the dormant life of the ginger. But for me, this is probably best as a cold remedy, when the honey could help with a sore throat. Of course, there’s always licorice root…

I rarely drink Lapsang Souchong, which is why my Republic of Tea can from ancient history is still more than half full. Every time I do drink this tea, I realize that I like it a lot, but it does not leap to my mind as a craving—not like Earl Grey or Sencha or Assam or …

It might have been the weather—freezing rain—but something said to me that today was a day for Lapsang Souchong. I cannot even recall the last time I had a cup, so I brewed up a Bodum full of the stuff and discovered that, perhaps because it is already so “cooked” and aged, the taste never really seems to change. Hearty and flavorful and reminiscent of a bizarre cross between the smoky embers of a campfire and a Dostoevsky novel, Lapsang Souchong is nothing if not unique!

I have noticed that leather notes in perfume are often redolent of Lapsang Souchong. So I suppose that I could say that the tea is leathery. Or is it, rather, that leather notes in perfume are sometimes more like smoked tea?

I drank this reddish-brown tea brewed strong and splashed with cream. Just right for a gloomy and pensive day like today with nary a ray of sunshine anywhere in sight.

whispering whistles
soft serenades at sunset
shining in the sand

I combined the remains of the two cups and added some cream. Now off to the bath!

I’ve been craving black tea lately, but it’s way too close to bedtime, so I decided that tonight would be the night for the big decaf ceylon brew-off. I had two bags of Harney & Sons Decaffeinated Ceylon: one in the sachet format, the other a regular filter bag. Here’s what I found:

The infused sachet was nearly twice as heavy as the infused filter bag, so the many testimonials to the effect that the sachets hold more tea and can be used to brew two cups seem true. I brewed the sachet in about 11 ounces of water and the filterbag in about 7 ounces. Both brewed up a lovely golden brown verging on burnt orange.

The big surprise is that I find the taste of the filter bag brew to be much more flavorful! The size of the tea particles in the filter bag is much smaller—not quite crush tear curl, but certainly a much larger surface area to volume ratio than the larger leaves of the satchet.

Perhaps, I deduce, the decaffeination process does more damage to the larger leaves than the smaller bits? Whatever the reason, the filter bag brew tastes quite a bit better to me. I probably will not buy either of these teas because I mainly use Ceylon for iced tea in the summer, and I have large bags for that express purpose.

This was an interesting result, however, as the conventional wisdom is that sachets are always better than filter bags. Not so, according to me, at least not in this case!

I’m not sure whether Harney & Sons Earl Grey Imperial is supposed to be better than Earl Grey Supreme—the can is certainly nicer!—but I find the black tea itself to be a somewhat lighter blend. The liquor is more orange-red (like Ceylon) than red-brown (like Assam). Since I prefer Assam to Ceylon, and this brew seems closer to the latter than the former, I am probably won over to the Supreme by that fact alone, though there are other significant distinctions between the two teas.

Nonetheless, this is a solid Earl Grey. I should say that the sachets may produce a lighter cup (I used one sachet for 11 ounces in a double-walled Bodum glass) than the loose leaves of the Earl Grey Supreme. Anyway, I do like this cup and do not find it overly perfumed, it’s just that it doesn’t have the same oomph as the Supreme.

I love, love, love the gorgeous tealish blue/blueish teal tin (I think that it’s blue, but it has the timbre of teal!) in which the Earl Grey Imperial sachets are stored. I’ll probably brew the other 29 sachets and then fill the can with loose Supreme…

I brewed up my first pot of Harney & Sons Earl Grey Supreme this afternoon after lunch. Delish. The liquour is dark reddish-brown (like Assam), and the silver tips are beautiful both in the dried tea and also upon infusion. I forgot that my carton contained light cream rather than half-and-half, so I sloshed a bit too much in, but ended up enjoying my inadvertent Earl Grey Latte very much.

Next up: Earl Grey Imperial. So happy that there is an entire universe of Earl Grey to explore! Can one overdose on bergamot? We shall see…