1360 Tasting Notes
Sipdown of an herbal tisane for ashmanra’s sipdown challenge. I got this from a TTB a while ago and was definitely hoarding it because I like it so much. Sweet, minty, creamy, excellent as a latte. Part of my effort to drink through anything with coconut in it before the coconut turns.
Sipdown! I like this one, but I won’t particularly miss it, you know? The raspberry and lychee flavors are very enjoyable – tart, sweet, and juicy. They don’t totally mesh with the base though, which is a bit too grassy and easily oversteeps into astringency. I found that it was good both hot and iced. Really, though, the key for me was adding a bit of brown sugar, which smoothed out the base and brought out the fruit flavors more.
Day 5 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. This might be my least favorite tea so far of this advent. I don’t know if it’s me or the tea, but I feel like this is just ok. I liked it best as an iced tea – somehow the general hay/vegetal flavor was more enjoyable cold. Maybe because it’s not a flavor profile I typically think of for iced tea, so it was a pleasant surprise. Hot, it’s just… a bit nutty, a bit hayish, and a bit green-vegetable. But not really enough of any of those things. And a stronger steep just made it drier rather than teasing out the flavors better.
Day 4 of the Inoki Bathhouse advent calendar. Love Japanese greens, so this was right up my alley. Off the bat, I really liked the color of the steeped leaves – a slightly less green version of how cooked spinach looks. As for the flavor, I was expecting something hojicha-esque but this wasn’t really. It was more like a mix between sencha and a light hojicha. Vegetal with a bit of nuttiness. This got finished off quickly!
Whoops, I took so long to finish my notes on the Tea Thoughts winter countdown box that the spring one is coming out in just over a week! I don’t remember the last time I had a Vietnamese tea, if ever. Thankfully this came with enough leaf to play around with. I made the last of it Western-style today. I enjoyed it, but I think I liked it better with a gong fu brew because the flavor was just stronger and more robust. Today, I mostly got malty, sweet, and jammy notes with a slightly drying effect at the end of the sip. Easy on the stomach, too.
Another excellent countdown box from Nazanin. I’m still thrilled about the cute little tea tray, and there were some delightful and interesting teas in here. I think I’ve skipped maybe one of her seasonal boxes since I started getting them a few years ago. I can’t say enough good things about them, I’m just a big Tea Thoughts fan in general. I like the stickers, the jewelry, the washi tape, the sticky notes, the notebooks, the pouches… I use my Tea Thoughts tote bag literally every time I leave the house (the old version with the zipper and inside pocket). I use handwritten notes for a lot of things, so I justify the stationery as a practical purchase. So yes, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll keep getting the countdown boxes :-)
Day 3 of the Inoki calendar! This was a more elaborate blooming tea than I expected. It gave me fond memories of the first time I visited my partner when he was living in Taiwan – I drank so much blooming jasmine tea when I was there. I was just starting to get into tea and I would drink the bloom grandpa-style, just topping it off periodically. This is obviously a different floral note, but it has that same balance of floral note to vegetal green. Three solid steeps from this. The rose is definitely present but it’s not overwhelming the base. This was such a nice stroll down memory lane!
Day 2 of the Inoki advent calendar. Made this gong fu, currently on steep 6 and still going strong. I’m going to have to stop after this and hope I can still sleep tonight XD
This is incredibly buttery, creamy with floral undertones and no harshness at all. Even this late steep still has a butter cookie quality to it. I’m inclined to agree with Roswell Strange that this might be flavored given how rich it is. That’s ok, this tea is delicious and I am finding it hard to care about whether it’s flavored right now.
Bonus advent calendar! Roswell Strange made this calendar sound so appealing that I asked for it as a birthday present. It was so pricy that I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy it myself, but that’s what birthday presents are for :-)
So, day 1! This is a surprisingly large flower. The only other time I’ve seen a chrysanthemum tisane this big is The Qi’s royal chrysanthemum. I’m more used to seeing it as small flowers. Since it is so big and beautiful, I brewed it in a glass mug for maximum prettiness. This flower isn’t just pretty, though. It’s delicious, too – earthy and gently floral. I got a bunch of resteeps out of it too. Feeling optimistic that this will be a good calendar!
Day 9 of my DIY mostly-Adagio advent. I’ve been a bit slow finishing this calendar! I was optimistic about these, but I ended up not particularly enthused. I found the jasmine to be more “jasmine flavoring” than “jasmine scented.” Drinkable but not exactly wowing me. Just tastes very mid to me.
