1216 Tasting Notes
Teabox Tuesday! It’s in the herbal hours of the evening and I’m getting low on teabox herbals, but I do still have this one from the Discovery Teabox, so thank you to Skysamurai for organizing and to those that participated for sharing! Brewed up my small sampler of this one in my little Japanese doubin, which holds about two cups.
The dry leaf smelled faintly tropical to me, mostly of pineapple. Hmm. Perhaps the sort of thing I should cold brew, but the water is already boiled so let’s do this.
Brewed, the cup is faintly pink, and since I am a fan of hibi-hip teas, that’s a fairly good sign for me… but the aroma I get now isn’t fruity at all (why did the dry leaf smell of pineapple to me, I wonder?) but… chamomile. Hooboy. Welp. Yup. That is mostly all I taste. Strong, thick chamomile. If I could actually taste hibi-hip, that would be an improvement for me, because I’m not a fan of chamomile. Looking at the ingredient list, there are a lot of florals in this cup, but I’m not really picking out any other distinct flavors… there is a hint of a sort of aloe taste, but the chamomile is just so strong to me it’s overwhelming anything else that might be in this cup. I’m definitely not picking up any huckleberry, which is supposed to be the flavoring added to this tea.
Maybe if I was a fan of chamomile I’d be alright with this, but as is, this isn’t my cuppa. I added a teabag with a small pinch of hibiscus and rose petals from my dry herb stash to a tea bag and let them soak for a bit in the tea, then added a spoon of lemon-infused honey, and though my tea turned considerably more red, it still tasted of chamomile. Guess I should’ve used more than a pinch, and actually made this tea a Scarlet Dragon… Perhaps that’s what is most disappointing to me. With a name like that, and with the hibiscus and rosehip pretty high in the ingredients, why is this such a chamomile bomb? Probably good news for 99.9999% of Steepsterers, but sadly, I’m in that 0.0001% that would’ve prefered a juicy tart hibi-hip drink because chamomile tastes like soap to my particular palate.
Also, my birthday present to myself arrived today! Since I decided the teapots I inherited from Grandma were too delicate to use as actual teapots and needed to go into storage, I still wanted a larger, “English style” teapot. My birthday is St. Patrick’s Day, and I just happened to see this one looking at English-style teapots… and had to have it.
https://www.englishteastore.com/shamrock-teapot-earthenware-6-cup.html
Isn’t it cute? squee I have such a weakness for cute teaware…
Flavors: Floral, Soap
Preparation
This is one of my oldest teas, and yet somehow I’ve yet to manage to get around to reviewing it. Welp, I guess I should rectify that, since I’m working on sipping it down.
This tea has a very strong sweet strawberry aroma in the bag, but I honestly find the flavor a bit underwhelming; then again, I have found my flavored rooibos blends seem to not hold strong flavors due to aging the most so far, so for my next pot, I may try adding an extra helping of leaf to see if that helps compensate some. The rooibos itself has a pretty strong flavor to me, it’s edging a little more on woody/medicinal/herbaceous, though the tea itself is very sweet with a subtle vanilla note. The strawberry is present, but there isn’t a strong, creamy vanilla note, so I don’t really get “strawberries and cream” at all, and the strawberry doesn’t feel strong, juicy, and defined against the rooibos base… and I’ve had strawberry rooibos teas like that. This just doesn’t hold a candle to Bird & Blend’s Rhubarb & Custard, which did the strawberry/cream rooibos so well. I believe TeaSource discontinued this one, but I have a very similar blend in my cupboard called Lavenderberry, which tasted like strawberries, vanilla, and a touch of lavender, and I remember it being quite lovely. I wonder if they tweaked the recipe, got a different flavoring for the strawberry, or if the age just made that much of a difference? I may have to make a pot of that tea again to jog my memory and see if I still like it as much as I remember…
This isn’t so bad that I won’t be able to finish it off, but it’s just so underwhelming compared to other better teas I’ve had with this flavor profile. It just feels so weak on the strawberry and cream elements it is supposed to be bringing out, so I feel like I’m just having a pot of rooibos. I like rooibos fine, but if I’m going to have rooibos, then I’d rather not have a very weak fruit flavoring in it, since I feel like that is probably what is bringing out the medicinal qualities.
