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This is so very blah. It’s not nearly fruity enough to sate any berry cravings and it’s got kind of a meh aftertaste. It’s also old so that might be contributing. Not enjoying but this was kind of a sipdown. I’ve finished the big packet at work with this pot (one cup left in the pot, half of my mug still left to go). Reading my previous tasting note, I have 2 more small packets at home, so I can’t mark this as gone quite yet.

This has definitely lost most of it’s potency. Still tasty but it doesn’t wow me anymore. I don’t have a whole lot left so I’m trying to drink it up.

Trying to share more with my coworkers.

So I’ll preface this with the good news. My Indian (as in from India) cube neighbour shares most of my workday teas these days and he liked this one a lot. He’ll probably be getting the balance of this once I finish this pot, if I can’t foist the rest of the pot off on him also.

For me, well, I haven’t even tasted it yet but it’s brewed too hot to drink and when I smell the tea liquor, it makes my too-spicy senses tingle without even touching my tongue. Like the back of my throat is on fire. So I don’t have high expectations of this myself.

I did add some sugar because I find that sometimes that makes the cinnamon a bit more palatable for me. I can occasionally eat cinnamon rolls after all. (Not sure anything makes ginger palatable for me).

This is…sweeter than I expected, even with the added sugar. And the licorice…well. I can never really tell with licorice because I don’t hate the flavour itself but every time I drink a tea with a strong licorice flavour, I can’t suppress the shudder that goes down my spine. I’m really not sure what causes it. The ginger and cinnamon aren’t too strong but they’re definitely there, making this tea experience one to be endured rather than enjoyed. If there’s vanilla in here, I can’t tell. I can’t even really taste the lemon. It’s spicy licorice all the way.

Bleh.

I wasn’t in the mood for anything complicated as my last tea of the night and after I’ve finished spending the day deconstructing binders. Busted up my fingers of my dominant hand enough that they’re so sore it’s actually painful to use my phone touchscreen. Bah. Hopefully they’ll heal soon.

This tea is getting old but still good. It’s nicely malty and nicely smooth. I’m coming to the end of what I have of this, one or two more servings (pot-size). I’ve enjoyed this but it’s time to move on. I’ll consider getting it again if I ever pare my hoard down to the point of seeking out tea to buy and needing a Yunnan Dian Hong.

This tea is getting me through this working Saturday. I’m not like Sil, this is voluntary overtime, but that doesn’t make it any less sweaty work since I’m used to sitting at a desk to do my work and all day today I’ve been deconstructing binders full of stuff. About 100 left to do before I can go home.

This tea is back to what I remember it being the first time I drank it. It is chock full of almonds and vanilla beans and it’s smooth and sweet with no astringency or bitterness.

This tea is very frustrating to me.

Oh, it has nothing to do with the tea itself. It’s a very pleasant oolong of some description that I’m quite enjoying, though I need to eat some more before I drink my next infusion because oolong on an empty stomach makes me headachey. A colleague at work gave it to me after we had a conversation and I gave her the rest of my Spiced Orange Tieguanyin (Verdant) because I don’t like it enough to drink the rest of it.

I have a picture of the package I wanted to put into the picture field of this tea. I’m not being given an option. This is frustrating. I’ve tried on 2 different browsers. I cleared my cache and cookies. I can’t drag and drop. There isn’t even an option to put a URL or file in. Nothing to click at all. Very frustrating.

ETA: This is an instagram of the tea wrapper in question. I was trying to use this as the photo but it’ll work here too.

http://instagram.com/p/sBVW_4HTsI/?modal=true

Made this as an iced tea through the cold steep method at work yesterday (and then realized I’d forgotten to bring in anything to drink it in, iced tea in a mug doesn’t really work). So I’m trying it today. I didn’t sweeten the entire liter because I’m trying to get some of my co-workers a little more into tea but sweetening my travel mug was an interesting experience. The granulated sugar here doesn’t have a spoon so it was sort of a ‘pour a little and shake and taste and repeat until satisfied’ thing so I’ll probably end up with a different amount of sweetener in each cup of this unless I give in and sweeten the rest of it in the jug.

I’m not completely happy with this as an iced tea but I don’t know how much of that is that this tea is super old and I should really just throw it out or something but I created it and it’s got my poor deceased kitty Gizmo on the label and I can’t seem to do that. So I keep drinking it. The hazelnut makes this nutty and toasty but the sub-optimum old Adagio black tea makes this just meh.

Unlike the only other commenter here, I steeped this…closer to the directions. I steeped it for a minute rather than 30 seconds at 205 degrees and I have to say that I’m not getting much other than the tea itself. The additional ingredients aren’t making much of an impact with that short of a steeping time, though the tieguanyin itself is quite nice. A bit roasty and sweet. Next time (next steep?) I’ll try to remember to steep this for a bit longer. Right now it’s giving me a headache because I haven’t eaten anything yet today (darn you oolong effect!)

Second steep (the next day) – done at boiling (thanks Dinosara) and 4 minutes. I can taste more now, a tiny bit of citrus and what I think is the sarsaparilla. Which I apparently have been pronouncing wrong forever. The vanilla is very faint, if it’s there at all, it’s hard for me to tell. And I don’t know what birch is supposed to taste like.

Overall, I think I like the plain tieguanyin better.

Hopefully the last of this. It wasn’t really enough left for my normal mug so I mis-judged the amount of water slightly. Not awful, but glad to be rid of it and I hope I don’t have more of it hiding at home.

I actually quite enjoyed this today. Perhaps it’s because I drank it at room temperature. I don’t think I sweetened it any more than usual. Or perhaps I did? Hard to say, it is quite sweet which overwhelmed the hibiscus sourness. However I haven’t eaten anything in hours and hours so I’m not primed for sweetness like usual. \

In other news, I just volunteered myself for weekend work with some of the most tedious boring stuff available to me as an engineer. On the other hand, money and it’s at my normal worksite so all my tea will be there too.