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Another of my “one and done” style Dazzle Deer samplers. I’m “winging” the preparation style a bit on this one, using the directions from a tea I think may be the same (or very similar) that I also haven’t tried yet that is about as old as this one from What-cha, their China Fujian Zhangping Light Roasted Shui Xian “Fruit” Cake. So I basically dropped the full oolong cake in two cups 205F water, steeped for 3 minutes, and strained into a small teapot.

The leaf expansion was huge! I immediately started to worry this might be a bit astringent just because so much leaf was in the water after the cake had fully expanded. The spent leaves had a highly perfumy, floral aroma. The steeped tea is a pretty autumn leaf light orange color, and smells of lilacs, orchids, honey, cream, and very sweet. The flavor is highly floral and a bit thick and syrupy on the tongue. This was described as lightly roasted, and while it doesn’t come out at all in the aroma, I do taste it. It’s a mild roasted note, slightly char-like, with a bit of a honey-roasted nuts flavor. And it is a touch astringent, with a slight bitter/drying effect left after the sip. I’m not sure if I care for the blend of the roasted nuts flavor with the highly floral flavor, but it is a fine enough oolong. Not my favorite, but I’ll enjoy this pot, and I’ll have no problem drinking the other cake of this I have from What-cha, either.

I’ve been continuing my matcha smoothies for breakfast… I used to not be a “breakfast person” but I kinda like that I’m getting my “tea and breakfast” in one this way, and I’m really liking how I feel with the sort of “mellow yet strong” caffeine hit I’m getting from the matcha compared to just making a warm cuppa (not that I don’t still love a warm cuppa).

I was getting tired of my “Lime in the Coconut” smoothies I’ve had for a few days in a row now trying to sip down my Coconut Matcha and just wanted to change it up this morning, and for whatever reason, was craving caramel apple as a flavor profile. I had this matcha, and it’s really old, past the best buy date, and in a package I hadn’t even cut open yet. SIGH. And this is my eternal problem…

Normally I just dump the powder into the blender but I whisked it up with the vanilla oat milk into a latte first this morning to sample separate from the smoothie, since I had never tried it before. (It meant more dishes to be cleaned, but MATCHA SCIENCE!) I normally prepare my matcha as lattes (as I find it too bitter for me typically in just water) but these “matcha au lait” mixes that Lupicia used to make are made to be latte mixes (at least from the instructions). There was definitely a sweet grassy matcha flavor present, but also a very sweet candy-esque note… caramel, though? I’m not entirely sure I got an overwhelming impression of caramel, though I could see what they were going for… maybe a subtle hint of a caramel flavor? Definitely something sweet and creamy, and there is quite a bit of sugar/milk in the mix for this one. I definitely would not drink this not prepared as a latte (as the mix suggests), but think it is fine. It is sweet so I don’t have problems with “matcha bitterness,” but at the same time, doesn’t have a flavor that overwhelms that “grassy matcha taste” either. On the other hand, it isn’t my favorite flavored matcha I’ve tried by a longshot, either. I guess it just feels a little lackluster?

The smoothie was good though! It consisted of the matcha latte (minus the few sips I took for MATCHA SCIENCE!), a green apple, half a cup of dates, some ice, and a big glob of caramel sauce (because health conscious I am not). It hit the “sweet/tart green caramel apple” I was wanting quite well!

I received this sample in the last Here’s Hoping Teabox, so thank you to tea-sipper for organizing and to all who contributed! This is apparently from ZenTea but not that ZenTea (the one that became “zentealife.com” and started selling teaware instead of tea… I’m fairly sure I’ve tried a tea of theirs before, long ago…) as this ZenTea (zenteaco.com) still has an active webpage and appears to be a mom-and-pop teashop out of Georgia.

Fair warning… I’m not a pu-erh person. Not sure why I decided to brew this today, other than the fact I have a lot of pu samples sitting around that aren’t getting drunk, and I keep thinking, “One day, I will get all the amazing tasting notes that I keep reading about in everyone else’s pu reviews instead of just dirt and swamp water.”

