I had this tea hot yesterday and I am drinking cold and unsweetened today.
The first thing I need to confess is that this tea sample is probably super old. My impressions of this tea may not be fair and a really fresh batch might be as spectacular as the company describes.
Having said that, it is not a bad tea. The color of the steeped tea is lovely – a very clear, crisp amber color. There is a slight nuttiness, I pick up the chestnut flavor they mention, and it is smooth with a touch of briskness and a touch of minerality.
I don’t mean this in a bad way, but I get a lot of the mineral taste we have here when you finish your drink and the ice in your glass melts and you drink the melt water. Is that a touch of iron? Like freezer frost? You guys are mostly too young to have had freezer frost!
But really every flavor here is light. It is light minerality, light nuttiness, light briskness…all adding up to a medium bodied and medium flavored tea. Most DHP I have tasted are deeper and darker in notes than this, if that helps explain this tea.
I like it, but I am not finding anything to wax poetic about. It is good, though.
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Ugh, I hate that “melted ice cube”/“freezer frost” taste! No matter what I do trying to make ice (use filtered water, store ice cubes in a freezer bag, etc.) they always taste that way to me. For that reason I have to chill my tea overnight in the fridge, I can’t make “iced tea” by pouring tea over ice cubes. And I cannot add ice cubes to the “straight out of fridge” tea either. It’s like my tea somehow tastes wrong or dirty as soon as I do…
I do the same, Mastress Alita. My strategy is that I always make three teas at once, at least one that needs to go in the fridge (a few hours is enough) and one that can be enjoyed right away. Then I never go thirsty! :P
I usually always have a mason jar at the ready in the fridge. When it gets empty or close to empty, I get a new one going in the evening and strain it the next morning.
The problem of freezer frost is cured for some of us? I’m confused!
Tea-sipper: when I was a kid, all the refrigerator freezers use to get a snowy frost. It could build up quite thick. We used to put the vacuum hose on the exhaust and thaw it so we could “clean” the freezer without turning off the whole fridge. If the frost got thick enough you couldn’t fit as much food in and sometimes it would jam the door open. We would also rake our fingers through it like harvesting snow and eat the ice while the adults threatened us that we were going to get some weird food poisoning from it. As far as I know, only big chest freezers do that now, so I doubt people still eat the frost. Is that the part you were confused about?
The freezer in the fridge that came with the apartment I was in until I bought my place in 2019 definitely had the thick freezer frost layer that constantly made it hard to fit in my food. The ice smelled foul, too. I think all the appliances in that place were from the 70s…
So newer freezers don’t get that ice build up? However did they get it to stop?
Add to that the flavor of ice cubes frozen in those metal trays with a lever opener poured into sweaty aluminum tumblers… (In retrospect, this might be why I always drank out of the garden hose at grandma’s house!)
Ah yes, the metal ice trays with the handle! We brought one home to show the kids when we cleaned out their grandma’s house!
I haven’t had a freezer make frost inside since the 90’s at least, tea-sipper. Maybe it is better insulation or somehow they dehumidify the air of the freezer compartment.
Wow, that is good to know ashmanra. NO MORE DEFROSTING?!?! (Can you tell older fridge and freezer here? haha)
oh wait… i’m just thinking of the pain mini-freezer and outdoor freezer. I forgot the main freezer doesn’t ever have to defrosted. But the weird ice flavor is still there.
Ugh, I hate that “melted ice cube”/“freezer frost” taste! No matter what I do trying to make ice (use filtered water, store ice cubes in a freezer bag, etc.) they always taste that way to me. For that reason I have to chill my tea overnight in the fridge, I can’t make “iced tea” by pouring tea over ice cubes. And I cannot add ice cubes to the “straight out of fridge” tea either. It’s like my tea somehow tastes wrong or dirty as soon as I do…
I do the same, Mastress Alita. My strategy is that I always make three teas at once, at least one that needs to go in the fridge (a few hours is enough) and one that can be enjoyed right away. Then I never go thirsty! :P
I usually always have a mason jar at the ready in the fridge. When it gets empty or close to empty, I get a new one going in the evening and strain it the next morning.
The problem of freezer frost is cured for some of us? I’m confused!
Tea-sipper: when I was a kid, all the refrigerator freezers use to get a snowy frost. It could build up quite thick. We used to put the vacuum hose on the exhaust and thaw it so we could “clean” the freezer without turning off the whole fridge. If the frost got thick enough you couldn’t fit as much food in and sometimes it would jam the door open. We would also rake our fingers through it like harvesting snow and eat the ice while the adults threatened us that we were going to get some weird food poisoning from it. As far as I know, only big chest freezers do that now, so I doubt people still eat the frost. Is that the part you were confused about?
The freezer in the fridge that came with the apartment I was in until I bought my place in 2019 definitely had the thick freezer frost layer that constantly made it hard to fit in my food. The ice smelled foul, too. I think all the appliances in that place were from the 70s…
So newer freezers don’t get that ice build up? However did they get it to stop?
Add to that the flavor of ice cubes frozen in those metal trays with a lever opener poured into sweaty aluminum tumblers… (In retrospect, this might be why I always drank out of the garden hose at grandma’s house!)
Ah yes, the metal ice trays with the handle! We brought one home to show the kids when we cleaned out their grandma’s house!
I haven’t had a freezer make frost inside since the 90’s at least, tea-sipper. Maybe it is better insulation or somehow they dehumidify the air of the freezer compartment.
Wow, that is good to know ashmanra. NO MORE DEFROSTING?!?! (Can you tell older fridge and freezer here? haha)
oh wait… i’m just thinking of the pain mini-freezer and outdoor freezer. I forgot the main freezer doesn’t ever have to defrosted. But the weird ice flavor is still there.