200 Tasting Notes
I am currently posting this from a boat. My mom and I took a casino boat out today since its such a nice day. This casino boat is nice and if you play your cards right (pun intended) and don’t gamble much, you can get a boat ride for free. Yesterday, since I was running around doing various errands, it was a day very absent of tea. Today, I came prepared. I brought along several tea bags. In addition, I know the cups they have on this boat are really small, so I brought along my celestial seasonings travel mug. And this was the first tea I brewed.
As other Steepsters mentioned the flavor is mild. I didn’t put anything in this and it’s just kinda meh. I might try adding milk and/or sugar next time around. I’m going to leave a rating off though since the tea might be old and the blandness might just be from age.
Thanks to Invader Zim for this green tea sample.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever had Kukicha, but if I had it’s been a while. Also, is there a difference between green kukicha and JUST kukicha? So many questions.
This is a pretty neat little tea. It’s very green, no mistaking that. It’s got that grassy vegetal taste, almost like spinach. I may have used a little too much tea, so the taste might be stronger than needed. I went with 4.4g for roughly 10 oz of water.
Another motivation to brew up this tea came from the fact that Yogic Chai is offering a lot of their chai’s on sale, and one of them is a Kukicha chai (who has ever heard of that, right?). I wanted to make sure I actually liked it before ordering. Now I’m wondering how this would compare. Hmm…
Kukicha is one of those that I don’t know a whole lot about. I’m not sure if there is a difference or not, I would assume there would be, but I have not had that many to be able to tell. I’m glad you liked this though, I find it very mellow and nice.
I think I remember reading how it doesn’t get bitter easily like other greens.
Poor Kukicha. Not exactly as well loved as its more popular brother Sencha.
Thanks Numi for this tea. I actually won a couple sample boxes in a contest – so yay!
Now onto the tea. My stomach was bothering me, so I thought I would break into this tea. I know mint and pu-erh can be good for a stomach. Brewing a tea bag is always a little bit of a letdown when you’ve been brewing loose tea for so long. ;)
I was really expecting this tea to be very minty with a hint of a pu-erh, but HOLY COW – the pu-erh is strong with this one. They don’t skimp out here. The pu-erh flavor is very prominent and the mint and basil are much harder to taste. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t know if it’s the best starter pu-erh, either.
I do have to give Numi props, though. It would be so each to just slap a few pu-erh leaves in something, surround it with overpowering flavors, and call it pu-erh just to attract the Dr. Oz-ers, but this is really pu-erh. I can see if someone likes this, they could move onto the unflavored pu-erhs very easily.
Very interesting, Numi ;)
Thanks to Rachel Sincere for a sample of this tea (and having an awesome name :-p).. I had heard so much hype about this tea and I just HAD to try it.
My first thought when sipping this was… Bitterness. I’m not sure WHY I’m getting bitterness because I used less than boiling water and only steeped it for 2 min. But for some reason that’s the most prominent thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have let this brew in a t-sac? I don’t know, I haven’t had problems with other t-sacs. I’m a little concerned it’s something on my end because no other reviewer mentioned bitterness
As the tea cools, the bitterness goes away and I do get the notes of mint and marshmallow. Maybe I’m better off cold-brewing this one? I don’t know.
I’ll have to rebrew this and see if it changes the next time. Maybe I’ll use more water. Unfortunately I only had 1 sample of this. :(
Awwww, I’m sorry, I thought I had sent enough for two cups. :-( I’ve got plenty, want me to send you some more?
Well I generally brew tea 2 cups at a time since I use a large mug. It’s possible I used too much, though. I would LOVE some more if you’d be willing to send it. I worry that the Root Beer smell might have rubbed off too much on the other teas. It was REALLY strong. LOL
Oh, jeez. I’m sorry about that. LOL I’ll send you some more Graveyard Mist. I’m trying to recruit people, you know, so that we can get it on the permanent collection. ;-)
Thanks to Terri HarpLady for a sample of this!
Another bit of backlogging. I drank so much tea yesterday and was so bad at writing most of it down I don’t know where to start, so I’ll start here:
Last night after all my different tea drinking escapades, I started to get a stomach ache. I know mint and tulsi are good for the stomach, so I broke out this tea. The great thing about herbals is that you can stick ‘em in a T-sac, throw boiling water over it, and let it sit forever, and when you’re not feeling well, minimal maintenance is always a good thing.
This was a very pleasant tea. Minty, but not overly so. I didn’t even realize this had licorice in it because it was not prominent at all, and I’m a big licorice hater.
Overall a very nice herbal tea with lots of different flavors and not a single overpowering one.
BlueKittyMeow sent me some of this matcha, along with some other matcha goodies. This is the same matcha they use to make the matcha lattes at Starbucks. Unfortunately, you can’t actually purchase the matcha powder anywhere; you just have to find an employee of Starbucks. I’ve had this tea a couple times now, but this is my first official tasting note.
While I’m generally a tea purist, matcha is one of the few teas I do sweeten hot. When it’s cold, I can usually drink it without needing sweetener, although I’m referring to the flavored matchas.
Anyway, I made a nice mug of this the traditional matcha way (it had been awhile). I didn’t bother to sift it, but I really didn’t have any issues with grittiness. The nice thing about this kind of matcha is that you don’t have to worry about adding any sweetener afterwards. I found the matcha was plenty sweet. The problem, of course, is that if you think the matcha is too sweet right off the bat – TOO bad. I enjoyed it as is with just hot water, but decided to throw in some skim milk to help round out the taste. The milk added some nice creamy notes to it, but I think I actually prefer this matcha without it.
The matcha itself tastes very mild. I would not recommend this for someone who actually likes the taste of matcha. This is more for the people who want to drink it but don’t want the typical “green tea” taste.
Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for a sample of this.
This isn’t a bad fruity tea, but it gets astringent quickly. It’s not
as exciting as the Green Caramel that I tried a little while ago, but it’s not bad. The tea smells very nice. I just prefer other flavored greens over this one.
Perhaps cold brewing might make this tea pop a little bit more? Although I am seeing other steepsters complain about bitterness on this tea, too.
I think I’ve finally reached the point where I have too many tea samples. Or maybe I’m just saying that because I was gone for a week and I came back to 4 boxes of swaps and it all seems so overwhelming. Tea samples are always awesome, but now I’m wondering how I’m going to go through it all. In the meantime, I’m going to try to resist all the upcoming Christmas promotions.
Anyway, I picked this out from the sample box I got from momo a while back. I don’t have much experience with guava, so I’m really sure what to expect. I’m not getting a LOT of guava flavor in this, I mostly just taste the white tea. It’s not bad, but I’m not picking up on all the notes that everyone else seems to be. Or maybe I’m just not familiar with guava to taste it. It’s not a bad tea at all, though. Didn’t really get a chance to cold brew this since my samples was so small, so maybe I might pick up the fruitiness a little better if it was colder.