100ml shiboridashi | 5.5g | 205F | Rinse/10s/15s/20s/25s/30s/35s/40s

Threw the entire 5.5g sample in my 100ml shiboridashi. After the rinse, the leaf just… had that same marshy swampy smell I seem to always get from pu-erh. Here we go again. Am I broken, guys?

Same earthy/wet dirt/marshy sort of flavor I seem to always get from puerh. I’ve definitely had some that felt a little more abrasive in that flavor than this one, as this isn’t leaning as heavily in that marshy/vegetal realm that I usually get and instead is more like a damp, rank cave, which… is still not my favorite, but preferable to me between the two. It steeped for a long time, but the flavor notes never changed for me. Ah well. Will it ever happen for me? Dunno…

This is a single teabag I got from some past Lupicia order as a sample. Grapefruit isn’t really my thing, but I figured I may as well just steep up the cup and get it out of my cupboard. I cold brewed it, probably letting it steep for a few hours in 350ml of ice cold water in the fridge while I was doing some washing up and food prep stuff in the kitchen.

This actually isn’t as jarring to me as I was expecting… maybe cold brewing made the grapefruit come across less bitter/acidic than I usually find it? (Or I wonder if the flavor is simply growing on me! I normally love tart/sour flavors, but have just never liked that one particular one for whatever reason…) This is actually pretty refreshing. It does taste like grapefruit, and I am getting a bit of a citrusy tang, but it isn’t overwhelmingly sour. The base tea is coming across very light (but it probably is quite old at this point); there is a subtle grassiness, and, oddly enough, a slight note of melon rind. Honestly, I really like this as an iced, cold brew tea, and I didn’t expect to at all, which is really surprising me! I’m not sure if I’d pick this over other citrus flavors, but I don’t think I’d turn down exploring other grapefruit teas a bit more if the opportunity arises in the future, either.

I’m tired and my head is starting to hurt. My grandma on my mother’s side passed today, after choosing to end nearly a decade of dialysis which had grown very painful this last year. I was in full support of her choice and glad her pain is over. My grieving is mostly manifesting in just feeling a deep sorrow for the grief my mother is going through, and trying to be there for her as much as I can despite the fact I live in the western US and she lives in the eastern US. I guess the service will be held online due to That Thing That Shall Not Be Named. I wonder what that will be like…

This is my next old matcha that is now a smoothie target. I got it from an independantly owned teashop in Boise, and though they list Aiya as one of their matcha suppliers, they don’t have any flavored matcha, so I have no idea where they are sourcing this particular one from (or I’d list it under the appropriate source… sorry!) Mostly I’ve been making pina colada-esque concoctions, but I decided to mix some of this straight into an ice cold water bottle and do the “mad shake” to try it plain, to get a sense of its flavor as a matcha on its own. Unlike the Mint Chip, this one does have that noticable grassy flavor, but it is very sweet from the sugar (not a complaint for me, I can’t handle the bitterness of matcha straight up). The coconut is coming through toward the end of the sip, more pronounced at the back of my tongue. It is more of a gentle touch than a strong hit of syrupy coconut… to be honest, I like both flavors depending on their presentation. I think the coconut adds to the sweetness/balance of the matcha in a way that makes this easy for me to drink in straight water, and normally I have to take my matcha as a latte. Perhaps on days when I just don’t have time to mix up a breakfast smoothie, I’ll just dump a bit of this in a water bottle and take it on the go since it works well this way.

The Great Un-Steepstering of 2020 Review #11 (08/25/20)

Rather than adding a bunch more individual entries to the (already giant and slow) database when these dry herbs essentially taste like what you would expect when you steep them in water (What, you mean lavender tastes of lavender and ginger tastes of ginger?! Stop the presses!), I’m going to collect these all here since I’ve been using my loose plain herbal infusions stash in a few different ways I want to document.

