382 Tasting Notes
I live! (again)
Finally manage to get myself moved and settled in. Sadly, my desktop is refusing to connect to Teh Internets, but at least the laptop works. Sigh.
My brother, who is usually a dork, but occasionally (like this time!) comes through sent me tea for my birthday! He is a giant tea snob, so he chose two unflavored black teas. Fujian Baroque and Yunnan Noir. And this is the one I’m trying first.
The leaves are adorable they’re these brown and yellow curls that remind me of very slightly relaxed jasmine pearls. Very aesthetically pleasing, I must say.
The tea itself tastes lovely. It is very smooth almost silky, with no bitterness about it, just a full, black flavor. Perhaps I shall try it out as a breakfast tea.
Oh man, like the cheesecake chai, this too is better than I remember it, leading me to believe that a vacation from your tea cupboard does you good every now and then. So coconutty and delicious!
It kind of makes me crave the Golden Moon coconut pouchong. (I am planning on getting that as a bday present for myself…just as soon as I have a stable shipping address)
I almost picked this one up in my order this morning, but I thought that I’d grab a couple of limited edition blends since this is in the permanent collection. I think I’ll have to grab this one another time though!
That’s always the dilemma, isn’t it? Do I go with a limited edition blend that I may never see it again (and then be sad when it disappears) or something in the permanent collection that I will be able to get more of if I like.
Yea, if the limited edition is amazing, that may be the only chance you ever have to try it again. I was thinking about that, but I think the pull of the limited edition flavors was too much for me.
Noticed that I’d been having a LOT of blacks. This is because due to jetlag and the need to drive around trying to find a place, I have been operating on the principle that if I ingest even one non-caffeinated tea, I will just pass out. Still a little variation is definitely in order. Mixed black and green to the rescue!
Can’t say much about the taste because I did that thing where I completely forget about the tea I’m steeping and left it for, like, 20 minutes. Strong! Still, the second steep was certainly passable. This also finishes up my sample of this. Hmm, to get more or not to get more. Gotta decide soon before the mega super awesome teafrog sale ends!
Didn’t have any milk to go with this, but the pull was too strong and I drank it anyway. Also I needed more black tea to stay awake. It’s actually a lot better milk-less than I recall. Probably because I do not have the immediate memory of it with milk to fall back on anymore.
As the determined waves of jetlag begin to erode my consciousness to the point where I can’t spell “consciousness” properly until the fifth or so try, it becomes clear that there is only one tea that can help: Super Strong Assam Melody.
Here’s what satisfied customers have to say about Super Strong Assam Melody:
“Thanks, Super Strong Assam Melody, because of you, I was able to drive to the grocery store without the nagging feeling that I am going to fall asleep at the wheel!”
“You are the only reason that I managed to make it past 3pm today!”
Ask your doctor what Super Strong Assam Melody can do for you!
Oh breakfast cup of malted chocomate, TOO LONG have we been separated! The days without your roasted chocolateyness waking me up have felt like years!
But alas, I regret to say that you are not first in my mind at this wonderful moment. That, sadly, is reserved for my Ingenuitea. Oh IngenuiTea, you are SO CONVENIENT. I have missed you!
I LIVE!
Back from Japan and at last ready to have some tea that I do not have to make the stupid entry for before logging!
Naturally, I turned toward an old favorite to welcome myself home. So delicious! I think I’m gonna go on a little 52teas buying spree when I get the chance. Unfortunately, I may not for a while, as my biggest priority right now is finding a place to move into before my lease expires in, gulp, a week. But after that! Buying spree. AND maybe a little contest? A little Japan-related contest? We’ll see!
Welcome back! I enjoyed reading your tea tastings while in Japan.
Welcome home! Glad you had a great and safe trip :) Good luck on the place to live arrangements!
Welcome back!
Thanks for the welcome! -(anyone in Santa Barbara looking for a roommate?)-
Welcome back!
Another tea to tide me over during my preemptive “can’t find Chocolate milk tea again” mourning period.
I’m gonna be straight with you guys. I have NO idea what this is. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s just unsweetened black tea, that’s pretty much what it tastes like. Pretty lightly brewed and with a kind of delicate, even somewhat sour flavor. The label uses the characters for black tea so that backs it up too. BUT, the word ‘RED’ is written in all caps on the bottle, so perhaps it is not black tea? The trouble is that the character for black in “black tea” in Japanese is actually the character for dark red or crimson, which brings us back to the idea that it’s just black tea. BUT, I’m not sure how strict of a categorization it is. Maybe that character denotes any tea like drink that is reddish? Also, they sell Java Tea (same name, different company) at Trader Joes, and I think that’s not just normal tea? I don’t actually know, I’ve never tried it.
Ok it’s probably black tea. Like I said, quite pleasant and delicately flavored. And, best of all, unsweetened! Yay!
BUT, forget about the tea, let’s talk about IPHONE APPS. I was trying to figure out what was up with this tea from the website, and, obviously I didn’t, BUT, I did find out that they have a combination iPhone and iPad app which turns your iPhone into a bottle of java tea and your iPad into a glass. I quote from the page! “When you turn your iPhone towards your iPad, see what happens!” Clearly, anyone possessing both of these needs to go and download this right now: http://www.javatea.net/
I picked this up in hopes of cheering myself up during the long search to rediscover chocolate milk tea. As an instrument of cheering up, you have to admit it is pretty rad. I mean, the name alone is already hilarious. When you add that to the extremely frou-frou looking bottle and the fact that what they describe it as is pretty much the exact opposite of what it tastes like…oh Japan, I love you and your insistence that you can just call things “European.”
Anyway, so the description of this said that it was supposed to be extremely fragrant because that is what (all) Europeans like. In actuality though, I found it to be much more subtle than the other (Japanese, one must assume) jasmines that I’ve tried while here. In fact, I quite like that aspect of it – I felt I got more actual “tea” taste out of it than I have the other ones which were basically just all about the jasmine. I think it wasn’t as sweet as the other ones as well, so I’m wondering if the base green tea was different (it was probably European).
