Tea-Historic

Silly me didn’t realise this one was a jasmine tea… but you know..i’m always up for trying anything. What’s nice about this one is that it’s not SUPER in your face jasmine. It’s still probably too much jasmine for me, but i could take out a few of the jasmine pearls next time to try that out. I do really love the concept of this tea though…asteroids and mini fragments heh. I have a few friends that might really enjoy this one so i’ll be sharing the rest of this and leaving a few for me to play with. Not rating this one as i’m not a jasmine fan but i think those that enjoy jasmine would like the execution of this one. It was neat! (also i drank almost the whole cup so that speaks well to the tea!)

All done! I’m trying to get through 16 ish sipdowns this weekend so we’ll see how i do. I’d like to get back under 100 AND try to make my weight goal this month and i technically only have a week left to do it. So gotta get cracking! The last of this is going to my tea sister to try :)

i think i let this one steep a little too long this morning. need to remember that for this one, i want to keep it to a shorter steep time. Still a good wake me up tea for today but a little strong

I had this one today but i got distracted playing with the dog and moving our house around. What i remember most was that while this is a brisk tea, it’s not too bold or astringent. more to come the next time i have it!

Took this one in to work today, but it’s a sipdown since the rest is going to VariaTEA for her to try out :) This was a comfort as today was another very long day. But at least today had cookies….and salad…but cookies. yes.

yep…this is a good one. Had it yesterday and was glad to have something good to make a bad day better.

I feel like i’ve reviewed this before..but i guess not. When i had this uh…3 days ago it was damn delicious. Just the right balance of chocolatey goodness with a lovely base tea.

Last little bit of this tea – trying to get a few more sipdowns in today while i work from home. I won’t have much variety with tea next week so today is going to be all about samples! :)

tea save me from this day! also my puppy..playing with three balls at a time for like 40 mins… best evening.

Noms. I made a small order the other day from tea-historic as i like to try and support the folks within the community who are trying things out. Plus, given our swapping history, i was fairly sure that i’d enjoy at least some of the selections from her store, as she wouldn’t be selling them if she didn’t like them :)

This one is tasty! I have often dropped cacao shells in to my LB, but i can’t say that i’ve tried it with an assam. As expected, this one works. It’s very much a delicious chocolatey tea that isn’t overly sweet. I supposed you could add a little sugar to it (or milk and sugar!) to really turn it in to a decadent beverage but i won’t need all that. Even cold, this is yummy!

Recently, for Christmas, I got a new book called The Great Extinctions, a dense little book on one of my favorite sub-subjects of prehistoric studies: Extinction Events! Conveniently for me (not so much for the vast amount of life ended by them) there have been several so I have my pick of ones to decide are a favorite, though let’s be honest, if I don’t choose the Permian-Triassic Extinction I am missing out. This event was so epic they called it the Great Dying, 96% of Marine Life and 70% of Terrestrial Life…that is an honestly hard to fathom amount of death. One thing that was really driven home to me a few years ago when I started studying mass extinctions in depth is that they take a lot of time to happen, the Great Dying took roughly 10 million years, most the documentaries, books, and brief mentions in other media make it seem so quick (looking at you Fantasia) and granted it is when looked at in a geological time scale, but it is certainly not as quick an event as most pop culture makes it out to be.

As much as the Permian-Triassic (and its amazing Siberian Traps) might be my favorite, the most well known has to be the one that killed the dinosaurs, the event caused by an impact (mostly, there is of course the theory that the dinosaurs were on the way out and the event sped things along, and of course the impact probably triggered climate change and the Deccan Trap eruption, turns out extinctions are not really caused by one massive thing but snowball out of control. That is what it is both correct and not entirely correct to say the dinosaurs were ended by an impact) With that bit of topical rambling aside (I honestly have put this off because I had a heck of a time abridging this topic…I could write MANY blog posts on just the K-Pg event) it is time to look at a real asteroid of a tea, Extinction Event from Tea-Historic! The big ol’ rock is made from a rolled Yunnan Dragon Ball (yay for Dianhong!) and the little splinter rocks are made from White Jasmine Pearls, making this a Jasmine black and white blend, something I have been wanting someone to make for so long! See I love jasmine in moderation, straight up jasmine scented teas tend to be a little too much for me, and I always thought blending with a hongcha could be perfection. So the aroma of the collection of tea space rocks (which come pre-measured, so useful!) is fascinating, the typical notes of malt, cocoa, yams, and molasses blend with a heady note of freshly blooming jasmine and buttery sweet undertones of baking bread. It is honestly the perfect amount of jasmine, heady without being headache-inducing (a problem I have with stronger jasmine, even the flower can be a bit much) nectar sweet and floral without being perfumey.

