Mad Hat Tea Company

I only have one tsp left of this after I finish drinking this cup. Makes me sad because I LOVE this one! Must savor it…

Wow! Coconut and oolong were MEANT to be together!

Loose
Appearance: olive brown green grey large curled leaf
Aroma when Dry: coconut pound cake
After water is first poured: desserty, sweet (western) powdery coconut
At end of first steep: nutty, buttery slight chestnut notes
Tea liquor:
At end of first steep: clear
Staple? Possible
Preferred time of day: afternoon, evening
Taste:
At first ?: buttered popcorn and chestnuts, creamy finish
As it cools?: notes open, coconut notes surface, fragrant close on palate
Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? Yes, nutty coconut notes

Second Steep (4min):
At first: light coconut nutty notes
As it cools?: buttery, nutty, odd metallic note close

Third Steep (5min):
At first: sweet coconut
As it cools: coconut and mineral, metallic notes

Picked this up the other day at my local shop to compare with a previous rooibos blend I’d purchased there and really enjoyed. I’m trying to figure out if I’m just a big rooibos fan or if that blend is what did it for me.

Anyway, this actually isn’t even on their menu. But the unpaid intern (slash bored college student helping out) claimed it was a favorite of hers so I picked up 50g to try.

Smell? Citrus and a hint of cinnamon come through.

Taste? Earthy,not bitter at all….maybe a bit bland really. I was expecting to get popped in the mouth and didn’t. I can taste the orange well but not the other flavors. It’s mellow and easy to drink…it just seems like it’s missing some “pop”. I may ise a bit more then my 1.5tsp next time I make a cup and see if that gives me what I’m looking for.

Still, all in all, not a bad blend. I feel line the almond and cinnamon get lost in the shuffle though. I can certainly drink it though.

Back to the Moroccan Mint today. Brewed it a shorter time (1 minute flat) which is shorter then I normally do blends (2 minutes). I think I like it more this way. The mint is still present but it’s much more in the background. I’m also thinking this would make an awesome iced tea (something I’ve yet to attempt with any tea). Anyway, yum yum yum!

I’m a sucker for mint. This guy has just the right amount for me. I can smell and taste it but it doesn’t overpower me when sipping. Love that fresh saste in my mouth after drinking.

Gave this a try today at the shop, and was pleasantly surprised. Smells/tastes buttery if that makes sense. Smooth & rich I suppose I’d describe it as.

Had a rotten day so dug around for my favorite tea.
Not sure what does it for me with this combo but I love it. It’s happy and relaxing and all around GOOD!

Sadly I may soon run out.

The Mad Hat is close to my house and just made my way down there for the first time and grabbed this beauty among others. I LOVE this tea. I’m not sure If I’ll be a fan of other rooibois (have a few more on order) but this particular mix with the rose and berries smells and tastes wonderful. It will be a staple of mine for years to come.

Jen randomly sent me some of this and I thank her very much!

There was a place – years ago – on THE STRIP – in Pittsburgh – where I visited that had Snickerdoodle Cookies that tasted like this tea – so – I agree with the aroma and tea name of this! I also remember having a few flavored black teas that were a cross between Snickerdoodle-tasting and Almond-Cookie-tasting and I must say this is somewhere in the middle of the two. Regardless this is a lovely flavored tea! I am a fan!

The black tea base is medium-strength and the spices are working really well with it. The snickerdoodle ‘cookie’ likeness pop in and out while I sip…and it also tastes a nit nutty and I like it!

Very nicely done! A Winner!

The vanilla in this one is the most tame of my cupboard. It really seems to serve to bolster the sweetness the honeybush already has. Those spicy notes in honeybush are pretty soundly beating the vanilla down. Still pretty good but I think vanilla and rooibos is a better combination.

Today I decided to do a side by side comparison of the two earl grey creme. I have tried this one before and decided to send it to work with Dylan. It was just a bit too heavy on the bergamot for me.

