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Aw, one of the best characters ever… Beep boop beep! This tea is a mixture of broken-up green and white tea leaves, lots of dried apple pieces, some rose hips, and a few blueberries. I see some small pieces of hibiscus, so hopefully they won’t factor into the taste (I hate hibiscus, and rose hips for that matter). It smells very apple-y, with some tartness and a sugary scent. Brewed for 3 minutes at 190 degrees.

It smells pretty good – a mild blend of blueberry, vanilla, and the hay scent of white tea. The taste is quite weird though. It feels like the flavors are fighting one another and not melding very well. I can taste a generic green tea taste with a little bit of bitterness and some musty hay from the white tea. I also taste quite a bit of apple and little to no blueberry. Sigh… I hate it when companies include apples as filler. There’s a really weird tart aftertaste from the rosehips that linger unpleasantly at the back of my throat. Overall, pretty meh. Next time I’ll try a lower temperature, since the recommended 190 seems high to me for a blend with green tea in it. I could see trying this cold-brewed too.

Is this R2D2? I don’t think so. I have a sneaking suspicion that the creator chose this combination because it involves a lot of the colors white and blue. I am always so disappointed when fandom blends are created this way… R2D2 is such a go-getter! He definitely needs a caffeine punch in his tea!

Another tea from KiwiDelight’s Japanese green sample extravaganza package. It’s a sencha tea with the teensiest cherry blossom buds in it. Cute! The smell is a bit odd… I don’t really smell the sencha, just a strange vinegar scent?

After the tea is brewed, it smells more like a sencha, albeit a mild one. It’s grassy and spinachy in a very light way. There’s a light floral note, and that weird vinegar odor is still there in the background. It tastes similar to the smell – mild grassy sencha with just a wisp of floral taste. I taste vinegar in the back of my mouth at the beginning of the sip – strange but not wholly unpleasant. I asked my boyfriend what he thought, and he said it reminded him of apple cider (what?! weirdo). It seems to me that the floral note is mostly in the aroma.

This was definitely a very delicate tea. I don’t think it lent itself very well to western style – either that or I should have used more leaf. Interesting, but I’m not in love. :P

I got this sample from KiwiDelight. I’m not really going to go into the dry leaf, because I think most of us know what dry sencha looks and smells like (at least, anyone who reads my notes will know by now). Steeped for 1 minute as per usual.

The aroma is pretty standard but still nice – a mixture of spinach and alfalfa with a buttery edge. Tasting this, I assumed that this was a heavily steamed variety because it has more intense flavors. However, it’s actually because it’s not harvested until autumn (I don’t know how steamed it is, it didn’t say). It’s a nice balance between the intense and sweet flavors of gyokuro and the more savory flavor of sencha. I get notes of spinach, zucchini, and butter with a little touch of savory seaweed. Overall, quite tasty and I would definitely drink it again. :)

This is the first tea I selected to try from my brand spanking new Star Wars fandom sampler from Adagio. To be honest, I’m not expecting much from these teas and I mostly bought the sampler for the cute tins (I love Star Wars…). I chose this one because it smells fantastic! It’s very strong marzipan/sweet almond scent with other roasty nuttiness mixed in and a few spices. The dry leaf is a mix of a ton of various tiny brown things. Only a few tiny chocolate chips, which makes me happy because I generally don’t like chocolate in teas. On to the tasting! BRRWHHHAARGH! …sorry, I don’t know how to spell a Chewbacca roar…

The aroma of this tea is yum and yum! It’s a more toned-down marzipan mixed with hazelnut and nice roastiness. The taste is also more yum and yum! It’s much more subtle than the smell, but the flavors blend beautifully. There’s a lovely roasted nutty taste with little hints of sweet almond and spice. It also seems a little vanilla-like to me, but there is no vanilla in this so I guess it’s just the almond! I don’t taste chocolate, hooray! This is a very warm and comforting tea, and it reminds me of the holidays. I found myself inhaling with each sip to smell that amazing marzipan goodness. I added a bit of sugar to the second half and I think I may have liked it better without. I can see this being good with milk too!

Now, to the really important part… does this represent Chewbacca? I would say it does a decent job at least. Chewbacca is generally laid back, warm and fuzzy, just like this blend. Then there’s the hints of spice and the caffeine kick from the mate to represent his outbursts. Bravo, I say! I am so pleasantly surprised by this one!

My last new Yunnan to try from H&S. I was a little intimidated to try this one, and I’m blaming boychik! ;) I believe she used the word “gross”… Eep. The dry leaves are kind of short and slightly curved, and they’re mostly black with some scattered golden tips. The smell is similar to the Yunnan Golden Tips I tried yesterday morning – very malty with scents of honey and stonefruits. This one also has a sort of musty hay note to it. I did a 3 minute steep because it seemed to be what most people suggested after trying this one.

Well, this Yunnan is definitely very different from the other couple that I’ve tried so far. It almost seems like a completely different type of tea – the only note that really ties them together is malt. While others I’ve tried have been bready, this tea is very earthy and has a fair amount of smoke taste to it. There’s a light honey flavor that I augmented with a small amount of sugar. The sweetness also helped to cut the earth and smoke flavors slightly. I also get an aftertaste that definitely reminds me of leather, but in a mild way. Boychik had warned me that this made her mouth very fuzzy, and I definitely do get a dry mouthfeel from it (that’s what astringency means, right?), but I didn’t have to brush my teeth after. :P

Overall, I realize this is a lower grade tea than the others but I feel it has a similar level of complexity but with largely different flavors. I quite enjoyed it. :)

This is my 100th tasting note! Hooray! Not bad for being on Steepster for just under a month.

