Silk Road

You can’t go wrong with black currants in tea, but the combination of currant and elderflowers is a surprising hit! This tea packs tons of jammy black currant flavour.

Spectacular smell, and equally spectacular taste. Big on rose flavours. This is the first rose petal tea I have ever sampled, and I am hooked.

The aroma dried is not unlike those fuzzy peach candies (love those things!!). Sure it’s a bit sweet and artificial smelling to the nose, but brewed up it’s a much more balanced aroma and flavour. The earthiness of the black Ceylon mixes quite nicely with the fruity peach and citrus flavours. Silk Road has great quality teas and this one is even organic. It’s the second time I’ve purchased it – had no trouble going through my last tin. It has a nice summer feel to it that is a great start to my Saturday here at work. I’ve found 4 minutes is about the right brew time – much longer and some bitterness starts to come through.

After cleaning out my tea cupboard I realized one of the reasons for my tea hiatus this last year; I have 80 some specimens and only three of them are green oolong. It’s full of puerh, black tea, and flavoured greens. That’s just not right, but at least there’s now true motivation to drink down all the teas.

This is a nice Earl Grey that would be run-of-the-mill if not for the Vanilla. It’s an “ice cream with waffle cone” level of vanilla indulgence.

My first experience with this tea was probably 7 years ago, by now. At the time, I was working at a local gift store, and they would often hire international students to practice their English. We often had Japanese students as that was one of the colleges the shop partnered with, and plus, we get tons of Japanese tourists. So win win for all. Anyways, the first of these students I worked with, right when I started, was a sweet girl named Yuka. We only worked a short time together, but when she left, she gave me a mini tin of this tea. And while I was a tea fan way back then, and before that, brewing green tea at home was never my strong suit. I was fortunate to have some green teas that were very forgiving, though genmai cha was a favourite, and I drank that the most (and it was fairly forgiving). When I made this tea, I wanted to love it. I wanted to enjoy it, but I didn’t. I can’t remember truly what I disliked about this tea back then, but it was probably that it was bitter, and thus (retrospectively) user error. I seem to think that the cherry flavour was not that prominent either. Whatever it was, it kept me away from buying it for a LONG time. Til today, in fact. I was talking with one of the girls at the shop and she did confirm that it can be a finicky tea, and overbrew very easily. She suggested no more than 2 minutes to steep. I smelled it in the tin, that was filled to the brim. Ahhh, sooo good! I just had to try it again, and hope that with my gained skills and experience over the years, but more importantly, my variable temp kettle and kitchen timer, would give me success this time.

So, I decided to make this (from the 5 new green teas I got today) when I got home. I chose this one because I had my first wheatgrass shot, and anticipated it being awful (it was) I had a chaser prepared. My chaser was pomegranate juice. Then this tea. I set the temp on my kettle to 180F (it only measures in F) though it might have cooled off a little more as it took a few minutes before I actually poured the water into my mug and infuser. I let it steep for 2 minutes, and added a little bit of organic cane sugar. Oh sweet cherry! Though the sourness is just at the back of my throat after I sip. I found it got fruitier after it cooled a little more. This one seems like it will cold brew well. Looking forward to warmer weather to do that.

So, I am very glad I decided to try this one again. I am sure I will enjoy the rest of my mini tin…though I know a few people who will likely be getting some in their next tea box from me. :)

Okay, I’ve given it some time, some air, and it’s developed a roasty, vegetal scent in the dry leaf. So I brewed it, and it tastes like hot lemon relief.

I hate that stuff.

okay right okay so basically I impulse bought this cause .. giant leaves? How could I resist? Now I have no idea why they’re giant leaves, it says they’re from wild bushes which is weird cause i was gonna suggest.. gmo.. (they’re like 3 inches long!) but anyways. The package says 1 leaf to 4 cups of tea and can be resteeped, theres no time or temperature .. even on the website, so I figured i’d try starting out with sort of a basic green tea kind of steeping.

I put a leaf into my perfectea maker, and steeped for like 45 seconds, and it was basically flavourless which took me by suprise because everyone at Silk Road had told me how potent the tea was. at this point i just put the tea from my mug back into the perfectea maker, steeped for maybe 2 more minutes and there was still very little flavour.. except.. There’s a lot of astringency. So I’m thinking this might actually be how this weird giant leaf thing is supposed to be.

Basically it’s got a bit of honey flavour and sweetness, with a lot of astringency, but I think I need to stop thinking of it as a green tea, I think this type of leaf should have its own classification .. “Giant tea” gets my vote.

You know what else it has though, is that empty flavour of a tea too far steeped.. right from the start (I’ve been getting a lot of this today)

So much astringency.

