3235 Tasting Notes
This has been a busy week, and will continue to be. We picked up my oldest daughter at the airport over an hour away at midnight. She will come over later when she has rested to bring me LOTS OF NEW TEA! There is tea from Paris, Dublin, Budapest, and Nothern Ireland.
In the meantime, this is testing week for my youngest. So as I sit here proctoring ( that kind of sounds bad if you say it aloud…) I will sip away on my good old standby 100% Keemun and fantasize about the new lovelies to try that will be here soon!
This is fairly inexpensive tea but very satisfying with its chocolate notes and rich flavor. No bitterness, no astringency, just a nice, bracing morning cup. This seems to be about as strong as I like to go in a Keemun, though there are others I Iike very much.
I am doing a spring cleaning of tea and tea samples, trying to get some nearly empty tins emptied and revisiting swaps and samples. There was enough of this to make a bit for a tea follow-up to dinner.
The aroma of this tea makes my eyes roll back in my head. Ah, wonderful jasmine – not perfume-y, soapy jasmine. The steeped tea is a bold deep yellow, not a light lemony yellow like this morning’s Jaune Lemon. It leans a bit toward orange.
The tea base has a decided GOOD astringency, clearing the palate and freshening the breath. There is no bitterness. The jasmine is not overbearing but quite nice. This reminds me a little of Teavivre’s Chun Mee and as I near the end of the pot I feel like I am even getting a bit of that sweet plum aftertaste, but a bit lighter than in Chun Mee.
Delicious, and many thanks to SimplyJenW for sending it.
This is a sample I received with my Christmas gift tea. The ingredients listed on the back of the pouch that held the teabag says it contains 87% green tea from China, 10% lemongrass, and lime, lemon, and ginger essential oils.
The dry tea did swell considerably as it steeped. When I did the last oolong bag they sent I set it free but this one I kept in the bag because it didn’t look overly constricted.
The scent is decidedly lemongrass. I feel like I am shopping at our local nursery and rubbing all the lemon mint and other lemon scented herbs. This is a wonderful aroma. The color of the steeped tea is very lemony in the cup, having a beautiful yellow color that isn’t too pale.
The taste stands up to the aroma and ingredient list. The green tea base is very smooth and subtle and the lemongrass really stands out. This would be a lifesaver when you have a really sore throat. I can imagine it would be very comforting and soothing. I do feel the slightest bit of warming from the ginger, especially in the aftertaste. This might be excellent iced as well.
If you love lemon or lemongrass herbal teas, this would be a real treat. Hubby agreed with the nursery herbs assessment, saying he found this to be good but he still prefers Silky Green by Bird Pick above other green teas.
This was my first ever genmaicha, and I appreciate Bird Pick sending this sample in with my order. That said, I must admit that the aroma of the steeped tea was not appealing to me. It smelled like someone had spilled food on a burner and then cooked something without wiping the burner off first. The taste was essentially the same to me. To all the genmaicha lovers out there, I apologize. Perhaps I shall acquire a taste for it, if anyone can ever make me try it again. Meanwhile, I will switch back to Sunday morning tea that we enjoy! This is probably great genmaicha, and it just isn’t my bag!
I hope you only steeped it about 45 seconds.I just had it for the first time and tried it straight but my granddaughters like it sweet. Reminds them of sweet rice crackers from the Asian market that are really good!
I agree with Bonnie. I find most Genmaichas to be waaay better when steeped for a shorter time as most are Japanese greens that are a little more delicate and finnicky
Oops. There were no directions on the pouch so I steeped it like any green – three minutes. There was just the one bag and I steeped it twice so I doubt I could get a good idea of what it was supposed to taste like.
3 minutes is waaay too long for a Japanese green tea. I find that 30-45 seconds is pretty good and I never try to go more than a minute, at least for the first steeping. If you have enough left give it another try with a much shorter steeping.
It’s good we can help each other along isn’t it! I know I can count on you guys to tell me what to do when I try a new tea type and fumble around with the timing. I hate buying a tea with no instructions. Especially blends…you have no idea how much of what is in them so how long do you steep and how much do you use? With straight tea it’s easier to look up at least.
I love that we help each other! I don’t usually mind getting a tea without instructions because I hardly listen to them anyway! I do dislike getting blended tea without ingredients though. With blends I typically try to find it on here and see how others make it, if I can’t do that I err on the side of caution and treat them with a lower temp like 175 and less than 3 minutes steep time.
I almost checked on here, then said, “Nah! It will be fine!”LOL! So I will give genmaicha another try at a later date. I had already thrown the teabag away.
By the way…my daughter homeschools too…has 8 kids right now….7months to 18 years. 3 bio, 3 adopted, 2 foster…one little guy is bipolar and keeping mommy up at night…she needs more than tea right now! NAPS! Appreciate your homeschooling efforts! Have a good week!
Thanks, Bonnie! Your daughter sounds amazing! After May I will only have one child left in my little school! :) I may need to start pestering my oldest daughter to hurry up and get married and get me some grands!
