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Todd shared this tea with my last weekend when I met up with him at Anime Oasis in Boise. I brought the teabags home with me and made a small pot for my breakfast this morning, before meeting with a realtor.

It steeped up a lovely yellow and had a strong bean aroma, reminding me of Bi Luo Chuns I’ve had in the past. The flavor reminds me of Bi Luo Chun as well, in that I’m getting that strong, forward savory bean flavor on my palate that I always get from those. It’s quite vegetal, and I’d say aside from the sharp bean note I taste a leafy green taste closest to aspargus and spinach, with a subtle sweetening toward the end of the sip, a bit like a cross of florals and very wet melon.

It’s a nice green tea, savory, smooth, and lacking astringency, and accompanying my breakfast nicely.

I nipped this from the hotel room I stayed in last weekend, since I actually haven’t tried this one before (and left the chamomile for Todd, since I knew I wouldn’t like that, heh… he at least appreciates chamomile!) I’m not sure how long I steeped this since I just let my teabag steep while I was making some PB & honey toast for breakfast… I normally let CTC black teas go about two minutes but this may have gone a little longer and thus be a little stronger than my preferences. We’ll see.

The cup is dark with a malty aroma, with a slight burnt sugar aroma. The flavor is definitely on the stronger side of English Breakfast blends I’ve tried, and again, I’m not sure if that’s due to a longer steep or the particular blend of mystery “black teas” they are using. There is at least some medium astringency after the sip, but it isn’t too biting… or maybe my palate is just starting to adapt to these sorts of black blends more. I get a strong malty note, with a more subtle presense of leather, autumn leaves, and just a hint of citrus left on the back of my tongue in the aftertaste.

It’s not a bad EB, but not one of the favorites I’ve tried; if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say there is either no Chinese blacks in this blend, or a very low ratio, and most of the ones that end up being my preference have a good showing of Chinese black tea leaf in the blend. They just appeal to my palate more. This is just a bit more sharp/astringent than is my typical preference. But I am drinking it with some sickeningly-sweet peanut butter-honey toast, so it at least accompanies my breakfast choice well.

Todd shared this tea with me last weekend when I met up with him at Anime Oasis in Boise. Of course, because I was tired after a full day of walking around downtown Boise and going to con panels and was happy to curl up on the hotel bed with a cup of tea and knit my blankie while binge-watching The Umbrella Academy, it wasn’t like I wrote a review for this while I was drinking the tea, like I usually do, and with my migraine-brain, my memory is worse than Dory. I do recall it was a very nice black tea blend, though, on par with the quality I’ve come to associate with Steven Smith Teamaker. It was malty, but I remember a nice, but not overbearing, smoky note to the tea which made the presense of Chinese tea leaves very noticable, and I always dig a black tea blend with a strong Chinese black flavor. I really love Steven Smith Teamaker’s British Brunch (formerly called Brahmin) and rank that one of my favorite EB’s of all time, and it would be hard for me to recall off the top of my head which of these two breakfast blends is superior; if I ever have the chance to sample Portland Breakfast again, I’ll try to write something “in the moment” so I can better record the flavor notes. But I at least wanted to jot something down for the history books that I tried this one this year.

This is apparently a house blend from Snake River Tea. I was worried it would be way too spicy and actually questioned why I decided to buy some of this; I put some in Todd’s tea advent calendar last December and his review claimed it wasn’t very spicy at all. I was still hesitant, since most of my friends are far less “spice sensitive” than myself, and often they’ll say something is a “3” and then I’ll taste it and find it more like a “30.” I’ve been using my stash to make ginger rice whenever my migraine nausea has been particularly intolerable, and it’s been really awesome for that; basically I’ll just drop a teabag in my rice water as the water is coming to a boil, then my rice soaks up the tea and has a nice gingery flavor which gives the white rice a little more flavor; both rice and ginger are rather easy on the GI tract so it’s been a go-to when my gut is having none of it. I’ll even pick up a bit of the citrus notes in the rice, too. But I figured before I use up all the tea making rice, I should probably try a proper cuppa, too!

The tea smells spicy, gingery, and citrusy. Surprisingly, it isn’t overwhelmingly spicy, as turm/ginger blends so often are, so I’m happy about that! Todd was right, this is a Sara-spice-wuss-safe tea! There is a mild earthy/pepperiness from the turmeric and a stronger ginger flavor that I find rather soothing on the back of my throat and settling on my nauseous stomach. It’s warming, but doesn’t leave an obnoxious afterburn like many ginger teas tend to do. There is a strong lemon citrus presense in the tea as well; I can taste the herbaceousness of the lemongrass, but it is blending well with the citrus of the lemon and orange peel which seems to be rounding it out into a fuller, nicer lemon flavor so it doesn’t come off as really grassy/hay-like, which overly lemongrass or strongly lemongrass teas can tend towards. Overall, I am finding this a rather nice blend. I think this makes a good throat/stomach soother.

