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Ever look at your teas and have a total blank in your mind where information about how you ended up with it should be? That’s this tea. I thought it might be a tea of the month acquisition, but I had two 2 oz packets of it and the tea of the month club I belonged to only sent 2 oz per flavor. Big mystery here.

In any case, this containing both white and green tea, I steeped it at a low temperature for a short time and I intentionally overleafed because it’s Teavana, and it has big hunks of stuff in among the leaves. Coconut, dried pineapple, red peppercorns are very visible as is the lemon grass with its attractive geometry. It smells a lot like cinnamon in the tin.

After steeping it smells a little like cinnamon, a little like clove and cardamom, and a lot of that weird lotion-y note that I so disliked in the Teavana Tulsi Dosha Chai. Which makes me think that I perhaps unfairly pinned that note on the tulsi rather than on some oddness inherent in Teavana non-black tea chai. The liquor is a lemon yellow color and rather cloudy.

Rather unfortunately, the taste is a sort of generic, watery, cinnamon-y, pepper-y spice, with the weird lotion-y note in the aftertaste. I don’t taste any of the fruit, and I taste very little of the tea. I will try overleafing more severely next time and perhaps bump up the steep time and temp a bit, but I fear overdoing those and ending up with a bitter mess. It’s not as bad as I remember the tulsi being in terms of aftertaste so I’m giving it a few more points there, but this is going into the sipdown immediately category. I may even try cold brewing it to get it over with faster.

And of course, this is among the flavors Teavana still offers. Why do I always like the ones they discontinue and with a few exceptions dislike the ones they continue? Another mystery…

Sipdown no. 158 for the year 2014. I’m having this hot because I’m out of cold brew black tea and waiting for another batch to do its thing in the fridge. I’d love to try a jasmine green cold brew, but I am hesitant to part with the amount of tea it takes to make up a batch since it’s such a favorite. I may break down and do it, though.

This isn’t the most spectacular jasmine green I’ve had but it’s quite good for one on the light side (both the tea and the jasmine).

Happy July 4 to all you Americans in Steepsterland!

Sipdown no. 157 for the year 2014. This is a back log from yesterday when I polished off the last little bit of this as my morning hot cup.

I’m on a sipdown roll with these black Leafspas. Though Darjeeling isn’t really black, they just call it that. This is the third sipdown of a mega tin inside of a week, helped tremendously by the cold brewing that is going on pretty frequently these days given the heat here. I let this one steep a bit too long I think, but it’s still tasty and just a tad bitter. Darjeeling makes an interesting cold brew. I don’t know that I’d pick it for that ordinarily as it’s a little piquant for a cold tea in my book.

Which raises a question. What else do you like to cold brew? Is oolong a good choice? I have a ton of it and not as much time these days as I need to enjoy it hot through multiple steeps. If it’s a good choice, how long should it brew, or does it matter?

Also, what about pu erh? I have a lot of loose pu erh and the idea of cold brewing it sounds kind of yuck, but I dunno, maybe it would be interesting?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and sorry for my continued sporadic appearances. Things are getting kind of complicated here. The BF was admitted to the hospital last night with raging diabetes, and they haven’t let him out yet, so things are under an unusual amount of stress. Hope everyone else is having a better week. :-)

Sipdown no. 156 for the year 2014. I had the last bit of this this morning as I somehow let myself run out of coffee.

This one rather whizzed by. After trying this initially years ago (judging from my first note), I returned to it when I went on my second major tea binge earlier this year. I managed to polish off the entire tin (4+ oz) in not very much time, largely through a combination of cold brewing and using it as extra tea for chai, and if I didn’t have so much tea I would regret having plowed through it quite so quickly without really savoring it.

It’s a nice yunan. In looking back over my first note I mentioned a thick mouth feel, but I didn’t experience that this morning. It was rather on the light side in terms of body and flavor. Pretty much everything else I said in the initial note seems right, though.

And it made a really nice cold brew.

