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For the July sipdown prompt, “a lime tea.” Prepared cold brew.

I had a 20g sample of this, but it appeared to me most of the “weight” was taken up by a lot of dried lime slices in the packet. After picking all those out to see what I had to work with, I decided I should just dump the whole sample into a liter mason jar for cold brew.

Perhaps it was overleafed a bit, or there was just way too much dried lime in my sampling, but this tea is sour. I mean, I’m the person on Steepster that loves sour/tart tea and can’t get enough of it and even I think this is abrasive (that said, I can still drink this without sweetener… not that I would recommend that). It doesn’t really taste like lime to me, rather I get really pithy orange peel. I really can’t taste anything other than orange peel and a generic sour “citrus” taste that lingers unpleasantly on my tongue. And there is absolutely nothing “cola” about this!

The name made me picture decadent Lime Coke… and I got sour orange water. Not a fan and glad this was just a sample and after (begrudgingly) getting through two water bottles of this, it will be gone. Good riddance.

For the July sipdown prompt, “a mango tea.” Prepared cold brew.

This tea has a very refreshing “green” sort of flavor. It tastes very fresh, wet, and juicy… there is a fresh grassy/mineral taste to the base that reminds me of dew-damp grass. The mango is more of an underripe flavor, but still had a juicy quality. I was quite surprised how distinctly I tasted cantaloupe… most melon teas I’ve had lean more on the honeydew or watermelon side, but this really reminded me of crisp, juicy cantalope. The flavors aren’t particularly strong but well defined and taste really refreshing with the green base. This is a very nice too-hot summer day coldbrew sort of tea.

For the July sipdown prompt, “A blueberry tea.” Technically this tea has several different kinds of berries, but blueberries is one of them, which is good enough for me. Prepared one liter brewed hot and then chilled overnight, and the other liter as an overnight coldbrew.

Steeped hot and then chilled, the tea was quite brisk, with a fruity berry undertone that read most strongly as blackberry to my tongue. I normally opt to make my black teas “hot” and then chill them rather than coldbrewing, as I typically like the flavor a bit better, but when I tasted how strong it came out, I decided to try a coldbrew. The coldbrew definitely mellowed the black tea out a bit which let the sweetness of the fruits shine a bit more. I also got more of a “generic berry” flavor in the coldbrew. Both were tasty, but I liked the coldbrew preparation a wee bit more so I’m glad I tried it both ways! (And I’ll really have to experiment with coldbrewing black teas more often…)

For the July sipdown prompt, “a pineapple tea.” Prepared cold brewed.

Maybe it’s the cold preparation method (I just haven’t been feeling warm tea at all lately and didn’t even try it that way) but the pineapple flavor is really weak. Mostly I get a tangy citrus overtone, particularly an herbaceous-leaning one with the lemongrass melding with the green rooibos. I get a little pineapple toward the end of the sip, but it certainly doesn’t “pop.”

It’s not a bad iced tea, but it isn’t what I was expecting. I’ve had hibiscus-heavy fruit teas that had a much stronger pineapple flavor than this, and I thought on the milder green rooibos base the pineapple was sure to shine. I may try sweetening/carbonating what I have left in the fridge, but at the moment I’m underwhelmed.

I just finished off an old package of this I had received in 2018 from a cupboard sale by Ost. Thank you, Ost! Using for the July sipdown prompt, “A peach tea.”

I’ve been drinking this cold brew. The apple pieces come through pretty heavily for me in this one, but there is a gentle, sweet peach candy note to the tea. It’s actually a bit sweeter than I prefer, but it makes a nice ice cold drink.

I had one scoop left in the bag after the last liter of cold brew I’d prepared, so last night I decided to use it up as a very late night cuppa. I actually liked it a little better that way, because it had a slightly tart edge that I personally prefer in fruit teas that smoothed out some of the sweetness. I think, however, that this was due to the fact that what few white tea was actually in the blend sifted to the bottom of the bag, and I had just left the bag in my cup while drinking (my go-to for herbals) which caused the tea leaf to get a bit astringent/bitter.

Not a favorite… I’ve had other peach herbals that were more potent on the peach and tangier in the mouth that I prefer over this. However, this could be a good herbal peach for those that are hibiscus-averse.

I’ve been drinking pretty much exclusively cold brew tea (summer heat, UGH) but when I woke up this morning, I found myself craving a more traditional warm breakfast cuppa before the oven outside has preheated too much. So I pulled out this classic breakfast tea and a box of Walker’s shortbread for breakfast. Using for the July prompt, “A tea paired with a biscuit/cookie.”