But yeah I dont really know, there’s some other stuff going on with a different leaf I brewed. There’s all the other stuff I mentioned but somehow it’s .. thicker I guess. I only steeped for like a minute. The one leaf was sort of two leaves I think, so yeah it was more flavourful which makes sense. Maybe it’s growing on me but I’m starting to really enjoy it. No rating because I really have nothing to compare this to.

noms. finished this one up today since i’ve got 10 ish hours left before 2016 to get as many sipdowns in haha. I am about 100 teas higher than i wanted to be at the end of this month but i am TOTALLY blaming that on not planning to be in paris, which resulted in a ton of teas coming home with me (3.5kg worth). this one is a really nice winter/holiday tea. just the right balance of apple and spice…not just cinnamon :) thanks omgsrsly!

Apple teas are a dime a dozen. 95% of them are also spiced apple teas – cinnamon or otherwise. this one is no exception but it’s still pretty decent. there’s a little vanilla here to smooth out the cinnamon, and while the ingredients mention ginger, i’m not getting any. either way, this is tasty but nothing i need in my cupboard on a permanent basis! thanks omgsrsly

Best ever. My local cafe serves up Silk Road teas, when they run out, theres a mini riot. Very mild, exquisite aroma, use a bit extra leaf, look for that beautiful amber colour, always perfect. I drink it with milk and sugar, but a bit kess sugar because of the natural sweetness. You will never go back I tell you…

I haven’t had this one in awhile, so I will have to go back and update my notes next time I drink some but I worked at Point Ellice House and that’s when I first tried this tea. It’s actually based on the archives of the O’Reilly family (who owned PEH) and is something they would have enjoyed on the lawn during a party. Beautiful, smooth tea which is excellent for everyday use. It’s a little reminder of the best parts of Victoria that I enjoy regularly. I hope they never discontinue this one.

One of my favourite teas, so sad that it’s discontinued as it was a limited edition tea based on tea drunk on an expedition to Antarctica (Was it the Scott expedition? I forget). I love the smokey, richness of this black tea. Really nice with some milk and sugar. Great bold breakfast tea. Not overpoweringly smokey, either. I’ve gone through two HUGE tins of this stuff and am sadly down to my last stash, which I will have to ration out. Any suggestions for something similar? Would this be like a Russian Caravan type tea? I’ve never had anything like this before.

This is a really nice black tea that is not too sweet. The lychee aroma is wonderful brewed up, and takes me back to this past summer and exploring Chinatown in Victoria where I came upon the lovely Silk Road store. The Chinese black tea has a great earthiness to it that combines and is well balanced by the lychee fruit extract. It’s a well-crafted fruit and floral combination. Oh and it’s organic too.

hi, this is my first tasting note on steepster. for my first i have chosen the organic japanese sour cherry green tea from silk road teas.

i prepared this tea hot in my two piece tasting set (125ml/4oz), and cold brewed (first cold brew) in a 33 oz bodum french press. lets start with the hot brew..

the 1st infusion was at 71 C for 30 sec-
the cherry was present in the aroma but less so in taste. it had a tannin-y taste, slightly vegetal with a lingering bitterness that hits the tounge and cheeks and coats it with that sour, slightly citric taste/feel. not the most pleasant cup.

2nd, 45 sec, 74 C temp-
aroma was sweeter with stronger cherry. tastewise, chlorophyll was prominently picked up. this infusion as well as most of the others reminded me of the taste of a cherry flavored cough drop.

3rd, 60 sec at 75 C temp-
aroma: cherry comes at you with the vegetal smell, following is a sweetness.
still has an astringent, green taste with less fruity notes (at this pointed i suspected it’s life was coming to a end..)

..but i pushed for one more infusion- the 4th for 70 sec at 75 C-
aroma: strong smell of green (chlorophyll) with the the cherry twisted somewhere in there being harder to detect. taste: less bitter as a result of the tea slowly dieing i suspect. overall less of it’s previous notes and feel.

session duration: 1 hour

i would recommend this tea to those of you who are willing to pick this tea apart and like/love it for what it is. i personally appreciate it but would not dub it a favorite.. more of an educational experience. i believe i would order it again for one reason… cold brew.

indeed i commenced my first cold brew the same night of the hot brew. the thought that it may be the best way to brew this tea, just hit me out of nowhere.
i used 3 slightly heaping scoops with teavana’s perfect tea spoon. 33 oz of cold filtered vancouver tap water. i left it and went to sleep. 9 hrs and 53 min later i strained, decanted, and tasted it.

i love it, bitterness about 15- 20%, more of a lemony/lime taste in place of tannin. its quite sweet (as cold brew tends to produce,) and mellow. the cherry comes at around the tail end of the middle and through the last wave. unlike the hot brew the bitterness in no way dominates. i personally find it to have an almost honeydew/honey note, plus a note of sweetend grass underlying. despite the taste and aroma of the honeydew you still pick up cherry. the aroma is sort of like candied cherry instead of sour in my opinion.

will experiment with shorter cold brew times such as 2- 5 hrs for example.

i expect to brew this almost exclusively cold from now on unless the urge to refer back to hot comes up. may ice tea this also with a bit of rock sugar.

thanks for reading.

