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Thank you Butiki Tea and Stacy for this sample!
Tonight I grilled a Ahi Tuna steak for a favorite sandwich. After grilling 1-2 minutes per side on a hot dry pan, rest the tuna a few minutes then cut into chunks. Dress with Soy sauce mixed with a little WASABI (um love it). Make a salad of chopped greens, cut up avacado, a little chopped green onion, fresh corn if you have it, a little jalapeno pepper if you want…tomato if you are not allergic like me…and mix with the tuna…then spritz with lime juice and put a glob of the mix on a hotdog type bun. This is really good! Should be enough to make a few sandwiches.

OK. What goes with this?

To follow my fab sandwich for dinner, I had this Coconut Cream Pie caffeine free Rooibos and watched a French Movie on Netflix in HD on my 60in big TV (this is the good life of a retired old lady!). Oh, and a piece of salted dark chocolate.

I think this tea is almost a vanilla coconut cream flavor. I am so thankful that Butiki knows how to create flavors that are pure without going sour in the mouth. It is a pet peeve of mine that some companies use flavoring that is like swigging out of a bottle of flavoring with the alcohol in it. YUK! This is GOOD flavor not the bad stuff! The aftertaste lingers pleasantly long afterwards with that mostly vanilla note. I was tempted to get creative and run for my Lapsang Souchong to add a little…but this is not about mixing tea this time around. Butiki deserves it’s own time spotlighting this tea!

Thank you lovely Indigobloom for this sample and many others!

I was humbled today with a big mailing of samples from Indigobloom! I’m like the old woman tucked away who sees family now and then, goes to the grocers and Church but otherwise is invisable in her little home. My friends are the fleeting words on Steepster which I enjoy so much. The kindness of so many samples today was more than I would have expected from anyone!

My daughter told me about a Netflix documentary called Being Elmo…all about the Puppeteer who does the muppet Elmo and how he began as a poor young man in Baltimore, MD. I wanted to pick a delicious tea from my new bunch of samples appropriate for Elmo watching. Hum, got it! Chocolate cake! That’s what Elmo would drink!

I set the steep time for 5.5 minutes. The liquor smelled like cake alright, chocolate and vanilla wafting through the air. The liquor was the color of cream soda…light brown colored and the first sip also reminded me of cream soda with cocoa flavor. The taste was not very sweet on it’s own so I added splenda which improved the dessert quality. One more thing was not quite right. The rich flavor of cake was lacking. The tea seemed thin, so I added cream and again this helped elevate the tea to being more cake-like.
The aftertaste was different…not bitter, but I think the cocoa nibs are giving a woody, dry straw taste on the finish that is a bit odd. Some people might notice this at first and think of a bakery taste and then later it strikes you as an odd aftertaste.

My take is that I think this is enjoyable Chocolate Cake Tea. My grandsons would love this for sure especially with some chocolate ice cream! It was very fun to drink while watching my Being Elmo documentary!

Thanks again Indigobloom!

Thank you Teavivre for this sample!
This sample came vacume packaged in a purple and gold wrapping and then inside vacume packed again. These little darlings were not moving in transit!

I had volunteered some time removing cobwebs from garage doors this fine Spring Saturday in my community condo complex…and not feeling particularly up to fussing with complex brewing techniques…decided on Western Style (side saddle being that I’m a Colorado lady) steeping of this fine tea. This Oolong is soaked in honey. Interesting.

A 2 minute steep and the removal of the leaves smells wonderfully sweet with a bit of floral vegital glamor. The color is medium deep honey gold and somewhat cloudy…maybe from the honey.
On tasting I am surprised that there is not a heavy honey flavor. There is sweetness which is quite light, but not honey. I taste the light lilac and vegital flavor that my nose picked up from the first introduction. This tea is a bit salty with a tingle of pepper.
Adding some sweetening improves the flavor, bringing to the forefront the beautiful floral lilac expression. I am disappointed in the lack of honey flavor. As an Oolong, this is something I have had before, and it is a nice Oolong but not remarkable.

Also, 3-4 teaspoons tea for 8oz of water is a lot. I used 2TB for 16oz pot good grief! For this tea not to taste great is a shame.