Flavors: Medicinal, Rooibos, Straw, Strawberry, Sweet, Vanilla, Wood
Preparation
Sampler Sunday! Still trying to finish off all the sampler packets from the Great Sampler Order of January 2018, and it appears I only have three left! Getting there! While spring time does evoke a bit of a “green tea” mood in me (and I have been making a lot of fruity iced green teas again!) and two of the three are green teas, it’s a rainy gray morning today, which just makes me feel like brewing up a pot of black tea, so I opted for the last black tea of the samplers. But it is a rose black, so the floral touch does add a bit of seasonality. I love rose teas so as long as this has a nice base, this should be an enjoyable pot.
The tea has a strong fruity aroma, of stonefruits and mango; in fact, I’m getting very little floral elements from the scent, so it seems the fruit flavorings added to the tea are made to dominate here (which is a bit confusing to me for a tea named “Black Rose”). I am, however, getting more of the rose present in the flavor; the black base is lighter bodied (at least at my brewing parameters) providing a bit of maltiness that is present mostly toward the back of the tongue, but the flavors are left to dominate, with a fruity peach/nectarine/mango flavor filling the mouth until a very sweet floral rose finish closes out the sip. The flavors go well together and it’s a nice cuppa. There is an element of juiciness to it, and the rose flavor is pretty strong in the cup but isn’t a strong wafting perfumy aroma coming off the cup, which can sometimes be an issue for me with my migraine head sensitivities.
This is an enjoyable cup, and honestly the only thing that holds me back from the T2 offerings that I have enjoyed is the fact that they don’t sell their teas in sizes smaller than 100 grams, which I simply won’t purchase anymore. I spent all of last week rebagging teas from such large bags of teas to gift and/or cupboard sale off. In a single-person household, I just can’t deal with such large quantities of tea. Tea shops, seriously, you need to offer smaller sizes of tea for purchase or risk losing business!
Flavors: Floral, Fruity, Malt, Mango, Peach, Rose, Smooth, Stonefruit, Sweet
Preparation
Throwback Thursday! One of my oldest teas, this is another “vacation” tea, back from March 2017 when I visited Portland. Now I’m planning a return trip for the Portland Tea Expo in summer of 2019 and figure I’d better start finishing off the teas I picked up the last time I was there! I got this one at Tea Chai Te, a gem of a tea shop (can’t wait to return there!), and it’s really more of a spicy hot chocolate than a tea, since the base is lovely, fluffy Guittard cocoa powder. The spices are whole spices though, rather than ground, so it can be steeped like a tea, if you want to prepare it that way, and I believe the last time I made it that way I did so. For this revisit, however, I just put a generous teaspoon directly into my milk frother with a cup of milk and let it steep directly into the vanilla almond milk as the cocoa powder was thoroughly mixed up and dissolved into the milk. Then I just strained out the spices with a strainer as I poured into the cup.
This would definitely be my preferred method of making this, since when I steeped it as a tea it was very spicy for my spice-wuss self, and then it was tricky finding the right ratios of milk and sweetener to add to the tea. Like this, it is very creamy, the vanilla almond milk already brings a balancing sweetness for all the spices, and I’m getting a lovely amount of spices shining through, so it tastes like a lovely cup of Mexican hot chocolate. The cardamom is especially strong, so fans of cardamom (and chocolate, of course!) would probably love this! I’m also getting notes of ginger, pepper, and a dusting of cinnamon across the top of the cup. Rich, creamy, warm, spicy, and satisfying! I’d definitely enjoy more of this! Increasing my rating slightly from before, since now that I have a milk frother to prepare this (I don’t think I even owned one a year ago?) it really makes a huge difference in how easy it is to make this “cocoa style” and how much that improves the overall flavor and mouthfeel for me.
Flavors: Cardamom, Chocolate, Cinnamon, Creamy, Ginger, Pepper, Spicy, Thick
Preparation
I found a box of this still in the cupboard that I’ve been trying to clean out, buried behind where I keep my cans of soup teas I use for ramen broth. It expired in 2010. Oops. Only five packets left in it, I figured I’d make one water bottle’s worth and if the matcha tasted nasty due to age I’d trash the rest. At least unlike that fossilized instant chai I found in the back of the cupboard, this doesn’t have milk product in it, so maybe there is some slight hope…
The Yamamotoyama website listing says this is the “lightly sweetened” version of their instant matcha iced tea (the box just says “sweetened”). Honey, there is nothing “light” about this! Is there matcha in this? The green color says there is, but my taste buds are getting nothing but sugar water. Maybe there is a faint shadow of something grassy in the background behind all the sweetness, but this is just… meh. I’ll admit I have to sweeten my matcha drinks because they tend to be too bitter for me otherwise, but I like to at least taste my matcha! This is unbarably over-sugared.
