teabento

Thank you to Tea Bento for the free sample.

This tastes characteristically of a Ceylon black. Lightly tannic black tea (what you might expect from a straight ceylon), light honey and nectar notes that are emphasised by the tea flowers. The honey flavour is most prominent in the second and third steeps. The first steep is the most brisk, verging on bitter but never quite getting there. The liquid brews a beautiful deep amber, which matches the taste quite well.

This tastes more like a daily drinker than a “keep for special occasions” sort of tea. The flavour profile is not unique, although the tea itself is high quality. While it was interesting to try, I do not find it to be anything special. If you like straight blacks and afternoon blends, this is probably a great addition to your cupboard. If you don’t drink a lot of plain Ceylons, you might enjoy a sampler size, but I wouldn’t recommend a large pouch unless it’s your thing.

As always, thank you to Teabento for proving me with a killer awesome sample! I chose all black teas because that’s how I roll, and come on, tea in the shape of a red panda? Sold.

The description of this tea is bang on. It drank half my cup before revisiting the notes since I haven’t read them since initially deciding on my sample requests, and I automatically thought of honeyed fruits with a touch of malt. This has a thicker mouthfeel in comparison to the others I’ve tried so far, which is my jam too. It’s good!

A big thank you to teabento for the sample pack! I will do my best to be unbiased and thorough.

Sweetly vegetal on the nose with just a hint of nuttiness. A sweet and delightfully floral, gently fruity oolong with a well balanced creaminess and ever so slight toastiness. An all around good oolong, particularly if you like your oolong heavier on the floral and lighter on the cream.

Very herbaceous, almost medicinal tasting tea. Flavors of old dried herbs, specifically basil and mint, and also has an oatmeal-like smoothness. Very slightly floral and slight honeyed sweetness. A bit of walnut astringency.

A pretty nice Shuixian with strong minerality and notes of licorice, lily, and nutmeg with a peanut-like roastyness. Very lubricating in the mouth.

It’s been unseasonably hot where I live, so I haven’t been drinking too much tea lately. However, I’ve tried the last of my Teabento samples, Lucky Otter, both gongfu and Western style. (The power went out during my last session yesterday, which deleted my review.)

This Li Shan is sweet, floral, and fruity. In Western style brewing, it has a dried fruit quality similar to cranberries, while gongfu brings out tropical notes like passion fruit and papaya. The floral quality, which the website describes as orchids, balances out this fruitiness nicely. In both brewing styles, there’s virtually no astringency and an underlying vegetal character that gets stronger as the sessions progress.

This is a lovely oolong and I’m grateful to Teabento for the sample.

Tasty and unique black with sweet notes of ripe plum and honey balanced by savory notes of soy sauce, peppercorn, and toasted grain. So far this is my favorite tea I’ve tried from Teabento.

Oh boy, another sample thanks to Teabento. Opening the packet, I was instantly reminded of Dutch processed cocoa powder.

In terms of flavour and texture, it is on the thinner side (seems like all of my samples have been so far), with faint cocoa notes, dried fruit, and honey. Slight astringency but nothing crazy. The new voila, I detect a smoky note? Only on the scale of 2/10 but a surprise, nonetheless.

A very mellow and tasty Dancong with strong orchid and nectarine notes accented by minerality, leather, green wood, grain, honey, and wet earth. A very rich and complex brew

Right into it – this smells like a dewy, honeyed nectarine dripping all over my face. It’s so luscious and full, I literally fell back when I stuck my nose in the bag.

Brewed it smells more like cocoa, nutty and with a hint of stonefruit.

The flavor is completely different piping hot over as it cools. Hot, (perhaps a bit too hot, I admit) it’s cloyingly sweet, like drinking pure honey from a fruit tree. As it cools, it gets multifaceted – we have honey notes, but strong nectarine still, some cocoa, straw, and back to the sweetness again. The final notes are more honeyed hay.

This is an exquisite white tea, and I’ll go out of my way to order it.

Thank you to teabento for sharing this tea with me so I could review it.