The second steeping (I’m being fair here) is light and clear!
Whatever the honey coating was doing globbed onto the leaves so tightly before and clouding the tea is gone. Now the liquor sunny yellow-gold and shimmering. My second brew is much more illusively scented…as if a breeze lifted the scent of one lilac on a strand past my nose. There is absolutely no honey at all. None. Nada. But, the flavor is pleasant. This second steeping is where you want to be with a nice Oolong (still this is an average-plus one though).

My overall rating will have to be somewhere I don’t want to go, but I must be honest. I get no honey flavor in this tea. I think you have to sacrifice too much product for a good cup. The first 8oz is cloudy and not that good but the second steeping is much better and I expect the 3rd and 4th will be fine also. I have had such good experiences with my Teavivre tea’s that this one is just not spectacular like I’m used to. I may be expecting too much. I do appreciate the experience.

Thank you Butiki for this sample!
Yesterday I drank so much caffinated tea that I was up and down during the night (don’t act like it never happened to you!) . So there’s no way I wanted to repeat that mistake and took down my decaf bin for an evening selection.
Have you noticed how vanilla tea initially tastes ok and then the flavor goes sour? I hate that! Reminds me of fake flavoring with alcohol.Blech!
This vanilla is good! No bad aftertaste and the flavor is mellow not overly bold.

While this is not a mindblowing brew, it is tasty and created well.

First review. Bought this at Whole Foods today…had been curious about what this would taste like in the Spring and Summer as a cool beverage like a green tea milkshake. I read the package suggestion for making an 8oz. cold lemon Sweet Matcha drink and went with that since I had no whole milk on hand (and I’m watching the calories too). All I can say is….eh. Not that sweet or flavorful. You can’t mess up a recipe that’s 1TB powder, 1/4 tsp fresh lemon juice and 8oz water! Whisk! And a big…eh! No green flavor, just bland. To be fair I’ll try this again with milk and see what I think. Right now I have to rate this the way the green stuff fell.

I still like this tea a great deal and especially enjoy playing with adding it to other tea’s and cooking with it. Here is tonights discovery:

No more stinky veggies!

You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever guess what I did with my Lapsang Souchong tonight. Well, I don’t like the smell of my broccoli steaming in the steamer basket (and I had 2 bunches from Whole Foods on the stove) so I put 2 pinches of …you got it…Lapsang Souchong in the water and….OH WOW! The smell was wonderful, and the flavor super fantastic. Not too smoky but just right! My house didn’t smell like old socks either! Um…Um…good! Playing with my food, playing with tea!

ok, another thing I did with this tea was put some in a steeping basket then in the water where I was boiling some cheese tortellini. This was also a big winner. I added a little olive oil and dash of Greek seasoning after draining the pasta…so good! Smoky in a mild yummy delicious way!

Second Tasting Note.
After my exciting Gyokuro tasting at Happy Luckys Tea House a few days ago, using the Shinoba Cha method of extracting flavor from the leaves by letting ice melt over them slowly (AWESOME FLAVOR CONCENTRATION!)…I thought…hey self, I have this Gyocuro Genmaicha Green Tea…so what would happen if I tried this ice method with it?

So I Did!

Here’s a video of the method: http://youtu.be/4UEZcq1qVtw

All afternoon….little drizzles of extracted flavor…concentrated drop by drop as the ice was melting. Pretty good flavor! Nutty, salty and savory. Not as extreme as the higher quality straight Gyokuro without the toasted rice that I had previously, but pretty good with a lingering aftertaste. That aftertaste is wonderful and lasts for hours.

If you have never tried this method and have a nice Gyokuro or Sencha around, you might give this method a try since it is cool for warmer weather and so easy to do.

Andy at Happy Luckys told me that he heard about a place in Japan that puts out pure blocks of ice with a groove in each running end to end. A cup is set at each end to catch drips of melting water. Then a different type of Gyokuro is placed in the groove of each ice block so that guests can go from one to another tasting each Gyokuro varietal as the melting progresses. Sounds heavenly!

Thank you to Teavivre for this tea sample which I requested!

I noticed that there were no tasting notes for this loose Pu-erh on Steepster. So, when Angel contacted me about sending a second round of samples, I requested this one and I received a nice amount for several large pots of tea.

Where has this Pu-erh been? Why has noone reviewed it before? In my opinion, it is one of the best…if not THE BEST loose leaf pu-erhs I’ve had to date!