Culinary Lavender by Silver Fox Lavender Farm

As a bonified lavender fan, this is the one I’ve gotten the most creative with so far. I bought quite a bit from a stall at a Farmer’s Market in Boise (yay supporting local farmers!) so thankfully I still have quite a bit of lavender buds still in-house.

My first endeavor was making lavender-infused hot cocoa by following the recipe here (https://www.teatulia.com/recipes/earl-grey-hot-chocolate-mix.htm), only the portions were so huge (I ended up giving bags to both Todd and my sister!) that now I have copied down versions of it not only halved, but halved several more times from that, down to getting nearly a “sampler size” portion. It’s basically a way of crushing the buds in a spice grinder and mixing them with sugar and cocoa powder for hot chocolate, and the stuff is delicious!

In the winter months, hot lavender lattes are a favorite. I’ve found my favorite way to do them thus far is a half gram of buds per 1 metric cup (a little seems to go a long way!) steeped in 3 parts hot water for 3-5 minutes, then I heat/foam 1 part coconut milk, and mix together with a small dollap of Farmer’s Market honey. I really like the flavor combo of the lavender with the coconut milk! During the summer, I like to cold steep plentiful teabags of it in lemonade, as the lemon/lavender flavor combo is another favorite!

I’ve also been using it to make my own deodorizer spray for the house. I steep a strong infusion (usually a heaping teaspoon of buds in half a cup boiling water), then let the brew cool some, and put it in a small spray bottle with a teaspoon of lemon juice and top it off with water. Makes a nice air spritz and I keep a bottle near every litter box; completely natural and doesn’t bother the kitty!

Ginger by Starwest Botanicals

I’ve been using this almost exclusively to make flavored white rice! While the water for the Minute Rice was boiling, I’d put several teaspoons of the loose ginger in teabags and let them steep in the boiling water, remove the teabags, then add the rice and let it “soak up” the ginger tea to make a lightly ginger-flavored rice. I found the ginger-flavored rice extremely easy on my GI system on days when I was having issues with it due to migraine. As such, I used up my bag I brought home from a co-op on a vacation in San Franciscio quickly. I need to restock!

I also liked mixing this with the hibiscus flowers 50/50 to make a throat balm when I was starting to get a sore throat/cold… the hibiscus was full of that strong Vitamin C hit that I wanted in the early stages of a cold, while the ginger provided the throat balm, and I liked the taste of the two steeped warm together.

Hibiscus Flowers by Starwest Botanicals

I imagine I’m the only person on Steepster who willingly owns (or rather owned… I’ve now used them all up!) plain ol’ hibiscus flowers. My main use was a generous heaping teaspoon per cup cold steeped overnight in lemonade, which gave the lemonade a noticable sort of “raspberry lemonade” sort of flavor that I really liked! I also used them for the 50/50 hibiscus/ginger throat tea for colds, mentioned above.

I guess I had used up way more of my stash than I had thought, because I wanted to experiment with these in Sprite after reading about VariaTea doing so, and I had bought two different bottles of Sprite (traditional and a ginger one… I didn’t even know they made that!) but I had hardly any leaf left! I put a teabag into a tall glass of Sprite, and my findings were that other than turning the Sprite red, it really didn’t change the taste at all. At about halfway through the glass, the Sprite finally started to have a slightly “red berry/punchy” taste to it, but it was still pretty subtle against the flavor of the Sprite itself. By that point there was a) a lot less Sprite in the glass and b) the hibi teabag had been steeping for quite some time, so I guess to get any effect against the sugars/flavors of the Sprite I would’ve needed to use a lot more raw hibi leaf, and also probably done an overnight coldbrew of it. If I restock my leaf (this was another I picked up at the San Francisco co-op, and I can’t easily restock it locally without ordering online), I will have to try that out.

