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Happy National Library Week! In the United States, the second week of April is designated by the American Library Association as National Library Week, and since I’m a librarian, I try to find a “library” tea to try each year. Last year I sampled Haunted Library by Malfoy Tea Emporium, the review of which is here if you are curious: https://steepster.com/mastressalita/posts/375034

I’ve had this blend stashed away in my collection just waiting for National Library Week 2019 to try it for the first time! It is a blend of black and green teas, using Ceylon, jasmine green, Keemun, and gunpowder green. The jasmine is especially striking from the dry leaf, and I’m not a huge fan of jasmine teas because of how overly “perfumy” it tends to be, but I’m curious if blended with the black teas if it will be more tempered and come out more floral and less like grandma perfume than I tend to find jasmine.

The steeped tea is a proper copper-colored cuppa, though it does still smell quite strongly of jasmine. The flavor is… pretty nice, though! It does have a strong floral element, but there are definitely a lot of other elements to this tea, too; it has some depth. In fact, after the cup has cooled just a touch, I can get a malty note wafting up in the aroma and mixing with the strong jasmine fragrance, and that aroma/taste profile helps the entire cup veer far away from my typical issues with “grandma perfume” territory. The black tea in the base tastes of a medium body, and I’m picking up a bit of malt with a heavy citrus element. Mid-sip a grassy, refreshing, very vegetal flavor enters the tongue, a bit like wet stones and moss and then very sweet jasmine flowers. The end of the sip is a bit astringent/drying and leaves me smacking my tongue a bit, and I’m left with a strong smoky flavor in the aftertaste.

This is a very satisfying cuppa, especially considering my track record with jasmine. I think the rather strong astringency in the cup is my only complaint, but I already have plans to try making iced tea with this and seeing if that helps curb that.

Sampler Sunday! I only had one teabag of this, and after being impressed with my Steven Smith Teamaker tea yesterday, decided I’d have this for my herbal tonight. But I do have to be in a certain mood for warm hibiscus — I perfer it iced — so this afternoon I dropped the teabag in a cup of water to let it cold brew. It is now a vibrant red and has probably had ample time to cold brew given I usually brew four cups of iced tea at a time and this was just a single cup.

It smells lovely. I can smell the sarsparilla, which is one of my favorite notes in a tea, though I don’t think I’ve ever had it paired with hibiscus, so I’m curious about the flavor. It also has a somewhat floral aroma. The flavor has that nice tangy flavor I enjoy (you know me, I’m a huge hibi fan!) but there is definitely a softening sweetness to this tea, as it isn’t as tart as many of the more fruity hibi teas I’ve tried. It doesn’t have that really strong “fruit punch” taste to it either… there is the typical hibiscus fruitiness, but the sarsparilla brings in more of a… soda sweetness/creamy feeling? They are two flavors that one wouldn’t think would fit together but they oddly do. Almost like cherry soda, except not that sweet or extreme, but a bit of that vibe. I’m not really picking out any particular floral notes from the tea, but I do get a floral sweetness from the tea.

I don’t think stalwart hibiscus-haters would be converted by this, but this is a hibiscus tea that has a lot of natural sweetening elements without using the other most-hated ingredient on Steepster, stevia; it is quite surprising how much balance the sarsparilla brings and I do think it brings out a somewhat “natural” cherry soda element to the tea when cold brewed. With sweetener added that may be even more prevalent, but I like it fine as is. I’d happily stock more of this to cold brew by the quart over the summer, and probably will when I visit Steven Smith Teamaker on my Portland vacation this coming summer.

Sampler Saturday! I had a single teabag of this herbal and decided to brew it up tonight. In general I’ve always been very impressed with Steven Smith Teamaker blends, so I’m hoping this will be nice.

Gave this a nice long steep, a bit over the five minutes I usually give rooibos just because I was busy with things, but eh… it’s rooibos, you can’t really oversteep it. It’s a proper ruby red color, and smells a bit like stonefruit and pear? The ingredients don’t really give any hints to the “natural fruit flavors” in this, so I wonder how far off I am…

This is pretty nice. Better than many of the rooibos I’ve had recently (but then, I drank one with chamomile in it yesterday, so that bar was pretty low, heh). I’m getting a natural very subtle smoky note which I’ve never tasted from rooibos or honeybush before, but it isn’t unpleasant, and I’m very sensitive to smoky notes; it blends nicely with that slight woodiness perfectly, actually. And just the tiniest hint of pepper. I’m also getting a vanilla note from this, which is quite nice, and it brings out a lovely natural sweetness in the cup. Usually whenever fruit flavors are added to rooibos it tends to bring out the sharper, medicinal notes for me, but thankfully I’m not getting that taste here at all; the fruit flavoring is more on the subtle side, letting the natural notes of the rooibos and honeybush shine, but it is there, and I’d say it is sort of an apple/pear sort of flavor. With that woody/smoky rooibos note, the natural sweetness, and the apple and pear paired together, my mind is stretching this a bit to baked fruit or cobbler, just minus the cinnamon/spices or pastry-sweet elements.