I liked the vanilla in it and the citrus flavors but I had to get over the perfume to get to them. I totally agree with Dylan it tastes like there is lime in here. Maybe that’s just the addition of vanilla. The tea base is pretty mellow, I had to look for it a bit. If you like a stronger bergamot creme this will do it for you.

So I went for a second steeping, and found it pretty flavorless. Granted, I did go pretty bold on the first steeping, so I’m really not surprised. As a result, I decided to dump some gin in and see what happens. At first I took a small glass and just mixed the two with a two to one tea to gin ratio. The tea was too flavorless and definitely still too hot. I could smell the alcohol evaporating (and I shed a tear). Also, the gin just blared through. It really didn’t even taste watered down at all. I felt like I was just drinking hot Seagrams.

As a result, I gave the rest of the tea a minute to cool while I handled some laundry, and then went ahead and dumped the rest (10-12 oz’s maybe?) over some ice. A liberal amount of honey, a splash of Rose’s Lime (because I’m too lazy to juice real limes right now), maybe 2 oz’s of gin and I got to shaking.

Not too shabby. I can actually taste the tea itself, and the Rose’s and honey seem to bring back that citrus cream flavor. I can’t taste the gin at all, which is a bit of a bummer, but because I used cheap gin, it’s not an awful thing.

This small victory has brought about a new challenge. My summer goal is to create a worthy gin and tea cocktail. So far, all I’ve found is from actual mixologists using tools and ingredients that most of us probably don’t have on hand. I want to create a tea based cocktail that the average tea loving drunk could prepare with items they most likely have on hand. It’ll start with cheap ingredients until I start to narrow down the basic idea, and eventually I’ll come up with a top shelf version using Hendricks Gin (hands down my favorite thus far) and a tea yet to be named.

(Note that this will probably never come to fruition, but it’s my next distraction)

Well this is rather odd. I know for a fact I drank this tea and wrote up a tasting note. Weird.

I’m sure Dylan and MIssy sent this because they’re familiar with my love or various EG’s. This is intriguing. I’ve avoided any and all Ear Grey de la Creme because of my tumultuous and storied history with vanilla. I’m not sure how much I’d like other EGdlC’s, but I’m really enjoying this one. The creamy scent coming from the bag is delicious, but worries me a bit because of the vanilla. The strong citrus smell tag teaming it does boost my confidence.

So I have to wonder how much of Dylan’s review is affecting me here, as lime is definitely the primary taste I’m picking up. It’s like lime dipped in buttery creme. With the sweetness of the lime on the front end, the vanilla is blended to come across more like creaminess than vanilla. I honestly don’t even recognize it as an Earl Grey until the end when bergamot pops back up to remind me that it’s actually his show after all.

All in all, it’s an extremely smooth and interesting take on EG that has me excited to not only try other versions of EGdlC, but also try other offerings from Mad Hat.

This was my first try at a oolong. I believe I understand “washing” the tea better. I took a sip of the first steep and went, “hmm, that tastes like tea colored water.” I tossed it out and tried for another steep. That went better.

I find this one a bit vegetal, but in a good way, like green alfalfa. A hint of some thing floral in the middle. It’s odd that I like it. Here lately I’ve been put off of floral things. We have a couple of teas I swear I could wear in an infuser necklace as perfume. Last but not least a hint of some thing sweet but not honey-ish. It reminds me more of sugar.

Over all a mellow fellow. I may have brewed it wrong and totally missed out on what oolong is supposed to taste like. I’ll have to play with it for a while.

I gave my good friend Oolong a bit of a bum rap before, and am much happier with him today than I was last week. I even put up a new picture of him to celebrate (the old picture was pretty lame, it was dark, it was unfocused, and it was a bunch of dry leaves on a paper towel).

While we were goofing off at an Asian Market last week, I bought myself a new ceramic mug with infuser and cover/base thingy. I have a soft spot in my heart for designs which are black, red, and Asian. I’m not sure why, but this fit the bill, and it was $5, so I wasn’t going to complain. (Curious what it’s like? Slightly different aesthetics, but the exact same design as Shang Tea’s Kung Fu cup, here http://www.shangtea.com/Kung-Fu-Tea-Cup). I’m going to officially refer to this as Kung Fu brewing.

