Mighty Leaf Tea

Nice name, but in reality utterly unremarkable. Even just walking down the supermarket aisle, there are much better options. [internal score: maybe 62ish.]

creamer: none
sweetener: none

I received one serving of this matcha in my Advent calendar from Devon. It was day 6, but I had absolutely no mood drinking and whisking matcha yesterday. So, I prepared it today afternoon.

I have to say that I am greenhorn in matchas. And prepared this one wrongly again as well. As I have read, I should use the powder, use little water, make a paste with whisker, then using the rest of water. Well, I used all the water together.

And whisking…
I got a green, thick liqiud. Very grassy. High level of umami too.
Enjoyable, but nothing I would necessary have again. But maybe it is just my wrong preparation method?

It’s funny to read other tasting notes and see only reviews from 7-14 years ago. It appears that Steepsters either loved it or hated it then. This is a tea that Mighty Leaf has kept on the market and can be found pretty regularly. I believe I picked it up at the grocery store.
There wasn’t a strong scent to the tea bag. I accidentally steeped it at a higher temp than I normally would. Once I realized how hot the water was, I steeped it for approximately 2 1/2 minutes. Seems like I didn’t screw it up too badly. The color was a nice yellow. It smelled faintly of pineapples and mango. I was reminded of a random “tropical” tea that I picked up at a grocer in Aruba many years ago. It was just fruity enough without being overpowering.

I would say this one is alright. I don’t get the fruity flavor/scent that others remarked about. But perhaps I dulled my senses with all the cleaning products I just used. I probably would give this one another try.

A little more fun than your average chamomile. Spearmint and citrus.

Backlog. I drank this during my teabag inventory check. Taken without milk.

After drinking the surprisingly smooth Numi Breakfast I was in search of something a little more abrasive. This bright, tannic tea did the trick, although I also found it had an interesting “dusty red rose”note. This bold tea has hints of metallic, which doesn’t bother me much anymore. You can tell this is a mix of citrusy ceylon, raisin-like assam, and muscatel darjeeling. Not bad in a pinch.

And it’s a belatedly posted sipdown!

#long time ago internet hiatus sipdown

Random tea bag I snagged from somebody somewhere. Had very early and in a rush. I don’t remember much.

Sweet, smooth taste with plenty of vanilla, whether from vanilla bean or flavoring, I don’t know. It was like a malty-cocoa-vanilla marshmallow that smoothed over the brighter taste of red fruits. The taste took me by delightful surprise but then I realized how thin the brew actually was. Mellow black tea to ease my way into a sleep-deprived morning.

Stole this one from a hotel I was at just before the pandemic “started” in the USA. I rarely add anything to my tea but found it to be a bland Black Tea but improved with milk and sugar.

Clearing and cleansing, awakening aroma. Good first tea of the morning to nurse me out of a hangover and little sleep (bigfatgreekwedding). Dry grass gunpowder green tea with subtle bitter-smokiness, bright and sharp spearmint. Gently sweet, mineral-astringent tingling. Good balance to this tea.

Nice to sip on a warm cup while sitting in the shade of a late spring afternoon. Grassy with a smooth tropical fruit balance – I guess it’s pineapple. Sunny-cool, happy, bitter-sweet.

More mown grass forward than jasmine. Bitter-sweet herbaceous undertone but overall rather smooth.

#tiffanys2021sipdown Tea #74 overall / Tea #41 for February

Wednesday 2/24 — So I’m on a good roll to finish February on track with sipdowns, so figured I’d get a few in this morning at home since I was working the 3-11 shift at work today. I’m not a earl grey fan or much of a black tea fan so I grabbed two different earl grey teabags and figured hey half water half milk make a latte and knock two out. So two earl grey lattes in one day. Sheesh.

This was more subtle smelling not sure if flavoring wasn’t as strong as the steeped tea one or an older teabag? Oh! I did post a pretty picture of latte in my matching DT mug & handmade coaster from @teathoughts :

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CLrtQWAglUK/

#tiffanydrinkstea #tiffanys2021 #tiffanysfaves #tiffanyinthe614 #tiffanysteasipdown #sipdownchallenge

A random tea bag in my stash, I might have snagged it when I was on a trip at the beginning of the year. I enjoyed this tea and would pick it up again if they changed their packaging to eliminate plastics. I found it to be light, slightly nutty, and smooth.

Sipdown (263)

Thank you Evol Ving Ness for sharing! With this being done, I’ve now finished off all the teas from our swap back in November 2017. Yay for finally getting to the samples!

This tea was better iced I think but it is better than I thought it would be hot. It’s similar to the iced tea in that you get the black base but also floral notes from the lychee. It’s floral like the fruit which is less offensive than the perfume quality most floral teas have. It’s a bit astringent and it’s not overly flavourful. It’s nice but a tea I am alright to not revisit.

Thank you for sharing this one, Evol Ving Ness! I had it iced today with our steak dinner and was worried since a lot of people said this was very floral, like potpourri. However, this sample is almost 3 years old in my stash, plus however love Evol had it before that and maybe age helped it mellow out. It’s floral but floral the same way lychee is, not overly floral. And the black base tea is a little sharp which dials back the floral nicely. It went surprisingly well with the meal because it provided a sweet counter to the savoury food.

I brewed it for 2 mins and 45 seconds in 200F water.

Yes, I know this says it’s iced tea. But as my body has shifted to standard time already (I’ll save the DST rant, as I’m sure you can find several in the archives), I needed a boot-in-the-backside wake-up this morning and decided to start with a strong and tannic tumbler of this tea from derk. A little milk to tone down the sharpness and I’m catching some of the subtler cherry wood undertones mentioned in other reviews. Eyes are open, albeit reluctantly. Mission accomplished.

This was a freebie in my freebie bag from the 2018 San Francisco International Tea Festival. And it has coconut in it. My bad.

It’s a bagged tea, in a rather nice sewn cloth sachet, and I couldn’t really make out from the aroma of the dry leaf if the coconut had turned, and being incased in the sachet, I couldn’t sample a bit of coconut, either. So I heated the water and prepared to brew the cup as normal. As soon as the hot water hit the leaf, the very distinct aroma of rancid coconut hit my nostrils. Welp. My GI has been hell lately, so I’m not about to take a chance with that. Down the drain it goes.

No rating on account of turned coconut. Though Todd drank his sample only a few months after the tea festival, and I see from his review he described it as “sour.” That almost makes me wonder if these already had turned coconut in them before they made it into the freebie bags for the festival…

Temperatures in the one-teens are unacceptable. Especially for 3 days in a row. This isn’t Arizona.

Our tomatoes are cooked on the vine. Watermelons have exploded. The 19-year-old cat thermometer reads loooong and miserable.

I want to sleep all day.

I want an entire bottle of cold white wine to myself.

I want a strong, unsweetened iced tea.

Only one can win. You all know the answer.

Thanks, Gary, for the cool-off.

Sipdown (1075)!

Finishing this one off now – thank you VariaTEA (and also Evol Ving Ness) for sharing with me! It’s pretty nice; I tend to like pistachio teas and this one is a really nice sweet pistachio with an almost amaretto/almond kind of undertone to it as well. Full bodied, enveloping in the mouth and weirdly just a hint spicy!?