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Yay! All moved into my new apartment! Just a few boxes of books and the washer to move. Afternoon koicha is permissable. =)
Today’s matcha came out with more seaweed than chocolate than usual. I’m fairly certan the water was a little cooler than usual. I’ll have to remember to keep the temperature up if I want a bowl of cocoa crisps for breakfast.

Finished off my tin of this and the big bear of local honey for lunch. It comes out with a lot of birch and smoke notes with this new kind (White Mountain Apiary). Maybe I can get a new tin while there’s still fresh peaches…

Finishing off the bag today with some fresh peaches, coconut yogurt and the first sunny evening since March! Still amazed I got a third infusion even after I ate the apricot pieces. XD

It’s hard to believe I’ve never logged this before. I must’ve gone through a pound of it this year alone!

It’s a very refreshing sencha. Light and fruity with some alfalfa notes. It changes slightly with different brewing factors and is fairly forgiving for sencha. And just as important as taste is the organic factor. It gives this tea cupboard tenure in big green canister.

After much convincing, I am home fo Easter. Which means properly prepared bai mu dan! Today was perfect for it too. Warm and drizzly with a sde of butternut squash.

I love leaving a steeping of this over night to drink wth matcha in the mornng. For some reason Bai Mu Dan gets better after sittting for several hours. The woodsy honey quality of the first few steepings fortify themsleves with a night’s rest I suppose.

Happy hoppy day by the way.

Attempting to backlog this one for the…fifth time? Somehow I write a note and it won’t save for several teas. It was probably the connection at my old house.

This is my favorite white tea to date and a baffling lesson in proper tea storage. Somehow I accidently order this online wile trying to look at the tin art in addition to purchasing it at two stores. One sample sealed up since processing, one sample from a bulk jar that saw many sudden breezes and one bizarrely stored sample. This one was in a small tin, purchased from a big sore with no bulk section, taken home and upon inspection- someone had already opened it. They opened it and shoved in the back for who knows how long. Ye-ah. Not nice.
Sample three looked beautiful, fluffy white pea pods with few fannings and smelled faintly like leaves and mushrooms. It steeped up four umami ladden cups of honeyd mushroom broth that gained citrus notes for the last cup. I drank this even when over steeped it was so amazing.
Sample two was largely fannings and a free apologee for not having many teas for a long time. It was almost black ans shriveled and had no aroma. The tea was slightly bitter and only a tinge of honey in the first steep. It was still better than a lot of teas even with that stale aftertaste!
Sample one was just like three, honey, straw, mushroom and refreshing. It makes me cry that Tao won’t have this for weeks at least. The little I have left must be hidden in a box out of sight to deter consumtion.

In the ER, out, in the ER out. At least I managed a three day interim this time.
Thanks to Ellen for this. I hadn’t tried an Indian white before but I’ve only heard laudatory reviews. This one wasn’t astounding but a nice change. Not as malty as I’d like but it’s definately a good Assam. Surprisingly like oak and held up to seven small steeps for me, not much variation in flavors. It piqued my interest in Indian white tea. Hmm, how would an Izu white taste, I wonder?

Happy 100th note to me! To celebrate it and my exit from the hospital, fresh matcha is in order.
Despite being a little expensive among matcha, it’s worth it for a couple tins a year because this isn’t just matcha. It’s also the only thing as good as matcha: CHOCOLATE.
The start of the first sip is much like the aroma: fresh, thick spinach and kale sautéed in olive oil. Then everything goes dark. The end of the first sip dissolves into raw cacao, flax, seaweed and cocoa crisps. I swear this tastes like my favorite candy bar, Fearless’s Super Seeds, wrapped in toasted nori. Oddly not any of the olfactory salad greens. As this cools and as usucha it sweetens a bit and gains a seawater taste. Combined with the perfectly thick froth this is a satisfying and chocolatey treat. I have to remember not to have this one before breakfast; I felt full and wired for an almost an hour afterwards. 100 for the 100th!

This is brightening the endless March drizzle especially after four cups of Frontier Organics’s bai mu dan. This baicha is so smooth and honeyed. I never noticed it before but this baicha has more tips than any other I’ve had. Even so I think I’m going to drastically reduce my intake of this tea, partally to make it last, and partially because I’m getting a little burnt out on bunny baicha. Too much of a good thing and all…

I kind of wish I got tin 100 to match my tin #50. Oh well. It’s better than refreshing the counter page every ten minutes and missing it altogether.
Speaking of 100, now what should I do for note #100?

I’ve passed over this tea for a year but put a sizable amount of this tea in my cart at the health food store recently. Usually don’t start with more than an ounce but, the need for extremely cheap baicha and Liberteas’s good review made it a good gamble.
The first cup was hard to judge. It seemed like a whole different type of tea. Martian mu tan? I told myself it was just my rabbit coddled palate recoiling from quality shock and made another cup.
A-and it’s definately Martian mu tan. By which I mean dusty, earthy, light and very different from other mu tans.Very light and musty and half way between puerh and strong chun mee. But not bad. It disappeared quite quickly for such a rough white. I’m quite glad I picked up a good bit instead of the usual couple cups of a bulk tea.