I also completely disregarded what the guy from Mad Hat told me, which was to use less tea than I thought I should. After watching how people use a gaiwan, I’m considering this fairly un-sound advice. In my kung fu cup, which holds maybe around 10 oz of water in addition to the infuser, I use two ‘perfect teaspoons’, and this comes out GREAT.

The flavor of the tea at first is very mellow, with a lightly vegetal flavor, reminiscent of a fairly weak green tea. After a few seconds, the flavor starts to take on this sweet fruitiness that reminds me a lot of juniper (or at least of Tanqueray). It was a little bit surprising to me, and a little bit odd. If I rolled the tea over my tongue, the juniper flavor became a lot more prominent.

Steep #2 gave a very similar performance. With steep #3, the fruitiness tasted a little less like juniper and a little more like apricot. Steep #4 was just as good as steep #3, and if it weren’t for a lack of time, I probably could have kept steeping this tea all day. I tasted no degradation in flavor between steeps 1 and 4.

I can’t decide whether I like this tea. It’s interesting, it feels almost entertaining. In a way, it’s a bit of a one trick pony… but it’s a cup of tea, and it’s doing a trick. What more could you ask for? I’m not sure I’ll actually purchase this tea again. It’s very good, and it went a long way to renewing my hope that I’ll find a ‘green’ oolong that will be enjoyable. But… it’s more of an eye-opener than a keeper, if that makes any sense.

So here we are my kindred spirits, another oolong to drink.

We’re somewhat new to oolongs over here, and nary a gaiwan to be found in this household! So, for better or for worse, we’re going to western style this tea. The western style thing is kind of a funny label, come to think of it. I’d consider us to be east of China. Gringo, it’s gringo brewing.

This oolong has a very fresh scent to it, like meadow flowers… it just smells fantastic. Like I want to put it in a bag and toss it in the dryer. Though, that’s probably a terrible waste of tea. Anyway, very floral, very pleasant smell.

Missy put this in the pot for about two minutes, and then pulled it out, and poured us some to drink. It really didn’t taste much like tea. It kind of tasted like a hot liquid that once met some tea at the bar, and hung around all night. It had a little bit of a tea flavor, reminiscent of tea, but it really wasn’t tea yet.

We dumped that pot. Let’s just pretend it was an extended leaf refreshing. Our leaves are now VERY refreshed.

Four minutes later, we decide it looks like it might be dark enough to try another pot. It’s now less khloros, and more a fluroescent green, looks like it has a little more life to it. Not quite the vibrant radioactive green of my genmaicha, but almost heading that way.

I have to say though, the flavor is still rather muted (and maybe this is just how this one goes). The tea itself is a very still, very calm flavor in the cup itself. Its transformed from that flavor of ‘hot water’, into something a bit more vegetal. The flavor of the tea has a freshness to it, and a subtle hint of that floral fragrance that you smell inside the bag. Underneath that, there’s a sweet honey note that creeps in, and then the flavor just fades away from you.

It also has a ninja-like astringency that I never quite felt before. It was like all of the moisture had been drained from my mouth before I ever really knew it was gone. I was still looking for footprints on my ceiling.

Anyway. I don’t think I’m a fan of this particular oolong, on this particular day. It could very easily be our gringo brewing, or our extended steep time, or something else completely. It’s likely that we’ll sort of hide this one in the back of the tea cabinet until we get a gaiwan to give it a more fair shot at life. But as it stands… eh… I don’t see us picking up more of this.

Missy decided that today we need to have the epic battle royale deathmatch between our two Earl Grey Creme’s to determine the winner. Mad Hat vs Upton.

The most negatively weighing factor of the Mad Hat tea is the really just brazenly floral scent of this tea. When I first opened the bag of this tea, it really struck me strongly. After sitting in a tin for a few weeks, it almost takes your breath away for a minute.