- Raswalt

how is it possible to be chronically busy? even on weekends? even in free time? it must speak to a time management issue or a problem with prioritization, and yet….

i got pictures of a snake basking in the sun today and got chased out of an urban exploration photo shoot yesterday by drug dealers… i found the snake much more relaxing, let me tell you! the rcmp and i are getting to know one another quite well ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNANgFCYpk) lol.

as i review this tea i am drinking a dreadful one, but that’s just the way it goes….

the first note i observed about this blend once the water was poured was a light wood essence. it verged on smokey, but didn’t quite cross the boundary. light sweet wood… maybe balsa by comparison. i wasn’t sure how that would factor into the tea. the smell of lychee wasn’t as strong as the wood element.

everything changed with sipping. i realized what silk road had been striving for (i think)… they weren’t trying to recreate a lychee flavour, they were looking to create a lychee experience. the wood element built the suggestion of the lychee’s woody rind in china town, the warmth of the beverage reminded me of the boxes of lychee fruit basking in the sun, the lychee notes themselves had a NEARLY overripe quality, almost bruised… that ‘peel and eat me as soon as you get in the door’ urgency.

impressive. if you’ve spent time in china town (1 block down the road from silk road teas) then you know that this tea is less a flavour and more a spring scenario painted for your nose and tongue. very clever.

back to being busy… royal roads begins at the end of august so it isn’t going to let up anytime soon, lol.

OK so I didn’t get citrus from this at all. A bit of spice which I presume was the cinnamon and the rest was all puerh. A bright one, I’ll give it that. and I’ll accept that the brightness is possibly a result of the grapefruit, but I would never have picked that out, let alone something fruity. I also get something else underneath. Bread? that isn’t quite it. Hmmm.
I did really enjoy this blend. Maybe one day I’ll buy some :D

Wow these ttb pickings are hitting it outta the park!

I really like the name of this tea, however one cannot rely on name alone…
The curling of these leaves was quite enjoyable to look at so I looked at them while the water heated up. I brewed them and went outside to read this morning. I drank an entire pot of this to determine how I would explain it:

Imagine you have an oolong tea that you would/have rated 90 to 92 on and once you pour the water on someone drops two tadpoles in your water. Though it’s only two tadpoles and not a dozen, they do change the taste of that beloved brew that you had coming up. Now drinking on this was quite interesting because there was an enjoyable oolong taste accompanied by this peculiar sour taste. I have nothing against tadpoles, but I do not enjoy their taste.
Please note, there were no tadpoles in this tea… it’s simply a taste comparison.

Had the last of this sample this morning. As always, I had a little more than I would usually use, so I dropped by steep time a bit. It was pretty tasty, although I find the flavor combo a touch overwhelming. Perhaps it is the lavender, even though it (thankfully) isn’t a very strong flavor. Still, a pleasant tea.

Another tea (#1) from OMGsrsly! Thanks! At first I thought this had been slightly contaminated by the Blackberry Sage that she also included, but I think I was just smelling the lavender. I was worried this would be too “herby” for me, but the lavender definitely calmed down a bit in the brewed tea.

This is a tea I need to drink fast, when it is still hot. Then it was quite nice, with red berry and bergamot notes, and no bitterness to speak of. But as it cooled the lavender came out and it became a lot more bitter and astringent. Alternately I do need to try it with less leaf, as suggested by the company and OMGsrsly. :)

Sipdown! Or rather, sink down.

Tried as an eggnog latte.

Bad. SO BAD. The tea is mega cinnamon, it’s super astringent, just. No.

This is mostly cinnamon with some other spices and maybe some apple as well.

Anyways, Sil hasn’t tried this one so I get to offload some of it by sending her a sample. :D :D (Although it might have been in the bag I brought her. IDK. I’ve stopped trying to remember what I’ve sent people.)

There is spice. And apple. And I’m enjoying this mug of this tea.

Yep.

(1.5tsp/10oz)