Christina / BooksandTea Send Message

So close to this being a sipdown – one more serving to go.

I oversteeped it again, but it didn’t affect the taste very much. In fact, I thought it was going to be maltier/roastier, but this steep tastes grassier.

I’m going to finish off my cup and then steep a different tea. So much to get through, and I’ve got to pick up 2 orders from my newly-returned tea mule!

Another sipdown. Second one of the day.

My comments about this tea from the last time I brewed it still stand: cloves and cardamom are the most prominent flavours, with ginger being a little more noticeable this time around. I also smell the vanilla. However, this really doesn’t work as a green tea – when I finished brewing it, the green smelled rather vegetal and marine-like, and I just don’t think that’s a good mix with chai spices and other non-fruit flavourings. I think this would be much better with a black base.

Sipdown! Many thanks to Indigobloom for giving me a sample of this to try.

It’s a Monday, and I’m going to do my bookkeeping for tax season. I haven’t started yet, but I figured that something dark like this would give me the fortitude to buckle down and try. I think I oversteeped/overleafed this a bit in an attempt to get the sipdown, but it’s not incredibly bitter. The tea smells dark – like smoke, or pepper, or dark chocolate – and this is carried over, albeit not as strongly, in the taste.

Not sure if I’d want to keep this in stock, but at least I’m getting an impression of what black teas I like. So far, I think I’m still going to stick with flavoured blends over straight ones.

Not quite a sipdown, but my sample was so small that I have only a cup of this or so left. So yay!

I’m not a huge fan of hibiscus in teas, but the tartness of the hibiscus works well here with the sweetness of the apples, beet, and carrot in this blend. I think I can also sense the creaminess/tartness of the yogurt. However, I’m not really getting a strawberry taste, when I was really hoping for it to taste like strawberry-rhubarb pie.

I can see why others like it, but once I finish off what I’ve got in my cupboard, I won’t restock.

Backlog from yesterday:

I brewed this up to-go in my Teavana tumbler (I know, I know), and added twice the amount of recommended leaf so that I could take the teabag with me over to my friend’s place and do multiple steepings throughout the day.

This was a smooth blend, and I could taste the cinnamon and ginger, but it tasted a bit off because of my addition of agave nectar (also because I was drinking it in my tumbler, which has a tendency to hold onto previous flavours). I don’t think the agave nectar worked well in this, and perhaps I’ll brew it up with plain old table sugar some time. Holding off on a rating until then.

EDIT: Thanks to Aimee Popovacki for the sample!

I’m moving my rating of this down a few points – while I have a lot of nostalgia about this (now discontinued, even by Teavana) blend, I’ve realized lately that the sencha leaf base could be even better. Drinking it right now to remember the good times when my tongue was much more innocent (and also to finish it off, since I’ve got probably 1.5 oz left, and this leaf is nearing a year old).

It still smells lovely dry, though. Perhaps I can turn it into laundry sachets?

Sample sipdown #4! I think this will be the last sipdown of the day.

The first time I tried this, I brewed it hot. Now, following the advice of aisling of tea, I decided to coldbrew the last of the dry leaf. I steeped this for abou 5 1/2 hours, which maybe wasn’t long enough, but I was just so eager to have another sipdown that I couldn’t wait.

So, this tea. It’s still very hibiscus-heavy, even after using agave nectar instead of honey to add sweetness and tame the tartness. Also, this time, there’s a bitter undertone I’m detecting that wasn’t there in the hot brew from a few weeks ago. However, it’s still very vanilla-y, and I think the vanilla flavour is even more present now than in the hot version. The lemon and the other fruit flavours, less so.

I’m just going to sip this over the remainder of the evening. This isn’t a restock, I think, but at least I got to try it and also get another sipdown today!

Sample sipdown #3 today – I’m on fire!

I got a little impatient waiting for the water to cool, so I steeped it at a temperature higher than recommended on the sample packet (76° instead of 70°). This hasn’t changed the taste much, as it still smells strongly of orange with some smoothness underneath.

To bring out the flavour of the vanilla and almonds, I also added a touch of David’s Tea’s creamed cinnamon honey to the mix – just about 1/2 a teaspoon. However, adding the cinnamon made the orange flavour even stronger, which was the opposite of what I intended.

Anyway, this is still a mellow cup. Not something I plan to restock, but I’m glad I got to try it and satisfy my curiosity surrounding a tea named after where I live. Thanks again to De and aisling of tea for the sample.

EDIT: 100th note, baby! Being at steepster has really upped my game (and affected my wallet) when it comes to drinking tea, but I don’t regret it. :-)

Sample sipdown #2 for today! I got this as a free sample with my most recent online David’s order.

I was feeling lazy, so I dumped the entire sample (5g) into a pot – and it turns out that I didn’t boil enough water to fill the pot, so chances are I overleafed this by quite a bit.

When dry, the leaf smelled lovely – salty and marine-like, like seaweed and popcorn. It smelled even more strongly like this as it was brewing. However, after I pulled the infuser out, the leaves in the infuser smelled…burnt, somehow.

This burnt taste was also present in the brewed tea itself. This is only the second or third genmaicha I’ve had (the other one being Sloane’s Grand Genmaicha) and so I don’t have enough context here. But I was expecting something a bit sweeter, or saltier, or more malty/roasty. Also, I think I brewed this with dead water that had been sitting in the kettle for too long, so it also tastes like minerals.

Ah well. At least I got a sipdown in. Perhaps others will appreciate this tea more than I.

EDIT: After it cooled down, I reheated it and gave it a few more sips. Yup, the water was definitely stale. The rest went down the drain.

Sample sipdown! Thanks to indigobloom for giving me a sachet of this to try (and for only giving me 1, so I can feel like I’ve accomplished something today by doing a sipdown).

As it was steeping, I could smell the chocolate aroma wafting through my kitchen, though when the bag steeped long enough, the most prominent smell was of the black tea base – which I always associate with raisins or prunes. The first taste was mostly of the base, but as it cools down, the chocolate is more apparent.

Not sure if I would want to restock this, though, as the black base is a bit too strong for me.