Peppermint by Frontier Co-Op

I had a lot of plans for this… I wanted to infuse cocoa with it, like with the lavender, to make mint cocoa as gifts at the holidays, which never happened, since I ended up using it up just making plain ol’ mint iced tea to soothe my tummy during bad GI attacks for my chronic migraine condition. The last of this from the San Francisco co-op ended up in a big pitcher and is currently in the fridge, and has been going into smoothies, mixing with the smoothie ingredients to leave a lovely fresh, minty taste! This would be nice to restock since I would still like to try out the cocoa idea, but since cheap, bagged mint tea alternatives are easily available here to make iced mint tea for the tum-tum, it isn’t as high of a priority…

Red Rose Buds and Petals by Starwest Botanicals

I still have quite a bit of this left from the San Francisco co-op haul. I have made one batch of rose-infused cocoa, which was just as lovely as the lavender, and have also used it to cold steep in lemonade, which I also really enjoy! I think I may try making another batch of rose lemonade and adding that to fruit smoothies in the future, or if I use up one of the spray bottles of lavender deodorizer and want to switch it up, I may fill one with a rose deodorizer next time.

The Great Un-Steepstering of 2020 Review #10 (08/24/20)

I have tons of matcha that just doesn’t seem to be getting used up fast enough, and since VariaTea uses hers in smoothies, I thought I might give that a try… except, I have never made a smoothie in my life (culinary expert, I am not). I know this should be as simple as looking up a recipe and following it, except… every smoothie recipe ever uses banana, and I have the strongest banana aversion on the planet (perhaps the reason why I’ve never attempted to make a smoothie before). There can be one slice of a nanner mixed with 20 other fruits in a smoothie, and I’ll taste it and gag. So #projectsmoothie is probably going to get very creative, and have some spectacular failures along the way…

Yesterday I decided to start with this matcha, and try making a chocolate mint flavor profile smoothie. I found a banana-less chocolate smoothie recipe to work off of, and made some tweaks to it. In the end, I ended up with one cup of cold brewed peppermint tea, eight or so pitted Deglet Noor dates (much cheaper in my area than the larger Medjool variety), 1 tablespoon of chia seeds, 1 tablespoon of the Mint Chip matcha, 1 teaspoon of Nutella, 1 teaspoon of almond butter, 1 teaspoon of chocolate sauce, and about 8 ice cubes.

For my first attempt at a smoothie, the biggest issue was the dates, which didn’t want to chop up/mix in well at all (and I ended up eating them out of the bottom of the cup at the end with a spoon). But the flavor was very good! The mint chocolate was strong! Maybe just a hint on the bitter side, but in a pleasant way, like the kind of bite you get from really dark chocolate. I didn’t mind it at all, but I suppose that next time I could add more chocolate sauce or Nutella if I wanted it sweeter. But I think I might prefer it this way, I do prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. The peppermint had a nice minty flavor, but mixed with the chocolate didn’t come off with a menthol taste, just crisp and cooling. I didn’t really taste “matcha” specifically, but I wasn’t really expecting to and was just glad that both “chocolate” and “mint” were distinctly featured in the smoothie flavors. Good flavor profile, just need to figure out how to integrate the dates better next time!

So, take two this morning. I probably should’ve stuck with the same recipe, but decided to try something slightly different, just because I wanted to “pre-make” the matcha this time to add in (instead of just throwing the powder into the smoothie) so I could taste it sans all the other ingredients to see what it tasted like on its own. So in this one I used one chopped apple, 4 dates (I pre-chopped them into smaller pieces this time… still trying to experiment with integrating the dates as a nanner alternative!), 1 tbsp dark choco chips, 1 tbsp cocoa powder, and 1 cup of matcha latte made with Mint Chip matcha in vanilla oat milk.

I was surprised to find the matcha, made on its own in the vanilla oat milk (a rather sweet milk), had that deeply dark bittersweet chocolate mint flavor, and it wasn’t coming from the ingredients in my smoothie yesterday! So, that’s a win. As I mentioned, I really like that deeply dark chocolate profile. Again, didn’t really taste any “matcha” under that flavor, even when separated as just a latte, but I really did dig the flavor I was getting.

