Cameron B. select Send Message

The little green man tea! Yoda is pretty epic, even if he is a little bit overdone in pop culture. The tea is a mix of green tea leaves, dried lemongrass, and bits of dried ginger root. It smells exactly like bread & butter pickles! Side note: my boyfriend looked at me like I was crazy when I called them bread & butter pickles, apparently he had never heard that term before (he calls them sweet pickles). Maybe it’s a more southern thing…? I steeped this twice.

First time, 175 degrees for 3 minutes. The aroma reminds me of the pickles too, just with less of a vinegar scent. The taste is extremely light. The main flavor I get is ginger and cinnamon, and even that is very mild. I taste a hint of lemongrass and then a light vegetal edge at the end. Meh.

Tried again at the recommended 190 degrees and with a little more tea. Came out basically exactly the same. I guess this tea is just a bit light for my tastes…

How does this tea compare to Yoda? Well… There is something about ginger and lemongrass that seems meditative to me, which would make sense. And I can see Master Yoda drinking a green tea, mostly because he has that kind of stereotypical Asian wise man persona. But I think he would want something far more pungent than this… Too weak for such a strong Jedi Master!

Another of my Harney & Sons samples that I ordered a while back. I’ve actually had a dragonwell style tea before, back when I got a lot of tea from Teavana. And I remember it being pretty good! This one has long, flattened leaves that are a light color somewhere in the green/brown/grey spectrum. I see stems attached to some of the leaves. It mostly smells like musty hay and alfalfa with some sweetness. 3 minute steep!

The aroma of this actually reminds me of sencha, in a milder way. It has that grassiness with some alfalfa, but it’s much sweeter-smelling and buttery. The taste has a lot more elements than I expected! It’s quite mild and buttery, and it starts off tasting of hay or dried leaves. There’s definitely a nutty element, but I can’t really place what variety it would be. The end is somewhat grassy and vegetal, maybe a bit of Brussels sprout? Not astringent at all and quite smooth.

Overall, I was surprised at the savoriness of this tea compared to the sweetness of the aroma. Quite nice, in an everyday tea kind of way! :)

Yay my first ever milk oolong! I’ve been pretty excited to try one ever since I found out it was a thing. This one is from Simple Loose Leaf – I chose it as my sample this month and it will be in the August menu. The leaves are a dark, muted yellowish green. They’re rolled up like other green oolongs I’ve seen and the size varies a lot among the pellets. It smells very much like sweet cream flavor. Hmm… I steeped for 3 minutes (the high end of the recommended time).

Yum, it smells delicious. It has kind of a peaches and cream thing going on with a bit of mild floral scent. The taste is not quite as exciting to me as the smell. There’s a definite vegetal note that reminds me of butternut squash, some light sweetness, and a floral touch. The peach shows up as an aftertaste, and it’s so convincing that I wish I could taste it the whole time. I don’t really taste milk in this, although I do get a light creaminess from the squash.

Steeped a second time (also 3 minutes) and I think I like it better this time around. The vegetal side is pretty much gone, and it’s much more fruity and floral now. However, I still don’t get a ton of cream flavor. I added some sugar and it seemed to help, but I feel like something called milk oolong should be creamy without additions.

Overall, it’s pretty good for a green oolong but I don’t know that I would classify it as a milk variety just from the taste. Perhaps it has to be with my brewing it western-style…

Happy 4th of July everyone! I’m sure a lot of you are going to be celebrating with family and friends, having amazing barbecues and such. I will be having a lazy day on the couch, drinking tea, and watching World Cup games with my love. Huzzah! Although barbecued meat does sound amazing…

Anyway, another tea from the July Simple Loose Leaf box! I’ve never had a Ceylon before. Well, not knowingly. The leaves are small and skinny and black, and they smell like musty hay with some malt and a little honey and stonefruit.

The aroma of this one is a bit ho-hum to me. It just smells kind of bready and malty with some light sweetness. At first, tasting this, I didn’t get much out of it. It mostly tasted like malt and bread with some earthiness in there. Disappoint. I added a tiny amount of sugar which helped a bit. Then as it cooled down, I started to get more flavor out of it. It’s quite light-tasting considering its flavor profile, and there are some biscuit or cookie notes with a light apricot and citrus aftertaste. It got more astringent as it cooled too, but I wasn’t horribly bothered because I was so happy to find other flavors!

Added vanilla soymilk at the very end when I had about a quarter cup left and this made it amazingggggg… Tastes very cookie-ish now! :D Take the rating with a grain of salt, I know nothing of Ceylon teas.

I hope everyone’s 4th of July celebrations are amazing! :)

This is from my swap with TeaBrat. Della Terra’s teas are kind of hit-and-miss in my opinion, a lot of times the flavor is quite weak for my tastes. Dry, this looks like a mixture of red rooibos and honeybush with some dried lemongrass and a few pieces of citrus peel. It smells good, although a little heavy on the cream flavoring. It promises to be sweet and lemony! Steeped 5 minutes.

The aroma is quite yummy! It smells lemony and sweet, with an almost marshmallowy edge. The taste, however, is not great. There’s a weak lemon flavor and some sweetness, and then rooibos. Maybe a slight tang from the lime. I don’t really get cream or pastry at all from this. I added some sugar and it improved it a bit, but when I added milk it smothered the flavors instead of making the cream taste come out. Oh well!