All the strengths of this tea are still there. It’s very creamy and sweet. The bergamot and other citrusy flavors are very tasty and well proportioned. The tea is smooth but light. The smell is much more wonderful in a brewed cup than out of the tin. I don’t think you’d ever go wrong with this tea, really. It would definitely be a crowd pleaser. I’m not going to be disappointed while I finish this tea off. But, now that the Upton SPEGCV has come into my life… I don’t think I’ll get more…

Forgive the photograph of this tea (and the next like five teas I upload from Mad Hat). I am neither a skilled enough photographer, nor an experienced enough photoshopper to upload a picture that does any tea justice.

So we went and tried our local tea shop today, yay us! It was a good experience, they have a LOT of unique tea blends that they don’t reference on their website, so entering the store I think is really the way to go. The prices are reasonable, they’ll brew you a fair sized sample for $2.50, and with the exception of one minor fluke (what do you mean no one roasts green tea leaves, they only roast the sticks?), it was a very enjoyable experience.

So, the first tea why try from them is their Earl Grey de la Creme, which should be standard fare, but for some weird reason this is our first loose Grey buy since we’ve started on our whole loose leaf journey. Neither Missy nor I are exactly sure why. Oh well, rectified.

Opening the bag… wow. It is overly perfumey. Like, makes you take a step back. I’ve heard a lot of people say they don’t like Grey because it’s “floral”, but have never understood it before. Totally understand it from the smell of this bag. It smells like flowers and limes, which isn’t far from bergamot, but still…

Tally forth, we brew a pot, and it is extremely good. The floral scent is gone, and it’s just back to good old bergamot for me, with maybe just a hint of sour citrus that may be lime. I know lime and bergamot aren’t terribly far from each other, but this kind of distinctly tastes like lime. Well and truly after the bergamot, but still limey. They should cross breed those two and call it a blimey. I’d buy them.

Anyway. Towards the end of the lime tang, I start to pick up just a hint of vanilla. Really not overpowering at all, just subtle enough to tag on underneath the citrus notes and hang in for a little flavor.

The black tea itself is very, very smooth. I believe it’s assam, but it doesn’t quite have that… richness that I expect from assam. Maybe a weaker assam? Does that exist? At any rate, the bag doesn’t say, and I didn’t think to ask. All in all, a very positive blend.

I’d put the price at mid-range, a little higher than some other Grey’s I’ve seen, but for $9.50 for a four ounce bag, I’m definitely not going to complain. Plus it’s supporting a local business, blah blah sustainability, blah blah closed economy. Consider that the entirety of my Keynesian Economics understanding.

As an amusing side note, each of their teas has a pencil-drawing style picture of an animal, unique to each tea, with a little quote in French. This one happened to be “Ceci n’est pas un Colobus Monkey”. This evidently hearkens to a famous surrealist painting called ’The Treachery of Images". Our daughter, much more obsessed with France than surrealist French artists, asked about it.

Uhh… bonjour? Non. Adieu!

this tea is considered a pouchong, which I had never heard of before this summer. I wandered into a cafe in Seward, Alaska where they carried a coconut pouchong, and I was hooked. Months later I wander into the Mad Hat Tea Company in Tacoma, Washington where the owner gives me a generous sample.
“So what do you think? Are you floating?”
Boy, was I. Could it have had to go with a warm shop and hot tea? Perhaps, but “floating” was the perfect was to describe how I felt. It’s a light tea with a strong coconut flavor that is perfect for any time of day, any occasion. I went through the bag in about a month and a half and was happy to make the trek back to Tacoma (I live in Olympia) to get it. Now I’m sitting with the first cup from a new bag, floating.

I have finally found the perfect after-dinner tea. I wasn’t too sure about the mix of mint chocolate and rooibos, but it’s totally a match made in heaven. The scent of the tea is almost overwhelming, but the actual taste is much tamer, but just the right balance of chocolate and mint, with the earthier rooibos taste underlying it. And since it’s rooibos, so without caffeine, it’s great for after late dinners. unfortunately, the second steep loses almost all chocolate and mintiness, and tastes like a more watered-down rooibos.