My sleep has been very disturbed… either I can’t fall asleep properly at night, or wake too early in the morning. This is one of those early mornings, so I just decided to get up and make a warm cup of tea before work (the game plan lately has been taking iced tea water bottles to work… it’s been taking me eons to try to work through nearly 100g of a green pomegranate tea in big iced tea batches, finally down to the last 20g of that!) Making this one teabag sampler I got from a cupboard sale from Ost last summer… thank you Ost! I love Steven Smith Teamaker and appreciate the chance to try another of their teas!

So this is their darj black tea offering. It smells very malty, with a slight honey quality. The flavor is quite nice. I get a bit of that autumn leaf component, but it isn’t too strong; it blends with a malty/baked bread note, a honeyed sweetness, and there is a strong floral presense toward the end of the sip. I’m getting a touch of a citrus note lingering on my tongue, too. It’s a very light and sweet black tea. Those that like “hearty” black teas in the morning may not prefer something like this until the afternoon, but I quite like it, especially since I don’t brew blacks dark/strong/to take milk/sugar. It’s very smooth, and I’m especially liking that touch of florality!

Teabox Tuesday! This is the last green tea in my teabox stash; it came from the Discovery Teabox, so thank you to Skysamurai for organizing and to those that participated for sharing! I decided to cold brew my sample since the leaf smelled a bit fruity and I’ve been drinking a lot of fruity iced greens lately.

Because of the hectic weekend I experienced I was unable to strain this when I planned, and I’m uncertain if in coldbrewing a tea can get “oversteeped” but that may or may not have made a difference (I usually always strain within 12-24 hours). The aroma smells, perhaps oddly to me, a bit like bubblegum… very sweet, jackfruit, and pineapple are coming to me in the aroma. The flavor is very sweet and fruity, but there is something vegetal about it, too… it has like, this freshness that makes me think of aloe, and it’s a little “watery” tasting too… not oceanic, as it’s lacking that saltiness of seawater, but it makes me think of wild freshwater somehow? I wonder if that’s the moringa? I’ve never tasted moringa before. I’d say that the sweet, vegetal note is the strongest flavor and overpowering the rest of the drink… I can taste some pineapple, and there is a sweetness left in my mouth as an aftertaste, but that strong “green” taste is very palpable. Reading up on moringa a bit, I have a strong feeling that is what I’m tasting. Interesting. I wouldn’t say I dislike it, but I do wish it didn’t feel quite so strong in this particular blend.

Thanks for sharing! I appreciate getting to try new ingredients I haven’t been exposed to before!

I haven’t really been drinking any tea this weekend. I’ve been going through it, and tea was just the last thing on my mind. I know there are some folks that want tea reviews to just “be about the tea,” so I will focus on the tea… those that want to know more about what is going on can read the addendum below the review.

So, I’ve decided to drink this sampler of Lupicia’s Paradise Green. From the information I can get on it (from the Steepster listing since Lupicia is still transitioning to their Ala Moana website — that will be coming May 23rd, by the way!) apparently this is a tropical flavored green, but I don’t have any information on the ingredients, even the sampler packaging doesn’t include that. My sniffer isn’t working great at the moment (lots of mucus!) but I’m getting more of a peachy/apricot aroma from the dry leaf? Ah, I suppose it could be mango! And it is a bit sharply fruity.

Steeped, I believe I’m smelling a bit of peach, mango, and pineapple. I didn’t smell any pineapple in the dry leaf, but it is coming forward now, and I’m getting it in the flavor of the tea as well; it starts off mostly as a peach fuzz/mango flavor, light, juicy, and sweet, with a slightly tangier pineapple note toward the end of the sip. I’m tempted to say the green tea has a bit more bite than I usually get from a Lupicia green, and this was steeped around 170F for only two minutes, but I switched to a migraine nasal option which leaves this really awful taste down the back of my throat, which could be playing with my tastes a bit. I definitely am picking out a nice grassiness though, which I always appreciate about their flavored greens; the base is not dominated or overwhelmed by the flavorings. It is a pleasant fruity cup, and would likely be a lovely iced tea, if I had more of this to play with.

