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Trying this one straight this time since I had it doctored before. Oddly enough, the bergamot doesn’t seem as noticeable now. It’s more of a faint juicy-like sweetness with a touch of perfumed bergamot at the tail end of the sip and hanging around post-swallow. But I still like this one – it’s smooth with no real astringency and a nice, non-fake flair of flavor. It doesn’t scream “I’M EARL GREY!” but rather states it in a dignified tone and in possibly a slightly snooty British accent.

I am feeling bold and daring today so I decided to give this one a shot. There was a time that I thought I would never try pu-erh – the idea of it was just too scary. But then Steepster(ites) came along and made me brave enough to try it. I’ve tried a handful of different pu-erhs and don’t hate them, but I haven’t found one that I can really get behind (at least, not a cooked one – I’m kind of loving raw ones so far). I keep trying though! I might be out of luck simply because they all have a taste that I end up mentally calling ‘earth syrup’ and it’s just a little too rich/sweet/thick for me to not feel overwhelmed. But again, I keep trying, so I’m apprehensively excited to be trying this one.

The dry leaf is more ‘hay syrup’ smelling than ‘earth syrup’, but after a quick rinse and then some steeping and the earth comes out. No fishy though, which is another pu-erh smell/taste that can be a bit much for me so the lack of fish equals good. There actually might be a little hint of something spicy in the smell, too, but I’m not exactly sure on that.

Okay, I have to say this first steep is promising. Yes, there is some sweet dirt taste going on but it isn’t thick or heavy enough to reach syrup status. Instead, there is a little almost-Yunnan-like tea taste at the beginning of the sip and a little peppery-type like warmth/spiciness left on my tongue after each sip. The damp dirt sweetness hits in the middle of these two flavors and follows through to the end. And while the tip of my tongue is tingling with spice after the sip, the sweetness expands in the middle of my tongue. The post-sip sweetness is almost into syrup territory thickness but not quite.

Amazingly, I finished off my cup and wasn’t too pu-erh-ed out to avoid more steeping! Second Steep (4:00) is sweet and smooth and edges a bit more towards earth syrup but still doesn’t feel too heavy. I’m thinking the peppery warmth has increased a bit but that could be residual lunch after-spice (but I don’t think so since sipping seems to increase it).

And I’m still up for another steep, so Steep Three (5:00)! It actually tastes a lot like the last steep. Smooth, earthy sweet but not heavy enough to be syrupy. Not as much depth of flavor as steep one and I’m not getting so much of the hint of spicy, but it’s still good.

Fourth Steep (6:00)! Mild, sweet but a little lighter/thinner than the last two steeps and more closely matching the first steep (but without the pepper tingle).

Honestly, I wouldn’t be adverse to taking this tea a bit farther (which is kind of amazing since it is a pu-erh and usually I’m done pretty early in the resteeping process) but I just finished a HUGE blog post about my Hawaii trip (http://pinkness.danzimmermann.com/2010/10/mia-ness-over.html) so I feel the need to celebrate and relax with something green so I’m going to call this tea done. I’m also going to leave this unrated for a little contemplation time. The fact that this never hit earth syrup is huge for me so I actually can say that this is a cooked pu-erh I really like. Shocking, I know. But now the question is: how much do I like this? Will I start craving it’s slightly lighter pu-erh profile? Is this enjoyable enough to break through my anti-cooked-pu-erh mindset to where I would actually buy it? That’s what I need to figure out so no rating for now, but it’s definitely a 75 or over.

Additives in this one? Make me happy. Not as sweet as I thought, but the creamy + candied bergamot is tasty with other stuff added and the lack of tea-ness in the flavor doesn’t really bother me like it did when drinking this straight. It’s similar to yesterday’s Upton’s Devonshire EG but the bergamot responds better to milk (doesn’t get all perfume-y) in this one so I like it a touch more.

So it’s official – good Keemuns are really good! Adagio’s Anhui, Chicago Tea Garden’s, Jackee Muntz and this one – they’re all a little bit different but they’re all good. They each have similar notes of rye and sweet and smoke but in different strengths and proportions. Adagio’s and CTG seem to sit on one side of the spectrum for me with softer, smoother notes and lots of complexity. Jackee sits on the other end, representing the Keemuns with a stronger, more straight-forward flavor and texture and oh yeah, if the stars align, major sweet-in-the-form-of-caramel notes.

