216 Tasting Notes
Alas, this doesn’t make such a great iced tea mixed with Khumbu Green. I had hoped that the sharpness of this one would mix with the earthiness of that one, but instead they fought it out unhappily. Either one alone is much better than this mix….
The first of June’s teas! (Seriously, how is it June already?)
This is, indeed, very fruity! It blended very nicely with the tea itself, and was neither sour nor cloyingly sweet, both of which were fears of mine when I read the ingredients list. When I opened the pouch of tea and took a whiff it smelled very strong, but these parameters actually brewed up a fairly mild tea.
Preparation
One of my new purchases from the trip — Your DeKalb Farmer’s Market (which is neither a farmer’s market nor mine but which is in DeKalb, so I guess it’s okay) carries bulk Ceylon Black tea in a variety of flavorings. I picked up Orange and Peach.
During the trip I mug-brewed this one, and this was (unsurprisingly) deeply bitter but (surprisingly) deeply flavorful as well: I would have expected the long steep to cause the tea to override the orange, but it didn’t. In fact, on a more “proper” two minute steep this morning, the orange didn’t really come out enough until I steeped it a second time and added some honey. This is leading me to believe that it may be an excellent iced tea, so I shall have to experiment!
Preparation
Hello out there! I’m going to be doing a bit of backlogging to catch up with my trip last week. (As much as I can, anyway: there was one tea that I looked at and thought, “No need to write that down! Surely I couldn’t forget a tea named ____ from the ____ company!” …Yeah. So, does anyone know of a maté tea in a teabag blended with several flavors including probably coconut from a well-known company?)
This was one of the teas available in the office, so I had it plain with hot water. It was tasty and sweet, but the problem is that I apparently use this exact blend of spices when I make tea eggs, so I kept expecting to the tea to taste like hard-boiled eggs. Of course, it doesn’t taste like hard-boiled eggs, nor should it, but the cognitive dissonance put me off what would otherwise be a rather pleasant cup of well-it’s-midafternoon-and-I-need-some-tea-at-the-office tea. It didn’t get too bitter when oversteeped, although it did get almost too strong.
My first matcha! I suspect I probably did it all wrong, but I really enjoyed it anyway.
I put a spoonful of this into a bowl, poured it about half full with near-boiling water, and tried to whisk it with a metal cooking whisk. This came out bitter, bitter, bitter, so I added more water and stirred in a half-spoonful of honey, then kept stirring with the spoon because that seemed to be working reasonably well. At these terrifically precise measurements, it tasted great! I know, I know, some of you type-A tea drinkers out there are trying to stop your heads from exploding right now, aren’t you.
I wound up drinking a lot of this with the spoon because I needed to keep stirring, so I just treated it like soup for the first half of the bowl, then picked it up and drank the rest (I really need to find some of those square bowls with the great-for-drinking corners on them like my girlfriend’s roommate has). It was a really thick, interesting texture, and there were a few very small lumps that added to the texture more than anything else.
In conclusion, yay!
Recipe for a tasty working-late tea
Start with: one mug
Add: a bit of Tea Farm Oolong Rose (http://steepster.com/teas/the-tea-farm/12471-oolong-rose-tea)
Add: a bit more of Art of Tea Velvet Tea (http://steepster.com/teas/art-of-tea/2887-velvet-tea)
Toss in: three flowers of JK Tea Shop Wild Purple Chrysanthemum (http://steepster.com/teas/jk-tea-shop/11241-wild-purple-chrysanthemum-flower-tea)
Fill with: boiling water
Steep: until the water cools enough to drink and most of the tea is at the bottom of the mug
Sip, occasionally straining rooibos from your teeth, until the chocolate/rose/chrysanthemum/rooibos savory combination puts you at your ease despite the spreadsheets still open.
Recipe for a tasty working-late tea
Start with: one mug
Add: a bit of Tea Farm Oolong Rose (http://steepster.com/teas/the-tea-farm/12471-oolong-rose-tea)
Add: a bit more of Art of Tea Velvet Tea (http://steepster.com/teas/art-of-tea/2887-velvet-tea)
Toss in: three flowers of JK Tea Shop Wild Purple Chrysanthemum (http://steepster.com/teas/jk-tea-shop/11241-wild-purple-chrysanthemum-flower-tea)
Fill with: boiling water
Steep: until the water cools enough to drink and most of the tea is at the bottom of the mug
Sip, occasionally straining rooibos from your teeth, until the chocolate/rose/chrysanthemum/rooibos savory combination puts you at your ease despite the spreadsheets still open.
