1779 Tasting Notes
I got this as a sample from Shelley_Lorraine! Thanks for sharing! I just realized that this will be my first guyusa!
The first few sips bring the word FINAALLYYYYYYYYY to my mind! This is spicey! Like really spicy, not just spicy but really only has a hint of spice to it. This has kick and I like it, but it’s not so intense I can’t drink it. I can pick out some cinnamon and the burn lingers for a minute or so. I’m getting over (I hope) being sick right now and even tho I can’t taste all the flavors, this tea is perfect! I would love to find a chocolate tea with this level of heat!
Sadly tho, I’m learning the hard way that I shouldn’t drink guyusa until I have weaned the baby. The child hasn’t slept all day and won’t go to bed. It’s going to be a long night!
Thank you so much to Mercuryhime for this sample!
This is the first red matcha I have tried. I’m loving that I can drink this late at night and not have to worry about being up all night! I prepared it as a latte with some milk and sugar and oh man it’s good! The cheesecake flavor is nice and creamy and smooth. I’m not able to pick out a rooibos flavor, which I expected. I need (yes, need) to order some of this soon because I can’t stop thinking about it and wishing I had more! Must finish off more teas before making another purchase! We shall see how my will power holds up against the desire for this tea!
This is the first tea I have been able to taste in almost two weeks! I had sinus surgery and just got the packing out that was preventing me from smelling and tasting. I came home and opened up a few of the new teas I got and was able to smell them for the first time! This tea won the sniff test of what I was going to drink first.
When I smell the dry tea, I’m hit by a huge sweet smell that I can imagine being the marshmallow part of the treats. I taste the toasted rice flavor when I sip the tea, but don’t get a sweet flavor translating from that sweet smell. Adding a little sugar really completes the taste, bringing out more of the marshmallow flavor for me. This is a really fun tea! I can see why so many people love it!
Preparation
Thank you for this tea Shelley_Lorrane!
I didn’t know what to make of this flavor combination, but was intrigued enough to want to try it. I’m not aware of any dish where apples and potatoes cross paths, so it strikes me as a curious marriage. It’s like an odd couple that don’t seem right for each other and you wonder what on earth they are doing together until you spend some time with them and then it dawns on you how strangely perfect of a match they are. I get this tea now. I don’t think it is something I will want to keep stocked in my cupboard, but I get it now.
I can easily pick out the applesauce. It isn’t a fresh apple taste, it’s a cooked apple taste. I think I can taste a touch of cinnamon. I have never had potato pancakes, but I can definitely taste the creamy starchiness of the potatoes. I’m not tasting the green tea base at all and that’s okay. It’s pretty good without sugar, but it’s nice with it too. I could really go either way on the sugar part. Overall I’d rate it as interesting.
Three minutes in boiling water make this black tea bitter. I wish these teas came with brewing instructions on the box or tin so I wouldn’t have to guess. It smells really nice, a chocolate scented tea. The bitter taste is less as it cools, but it is still not smooth. I’ll have to try a lower temperature next time. For some reason instead of dumping my cup and trying again I’m making myself drink it. Penance for ruining a cup of expensive tea? Life is too short for bad cups of tea.
Preparation
Just got back from a month long trip on the road and three days of driving to get home. It’s good to be home! I arrive with a new arsenal of tea purchased on my trip and find some 52teas waiting for me in my mailbox. Feeling a little road weary, I’m hoping some tea will pick me up and cut through my stuffy nose a little.
I have been reading Tea Sipper’s notes on short steeping 52teas, so I’m going to give that a go. At first I steeped this for 30 seconds, but decided to give it an extra 30 in an attempt to bring out more flavors. I can taste the genmaicha, it’s toasty rice and a little bit of butteriness, but I’m not picking up on much more than that. It’s a nice comforting welcome home, but I’ll have to try it again when my nose clears up.
Preparation
Would love to do a real road trip. Isn’t really something you’ll be seeing a lot in Europe and certainly not something you could do in the Netherlands. Driving from east to west will take about 2,5 hours and from north to south about 4 hours. Hard to fill a month… ;-)
Apart from that, gas prices here are through the roof!! Whereas when I bought my Smart I could fill it up for ‘only’ €35, a full tank costs me a little under €50 nowadays and only gets me some 500 km.
I wish our drive only took a couple of hours! Would have been more fun if we didn’t have little ones who quickly become miserable when strapped into their car seats or if we had attractions we were stopping at along the way. Gas prices keep rising here too. :(
Yeah I imagine that with children it’ll probably be a lot less relaxing :-)
I got this as a sample with my Butiki order, thanks Butiki!
I can taste a nice base to this tea, but I’m not picking up on the almond. It tastes like the Butiki Plum Pudding to me. I’m guessing the same black tea is used for both, which is tasty, but the flavors other than that are lost on me right now.
I’ll have to revisit this and several other teas again after I have sinus surgery which will hopefully restore my sense of taste.
The Plum Pudding is actually an oolong. It does get mistaken for a black tea quite a bit though. Both are from Nilgiri, so there are definitely some similar qualities.
Oh no, that doesn’t sound like fun. I hope your surgery goes well.
Oh, interesting! My sense of taste and ability to identify things has been way off lately. I know I have been missing out on a lot.
Thanks, I hope so too! I’d love to have normal sinuses again.
It makes sense that those two teas would be similar since they are both sweeter Nilgiri teas.
I hope you heal fast. :)
Thanks to Barbara for this sample!
Brewed, this tea smells like the filling of a warm peach pie. The smell is similar to the taste with a little more of a floral aspect to it. A little bit of sugar really rounds out the taste and takes it from floral to full juicy peach! The aftertaste is spot on! The green tea base is hidden in the back and hard to pick out over the peach. I really want to try this tea with cream, but I’m hesitant to disrupt something that is already so good. And my intuition was right! Cream really didn’t add to it and actually takes away from the juiciness of this tea. Second steep was pretty good too! I’m normally not a fan of peach teas (maybe because of association with cheap blacks with overdone synthetic peach), but I’m finding this one quite delicious.
Just read the description and saw it had melon in it too! I’ll have to see if I can pick out the flavor in my next cup! These The O Dor teas have interesting flavor combinations that I’m not picking out before I read what is in them. I’m not as good at identifying tastes as I thought, but it’s fun to try!
Preparation
The directions say to steep this tea for 2-2.5 minutes. I did 2 minutes for my first steep and boy was I disappointed! It was a little bitter and tasted nothing like cookies. I added milk like it suggests and sugar, but it didn’t help. For my second steeping I did 2 minutes again, added a little sugar and it was a whole different tea! It was very cookie dough like and the black tea base wasn’t over powering or bitter. It seemed pretty creamy on it’s own to me. I did just over 2 minutes for the third steep and it wasn’t quite as delicious as the second steeping. Next time I think I will do the first steep for 1 minute instead of the initial 2.