This one strikes me as sitting pretty much in the middle of that spectrum, with some delightful characteristics of the Keemuns to either side. The dry leaves smell sweet and slightly smoky, which somehow combines to give me the strong impression of chocolate – more milk than dark, but listing slightly towards the dark side. Post-steeping, the smell is slightly smoky, rich and silky, with a bit of a dark grain/yeasty note that is too sweet to be bready and instead translates into almost crème brulee-ish. You might see where I’m going with this…

The taste is lovely. Not quite as complex as CTG’s or Adagio’s Anhui Keemun but still with that overall gentle smoky taste and almost-bready/grain-ish/woodsy solid note. Then a bit of stars-aligned Jackee pops up in the insanely smooth and silky feel. The end taste is especially smooth with no hint of a raw or acrid note that a lot of Keemuns seem to have. Instead, it’s silky, rounded and heavy. If this tea was a shape (other than, you know, the shape of whatever container you pour it in to) it would be a large, frictionless, dark garnet sphere – that’s how smooth it feels going down. It also has a strong sweet note – not quite as sweet as full-on-caramel-mood Jackee, but sweet enough that, combined with the thicker grain-ish/yeasty/solid note and the smooth, decadent feel, it makes me think a bit of crème brulee or custard.

Ultimately, I like the edge and greater complexity of CTG’s and Adagio’s Anhui Keemun just a hair more (a very tiny hair, in fact) but this is a really good tea. Those that find non-caramel Jackee a bit strong would probably really enjoy this one, especially the sweet notes and silky feel. Actually, anyone that enjoys Keemuns would probably like this one unless you tend to go for rougher, rawer feeling/tasting Keemuns – it’s truly delightful.

A big thanks to Angrboda for the share!

Trying it with additives this time, just ‘cause I can. Looking back over my previous tasting note, I was concerned that sugar would make it too sweet and milk might kill some of the flavors. And yeah, that’s basically it. I added maybe half a teaspoon of sugar to my 10oz but it’s surprisingly sweet. And the milk takes away the candied citrus aspect of things and turns it more into a perfume-y EG flavor which isn’t near as fun. But it’s still not bad, I just like it more straight.

I love how this one smells so I’ve been anxious to try it – it’s vanilla-creamy with a splash of creamsicle-like orange. And I’m a sucker for anything orange, so yeah. Post-steeping the smell is awesome. It reminds me (what I remember) of SpecialTea’s Earl Grey de la Crème, which I really enjoyed (though it has been years since I’ve had it).

Additive-less, the initial sip seems a little sharp but the aftertaste is sweet and creamy. Mmm. A few sips in, the sharpness evens out and I’m left with smooth, creamy, sweet but not overly Earl Grey-y tea. The citrus bit pops up mostly at the end of the sip and is nice and bright but sweet in a way that doesn’t really scream citrus fruit so much as fruit-like candy. It’s nicely sweet but I almost want to add sugar to fully realize the dessert potential of this tea.

Ultimately, this falls more in the dessert tea category for me than Earl Grey category, but that’s okay because I like the dessert tea category a lot. I have a feeling I’ll really fall in love with this one when I put in some sugar and milk (and thus the rating might go up).

Going on vacation totally messed with my normal tea-drinking schedule so I’m happy to get back home if only for the chance to dig back into some teas I’ve been wanting to try. (Mind you, lack of my regular tea brewing ability was about the only thing close to negative for my vacation and the beach being half a block from my apartment? Made it fairly worth it.)

This one is another sample provided by Arbor Teas. I generally enjoy Yunnans lots so I’m looking forward to it. The smell of the dry leaf is nicely promising – sweet and malty and thick and yummy. Mmm. The steeped tea has the same great smell but with an added creamy undertone and something almost red-wine-like.

Initially, the taste struck me as a bit watery and thin on the front end; sweetness and malt and a hint of tasty (tasty, mind you, not icky) cardboard came next in at the middle of the sip, then a delightfully sweet and almost floral taste hit at the end of the sip and expanded through the aftertaste. The sweet flavor was more of a caramelized sugar sweetness than the raisin- or fig-like sweetness I typically get from Yunnans. After the tea cooled a little more, the initial taste no longer felt watery, just smooth and with a thinner mouthfeel, which I think threw me off a little at the first.