I agree with everyone else who has tried this tea: it’s fantastic! It’s like a Laoshan Black, only toastier. It’s also my first balhyocha and my second Korean tea—assuming that Teavana’s Jeju Island Green is a decent example. I did five gongfu steeps of 20, 10, 40, 90, and 180 seconds, followed by another ten-minute steep because I didn’t want the session to end.

In the first two steeps, cocoa and cereal predominate, with caramel and berries in the background. To me, this is milk rather than dark chocolate. Although the fruit then disappears, the toasty cocoa is more than enough to hold my interest. The tea never gets astringent or bitter.

I’d definitely consider buying this again to keep me warm over the winter. It’s also inspired me to seek out more Korean teas. Thanks to Teabento for providing this sample.

Talking too long, I oversteeped, undereafed and oversweetened this.

It’s still tasty.

I get a malty, thick mouthfeel, almost like a honeyed quality. A touch drying but not in a bad way, almost like it adds to the flavor if that makes sense. Hint of spice (might be the cayenne tea I just drank though), hint of cocoa, something floral, and… fruity?

Honeyed, malty, thinly chocolaty juicy. Yep, that’s about right. Quite spectacular if I do say so, for a severely long steep.

I haven’t drank many senchas, and those which I’ve drank were low quality ones, so I can’t compare it with something good.

I’ve steped this tea with 80ºC and 70ºC and 15-20sec steps (5gr).

The 80ºC ones were grassy, strong and a bit bitter (it was like that robustness with a hint of bitterness.

The ones at 70ºC became more gentle, grassy, no bitter, with a sweetness touch. Quite good.

Big, twisty black leaves. Brews a medium orange with an earthy aroma. Mild and slightly sweet with a definite plummy flavor and a slight mushroom note. Mild with and earthyness like decaying leaves.

It’s early and it’s still dark. I have a batch of dvds to return to the library before the fines begin in an hour or so. And so, I pulled the Prince out of the box to propel me into action.

To me, the scent of the steeped tea is citrus.
The first sip or two is rose, leather, and wood. I remember this taste from China.
Further sips produce a thicker mouthfeel and round out the flavours with a buttery earth honey sweetness.

To be continued after my sprint to and from the library.

Ok, I am back and it is sweltering out there. Humid, oy!

On my second steep now. The taste has become lighter but sweeter in both honey and rose. A bit drying in the mouth in the after sip. Not as rich and intoxicating as round one with the leaf. The rose and honey continue to be intense. I must mention here that I steeped the tea using cooler water. Hence, the rose is intensified and the chocolate note is missing altogether.

This second steep may be a bit too sweet and a bit too rose and a bit too drying for me. The first steep seemed somehow richer and more grounded with the flavours more complex and somehow kaleidoscopic. That is to say that the first steep was very wow. If I were to have this tea on hand, I would stay with that first steep every once in a while for a wow tea experience.

The third and fourth steeps were milder, of course, and more enjoyable. I steeped with boiling, hoping for chocolate or cocoa, but nope.

I have a bit left for a second run with this tea which I will likely begin steeping at a higher temperature to see whether I will be able to coax any chocolate notes and to see how that changes things.

Thank you, teabento, for sending me this sample box to try. I am very much enjoying exploring your variety of teas.

Another sample from teabento! So this is a little different from the sencha that I’m accustomed to drinking, and definitely brewed up faster than I expected. As someone who plays it a bit fast and loose with steeping parameters – if pretty much always by accident – I was sure I hadn’t left this to sit long enough. Imagine my surprise to find a wide range of flavors unfurling on my tongue with that first sip. The infusion is a nice green/yellow color, and while Teabento’s website advises a fine strainer when brewing this Yame sencha, I’m still amused how much leaf sediment floated to the bottom of my cup, particularly given that the strainer I used has filtered rooibos before without issue. I don’t mind a little added green, however, and don’t feel like it detracted much from the tea itself. Just be mindful that when they say this is a fine leaf, they are not kidding.