At least there is nothing about it that tastes off, or bad… though maybe the lack of flavor to the matcha is due to the age, and if it wasn’t 9 years expired now I’d be tasting more than just sugar, so I suppose I should take that into consideration. I have three packets left to finish this off and get it out of my cupboard. Maybe if I add a few teaspoons of my loose matcha with the leftover packet mix that will help even it out a bit?
Flavors: Sugar, Sweet
Preparation
Teabox Tuesday! This is a flavored white tea sampler I got from the Here’s Hoping Teabox, so thank you to tea-sipper for organizing and to those that participated for sharing! I particularly like to cold brew fruity greens and whites so I coldbrewed 6g of leaf overnight in my fridge and then strained and now have it in my work waterbottle today.
I was surprised at the faintly pinkish-red color of the tea. It smells fruity, but I wouldn’t say it is a strong strawberry aroma to me, because it has a potent florality to it; it’s quite pleasant, actually. In the flavor I’m getting a very clean, vegetal taste, slightly grassy, with a hint of cucumber water, but there is a sweet floral note as well. The back of my tongue picks up some autumn leaf before a bit some berry flavor settles over my tongue, but I’d say the flavoring is pretty gentle; I’m okay with that since the white tea notes aren’t overwhelmed by artificiality, which easily becomes the case in flavored greens/whites. It’s refreshing, and the name is actually pretty spot on… the strawberry is subtle. That may or may not be your thing depending on what you want out of a flavored tea.
Flavors: Autumn Leaf Pile, Berry, Cucumber, Floral, Grass, Vegetal
Preparation
Sampler Sunday! It’s my birthday and I bought myself a small carrot cake, because why not? I thought a simple black tea would go well to accompany the sweet, so I went through my black tea blends and of the three I had stashed, I asked Todd which one I should go with and he “liked the sound” of this one. It was a freebie sampler I got from the Lupicia San Jose store when I visited on my trip last November… to think that storefront would be closed a few months later!
Since there is Darjeeling in this blend, I decided to drop the temperature a bit from what I usually brew my blacks at (205F) to 190F. I kept the steep length the same (3 min) since it looked like mostly whole leaf in my sachet. The brewed tea was a lovely brown shade with a touch of coppery hue and smelled very malty, with some notes of baked cinnamon bread, and a slight floral undertone. Thankfully this cup did not turn out too strong, and perhaps it could’ve turned out that way had I used warmer water or steeped it longer, but this pretty much hit my perfect zone for a black tea, which was a smooth medium bodied brew that can be taken nicely plain. The flavor was a nice malty flavor with a natural sweetness to it, reminding me of baked bread with a touch of honey, and there was a slight cinnamon spice and subtle citrus note toward the end of the sip. There was also a very subtle floral sweetness lingering in the background, which was quite nice as well.
Brewed at these parameters, this was a lovely cup, and went nicely with my indulgently sweet carrot cake!
Flavors: Bread, Cinnamon, Citrus, Floral, Honey, Malt, Smooth
Preparation
Sampler Saturday! Thank you, derk! I received this tea from derk while I was having a hard few months, and really appreciated the laugh… especially since it all started from me making a comment on one of those many “wellness” blends about where the “peachy impeachment” teas were, and then Todd actually finding that one existed, hahaha. Which just proves, there really is a tea out there for everything. Now the real question… does it work? I’m betting it works about as well as every other over-promoted “wellness” tea, heh…
Steeped up a pot using both of my teabags in my doubin, and it certainly smells very peachy! It is actually a surprisingly nice blend, for something that is selling off the gag. It isn’t the sort of peach flavor that is on par with Lupicia or 52Teas, but it doesn’t taste oddly artificial or have any of the strange metallic notes I sometimes get with flavorings. It actually tastes slightly floral to me, giving me an odd peach blossom association; perhaps its from the honey sweetness in the rooibos base which is reading more as a floral/honeysuckle sort of flavor to me in this tea. I do taste the tulsi, and it’s bringing in mostly mint and pepper notes. Mostly I’m getting a sweet floral peach flavor, and it’s a quite relaxing cuppa.
