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Ah, I’m back to Steepster. I have had so many things to attend recently, that I couldn’t even log my teas. What a waste! :( Who missed me? Nobody? Oh well, I wasn’t a popularity here after all. :p

Let us see this tea. The dry leaves are short and are narrow. It looks like it is a mix of green and black leaves. Maybe with some grass-looking leaves as well. I think Teabox made a good balance with the dry leaves.

Let us brew this tea. The steeping instructions say 5 minutes and 1.25 tsp in a water of around 180-200F degrees. For this sip, I followed exactly what the instructions said.

Let’s sip now! The first thing I saw is that this tea isn’t of the usual black tea color. Personally, I think it looks more like a green tea. But the taste is definitely more like a black tea. Interesting! The tea itself is very creamy and mellow. I can easy distinguish some reminiscence of melon and citrus along with some nut finish. This tea is really full-bodied, if I try harder I can also find some notes of melon! It is also a bit astringent, around 3 out of 10.

Overall, I find this tea really fun to drink. It’s a real treat for an everyday tea!

Oh, today is an amazing day. Imperial College London just emailed me that they will be making me an offer for a place on their Computing course. So delighted! London, by the way, is an awesome city, especially the South Kensington region. It’s certainly like Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts.

So to celebrate this, I decided to clean up my tea stash only to find that I have this tea. I completely forgot that I bought 1.5 ounces of this from Ebay a couple mongths ago.

I’ve decided to try it Gongfu style. First a ten-second rinse, then a five-second steep. It’s sooo smooth! I never expected anything like this from a black tea. Most of my black teas are a little bit astringent on the tongue, but this one is different. I expected this to be very dry and astringent.

Second steeping (15 second steep): Woha, now we are talking astringency business! I tend to like when a black tea is pulling my mouth together.

Third steeping (25 seconds): The tea is losing it’s color now, meh, I guess it isn’t that high quality. After all, I bought this on Ebay for $6, so it was a pretty good deal nonetheless. Anyway, the taste is still smooth, but I fill that it has lost its power now, so I’m ending this now.

Bottom line: It’s a smooth black tea that is really cheap, but it won’t last long in your gaiwan. (At least it didn’t in mine, a 4 oz gaiwan)

So, this store is a local store in Szeged, Hungary. The store is awesome, most of their teas are good too. Let us see this one.

First round!
Trying this in a gaiwan, the taste, well, ain’t that good. The jasmine for me is just too strong in this one. I think it lasted 5 infusions + a rinse (+5 second steep everytime).

Second round!
Trying this Western style. 300cc! 4 grams of tea! Alright, so now, this one is awesome! It’s just as jasminy-strong as I like it.

Conclusion!
The tea is a pretty basic oolong tea, with jasmine petals all over it. I find it kinda interesting that drinking this in a gaiwan makes it go all way wrong. As a matter of fact, I tried to put less tea in another gaiwan session, but still the taste didn’t change. On the other side though, the tea is a nice refresher if you do it the western style.

I received this sample to review this interesting “new-old” invention! Let us sip!

Since the sample was already bagged, I had to do Western style on it. Not sure how the gongfu style would have turned out, but it might have been good, who knows, this tea disappeared quickly from my cupboard. :-)

As I sip down the last few millilitres, I can taste something I have not tasted for so long! It’s coffee! Oh my gosh, it was so great. Honestly, I enjoyed every single sip of this tea! Now, if we are going back in the time the first few sips were a bit earthy and maybe with a reminiscent of matcha-type grassyness. When you begin to brew this tea the color of the tea is light yellow, but once it steeps for like 3 minutes it becomes dark-orange. It’s not something small like you would expect from black teas, it’s totally big.

Bottom line: An interesting and tasty new-old invention, that I would definitely recommend to anyone!

(What’s worth to mention is that as soon as I poured the water over the bag, a LOT of small bits went straight out of the bag. Whoopsie! :) )

Photos will be available really soon!

I got this from a friend of mine as a present, and it’s an Earl Grey so I have set quite high expectations for this one! Let’s sip! Wohoo!

The dry leaves look very produced. I don’t know whether this is the same exact tea they put in the bagged version of this (I’m not too sure if that exists though!). It typically looks like the tea leaves you would expect from bag, with here and there a longer leaf.

The scent, ladies and gentleman! The scent! Oh my gosh! Great. When I first opened the box I was like, meh, alright this is the thousand year old scent that was trapped for eternity in the box. Never have I been so wrong in my life! The scent remains even after I picked a few grams out of the box. Very intense scent! It’s obviously bergamot-scent as you would expect from an Earl Grey.

I steeped 5 grams in 300ml for about 2 minutes. The end result (as can be seen in the photos I’ve taken) is quite good. It’s about 60-70% dark. As the first sip goes down, I feel no dryness, no bitterness. It goes down slowly, mostly due to its very strong scent.

Bottom line: Great Earl Grey. Re-buying should I run out of the 3.56oz/100grams I have. :-)

Photos available here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127882037@N04/sets/72157648318765629/

I bought 3 blooming balls while I was in Brno, CZ. Let’s see how this goes.

Well I steeped this 3 times already, didn’t really taste good. The official description says it is a white tea, but to be honest it tastes like water! I have no idea why this happened. On the other side, the blooming is great! I’m absolutely in love with the blooming movements. :-)

I got a 20g sample from my father, so I had to try it as soon as I got it, let’s see!

First infusion was quite very nice! Enjoyed a bit of bitterness, and a hype from the caffeine! I find it a bit too ‘heavy’ (as in caffeine) for a darjeeling tea.

Second infusion was even better! No more caffeine hype though. It was a lot lighter as I expected, but it had a slightly different taste. I believe I tasted some chocolateness there.

Had to give it to try when I saw it in the supermarket. If not for the tea, then for the nice metal box. :-) Tasting notes follow:
The scent of it is like real gunpowder. I don’t really find it great, to be honest.
Taste: Well, strange, but it’s not that bad. You can feel that its a green tea, and it’s quite a mild one, but it has some strange (bad?) aftertaste. Aside from that, it’s good.