So my initial stab at describing this tea was that it tasted vaguely briny, but not necessarily marine? More of a buttery, salty vegetal flavor that sometimes comes through with prepared artichoke hearts. While I type this, I find that the initial sip is sweeter, followed by that complex, green aftertaste which makes for such a compelling cup. Is this that umami thing everyone is always talking about? No wonder people flock to these kinds of teas. As I mentioned earlier, I’m used to sencha that has a definite oceanic tinge to it, and this doesn’t quite fall into that category. This tea is more.. pleasantly grassy knoll overlooking the docks? It feels more refined, smooth; not far removed from its marine counterparts, but very much in a league all its own.

Thanks to Teabento for providing this sample. I really enjoy dan congs, though I don’t have much experience with them. Due to some over-enthusiastic pouring into a damp teapot, I steeped about 4-5 g of this in 120 ml of water. I kept the temperature around 205F and followed Teabento’s instructions for gongfu brewing: 15, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 120, and 180 seconds.

True to the name of this tea, honey and florals are the dominant flavours in the first steep, backed up by stonefruit, citrus, and grains. The roast doesn’t seem to be obtrusive, though it’s not soapy or way too flowery like some other dan congs I’ve had. I oversteeped the second brew by a couple seconds and it ended up being dry, meaning that this tea isn’t too forgiving. Still, the honey, orchid, citrus, and malty notes come through.

From the third steep onwards, there’s more maltiness and roasted character, though the other flavours are still very much present. I can even understand how Teabento can describe this as woody or mossy. The aftertaste is long and fruity and a lovely aroma persists in the cup. The tea remains pretty consistent until the final steep.

This was an excellent dan cong. I can only hope that the other dan cong samples I’ve been accumulating since 2015 are aging as gracefully.

Another sample thanks to the wonderful Teabento! This has been my tea of choice throughout this cold, dreary day. I feel like I’m getting sick but I don’t think my sense has been affected. With that said, I cannot get any chocolate notes from here. Mostly a touch of honeyed malt and dried fruit. A thinner mouthfeel

Oh weird! On my very last few sips after this cooled way down, I got a whisper of gentle smoke at the end of the sip.

Sipdown (526)!

I’m a little sad to see this sipdown happen; but it’s time – I have enough jasmine white teas in my life at the moment and there’s no point holding on to one last, sad cup of tea.

I made the most out of this last cup though, and I whipped together a stellar tea cocktail for myself! I was inspired by the fact that, despite many people thinking I’m wrong in this comparison, jasmine scented teas almost always remind me of grapes. So, to play off that I muddled a large handful of grapes with a little bit of sugar, some vodka, and some peach schnapps. I added that mix into a cup, then filled the cup with ice. From there I just simply poured over a very strong, slightly over steeped mug of Silver Cat and made myself a light, refreshing and crisp mix of fresh, fruity notes and delicate florals! It felt like a very, very elegant kind of cocktail and I loved how much the jasmine and freshly muddled grapes really made one another pop!

It was amazing! Something for me to keep in mind to recreate with some of the other jasmine teas I have on hand…

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BgfRxNAhYIC/?taken-by=ros_strange

Short and sweet morning Gong Fu session.

This was delightful and smooth; very fresh tasting with really natural and sweet jasmine notes. It didn’t stop there though, there was also some very, very light peach notes once the jasmine had mostly subsided and all throughout the session there were some lovely peony undertones also. Not much staying power; I think this was basically tapped out after around seven steeps. Stilled loved it though.

Sometimes it’s really nice having something thick, and full bodied to sip on but other times something fragile, and delicate like this tea is even better. It’s like opposite sides of the spectrum; and throw on some sweet love songs and break out the soft, pastel teaware and you’ve got yourself the perfect tea to unwind with!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BevheAQlUhf/?taken-by=ros_strange

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNnNLBteKeo

Another sample from teabento!

Personally, I adore jasmine scented silver needle teas. In my opinion silver needle/yin zhen is the best kind of tea to be jasmine scented because it allows the jasmine to really shine through without any other flavours negatively impacting the flavour or drowning it out; and it’s the most peaceful/tranquil and relaxing form of jasmine scented tea. Greener oolongs and black tea aren’t bad options; but you’re always going to get a more full bodied tea flavour that’s in a way competing with the jasmine and not showcasing it.