Classic breakfast tea flavor that is smooth enough to drink plain. Beautiful red color with an aroma of honeyed dates, cinnamon, and a hint of citrus. Malt for days with baked cinnamon raisin bread, lemon, and a sweet honey-leaning-on-molasses sweetness.

One of my favorite breakfast blends.

Using this for the prompt “an African tea” (for the honeybush base).

I’ve never had a kumquat, so I don’t really have any knowledge to compare the flavor to… but what I got was a citrusy flavor that was also slightly melony? Like a cross between an orange and honeydew, with a touch of citric sharpness. The honeybush itself was very smooth for me… Usually I get strong peppery notes from it, but there were none this time, instead it was quite woody with a cinnamon sort of edge to it.

A nice cuppa on a (surprising!) rainy evening. I have hardly touched a hot cup of tea in weeks, as coldbrew season has fallen upon me, and it was warm and comforting and hit the spot as I provided my lap as a heated bed for the Chiya cat.

This is one of the last Japanese teas left in my collection after strenuous sipdown efforts, and the only tea I could reasonably use for the prompt “oceanic notes” since I already used by culinary matcha for “a tea smoothie.” I purchased this tea in 2019 from the Portland Tea Fest; both myself and my friend Todd were impressed by this one at Japanese Green Tea Co’s booth. (I also paid a lot for it, and could’ve used this for “a pricey tea” as well…)

It has a strong buttery, vegetal aroma… Like copious amounts of melted butter over steamed asparagus and spinach. There is also a saline-like umami note on the nose, that mixed with the strong vegetal notes evokes seaweed. It is quite umami, with a thick salty vegetal flavor, but it is also very smooth. The tea is grown using the chagusaba method, which supposedly causes it to be naturally sweeter than many Japanese greens.

It’s a very pleasant sencha, full of smooth, silky butter and oceanic umami vegetal notes. Given the weather, I’ll probably be opting to cold brew it in the future.

I bought this at the San Francisco International Tea Festival in 2018. I’m using it for the prompt “a pricy tea”… certainly there are more pricy teas out there, but this works out to close to $1 a gram which is pricy enough in my opinion!

I’ve been hording this, but making a cup this morning, I’m reminded why I was so charmed by it at their booth. I usually don’t get the claimed chocolately notes often in Chinese black teas, but this one is strong… the aroma is very chocolately, with a touch of a lemony-orange citrus scent, and a floral overtone, like a rosy sweetness. The flavor of the cup is very chocolate and sweet potato forward, with some notes of honey, orange zest, and florality.

Very satisfying cup. I don’t normally resteep tea leaves as a western brewer (blasphemous, I know) but I did this morning, and while not quite as potent as I prefer, the second cup still has a lot of sweet potato/yam flavor.

This was one of the teas that was in the Liquid Proust “puerh exploration kit for newbies,” which I signed up for in 2018. The label was simply “Dayi 7572 2007” but this is probably the only one of the bunch I received that had cryptic labels that I think I’ve correctly tracked down and don’t have to put on Random Steepings. (Of course, I could still be wrong!)

I’m using this tea for the monthly prompt “A tea from a place you’d like to visit.” Not because I actually want to visit China (which isn’t even on my short list) but because, the other day, my friend Todd was talking about going to a Santa Cruz teahouse called Hidden Peak Tea for his graduation, and it made me realize how badly I want to go back to that area and visit him. This tea is offered at Hidden Peak Teahouse in Santa Cruz, so I’m using that as my connection.

180ml (mini teapot) | 8.45g | 205F | Rinse/10s/15s/20s/25s/30s/35s

Gong fu. Brewed the first steep a little longer than intended. The tea smells warm, spicy, and subtly smoky… mineral earth and leather aromas. On first sip I get a strong peppery leather impression, with that sort of marshy taste I don’t care for in puerh sort of subtly hiding in the background, though the edges are smoothed out and it isn’t coming off as abrasive swamp water. A bit of smoke mixes with the spiciness at the end of the sip. It stayed pretty consistent from steep and steep, aside from that “marshy” taste getting stronger, which led to me being progressively less into it. Perhaps I’m not cultured enough to properly get flavor notes from teas like this, but I think I’ll make the remainder of the leaf western style, as I honestly didn’t really notice much difference brewing gong fu. I only went six steeps until my water ran out, and was pretty over it by that point.

I’ve never been much of a pu’erh person, and while I’ve definitely had some way worse than this, I’ve also had some I was more impressed by… pretty average feelings here.