*

Read no further if you are uninterested in non-tea life musings. So, my lifemate of the last twenty years, my cockatiel Kali, passed away last night. Saturday at 4 a.m. she suffered a night terror (common for cockatiels) and injured herself badly thrashing against her cage. I woke and came to her immediately, but she’d lost all her pin feathers from her tail and wings, and several in her wings were “blood feathers,” new growth feathers that receive an active blood supply, so she was bleeding badly. I did what I could to calm her and stop the bleeding, but it was obvious she’d lost a lot of blood, and living alone, it was impossible for me to remove the blood feathers and staunch up the wounds myself. I waited out until vets would be open Saturday morning, and called every one in my little Idaho town — and was turned down service by every. single. one. “We don’t do birds.” I was told there was one avian vet in town, and their vet wasn’t open Saturdays. Would not be open until Monday. I was told I could take her to Boise, two hours away, to get medical help. I did not think trying to transport an already panicked and terrified bird two hours in a car was a good idea, as her blotting wounds could reopen if she spooked and started thrashing. She was unable to climb at this point, grounded without any pin feathers to give her balance and act as “finger support” for lift up her cage, so I put blankies and food and water sources on the bottom of her cage and hoped that Monday first thing I could call that one avian vet to get the blood feathers removed. She passed at some point as I was sleeping last night. Instead I was calling the vet about their cremation services. I feel like I’ve failed her since I couldn’t get her the medical help she needed. I’m really torn up. I can’t help but feel like my situation and feelings were “belittled” because she was a bird instead of a cat or a dog, but she’s been with me since I was 16 — I’m 37 now — so 20 years of my life. Take a minute to reflect on all that has happened within two decades of a lifetime.

I chose “Paradise Green” because I know she’s in a better place now… paradise. If you have a pet, please give them love. Drink a cuppa today in memory of a pet you loved and lost. Cherish the winged, scaled, finned, and furred members of your family. <3

I’ve pulled this for my evening herbal. I believe one of our past volunteers at the library gave me this one, since our local coffee shop that sources TeaSource tea carries this one; I think she bought some single ounces of a few and then decided to gift them to me when she wasn’t really drinking loose leaf at home.

The steeped tea has a strong fruity aroma, highly tropical; I’m smelling mango, passionfruit, and pineapple, as well as slightly floral. The tea is a light orange color (I was surprised it was still so red since this is a green rooibos) and the flavor notes of the base is hay, wood, and floral nectar, with a fruity sweetness that moves in midsip that tastes strongly of mango, though I get a much more subtle note of sweet melon. It’s a pleasant enough cup, though I wish the flavor was a bit stronger; I don’t really have any idea how old this tea may be, so perhaps some flavor degradation is playing a factor, though. It’s quite servicable for a mango-flavored rooibos that doesn’t have any over-powering medicinal notes, as many fruity rooibos blends seem to have for me.

Teabox Tuesday! It’s in the herbal hours of the evening and I’m quite low on herbals left from my teabox stash, so I’m hoping this green tea is low on the tea leaf since the ingredients certainly make it appear that it is leaning towards more of an herbal blend and I won’t be too jacked this evening. This came from the Discovery Teabox, so thank you to Skysamurai for organizing and to those that participated for sharing!

The dry leaf smelled very peppery/spicy and a bit floral. I still used 175F water but let this steep in my teapot longer than I normally would steep a green tea because I wanted to allow all the herbs to get a good flavor, so I hope the tea leaf in there hasn’t gone astringent… guess we’ll see. The steeped tea is a gingery color and smells very spicy, musty, earthy, and herbaceous. My first thought from the aroma was “Ugh, ginseng!” but, much to my relief, it doesn’t taste like that to me at all. I get a strong lemony citrus flavor from the broth, and I’m tasting a bit slight mint note with a stronger fennel/black pepper spiciness. There is a fresh woodiness present as well… like sandlewood incense? The one thing I’m not getting, despite being called “Ayurvedic Rose,” is any floral component… It smelled a bit floral before steeping, but there is no rose flavor coming through after the steep. I would expect this to be a scent marketed for a men’s bedroom, which sounds weird trying to translate that into a tea flavor, but… there you have it. It’s quite pleasant, though! Certainly one of the more unique teas I’ve tried, too.

Thanks for sharing!

Sampler Sunday! I’m having a migraine today, and after sipping down my White Thunder (a white mint tea) this morning, I decided to try what my doctor suggested and pair pain medication with caffeine this afternoon. Caffeine has never really affected my migraines one way or the other (it’s not a trigger, and has never really helped with vasoconstriction, either) but he thinks during the attack it could help get my pain medication to respond quicker. I’m having major problems getting triptans, the only real abortive therapy out there for migraines, to do anything for me lately.

So, this freebie teabag of Earl Grey from Lupicia. The dry leaf has a strong citrusy scent that reminds me of grapefruit. I probably steeped it a bit longer than I usually steep black teas, so I expect this to be a bit more astringent/stronger than usual and than I typically prefer, but the idea was to try to get a pretty caffeinated cup. It was a nice reddish-brown color and still strongly citrus in aroma.

Surprisingly, the tea itself is pretty smooth, and even has a bit of a malty aroma beneath the strong citrus of the bergamot. The bergamot in this Earl Grey is pretty strong, and I usually prefer bergamot on the lighter side, but I am not finding this unpleasant. The bergamot has a strong lime note to it, with a touch of a tangy lemon zest. It’s hard to pick out the flavors of the black tea beneath the strong bergamot, but I’m getting a bit of malt and molasses. Overall it’s a fairly nice cup for a plain EG.