DrowningMySorrows Send Message

I drank this last night and I’m still not really sure how I feel about it. It seems pretty different from White2Tea’s other moonlight whites like Nightlife and Tiltshift…maybe it’s just because it’s old arbor? I don’t think I’ve had any old arbor whites before. The other moonlights smell really fruity to me but Nightfall smells…tobacco-y? And the first couple steeps tasted less fruity and more grassy than I was expecting. I dropped my water temperature a few degrees and the grassiness went away. After that there were a lot of citrus type flavors. I liked it better toward the middle and end of the session than I did at the beginning. Neither the flavor nor the aroma was as strong as I’ve had from other moonlights so I think I might have underleafed it a bit (my scale was alllllll the way downstairs and I’d just gotten comfy in my blanket nest). I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it as much as other moonlights. I’ll play with it a bit more to see if it was user error or my mood (I was a little grumpy, I dropped a glass tea infuser thingie in the sink and cracked it…3rd teaware casualty so far this year!) but for now I’m glad I only got a sample instead of a full cake.

New tea day, yay! It’s always super exciting when the mail lady brings me a tea package and I decided I needed to try Tiltshift right away. I ordered a few minis and a whole cake so I have some to try out while I let the cake age a bit.

Dry it doesn’t smell like much. It kind of smells like the paper wrapper or maybe the pouch it was packed in. Maybe that will change as they have a chance to air out a little. First steep/wash didn’t have a ton of flavor or color but it had a fruity aftertaste that for some reason reminded me of those ice pops that come in a plastic tube and you break them in half to eat them. I don’t know why. The ice pops are kind of gross but the tea wasn’t. The flavor stayed relatively light for the next several steeps while the ball opened up. There was a little bit of fruity flavor and maybe a tiny bit of floral but mostly I was getting that creamy vanilla thing I adore. Mouthfeel was soft and…powdery? Can something be wet and powdery? Not that nasty chalky texture of bad protein drink mixes but more of a soft silky type feeling like baby powder on your skin. The aroma got stronger with each steep. It smelled familiar but not? Sweet. Fruity but I couldn’t identify what kind of fruit and it seemed like a little floral hidden in there but I couldn’t figure out what kind for that either. At one point I thought I smelled grape but when I really thought about the different kinds of grapes I’ve smelled none of them seemed quite right. Maybe some kind of fruity candy? My steeps weren’t precisely timed but they were longer than I usually do for gongfu but shorter than western style. It just didn’t look or smell “done” after a short steep. Around steep 4 or 5 I forgot I’d added water and it steeped quite a bit longer than intended…it wasn’t the best steep but it wasn’t awful. That steep had a little more of the fruity flavors but it seemed like it was starting to get an overbrewed bite to it. After about 10 or so steeps I decided to give it a more western style steep with more water…because why not? The tea still had flavor and I started watching a movie and it just seemed easier. I ended up spending a really long time sniffing the tea as it cooled and two things came to mind: sour peach rings candy and a hibiscus-lime drink I had several years ago at an international food festival (not completely sure but I think it was chilled hibiscus tea with lime juice, a ton of sugar and maybe a little vanilla). I don’t think the tea smells exactly like either of those things but there’s something there that makes me think of them. This steep was sweet and creamy but I still didn’t taste nearly as much of the fruity stuff as I smelled. It tasted really good and smelled great, the smells and tastes just didn’t seem to match up? I liked it a lot and I’m curious about how the flavors will change over time. It might be hard to let it really age, though. I want to keep drinking it and play with different steeping methods and temperatures. If budget wasn’t a concern I’d probably order a mountain of Tiltshift. Realistically, maybe one more cake or another handful of minis if it’s still available in a few months when I try to justify another order.

This was a bit of a steep fail but it still tasted good so I guess it wasn’t too tragic. I started gongfu style in a glass mug with glass infuser, only filling the mug to the bottom of the handle. After 2-3 steeps I realized I didn’t have the attention span for gongfu and filled the mug all the way for semi-grandpa-style (leaves still in the infuser but leaving it in the mug until I wanted a drink…not especially convenient but it works and it seemed less messy than scooping the leaves out of the infuser and directly into the mug). It was a great plan until I got distracted shopping for birthday presents for my nieces and let the tea go completely cold. Despite my mistreatment the tea was smooth and delicious. It’s mild but not really boring, and slightly sweet. It’s not one of those mud and soggy leaves ripes. Dry it smelled kind of like an instant soup powder or something savory like that but I didn’t taste that in the brewed tea. Maybe it’s just the thought of flapjacks but now and then I got a whiff of something like pancake syrup or caramel sauce. I don’t usually like cold tea unless it’s an iced latte but I didn’t mind Flapjacks cold. It might be a good option during the summer when I really want tea but it’s too hot. My ripe tea bin is overflowing right now but I’d consider reordering this one once I’ve drunk down my stash a bit. The cute little mini tongs don’t take up much room compared to pouches of tea and full-size cakes so it shouldn’t take too long to find room for more.

First tea in a few days. Weather-related migraines were one of 2020’s many unwanted “gifts” and they appear to be here to stay. Every time the air pressure drops it feels like my skull wants to split open. I don’t remember signing up to be the human barometer. Everything tastes and smells a little off when I’m migrainey so I’m drinking a tea I’ve had many times instead of trying to form an opinion about something new, just in case my taste and smell are still off even though the pain is gone.

