Okay. Okay. Okay. The second infusion, CLEAR. Here goes.
The smell is so much better the second time! It’s soft and sweet, and I want to bury my nose in the cup. Mmm.
Taste:
…Hmm. The first few sips, I think it was too hot and my overall impression was, once again, of drinking green vegetables. Also, it was ever-so-slightly bitter, but that may be the combined result of the steeping time.
(Edit: Just wanted to note something I didn’t initially realize: the bitterness faded entirely as it cooled, although it does get bitter again when it’s too cold. Finicky tea!)
After it cooled slightly, though…hmm, not bad. If this review is far less enthusiastic than the last, I want to point out that I am actually drinking it clear, something I have yet to achieve with any other tea. So even having a positive reaction to it clear at all is saying a whole lot.
It’s still smooth and round! Not quite as sweet as I might have expected, but there are now floral notes that the honey was definitely strangling to death before. It reminds me of…
Actually, it reminds me of when my father took me to Ovo for my birthday. I’ll admit that out of the two Cirque shows I’ve seen so far, Kooza has my heart, but the food in the Tapis Rouge tent at Ovo was much better. Well, they had a tray of “edible orchids,” which turned out to be…you know, orchids. With some sort of cream-cheesy thing stuffed into the center. I was the only one of our party who was brave or dumb enough to eat one. My father asked me what it tasted like when I swallowed the first petal, and all I could tell him was, “It just tastes like a flower. I’m eating a damn flower.” Well, there’s a bit of this taste in it. …Hey! It does taste like orchids after all!
That’s not unpleasant, though. I get the mental image of little flowers blooming on my tongue, like those flowers you roll up in Katamari games. Yeah…I’m kind of into this “clear” thing at the moment. I’m just busy rolling the tea around in my mouth, and it’s soft green tea, and then at the last moment before I swallow, FLOWERS!
Pretty cool. Definitely have to do this with more teas now.
Also, if I have the only rating for this tea on Steepster, why on earth is the average rating for it listed as 77?
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Oh, I should have kept reading before mentioning the honey in last tealog. Hmmm, sounds like the honey was why you loved it tho (which is ok, lol, it has health benefits too).
Haha, honey helped, for sure. But that doesn’t mean I don’t LOVE this tea. Like I said, the fact that I could even manage to drink it clear at all is a huge thing for me – I have been struggling a lot to try to drink tea clear, and have found tea without sugar so far to be an un-enjoyable experience. So I always have to go add sugar, because I can’t not enjoy tea! But I actually got a lot of enjoyment out of this, even clear.
I have such a bad sweet tooth that everything pretty much has to be syrup. I think I just need to push past the junk-food lover expectation I have that everything “good” is ridiculously sweet. This is totally still on my top 10 so far.
Oh, and I just found out that Mariage Freres sells sugar to put in their tea! So I guess I don’t feel so bad if I continue to put at least a little bit of sugar in most of them. If it’s good enough for Mariage Freres, I guess it’s good enough for me!
Yea, we have the honey thing in common (and hey, it’s good for you…better than regular sugar, but that has it’s place too, like in chocolate flavored teas). I have been known to say things are “too sweet” though, and people give me strange looks.
Because Steepster uses a weighted average of ratings, not a straight one. It comes up every now and again. There’s a blog post about why they chose this here http://blog.steepster.com/post/247562587/brewing-a-better-rating-system-the-2nd-steep
@ Cheryl – Yes, I agree on the “too sweet,” to me it tends to apply to things like chocolate. I love candy, but chocolate I can take in moderation. I prefer carrot cake for my birthdays. Which makes my choco-holic family think I’m totally nutso.
@ Angrboda – Thanks, that makes perfect sense! Although it looks really, really strange with one rating. I do think they should make it clearer that it’s a weighted average. Heck, if they even CALLED it “weighted average user rating,” it would look more like it made sense. But I agree it sounds like a more reasonable system than a straight average.
Oh, I should have kept reading before mentioning the honey in last tealog. Hmmm, sounds like the honey was why you loved it tho (which is ok, lol, it has health benefits too).
Haha, honey helped, for sure. But that doesn’t mean I don’t LOVE this tea. Like I said, the fact that I could even manage to drink it clear at all is a huge thing for me – I have been struggling a lot to try to drink tea clear, and have found tea without sugar so far to be an un-enjoyable experience. So I always have to go add sugar, because I can’t not enjoy tea! But I actually got a lot of enjoyment out of this, even clear.
I have such a bad sweet tooth that everything pretty much has to be syrup. I think I just need to push past the junk-food lover expectation I have that everything “good” is ridiculously sweet. This is totally still on my top 10 so far.
Oh, and I just found out that Mariage Freres sells sugar to put in their tea! So I guess I don’t feel so bad if I continue to put at least a little bit of sugar in most of them. If it’s good enough for Mariage Freres, I guess it’s good enough for me!
Yea, we have the honey thing in common (and hey, it’s good for you…better than regular sugar, but that has it’s place too, like in chocolate flavored teas). I have been known to say things are “too sweet” though, and people give me strange looks.
Because Steepster uses a weighted average of ratings, not a straight one. It comes up every now and again. There’s a blog post about why they chose this here http://blog.steepster.com/post/247562587/brewing-a-better-rating-system-the-2nd-steep
@ Cheryl – Yes, I agree on the “too sweet,” to me it tends to apply to things like chocolate. I love candy, but chocolate I can take in moderation. I prefer carrot cake for my birthdays. Which makes my choco-holic family think I’m totally nutso.
@ Angrboda – Thanks, that makes perfect sense! Although it looks really, really strange with one rating. I do think they should make it clearer that it’s a weighted average. Heck, if they even CALLED it “weighted average user rating,” it would look more like it made sense. But I agree it sounds like a more reasonable system than a straight average.