As the guy who has let his parents down by refusing to “produce grand kids” I’m staying out of that part of the conversation, but I would like to weigh in on the tea steeping conversation.
There are very few teas in this world that are so particular they need their own, specific instructions. The broad guidelines for white, yellow, Chinese green, Japanese green, Indian black tea, Darjeeling, oolong, Chinese black, shu pu-erh, sheng pu-erh… the broad guidlines are pretty universal and will almost always get you a “good enough” cup with any leaf. Fine tuning of those guidelines for a given leaf has more to do with getting the best possible out of that leaf than being some kind of requirement to get a cup that’s drinkable.
3 minutes is a long time for any tea, even if you’re doing Western style steeping. And that being said, I would only recommend Western steeping for a few types of tea: black, shu pu-erh, oolong (but only the dark ones, not the green or floral ones) and Darjeeling.
Really, everything else wants to be steeped the traditional Chinese or Japanese way, which means lots of leaf to water ratio and short, multiple steeps.
The good news is, you get a lot more cups of tea for your money doing it the traditional way than the Western way — which is counter intuitive at first because you use so much more leaf and produce smaller pots. But I’m currently on my 8th steeping of this morning’s cup and you’ll never get anything like that doing Western style.
Hubby and I left the house early this morning to go to an estate sale waaaay out of town, not far from the beach. So of course, we kept going! It was nearly eighty degrees, we had a picnic in a garden on the Little River, saw a bald eagle fishing right in front of us, a woodstork, and a cormorant, and then went walking on the beach. When I was walking to the strand the fresh sea breeze brought some wonderful scents that reminded me of this tea. I seem to smell tea aromas more and more where I never did before! Even when I was chopping and cooking carrots and other veggies last week, I was reminded of one tea or another.
Anyway, after a long and tiring – but exquisite! day – I made a whole pot of this, and drank it all myself! Once again there is a lingering sweetness that stays in the back of my throat, making me want even more of this tea. I want to try more Tung Ting/ Dong Ding teas and see how similar they are.
This is a resteep of the leaves from this afternoon’s pot of tea. These leaves are still going strong, even being steeped western style and for the second time. Now I am picking up that same phenomenon that I got from Chun Mee by Teavivire. This steep is more woodsy, and at the end of the sip there is this amazing sweetness that lingers in the back of my throat. Perhaps there is a taste of dried hay as well. I didn’t pick up on the sweetness earlier today. Either it wasn’t there or it was hidden by the foods we were eating or the lively conversation. Now as an evening cuppa, oh my goodness this is marvelous. I am so glad, because I had really had a hankering for Chun Mee and I am out. This will hold me until my next Teavivre order!
After reading Dinosara’s post about her tea with rosebuds today, I almost mixed this with Rose Scented Black. At the last minute I decided to make it straight since we were already have a peach flavored tea. I am so glad I did. I don’t drink this one often enough. As soon as I took a sip I had to blurt, “Man, that’s good!”. And it was. This is a great black tea and paired wonderfully with our afternoon eclairs and cookies. Another one that has has to stay in the cupboard!
This was the first tea of tea time today and I just have to say, “WOW!”
My guest loved it, I loved it, and I want more. I also want to know why autocorrect changes the word “more” to the word “romper” even when I don’t mistype anything. That could be a very awkward substitute. Moving on…
This tea has such full flavor. It is both buttery and woodsy, and is going to be a tea shelf staple for a long, long time to come I do believe. Wonderful cup!
This is the loose leaf version. I gave instructions to my youngest to only give this about three minutes since the leaf particles are rather small. I must say it came out rather nicely and the peach flavor was quite good. This is definitely going to be my lunchtime iced tea when the horrible heat hits this summer. The tea base is strong enough to stand up to the flavoring, the peach flavor tastes natural, and it is great without additions.
K S…I have tried this one iced already and it is VOON-DER-BAR! I think you would like it! I was actually a little disappointed in Harney’s sachets of Midsummer Peach when I tried it beside this tea, and not because it is decaf. I just thought the peach flavor tasted artificial next to this one. My guest today said this one tastes just like the fresh South Carolina peaches that are sold beside the road here in early summer. The farmers drive up from SC almost every day to sell their peaches.
I decided to try one iced and lightly sweetened with my lunch. It made me change my mind about what is in this blend. This actually tasted like I had added lemon to it, so I am guessing that Ceylon must be a big component in this. I thought it was great iced but youngest said it was too astringent for her. I think she was picking the lemon actually, plus I put very little sugar and she likes a lot! I will definitely be drinking this iced from now until the tin is empty!
Lots of new tea? Exciting!
VERY exciting! Sounds like she had a lovely trip!
Well, the Paris tea was just shipped to Northern Ireland where she picked it up! LOL! She would have loved to include Paris on her itinerary, though. She did have a great time, and I have a ton of new tea. :)