This afternoon I’m in a bit of a ‘blah’ mood – it’s very dreary and gross outside, and there are some life things happening that have left me feeling a bit down as of late. I started the morning with some pretty rich tasting flavoured teas, but this afternoon what I really want is something peaceful. So currently I’m curled up in bed drinking a Western style mug of this from the cutest little robins egg blue mug covered in little white french dots. My cat Eric is curled up with me; coincidentally he kind of looks like teabento’s cute little cat design for this tea; he’s very white and fluffy – though also significantly fatter. It seems especially fitting that he’s joined me for my mug of Silver Cat tea.

The whole aesthetic right now is delicate, cute and peaceful.

The tea fits pretty perfectly with that theme, too! The first thing I have to point out about the flavour is just the overall freshness of it; everything about the jasmine flavour screams natural/authentic – though because we’re going for tranquility here I think it’s probably more apt to say that it ‘whispers authentic’. Truly, though, the jasmine is really lovely and relaxing: very fragrant and smooth with a bit of sweetness lifting it up to near ethereal stature. Like I said, one of the reasons I really like silver needle tea as the base for jasmine scented teas is because it REALLY lets the jasmine come through, and that’s 100% the case here.

The white tea itself is nice though; while this is mostly delightful jasmine notes you can’t ignore that the base offers some elements too. For starters, there’s a lovely mix of sweet, fresh cream and hay notes in the background of the sip that are definitely from the tea. There’s also just a hint of something fruity; like a fragile mix of sweet lemon and peach juices; definitely something you’d get from a really nice, quality yin zhen. The sweetness of both that fruit element and the jasmine lingers lightly in the finish of the sip, and the way it coats the mouth only to pop off the edges of my tongue makes me feel like a graceful ballerina is dancing in my mouth. Elegant movements, but so full of life and emotion.

This is exactly the kind of tea I wanted this afternoon; it captures exactly what I was in the mood for and all in all everything has come together so beautifully – from the flavour of liquor to my surrounding aesthetics. I feel at peace and relaxed; full of warm cozy tea and fat, cat cuddles. This might just be my favourite tea from teabento yet!

Whoa. This is a bold, complex green tea.

The steeped tea smells like the bagged (not fresh) roasted chestnuts that I get whenever I’m in a Chinatown around North America. This is a good thing – I love those chestnuts! I used to eat them by the bagful… uh.. moving on.

There’s also a lot of vegetal notes in this tea. I taste… peas? A bit of grassiness, and some sweet notes, too. In the description there’s also unami, and I definitely get that as the tea cools, it becomes the primary note.

A lovely tea. Not one I’d reach for every day like I did the chestnuts, although I might if it were piping pot and I needed a green tea.

A huge thanks to TeaBento for sharing this tea with me so I could review it.

Thanks to tea bento for this sample. Today we have BALHYOCHA from korea, which is an oxidized tea. This is a pretty dark black tea, and I started by heating my yixing for black tea and using about 205 water. Since I keep hearing about the deep chocolate flavors of this tea, and higher temp usually brings that out. I got a strong aroma of chocolate, nuts, and a bit of fruit, dark fruit like dark plums.

Brewing this up , I skipped a wash as I wanted to get the full flavor and feel of the tea, and I dont think black teas really need a wash. Sipping I got a flavor of chocolate, the dark fruit flavors as well as a tiny bit of citrus, honey and a teeny bit of pleasant sourness. Its a bit sweet as well, and a touch of caramel. Very interesting tea , I was a bit surprised that it is from Korea, its so rich and sweet.

This is quite the interesting tea, I might have to get some more to see what some variations on brewing produce. I highly recomend at least trying this tea, if you like black tea at all.

This starts out so yummy smelling from the bag – chocolate roasty toastedness. Plus, cute little black sheep curls – I love the presentation of TeaBento’s teas for sale.

This is light, sweet, with a touch of chocolate. Only a small amount of malt, and it’s a thinner, buttery tea. I could drink this all day. It’s smooth and luxurious, without overpowering anything. Even though I normally like a bolder taste to my straight black teas, this one is a daily drink.