Second steep (4min) is smooth, sweet and has a touch more texture. The hint of cardboard-ish starch is gone, as is most of the malty except in the aftertaste and I’m left with a nicely sweet, smooth, tasty tea. Very nice.
2.7g/7oz

Hello all! In case anyone has noticed, I’ve been a bit MIA for a couple of weeks-ish. I’ve been in Hawaii! I got back earlier today and am finally all unpacked, including the massive amounts of tea I purchased while there. After all, there is a Lupicia in the Ala Moana mall. And Shirokiya, the Japanese department store also in Ala Moana Center, had a long row of tea. Oh yeah, and Don Quijote (the Japanese discount store) had some tea – including Maeda-en stuff. So yeah, I got 10 different teas in Hawaii, most of them sencha. And when I got home I had a delightful package from Chicago Tea Garden waiting for me with 4 more teas and my new yunomi that I ordered before I left. (I got this one – http://www.chicagoteagarden.com/buy/yunomi/yunomi-cup-03 – it’s awesome!)

Anyway, lots of Steepstering (and real-life things) to catch up on and that always goes better with tea. I cracked this one open before my trip for a swap but didn’t get a chance to try it. So I’m passing on my hordes of new tea to try a new-to-me tea (though it’s been sealed in my pantry for a while).

Tossing the dry leaf into a pre-heated pot smells sooooo tasty. Not buttery like some of my favorite senchas, but still sweet, vegetal and surprisingly fresh.

The taste is also fresh and very crisp and clean, also a bit thin? As it cools though, the taste thickens and it begins to taste like honeydew melon and a little fresh grass with some sort of not-quite-salty-but-somehow-oceanic lower note that’s really attractive. It still has this remarkable crisp/lightness to it even though it feels a little fuzzy/comforting. It’s not as thick and heavy of mouthfeel as my normal senchas but it is very nice. Oddly, the final sip gave me some white grape flavor, which I’ve honestly never gotten from any sencha before so maybe it was just a short circuit in my tastebud/brain connection.

Second steep, instant pour: This makes me think of apples even though, yeah, it doesn’t actually taste like apples. Perhaps my taste buds are jetlagged? Or, upon more consideration, perhaps it is because this steep has a crisp sweetness coupled with a little bit of texture which gives me apple-like feelings? Or both. Or something. I don’t know, it’s good.
5g/10oz/pour started at 40s

I was pretty excited to see this as the freebie teabag from Lupicia this month. I love trying random tea flavors like this and I loved Adagio’s version until I met Samovar’s Yunnan Golden Buds which was an awesome buttered sweet potato flavor in an unflavored tea. So yeah, I love sweet potatoes and have no issues with it in tea-form. But anyway, on to this sweet potato tea.

Wowza. The teabag smells strong. Like sweet potato casserole fresh out of the oven, including marshmallows and whiskey. (Because everyone uses Jack Daniels in their sweet potato casserole, right?) After brewing, the smell calms down a bit on the whiskey bit (I’m guessing that smell was from the flavoring?) and ends up more sweet potato casserole with a hint of marshmallow.

No additives. The taste isn’t as strong as the smell would indicate but the aftertaste is, tasting just like I’ve had a bite of sweet potato casserole. It’s… kinda weird. The taste of the tea is sort of… starchy sweet but not sugary sweet, more like buttery sweet but it isn’t quite buttery. There’s a tea taste there but it’s not all that complex. It’s pretty much sweet potato casserole, especially on the aftertaste.

Which is really kind of neat… for about half of a cup. Then it’s just too much. Even though I liked the taste and it gets full points for flavor accuracy, I was pretty ready to pour out the last few sips of the cup instead of drink them. Tasty or not, I was done with it.

And that leads me to the issue of how to rate it. I think the flavor is done very well. There’s just something about it that I can’t take for all that long. I think I’ll leave this unrated.
1 teabag/6oz

First off, it is hard for me to not like a chai when made the traditional way – I mean, lots of milk, lots of sugar, what’s not to like? At the same time, since making it that way takes so much longer, I rarely have chai. So I almost always like this type of tea and I almost never make it. But I’ve been looking forward to trying this smoky chai from sophistre for quite a while so today I finally mustered up the energy to make it.

I can’t say I would have pegged this as a smoky chai – though maybe that’s because I’ve been drinking Russian Caravan this morning – but there is a certain something in this that is really different and unique. An edge I’ve never gotten from chai before – it makes it a bit mysterious. And tasty. That little edge is addictive, too. I like tasting it.

I don’t think this is a dramatically different chai from most of the others out there, but at the same time, that little extra note (the smoke, I imagine) gives it a distinctiveness that I think any chai fan would appreciate.