The instructions for brewing recommend 1-2 minute steep…but I went longer to 4 minutes which was delightfully dark. The broth (not liquor at this point) was not dirty but um yum…lightly salty with the flavor of slowly sauteed, buttery crimini mushrooms. Splendid! Marvelous! Delicious!
I can sip this and not need to snack on anything all day if I want to. It is just that good and savory!

Hiding underneath the broth is a natural sweetness trickling along in the big juicy flavor until POW! you get a sparkling WAM! of pepper on your tongue. (More sparkle than bite!).

Being an experimenter with flavor, I sweetened the pu-erh just a little which was a real enhancement to the savory quality of the tea.

This is fine loose Pu-erh!

Then, my power went out! I put on my Kindle Fire music and listened to this by Tchiakovsky (it lets you skip past the youtube ad):
http://youtu.be/vyFkPd6fEuI

Thank you Angel and Teavivre for this sample!

The Fort Collins Power Company was going to shut off power in the area for 3 hours this morning so I got up early enough to have a hearty pot of tea to stave off withdrawl symptoms! Not being familiar with Keemun, and reading about the smokey character (which I like), I chose this from my new package of Teavivre samples.

The dry tea is very dark and fine, which proved to brew a very dark liquor, fragrant with medium smokiness and malt.
This is not a tea party tea! It has Huevos like a shot of taquilla! The smoke is not like a Lapsang Souchong…but assertive somewhere in the middle range of smoke and quite astringent. The astringency creates lots of juice and tannin bites your tongue. No malt. This tea had too many rough edges to start my day by drinking it straight up. After all, my hair is messed up and I’m on the couch with a tea tray watching the news with a BIG MUG of tea American Style! I DO NOT want an intellectual interlude with my cuppa at this hour of the morning! My brain cells are still asleep! So, I added some cream and sugar and it knocked those rough edges right off the Keemun…oh yeh!

If you like a more tobacco, acidic and less yammy morning brew, this may be for you. If you do not like malt, again you may prefer this tea. I prefer the other black tea’s from Teavivre which are so wonderful! Try for yourself and see which is for you!

Thanks to Teavivre for another stunning package of Samples!

I’ve had a fun day! First I was off to post some samples to TeaFairy, and then to Happy Lucky’s Tea House to purchase a small wooden gongfu tray that can handle my little water spills. (It only cost $24.95!) Andy always serves me free tea too! I ended up purchasing a little Yixing Gai Wan with a handle and strainer (turns out I’m not much good at pouring and straining from my other gai wan…clumsy me). Now I’m ready to rock and roll!
With all the caffeine during the morning and afternoon, I was in the mood for a gentle evening without caffeine. I finished some brown rice California rolls…(WASABI !) and decided on one of the new Teavivre tea’s I had requested (yes you can ask for items you are interested in trying!).
The steep time listed is 8-9 minutes. Nice and long…and fragrant! It was hard to wait those last few minutes as the room filled with bold berry scent. The liquor was very dark purple blue. Had I gone too far and steeped this too long? I hate bitter infusions!
Taking a tentative sip, whew! there wasn’t any bitterness.
This fruity tea was full bodied and juicy like Knudsons Real Fruit Juice. The juice that’s 100% non- reconstituted, not mixed with anything else and coats your whole mouth. There was one element I could not identify so I looked at the wet mash in the basket. Blueberries, currents, grape and woody stuff that’s redish. What’s this red stuff? I read the packet…Roselle and Googled it. OK. This is a variety of Hibiscus…a more fibrous, woody variety with very small flowers that is grown in China. Evidently, you can steep it longer without it being as tangy as the Western Hibiscus I’m used to or Australian Hibiscus. Whatever the case, this Roselle addition mellows the flavors so that the tea becomes a blended fruit tea but not a distinctly blueberry tea.

I drank 24 oz. pot of tea hot this evening and then put a bit on ice to see what the flavor would be like. Very good. I’ll do an iced version for the next tasting since I received a generous portion from Teavivre.

Of all the caffeine free tea’s, every berry type satisfies me. The fruit used in this blend is big and bold. No tiny blueberries but large round fruit mixed with plenty of currents and grapes. I finally found a tea that I rummaged through after steeping. You can see the rehydrated fruit all plumped and I couldn’t resist popping the berries in my mouth.

Tomorrow night my tea shop is having a free tea ‘Happy Hour’ Near East Dance Performance to raise awareness to stop human trafficking. This shop supports this and other causes with 10% of store profits. I like that. One nice thing about small towns.