Didn’t like this smoothie as much as the one yesterday, though, so of the two I’ll probably go back to the other (the apple just cuts the choco-mint flavor profile too much, requiring some cocoa powder to help offset, and that covers up a bit of the darker chocolate notes into something a bit more fudgy/sweet chocolately… though in hindsight, this probably was a better “breakfast option” choice.) Still had trouble with the dates, which like to “sink” below the blades of my blender regardless… my blender is old, an 80s monstrousity that is likely as old as me, if not older. If I want to continue #projectsmoothie (and especially if I want to use dates as a nanner replacement) I may have to upgrade!)

Excited to pull out some of my other flavored matchas!

The Great Un-Steepstering of 2020 Review #9 (08/23/20)

The site is (mostly) working again, but I’m not quite caught up with posting my backlog (at the time of this writing); I’m only posting one a day as to not overwhelm both readers and the (still somewhat slow) site, so until I catch up to “real time” my reviews will be back-dated (though the gap is getting closer!)

My friend Todd (https://steepster.com/ashi here on Steepster) is currently in evacuation due to the California fires. On Sundays we normally “watch TV” together (I live in Idaho and he in California; we “stream” at the same time and use a chat program to interact in real time!) and decided to keep our “Sunday TV date” since he could stream from his hotel (good to keep the mind on other things and keep to routine, right?) but before the stream, we decided to try out having a tea time together on Zoom! He doesn’t have any “tea stuff” right now due to the evacuation, but picked up some bottled houjicha from a convenience store and had a lavender cocoa from Peet’s he’d picked up from earlier in the day when he went to visit the family that is currently babysitting their coop of chickens. I decided to make this tea.

Since I followed my last Dazzle Deer oolong sampler to the T with their directions and it was a bit astringent, this time I used the website that I tend to always use when it comes to “water-to-leaf” ratios (something I have a hard time judging myself), OCTea (https://octea.ndim.space/#/) and… hey! I had no astringency this time! I did have to use a slightly larger steeping vessel to accomodate, but s’all good.

250ml teapot | 7g | 205F | Rinse/10s/20s/40s/60s/90s

I didn’t really notice much variation from steep to steep regarding flavor, so this is actually the kind of oolong that would probably do me very well as a Western or cold brew. I got a very smooth, roasted flavor, but not “charred” or “smoky” (there was perhaps a very subtle hint of a “burnt toast” note to the aftertaste, but it was mellow, more like an afterthought, and hit that spot of “pleasantness” that is hard for smoky flavors to hit for myself). It had a very toasty nutty flavor, like deeply roasted walnuts, with other notes of wood, oats, sweet honey, plantains/sweet potato, and subtle minerals. It was a smooth and pleasant cup throughout the five steeps I took the tea.

This is a type of oolong I can definitely see myself interested in exploring further.

The Great Un-Steepstering of 2020 Review #8 (08/16/20)

I just buckled and made a large 52Teas order, so I really need to get through some of my oldest packages! But we are in another heat wave and I have this one and Ginger Cola from 2017, and I prefer soda pop-themed teas iced. Prepared 7.5g steeped in 2 cups 205F water for 3 minutes, which was added to 2 cups cold water, then left in the fridge to get nice and chilled.

The dry leaf, warmed steeped tea, and used leaf all smelled so delectably of root beer. The aroma on my cold water bottle is lovely, I can pick up the licoricey-aromas of the anise and licorice root, and sarsaparilla, and something a bit sweet/creamy as well… though I did sweeten this tea (I don’t normally, but to heighten the pop factor, I added a bit of liquid sweetener to the iced tea).

The flavor is quite nice… the black tea base is actually not entirely overpowered with flavors, as I’m getting a sort of malty/raisin bready flavor in the background. I’m really digging the anise and licorice root notes, which are leaning more in the direction of sharp spice (perhaps because of the clove, though I’m not picking up a distinct clove flavor) rather than sticky sweetness. The sarsaparilla creates this nice root beer-flavored base with that sweet, somewhat licorice/minty flavor, and while I often can’t taste vanilla added to teas, I am tasting it here; perhaps the sweetener I added is bringing that note to the forefront.