I’ve been neglecting my H&S samples a little bit because I keep getting more and more teas in the mail. :P But I was in the mood for a genmaicha so I thought I’d give this one a try! Dry leaf is a mixture of broken-up leaves and a decent amount of toasted rice. There aren’t any popped kernels in my sample. Smells like grass with a little bit of sweetness.

Mmm I love the smell of genmaicha – it promises so much toasty rice flavor! However, this one didn’t deliver well on that. The tea is quite grassy and tastes like dried leaves. I would describe it as rough-tasting. The toasted rice is more of a background note and an aftertaste, which makes me sad because that’s my favorite part! Okay, but not something I would purchase.

Yay, another Star Wars inspired blend! Oh Han, you rascal… :) This seems to be a very chai-like blend. The tea leaves are jet black and there are a ton of cloves mixed in, along with a few pieces of dehydrated ginger. It smells very strongly of clove and ginger, so much so that I can’t really pick up on anything else. Followed the directions and did a 5 minute steep.

Mm, the aroma is very comforting. Clove with a sweet edge, warming cinnamon, and a little hit of ginger. Chai always reminds me of the holidays. :) Clove is definitely the most prominent flavor in this tea, but it’s not overpowering as I expected it to be from the scent. The ginger adds a little bit of sharpness and there’s a lovely warm note from the cinnamon. I don’t know what cardamom tastes like so I can’t comment on that. :P

Next time I think I would use more tea as it tasted a bit thin to me. Would be excellent with milk and sugar!

Is this tea Han? I would say it’s a pretty good representation. A strong man represented by black tea, his mischievous personality in the spicy clove and ginger, and his warm heart in the comforting cinnamon. I wish I would’ve tasted caramel in this to reinforce that aspect. Not bad, Elizabeth O.

From Simple Loose Leaf’s July box. I expected this to be covered in powder, like other ginseng oolongs I’ve seen online, but there’s no trace of powder at all. It looks like a dark yellow-green rolled oolong. It smells quite grassy and sweet, and for some reason like peanuts in the shell? Lol. The package suggested 3-5 minutes, so I did 4.

I’m always amazed by how big oolong leaves get when steeped. It’s like magic! :D I’ve only tried one green oolong, but this smells similar to how I remember it. It’s rather sweet-smelling, with fruity (peach?) and floral notes. There’s also a vegetal scent similar to sencha. This is an extremely light-tasting tea. All of the flavors are subtle and I found them a little hard to pick out individually. But here goes! I could definitely taste a light vegetal note, but it was so mild that I can’t really be specific. The tea is lightly sweet in an almost fruity way, and I taste a mild and fresh floral note, especially in the aftertaste. And it’s really quite buttery which is nice. :)

I’m not going to rate this because I’m not sure I’m getting all the nuances here. I may try this again with more leaf or a longer steep but for now, I wouldn’t purchase it.

I got this sample from TeaBrat in our recent swap. I don’t have a lot of experience with green rooibos, so we shall see! There are also a few white and red flower petals in this blend. It smells very strongly of peppermint with a slight sweetness. Candy cane indeed! I brewed for 5 minutes.

The brewed tea has a lovely aroma. The peppermint has grown milder and I pick up on a sweet vanilla note. However, when I taste this plain, I pretty much just get a mild peppermint tea. In a lot of other notes, people mentioned sweetness from stevia but I didn’t get that at all. I’m not sure what green rooibos tastes like but clearly it’s very neutral because I don’t really pick up on any other taste besides peppermint. When I add sugar, it helps to bring out that vanilla sweetness. This is quite tasty with milk and sugar, but kind of unremarkable on its own.

Hooray, another Yunnan to try! :D I picked this up in my recent Adagio order because I had a $5 coupon and the sample was $5, so I figured that makes it free! ;) Do not question it! The leaves are very cute. They’re all curled up into little loose balls, bi luo chun style. Mostly dark with some golden tips in there too. The dry scent is strong malt with honey and a hay accent – pretty much what I expect at this point. I brewed this twice, first at 4 minutes and then at 3 (not a resteep, with separate leaves each time).

I did 4 minutes first, because it’s the average time for this tea on Steepster. The leaves get pretty big when they unfurl! :D Smells mostly malty with some bread and honey notes mixed in. The taste seemed kind of one-note to me. It was a ton of malt with a little earthy smokiness in there. Meh. Trying again.

Then I did 3 minutes in hopes I would get some other flavors. The aroma was similar, with more honey and some hay as well. I still taste mostly malt, but now there is some honey in there and none of the earth and smoke taste. Still not a super complex flavor profile. I added a bit of sugar and I felt it helped to round out the taste for me. I found this tea pretty good but not great. Somewhere between H&S Tippy Yunnan and Yunnan Golden Tips.

On another note, I saw several reviews for this on Adagio in which people said it didn’t have the normal Yunnan taste. This confuses me a bit because in all the Yunnans I’ve tried so far, the predominant flavors have been strong malt, bread, and honey notes. And this tea definitely has some of those. So I guess I don’t get what the “typical” Yunnan taste is supposed to be. :P