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July Sipdown Prompt – a fruity tea

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We have really blown through this one. It is really good iced and I have made the final pitcher of it today to get us through this long, incredibly hot weekend.

We enjoyed it a lot as a hot breakfast tea but the fruit flavors begged to be tasted as iced tea, too. It made an excellent iced tea. I didn’t cold steep it, I made it hot and chilled it. The tea base is the star and the fruit flavors are a great bonus, but they don’t take over and eclipse the tea itself.

July Sipdown Prompt – an iced tea

I bought this during the Happy Birthday (America) special, which was for the glass flask half price when you buy two of their special iced tea blends. I bought three or four different blends to try and I think this one was the cheapest one.

The flask has a two part filter. I was not sure why at first, but the first time I poured multiple little cups of tea out of the flask it was apparent that it is to keep the leaves from finding their way into your cup. Works beautifully. The lid with handle screws on easily and the handle makes it easy to remove the infuser basket if you want to use it in a mug or cup.

The flask is very attractive and the extraordinary clarity of the cold steep teas look beautiful in it. It is double wall borosilicate glass.

I have made this tea, which is a very fine cut black so that the flavors extract well, and Misty Green. I made two separate orders so that we would each have a flask.

Ashman and I tasted this one and Misty Green together. (Misty Green is not fine cut but is a regular green tea.) Ashman preferred Misty Green and I preferred this one. They were both great, though!

Ashman said this one tasted a bit tannic to him, but I find it flavorful and smooth. He has always preferred his black tea sweetened and is used to sweet iced tea and I think that the expectation of his tastebuds for black tea to be sweet when cold throws him off. He has never sweetened green, oolong, or white teas so the green one cold was more to his liking.

One nice thing about this black tea is that you can steep it overnight and it doesn’t get bitter even though it is very, very fine cut. It is so fine that I expected some powder to fall through the infuser but no “dust” fell out when I gave it an experimental shake. I will also say that this is the finest infuser I have ever seen, with the holes seeming to be even smaller than the ones in the Stump pot, which was up to now the finest strainer I owned.

I also bought one or two of their higher grade black teas cut especially for cold steeping. I am looking forward to trying those, and I really want to try this one hot for breakfast soon. It is a good, solid black tea.

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Good banana flavor, medium strength black tea base, nice for breakfast unless you need builder’s tea, and nicely spiced. Ashman and I drank this pretty much every day that he was home for breakfast and we were eating together so it disappeared rapidly.

I lost almost all my energy and usefulness yesterday to a stomach virus and today my buttered English muffin did not sit well. It sat and sat and sat in my stomach feeling like a brick. I decided a pot of puerh for all day sipping was in order.

Since I am behind on cleaning I was busy vacuuming and dusting and polishing and forgot to check the tea, and this big flat cube had opened right up and I had a pot of almost inky black tea.

No worries, puerh almost always forgives, so I added some extra water. Then I was puzzled. There was puerh smell and…something else? Fruity? I decided the jasmine incense burning in another room may have infiltrated the kitchen. But this didn’t smell like jasmine, or like puerh. I poured a cup and sniffed.

It’s just the tea. If someone else made this tea I would swear it was a flavored puerh. Trying to wrack my brain for what the aroma was, I think blackcurrant describes it best. There is camphor as well. Minty tingle on the tongue while the tea is hot that fades as it cools. Overall, the broth is very creamy.

Second steep (these are big steeps) was very dark as soon as the water hit it, so it probably had a 30 second steep at most. Now the initial aroma was quite expected “horse-y” puerh aroma. As I poured it into a second pot, the horse barn was subdued and stronger camphor came forward but there is still a fruity note here, much weaker than the first steep and horse and camphor lead.

White2Tea says it has molasses notes, and I suppose I get molasses and maybe some molasses has this fruity taste which they do not mention at all. I think it is fabulous, and this would be a really great choice for introducing people to ripe puerh tea.