It is a nice iced tea, but one I pretty much knew going in I was going to enjoy. I really love root beer teas, and the flavors of sarsaparilla and the “licorice herbs.” I have enough leaf to do one more quart after I finish off this batch, and will probably prepare it the same, including the sweetener. Super tasty and refreshing, tastes just like uncarbonated root beer!

The Great Un-Steepstering of 2020 Review #7 (08/16/20)

Digging into more of my pure origin teas from 2017 (I’m sorry I neglected you, poor teas!) I realize that any lack of quality at this point, well after the best-by dates, is only a reflection of my bad habits and not the tea.

I don’t think I’ve ever tried a baked/smoked oolong…? I can’t stand fire-smoked teas like lapsang souchong, as the strong, smoky “aroma” is a major migraine trigger for me. I’m not a huge fan of smoky flavors, either, if they taste too strong/ashy/charlike (a bit of mild BBQ-esque smokiness I am fine with, and really like in Chinese blacks). This came in a sample packet with a lot of different teas, and probably wouldn’t be the kind of thing I’d select for myself based on those tastes, but on the other hand, I was wildly curious so of all the Dazzle Deer samples I have to go through from that pack, I chose this one. It’s a fall 2016 harvest, best before 12/31/2018 (I’m such a bad tea mother!!!)

The samples were packaged in the gram amounts the site suggested for gong fu, so it was a good excuse to get my lazy butt to actually brew gong fu on a Sunday afternoon where I had the time to do so. I used the instructions from Dazzle Deer’s website, albeit slightly cooler water (honestly, at the high altitude here in Idaho, I haven’t really found much difference between using 205F and 212F so I tend to brew most things that ask for “boiling” water at 205F, which is faster on my kettle).

100ml shiboridashi | 7g | 205F | Rinse/20s/25s/30s/40s/50s/60s

On the first infusion, it smells of roasted nuts, smoke, slightly vegetal, and a sweetness on the floral side, perhaps honeysuckle? There certainly isn’t the sort of “smoky” aroma from a lapsang that makes my head think a forest fire is in full swing, so I don’t think I have to worry about a migraine trigger here. The flavor on the sip, however, is a bit more “char”-like than I tend to prefer… but it isn’t as bad as I always imagined in my head, either. It tastes like burnt toast, and I’m probably the only person I know that will willing eat burnt toast (and several other burnt foods… I actually like hotdogs and marshmallows better that way, heh). My main issue is that burnt flavor is a bit overpowering and lingers on my tongue, and has a bit of a bitter/astringent quality to it. The tea seems to have some woody/nutty notes, but I’m having trouble tasting them under the heavy burnt toast quality.

The second steep has mellowed the tea out nicely, however… into something I can actually enjoy somewhat. I can actually taste the wood, and a roasted nuts (particularly walnut) flavor that is quite pleasant. There is still a somewhat unpleasant astringent aftertaste (maybe this was just a touch more leaf than I typically personally prefer for 100ml gong fu style? I usually use the ratios on OCTea which seems to fit me perfectly, but due to the size of the packet, went strictly with the vendor-provided instructions this time). Hoping the bitterness will mellow out a bit, too. There is a cooked vegetables sort of flavor as well, though I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint specific vegetable notes (maybe roasted mushrooms?). It still tastes a bit too ashy to tell if there is any sweetness/florality present.

Subsequent steeps did mellow out further, and the astringency following the sip went away. I continued to taste wood, roasted walnuts, and charcoal as the main flavors, with a subtle cooked vegetable note in the background. In the later steeps, I was finally able to coax some of the florality I’d been smelling from the tea out in the flavor, as a subtle honeysuckle note, once the charcoal quality were really starting to fade.

After trying it, this definitely isn’t the sort of tea I’d choose for myself, but I didn’t find it so unpalatable that I couldn’t drink it if offered, and at least find myself curious enough to sample if the opportunity arises to see if there happens to be one out there that falls into the “right” level of smoky vs. charcoal/ashy territory that appeases me. I’m definitely glad for the chance to try this, even if it isn’t quite to my tastes.