Sipdown no. 155 of the year 2014.

Hi everyone! It’s pretty hot here and I find myself not much in the mood for hot beverages. But somehow tea is even hotter when hot than coffee, so coffee has taken over as my morning beverage. Perhaps it’s the chi (qi?) factor? No idea.

Periodically, though, I’ve been making up batches of cold brew, and between those and running out of coffee and drinking the rest of this hot this morning, I’ve reached another major sipdown. This made a really nice cold brew, better than the hot version. The citrus gives the cold brew a tiny tang that makes it interesting.

My sipdown project has obviously been derailed, but I’ll continue on through the summer to the extent I can. Baseball season is over, school is over, etc. but we’re now gearing up for a vacation in Scotland later in the summer, and work has maintained a steady state of busyness so life remains hectic. On top of all this I’m trying to keep writing and taking classes regularly. And did I mention exercise? I gained back all the weight I lost and got horribly out of shape due to stress and blues, but with the trip coming up I’m trying to shed some pounds (it won’t be nearly enough but it should help some) and get some basic aerobic fitness back so I’ll enjoy myself rather than feeling tired and out of breath roaming around Scotland.

In any case, sorry for my continued scarcity. Hope all is well with everyone!

I love jasmine pearls in both green and oolong form. Jasmine tea in any form is awesome in my book if done well, but pearls are particularly candy like.

This is a mellow one. Everything about it is mellow, from the scent in the packet, to the pale yellow liquor, to the floral aroma, to the flavor which isn’t so jasminey that the green tea is untastable and isn’t so light as not to merit the name jasmine.

Not as tasty overall as the Leafspa, but I’m bumping that one up still higher so I can give this a solid score. I haven’t met a jasmine I didn’t like, I have just met some I like better than others.

Still battling some time sinks at work and home that are keeping me away from tea and here, but hoping to figure out a way to manage the various pieces of my life better.

Hi all! Generally hot weather, combined with end of school year craziness with the kids and the fact that one of my colleagues at work recently departed so (guess what) I am now doing part of his job as well are all conspirators to keep me from enjoying sitting down with a cup of tea, much less writing tasting notes. However, I’ve been coughing for the last couple of days and today, I woke up with a squeak in my voice signalling the beginning of laryngitis. Ugh.

The good news is that baseball season is almost over, one of the kids’ other activities is on hiatus until the fall, and school will be over in a couple of weeks.

This tea has now become part of my work stash, and I’m glad I had it here with me today. There really is nothing like a cup of warm tea for any throat ailment. I see more warm tea and potentially a few notes in my future. ;-)

I was cold brewing for a while and then got side tracked by some other bright shiny objects and haven’t put any up for a while, but I think I will do that tonight as well.

Hope everyone’s doing well!

Sipdown no. 154 of the year 2014.

Honestly, I don’t care enough about this tea to try to perfect steeping parameters for it. It was decent, but not special when I tried in the gaiwan, and I tried it several times. I dumped what was left (about 6 grams) into the Breville and made it according to Tavalon’s instructions—180 degrees, 4 minutes.

This didn’t make it any more or less remarkable than it was in the gaiwan using a lower temperature. Fortunately, it isn’t planty, so I give it higher than usual white peony marks for that, and this time a slight floral note is coming out high above some slight woodiness.

But I strongly suspect white peony and I simply aren’t meant to be unless it is operating as the base for a nicely flavored white tea.

Sipdown no. 153 of the year 2014.

I think I have figured out what Harney tea this reminds me of. Ready?

Queen Catherine!

And here’s the really amusing thing. I see that I rated this and Queen Catherine the same without realizing at the time what the comparison was.

I had the kids do a sniff test of what was left in this sample bag against what was in the Queen Catherine sample. They both said this one smelled more “green.”

Sipdown no. 152 of the year 2014.

Not much to add to previous notes. Pleasant enough, just not particularly distinctive as fruit flavored green teas go.