I will ice part of this and keep drinking it for the next day or two, as Ashman is now feeling a bit off in the gut and will also benefit from puerh’s tendency to calm the gut when food feels heavy.

Bottom line: I like it very much and would definitely order more of this.

July Sipdown Prompt – a tea you love the color of

I had this on my wishlist because of CameronB’s review and my daughter saw it and bought it for me!

It is a beautiful red and does NOT taste like hibiscus! It is fruity and light. We drank it by itself and also mixed half and half with decaf iced tea. Both were great. Not too tart, just fresh and just right.

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I thawed a zucchini bread that was in the freezer tonight and made a huge pot of this for Ashman and myself to share. He liked it very much and thought it was a great pairing.

June Sipdown Challenge – a tea you bought multiples of

Not a sipdown, and I hope it never will be. It is one of their limited season teas and you have to grab it while it is available.

Since it is in their low caffeine line, I can drink it at night and still get some sleep.

It is fantastic with ice cream! I love hot tea with ice cream, especially Lapsang Souchong, a good strong black tea, or certain flavored black teas. Hojicha is another great tea to pair with ice cream.

This tea tastes the way a tobacconist shop smells, with the cherry and vanilla pipe tobacco wafting like in a Bug Bunny cartoon and drawing you in.

June Sipdown Challenge – June 28th: Cream Tea Day

I had hoped Ashman could join me for this but he had to work late. This is one of the samples my friend got in her PdT order and she passed it on to me since she doesn’t really drink black tea anymore.

A British blend seemed just the thing for Cream Tea Day, and while I couldn’t have a fancy Cream Tea in a fancy tea house, I did set out some frozen Cream Puffs to thaw to go with this.

I was surprised it is a blend of just Assam and Yunnan tea because I felt like it had lots of the fruity high notes I get from Ceylon teas. The Assam didn’t have a big bite, and I drank this with no milk or sugar and found it very palatable for the pairing.

It is what it says – more or less an English style tea that could take milk and sugar if you wanted but is also drinkable without. It is not as strong as a builder’s tea and doesn’t have the bass notes I find in many Keemun teas that are billed for breakfast. It served well for an afternoon tea time, and maybe reminded me just a tad of Brigadoon. It is strong enough for me for breakfast, but I don’t need caffeine to get me going so it might not be strong enough for everyone as a kick start tea.

Daughter who lives with us surprised me with a gift of this tea and Mango Fruit Blend. I had it with breakfast this morning. I had read the reviews and promptly forgotten what everyone said about it.

Part of the way through drinking it, it hit me that it had a strong Tower of London vibe without really being that similar. You could easily keep both on shelf for their differences.

The base was really nice for breakfast, not thin or too high-pitched. The fruits are rich and deep ones. I did not detect rose or ginger at all, but I was eating at the time, plus I had treated it to my tea stretching parameters of steeping it twice in a row and combining the two, so that may have toned down the ginger in comparison with the other flavors that were being brought out.

Very tasty, and so glad I got to try it! Mike, please make this available in loose leaf!

A friend came over for breakfast this morning and brought me a tin of Palais des Thes Grand Jasmine Chun Feng and a couple of samples, including this one.

The packet that the sachet came in smells like those strawberry hard candies that have a soft center. I love that smell!

The steeped tea is mostly a decent black tea with strawberry flavor but you can tell there is more going on. There is a flavor that tones down the strawberry, keeping it from being a tart strawberry. That could be the honey. I didn’t lavender.

I had trouble with some Palais teas in the past because they were finicky, so right off the bat I made this with slightly cooler water (200F) and kept the steep shorter than their recommendation. First steep 3 1/2 minutes and second was 3 minutes. The two steeps were combined in one pot and enjoyed first with lunch which included fresh garden tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar, so I may not have had the clearest palate for tasting the tea.

The last cup was paired with a couple of Lindt Stracciatella truffles. Strawberry is still the dominant flavor, florals are not coming through, and the strawberry is at a really nice level. I would absolutely buy this to have on hand for a nice little strawberry black tea.