After a steeping in my gaiwan, the balls have unfurled a bit and the aroma that wafts out of the gaiwan is intoxicating. Honey jasmine nectar dances with cocoa, sweet potatoes, molasses, and brown sugar. Like sitting next to an open window at night eating chocolate dusted sweet potato pie while the jasmine flowers open in the moonlight…super evocative aroma! The liquid is a wonderful mild yet heady jasmine blossom and honey with yams, cocoa, and malt with a brown sugar finish.

The first steep is pretty awesome, the jasmine starts very mild allowing the Dianhong to show its stuff at first. Starting with honey and brown sugar covered yams (ok it is just liquid candied yams) it starts very sweet and thick in the mouth. Around the midtaste a malty cocoa note shows up and the jasmine starts to bloom, growing in strength and lingering long in the aftertaste. The finish is like chocolate covered jasmines, something I didn’t know I wanted until I had it.

The second steep is a perfect blend of jasmine and Dianhong, both having unfurled a good bit at this point, so their flavors and aromas really shine. Neither over powers the other at this point, and both start strong. The mouthfeel is smooth and light, a bit velvety in texture while not being very thick. It starts with yam and brown sugar with honey and jasmine nectar, then the flavor builds to stronger jasmine and malt with a strong chocolate and jasmine finish. The aftertaste is a long-lingering mellow jasmine that is sweet and nectar like, with just a hint of chocolate.

The third steep onwards show a slight decline in the jasmine, the hongcha goes strong for several steeps longer. Granted the jasmine is still there until the very end, just progressively fainter each steeping, like the flower closing up for the night, and I enjoyed its ghostly fade, towards the end I found myself wondering if it was a ghost and I was imagining it, though the lingering aftertaste of jasmine made me realize that no, it was still there. It is probably quite obvious that I really enjoyed this tea, so far it is probably my favorite of the teas offered by Tea-Historic and one I definitely recommend trying if you want something unique and are a fan of jasmine!

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2017/01/tea-historic-extinction-event-tea-review.html

Did you know that Ceratopsians (the family of dinosaurs that Triceratops belongs to) might not have had those elaborate head fringes for defense like originally thought? I am currently reading an ARC of a book called Weird Dinosaurs, and finished the section on Ceratopsians where it talks about how the bony head fringe might have been used for mating displays. The theory for this is two-fold, a lot of damage marking on the heads of these dinosaurs match damage you would find on the skulls of deer and goats (and matches the horns on others of the same species) and more importantly the larger horns and weird triangular growths on the more bombastic species (like the fringe on Centrosaurus) didn’t develop until they started going through puberty.

This segues nicely to today’s tea, Tricera-Tips (Assam) from Tea-Historic, a blend of Nahorhabi Estate Assam and Cacao Husks from the Dominican Republic. If you think from the combination of an Assam and Cacao husks that it will be liquid brownies, well, you are right. The aroma blends malt, chocolate, molasses, and sweetness, and it smells just like brownie batter. Not really much else to say, too busy sniffing the brownie batter tea leaves!

After a nice steep in my steeping apparatus, the leaves still smell like brownies, even more so. With the chocolate and molasses comes malt and a starchy baked goods note that really fools my mind into thinking this is food and not tea. I am serious, pretty sure you could shove this under my nose with a blindfold and I would be convinced you were teasing me with incoming brownies. The smell of the liquid is much the same, with a little bit of an extra sweetness and a little less molasses. It reminds me of the constant brownie war Ben and I have, since he wants his brownies sweeter and I want mine loaded with molasses.