I got this sample with my David’s mug order. I was pretty excited since there’s been a lot of hype around here about the carnival collection. The dry tea is a mixture of a lot of stuff. There’s red and green rooibos, sprinkles, mango pieces, and apparently some kind of brittle. It smells very sugary and rooibosy.

The aroma is very cotton candy, which was a good sign. I can smell the rooibos, but it’s in the background. At the first sip, I definitely got the cotton candy flavor. However, it seems with subsequent sips I don’t get it any more, which is odd. I’m not sure if my tongue adjusted to the sugar and now it tastes less sweet to me or what. So it basically tastes like a somewhat weak and sweetened rooibos… Meh. I used the whole sample, too, which looked like more than the recommended 1.25 tsp.

First-ever gyokuro! I got this as a free sample from YunomiUS as part of my Japanese green exploration fun time (totally made that up). I don’t know anything about gyokuro, so I kind of browsed around on Steepster to come up with some steeping parameters for western-style. The dry leaf is a beautiful jewel-tone green and shiny, but it is extremely broken up, which I did not expect. It smells similar to a sencha, mostly like alfalfa and a sweet grassiness.

The brewed tea smelled a lot like sencha to me, too. It’s quite spinachy and somewhat sweet with a buttery zucchini element to it that is new to me. But wow, the taste of it took me completely by surprise! I can see similarities to a more heavily steamed sencha, but the level of intensity is so enormous here. There’s a second when I first sip where I don’t taste a whole lot, but then I’m immediately hit by this immensely deep and powerful butternut squash taste. There might be some asparagus in there, too. I also taste a slight bitterness which seems intrinsic to the tea, but I could have also screwed up the steeping. :P This tea has an extremely thick and creamy texture and it coats the tongue heavily. The flavor lingers on and on.

Honestly, this tea is a bit much for me. I don’t find it very well-suited to western brewing because the flavor is so intense and it continues to build as you drink it. I think I would like it more if I did the traditional smaller brew.

This was a very interesting tea experience! I definitely can’t assign a rating to this, I would have no idea where to start. :P

Another sample from KiwiDelight. I’ve loved the genmaichas I’ve tried so far, so I was excited to sample another one. The dry leaves are small and flat, and there are some stems included. There is also toasted rice, which is much smaller than I’ve seen before. And everything is covered in a green dust of matcha. I was surprised when I took a sniff, because the dry tea doesn’t smell much like toasted rice, it mostly just smells like grass and leaves.

Well, the toasted rice aroma definitely came out while it was steeping! It made my whole kitchen smell, which was amazing. :D At first when I tasted the brewed tea, I got quite a bit of toasted rice flavor. But it seemed as I kept sipping, it moved more and more into the background and I could mostly just taste the tea. It’s quite grassy, with notes of autumn leaves and some kind of fresh vegetable taste that reminds me of celery or cucumber or something. When I finished the cup, the rice flavor came back as a lingering aftertaste.

I liked this tea, but I really would have liked more genmai flavor.

Trying a different Harney sample for my first tea today! I was pretty excited after loving the golden monkey I had yesterday. It actually smells pretty similar in the bag – very malty. But this one has more honey and I can smell a touch of stonefruit and alfalfa. The leaves are about a 50/50 mix of black and golden twisty leaves. I love the look of the gold leaves, they’re so fuzzy and shimmery. I really want to try one of those pure tip Yunnan teas that are all gold and beautiful! :)

This tea has a lovely aroma! Malty, but I love the honey and stonefruit scents. Wow, the taste is powerful! This is definitely the epitome of malt to me, it’s extremely strong but delicious. I also taste a lot of honey, which is fantastic! There’s a woody note and a hint of baked bread. I can see the similarity between this and the golden monkey – they have the same notes but in very different proportions. I found this even more amazing with just the tiniest amount of sugar added. I was a bit sad that I didn’t really taste that wonderful stonefruit that I was smelling. The most I got was a hint by the time it had cooled all the way to room temperature.

I have to say, I feel really bad for this tea on Steepster. It really doesn’t deserve the low rating it has, but it only has 4 ratings and one of them is a 34 (what…?). Makes me sad. :(

Yay another Butiki tea! :) This was one of the samples I asked for with my order. I love blueberry teas so I couldn’t resist! I must admit, I got really nervous about this one when I was reading the other tasting notes on it. It seems a lot of people had a really hard time with this tea coming out very bitter. Eep. It looks like a black tea, though the leaves are smaller and some of them are rolled up like oolong. There are a few blue flower petals and my small sample had one giant blueberry in it. The dry leaf smells like yummy blueberries and not much else, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I followed the directions on Butiki’s website for steeping.

So, I didn’t read up on purple tea at all, and for some reason I expected it to be similar to black tea, probably because the leaves are so dark. Let me tell you, I could not have been more wrong! I knew as soon as I saw the liquid that it was nothing like black tea. I took a sniff and it smelled like blueberry and not a lot else, just like the dry leaf. Not helpful, tea! :P I took a sip and it was pretty much the last thing I expected… It tastes like white tea, and a very mild white tea at that. The blueberry is definitely the star, and there’s a light hay-like flavor there too. The aftertaste reminds me of green tea though, sort of leafy or something. I find it kind of amazing that a leaf that dark can brew up so light! I was really worried about it coming out bitter, so I measured out a precise half-teaspoon instead of using the whole sample. I think I could’ve just used the whole thing to make the flavor a bit stronger. Overall, delicious and unexpected! :)