I think it’s been a couple of months since I last drank this tea. It’s not my favorite moonlight but I like it quite a bit. It was the first big cake I ever bought (I think 200g was the biggest before this one). 357g seemed so huge when I pulled it out of the shipping box…I thought it’d last me forever but I’ve managed to drink about half a cake in around 10 months. I’ve been thinking I should order more but I haven’t decided if I should get more of the 2018 or try the 2019.

This tea’s got the fruity white tea flavors but with some darker, black tea type stuff going on too. It might be because of my lazy, imprecise timing but some steeps taste and smell more like white tea and some more like black. Once in a while I get a hint of that vanilla-y flavor my favorite moonlights have, but when I try to focus on that flavor I can’t find it anymore. Not sure if that’s a me thing or if it needs more time to develop that flavor. It’s not brain-breakingly complex but it’s interesting enough to keep me coming back to it. It’s been my go-to tea for when I can’t decide what I want to drink. Smells good, tastes good, and it doesn’t seem to be very particular about how it’s prepared. I’ve played around a bit with the amount of tea, amount of water, water temperature and steep times…it’s been drinkable no matter what I’ve done to it.

Hmm…not sure how I feel about O’Bitters. It was more bitter than I expected, though I don’t know why the bitterness was such a surprise given the name. When dry it smelled like the chenpi teas I’m used to but wet it smelled more bitter. Bitter ripe was kind of weird for me and I wasn’t really into it. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t match my mood very well. It was kind of like the teas stuffed in king oranges. I think the king oranges are more bitter than tangerines and mandarins. I don’t know why but I think of king oranges as having a “good for you” type bitterness. Maybe at some point I ate something that was supposed to be really healthy that had the same kind of bitterness. O’Bitters didn’t have quite the same bitterness but it was close enough to make me think of king oranges. Pretty different from the soothing, smooth orange flavor I’m used to with chenpi. I have one more mini to try later. Maybe I’ll like it better next time.

Tea at grandfather’s today. Usually I do Copper Cow Coffee while I’m cooking and cleaning at his house but coffee can upset my stomach sometimes and my stomach hasn’t been happy the last couple days anyway, so it’s a tea day. Nothing fancy, just “grocery store fancy” black tea with some sweetened condensed milk in my big ceramic lined travel mug. I prefer it with a little maple sugar and half and half but I was trying to limit the amount of stuff I was dragging with me.

I don’t really consider this good black tea (good compared to the other grocery store blacks around here, though!) and I don’t like it plain but it’s decent with cream and sugar and maybe a couple cookies. Today’s cookies were Biscoff but it also works well with shortbread or digestives. I alternate between PG Tips and Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold for my basic blacks to drink with cream. PG Tips is slightly easier to find in my local grocery stores. I like that both brands seem to be pretty consistent. I’ve never had a surprise weird box of either of them.

Hot Brandy is interesting. I’m still relatively new to gongfu-ing teas and in my head white teas are delicate and light like silver needle steeped western style and blacks are all sort of English Breakfast-y. Combining those two things sounded weird and not especially pleasant to me but I added one Hot Brandy mini to my order because it was cheap and other teas that didn’t sound great to me have been surprisingly delicious. Hot Brandy is more like aged pressed whites that start tasting a bit like black tea. There are sweet and fruity flavors like I’ve come to expect from shou mei or moonlight whites and then there’s that thick and creamy, feels-like-you-could-chew-it mouthfeel I’ve noticed in fancier black teas like gold needle. It seemed like earlier steeps tasted more like white tea and as it went on the black tea flavor got stronger. At one point I thought I could taste cherry…that reminded me I need to re-order more of that aged dahongpao I thought tasted like dark chocolate covered cherries. Toward the end I wasn’t getting that thick tongue-coating feeling anymore and the flavor weakened into lighter somewhat fruity black tea. It was nice. I don’t know that it’s amazing enough to order in bulk but I’d drink it again without any complaints and might even sneak another ball or two into a future order.

I was all excited about finishing my tube of toothpaste last night because my new one is Vanilla Chai flavored (I hate minty dental care products)…and then I realized how sad my life must be if tea flavored toothpaste is this exciting for me. So I did what any reasonable tea-addict would do and fired up the kettle for a cup of chenpi tea to make me feel better about my non-existent life.

Using my Bodum The de Chine glass mug with glass filter (so proud of myself for remembering to not use a gongfu bottle and having to spend the next week or two trying to get the orange smell out of the rubber seals and plastic connector thing!) but only filling it a tiny bit above the bottom of the handle. That level seems to be enough to cover most minis but not be too watery for gongfu. Someday I’ll measure to find out exactly how much water that is.

I was a little nervous about Saturday Mass because of the description talking about it being all dark and medicinal but it smells a lot like my beloved Golden Horse stuffed tangerines to me. It smells quite orangey but the orange flavor isn’t as strong as some chenpi teas I’ve had. Not sure if there’s less peel in this one or if it’s just hiding in the leaves. The peel in this does seem darker than some others, the age maybe? I don’t know. It smells great. Kind of nice to have more of the tea flavor coming through, though I do enjoy stronger orange flavor too. It didn’t seem to last many steeps but I wasn’t exactly being careful with water amounts and steep times. Maybe I’ll try it grandpa next time.