So the moment of truth, does it smell as brownie heavy as it smells…yeah it does, astoundingly so! I have had plenty of Assams and enjoy drinking cacao shells, and they are each delicious on their own, but something about the combination of the two really works. Cacao shells on their own taste like chocolate but with a woody and at times sour note, and Assam can be too brisk and malty, but when combined these aspects are balanced out so what you get is liquid brownies. What I really liked about this tea is it is sweet but not as sweet as brownies can be, meaning I could quaff a lot of it without feeling ill (unlike what happens when I fill my gorge pouch on brownies) and of course I had to share with Ben, who loved it and requests more.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/12/tea-historic-tricera-tips-assam-tea.html

You know what is just a glorious thing, heated blankets. I was able to get a good deal for a new one thanks to Black Friday sales and it was ready to be picked up from JC Penney today, which Ben and I did. It is wonderfully fuzzy and of course wonderfully warm, much better than my usual heating pad usage since it is bigger and not as scalding. I get angry at the heating pad since even on the lowest setting it can be intense, but the heated blanket is like taking a nice hot…dry…bath, perfect for me! It also means I can go longer without opening the dreaded heating vent!!

Today, you might notice, is a Sunday and not one of the days I usually blog, but I was in the mood to write and have many teas piling up that need their story told, so why not? So I decided to delve into my new favorite company, Tea-Historic, a tea company…you guessed it…themed around dinosaurs! It is quite literally the perfect company for me to geek out over, and not just because thanks to this company existing I now have an ammonoid filled fossil tray and jade cup. They were a birthday present for myself, but along with these awesome pieces came some teas to review!

Presenting Mesozoic Malt, a GFOP Assam from Chota Tingrai Estate, being both sustainable and organic. Before I get into the tea, let us have a brief side rant into Paleontology…for once it is actually topical! The name Mesozoic is one of geology’s laziest names ever, one of two Geological Eras, smack between the Paleozoic (ancient life) and Cenozoic (new life) with Mesozoic’s name being ‘middle life’ which definitely sounds cooler in Greek. It is marked by extinctions, starting after the Great Dying and ending with the K-Pg event, called the ‘Age of Reptiles’ which is cooler than middle life, but not really correct since it was really dominated by dinosaurs. Or proto-birds if you feel creative. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Paleozoic, it has many of my favorite animals and of course my favorite extinction event, but my real passion has always been the Mesozoic! So, this tea, sniffing it I can say this is one of the sweetest Assams I have sniffed! This made me happy, you probably notice I don’t drink a ton of Assam, usually I find the brisk and woody notes too strong and the sweetness absent, so having an Assam that has the familiar brisk and woody notes, but also an immensely strong malt and a drizzling of brown sugar made for a happy nose.

I tossed the leaves into my steeping apparatus for the steeping time, I had to set a timer on my phone because I gongfu so much that I will wander off if I brew western style! The aroma is still very sweet, notes of strong malt and molasses with a touch of sweet honey and distant woodiness. There is also a touch of starchy molasses cookies, which adds to the sweetness. The liquid is surprisingly nutty and malty, with an undertone of brown sugar and molasses which again, reminds me of molasses cookies…yum!

The moment of truth, does the sweetness linger…yeah, yeah it does. The description on the website says this is a very sweet Assam and it is not an exaggeration, notes of brown sugar and molasses mix with rich malt and an underyling nuttiness that lingers on in the aftertaste. As I said earlier, usually I am not a huge Assam fan because of its overwhelming briskness (the same can be said of a lot of Ceylon and African black teas) but this one has gentle briskness and a wonderful mellow quality that had me downing this cup super quick! Also it goes for two strong steeps, which is fantastic. The website says this makes an excellent iced tea and I am tempted to get a bunch to send to my iced tea loving grandmother in the South to enjoy.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/12/tea-historic-mesozoic-malt-tea-review.html