442 Tasting Notes
TTB tea!
I arrived home from a weekend away to a Huge box with lots of tea! I picked this one for an afternoon tea and it was ok, it was more chocolate the more it cooled, and I typically drink my tea hot. I did like the cinnamon in this blend, but overall I was looking for a bit more flavor for this blend since I thought I overleafed it.
Flavors: Chocolate, Cinnamon
This was a bag I sipped down pretty quickly the first time I got it from Maya, and I just got another large bag from their sale. I can brew this twice, but anything past 2 minutes on the first steep will allow the bitterness to creep in. I can overleaf this tea to get a nice strong morning brew, and with only two minutes, the pecan and bourbony caramel comes through. The harsh base is still there, but I don’t mind a bit of bite in my morning tea. The second steep for 5 minutes is nicely praline and disappears from my cup quickly. I will say this tea does probably smell better than it tastes, but I’ll enjoy the whole bag :)
Flavors: Bourbon, Caramel, Pecan, Sweet
This one is in your face cinnamon with maybe some orange in the background (think photo bomb) I do like cinnamon and the base was just ok, I’d add it to an order but I wouldn’t seek it out. A good fall or winter tea.
Flavors: Cinnamon
Ah dashboard where have you gone?
Reading tea notes this morning made me want to grab a sweeter tea, but I decided to go for savory instead. And since it’s morning, I still need caffeine so a scoop of awesome tea went in the strainer too.
I’m amazed by how a small scoop of flowers can have such a large dill taste and pungent smell. It stands up nicely to the Assam I added with just a hint of bitterness underneath the spicy dill.
I find myself gravitating to teas with an ‘interesting’ taste profile, maybe because I rarely add sweetener, or maybe because I just have a strange palette? After trying my first snow chrysanthemum in a tea shop in San Fran, I knew some sort of this flower would need to be in my cupboard!
Flavors: Astringent, Dill, Savory
Not a builders brew by any means, don’t brew this when you are in a hurry. But if you wait for it and allow the cup to cool, malty, yeasty chocolate is your reward. I’ve had dragon pearls that were easier to brew and drink, so I don’t know if I need this in my cupboard, but I’d be tempted to add it to an order.
Flavors: Chocolate, Malty, Nutty, Yeasty
I like this too, but it never gets quite strong enough to suit me—-how many nubbins did you use in your cup?
Oh, I didn’t count, but dumped the 5 or 6 left in the sample pouch into my cup. The front taste is so subtle I don’t know if adding more pearls would help. Seems you just gotta wait for the tea to cool and the aftertaste to kick in :)
Oh. Patience. I’ll have to work on that! ;)
Despite being commonly referred to as Wild Rice, manoomin is actually an aquatic grass. Denise and Marc, the owners of Tea Horse, did a really good podcast episode with DAVIDsTEA where they talked more about it – icluding how its harvested. Definitely very naturally nutty tasting though, so your tasting note is spot on!