Thanks again, derk!
Flavors: Floral, Honey, Honeysuckle, Mint, Peach, Pepper, Sweet
Preparation
Sampler Saturday! I noticed this would be my 500th tasting note, and decided I at least wanted to make it something new, and (hopefully) something enjoyable. I noticed I had a sampler teabag of this Lupicia tea, which I apparently got a year ago as a freebie with a Lupicia order. Now that Lupicia is closed down (aside from wonky orders from Hawaii), and the cherry flavor reminds me a bit of the cherry blossom season (though I do have proper sakura teas I need to revisit this month!) I figured this would be a good choice for a black tea to go with my breakfast this morning. Plus, I’ve heard good things about it!
The teabag had a pleasantly sweet cherry aroma, and the steeped cup is a pretty coppery color and still has a rich cherry scent, with a sort of fresh, evergreen quality. The tea is malty and I thankfully keep my steep time rather short as I know Lupicia’s black can turn astringent easily, and I think three minutes was just right as this is pretty smooth; I’m getting very faint hints of cocoa in the malty base which accompany the cherry nicely. The cherry itself is not the syrupy, sweet, medicinal flavor that I usually find in teas which makes me typically avoid cherry teas; it has almost a juicy quality, and finds a happy medium between being too sweet or too tart. But what is making me really love this tea, is there is this refreshing evergreen taste right at the end of the sip; it would seem an odd accompaniment, but it keeps the cherry from feeling cloying or candylike, and just adds this mellowing balance. It’s a crisp and clean sort of taste. Sometimes a touch of pine makes the whole thing taste like cleaning agent, but here it just works into something wonderful.
I would absolutely drink more of this!
Flavors: Cherry, Cocoa, Malt, Pine, Smooth, Sweet, Tart
Preparation
Throwback Thursday! This is one of my earliest flavored green teas. I remember I didn’t care for it initially as a warm brew, and while I probably should revisit it warm sometime, these days I really do just drink most fruity greens as cold brews in my water bottle at work, so that is how I prepared this one: 5g in a quart of water, steeped over night, and then strained.
I still am not wildly crazy about the mandarin flavoring of this tea; it is quite strong and citrusy, but something about it just strikes me as too potent and artificial. I wish it was dialed back just a touch. That said, it at least doesn’t have the weird metallic aftertaste that I get quite often from orange flavorings, so I guess it has that in its favor. Despite the flavoring being pretty strong, the green tea itself holds up surprisingly well as a base since I can taste a refreshing fresh, grassy, vegetal taste, and often with flavored greens, I can’t really make out any base notes from the green tea at all. It is nice enough as an iced tea, but not one that wows me; I’ll be happy when I’m able to sip it down and this wouldn’t be a tea I’d consider restocking. I think what I’ll do for my next batch is mix up some lemonade and steep in that, since I think that might tame the orange flavoring a bit.
I wavered about lowering my score from where I had it initially, but decided to keep it since the base green tea was surprisingly good and I was so impressed the notes held out against such a strong and (in my opinion) unpleasant flavoring.
Flavors: Artificial, Citrus, Grass, Orange, Tangy, Vegetal
Barf. There’s something about chamomile that tastes like… bodily fluids, to me. I don’t really know how to describe it. So I’d definitely have preferred hibi-hip (at least it’s tasty when sweetened!)
In other news, that teapot is adorable – what a great birthday gift to yourself! I hope you enjoy using it :)
Cute pot
I think I forgot about englishteastore.com… probably intentionally…
They have some cute teaware. I also live in an area where some of the British bagged tea brands that I like (Twinings, Taylors of Harrogate) aren’t that easy to get ahold of, and they carry them. I’m not that big on their loose leaf (though their green cucumber melon was quite good, and with Lupicia’s Golden Honeydew gone forever now, and my other favorite melon tea which came from TeaSource also recently being discontinued, I may go back to that one for my iced melon tea needs in the future…)
I forgot that awesome cucumber melon tea you sent to me was sourced from there! At least that one is still around. I’ve sampled some of their teas over the years and I’ve mostly liked what I tried. Maybe I only tried the good ones though. haha