The more I sip on this and unwind, the more I’m really getting into this. Ya, I think Steven Smith Teamaker has won again for me!

This is a very old sampler I got from… I think the first Adagio order I ever made, sometime in the summer of 2017? And I don’t order from them anymore, so… it at least feels like a long time ago, now. It was my free zodiac birthday sampler based on my birthdate. I had every intention of getting around to it last month and somehow never did…

I think part of why I haven’t gotten to this sooner was the mix of tea in what appears to be mostly herbal ingredients, when I’m always in the need for more herbals to drink at night, but it looks pretty scant in the black tea leaves listed in the ingredients (and I didn’t even notice the white it boasts in the ingredients…) so I figure the caffeine must be pretty light in this. It’s a Friday night and I’m off tomorrow, so a lightly caffeinated herbal should be alright tonight, so I figured I’d finally drink this one off, in the mammoth-pot. (Probably a bit over-leafed, but maybe that will make up for the age of the leaf and the fact those Adagio sampler tins, while “looking cute” have pretty much no air seal on them at all, so I’m expecting some bad flavor deprivation…)

The tea is dark red, and the aroma smells heavily of rooibos and chamomile. I’m not a big chamomile fan, but the rooibos is very rich in this blend and helps balance out that flavor a lot for me, so it isn’t quite so overwhelming and overbearing for me. Mostly I get a strong, forward rooibos flavor that is a bit woody, grassy, sweet, and floral in flavor; likely these flavors are amplified by the heavy taste of chamomile that comes out midsip to finish and lingers on the tongue. This tea apparently has orange and grapefruit flavoring, but I’m not tasting any flavoring at all, so either it is the age of the sampler, or because I’m very sensitive to the taste of chamomile, it is just drowning out any other flavors for me. I feel like there is a very subtle hint of citrus left on my tongue in the aftertaste, but I can only pick that up after the thick chamomile taste finally subsides, and during the sip I can’t notice any citrus notes at all. So this pretty much just tastes like a rooibos/chamomile blend. I honestly can’t taste any black/white tea notes and don’t know why they would be included in this blend; it seems silly to add caffeine to this when they aren’t really adding anything to this blend in regards to flavor.

This is pretty meh. Since I don’t really like chamomile and this isn’t providing much else, this Pisces tea just isn’t for this particular Pisces, I guess. To be fair, the rooibos is making this much more palatable for me than many chamomile teas I’ve tasted, so I will finish this pot rather than dump it, so it does have that going for it.

Throwback Thursday! I’m surprised I still have some of this left; it’s getting quite old now (I ordered it in July of 2017, meep) so I’ve put a priority on trying to sip it down. I’ve had this one western brewed and gong fu style, but have yet to make iced tea with it, which is always a solid way for me to work through sipdowns, so I figured I should try this tea iced now, just for another take on it if for nothing else.

I always use the OCTea online app to help me calculate my leaf-to-water ratios and it is typically spot-on for my personal preferences, but I think for oolong it may have been a bit overleafed on what it suggested, as this tastes a bit overleafed to me. It has a slightly sour/astringent vegetal note on the back of the tongue that I rarely ever get with a cold steep; next time I’ll try lowering the leaf and see if that subsides. It certainly doesn’t make it undrinkable, and I’ve already nearly finished the quart I brewed up. The tea has a very refreshing green flavor, and the predominant buttered brocolli flavor that I usually get from this tea when I steep it western style is still the strongest note. The vegetal flavor has notes of brocolli, spinach, asparagus, artichoke, and grass, and the smooth butteriness comes in near the end of the sip and lingers on the tongue. This has never been a particularly floral Jin Xuan for me, but occassionally I’ll catch a very subtle orchid/lilac note toward the end of the sip. Mostly the tea is very green, vegetal, and buttery, even when prepared steeped in cold water overnight. I’m surprised how much I like the taste iced, actually… aside from the fact I’m still trying to find the sweet spot with leaf-to-water amount. I love the warm, buttery flavor of Jin Xuan, but it’s quite refreshing as an iced tea, too.

Teabox Tuesday! This is one of the teas I’ve had stashed from the Here’s Hoping Teabox, so thank you to tea-sipper for organizing and all those that participated and shared! I always meant to try this sooner, and I think my brain thinking that a lot of these teas “should” be drunk gong fu style is what has held me back, as I rarely have the time to do a session. Finally today I just said “screw it” and made it western (easier for me, especially as I can take that out the door to work in my thermos). I had 3.3g in my sample and just brewed it all up in 450ml of water, and since I had no idea how purple leaf tea should be brewed, I used the recommendations from their website for 175F water and a 3 minute steep.

The leaf unfurls to be very full, reminding me a Jin Xuan oolong in appearance, with a strong stewed vegetal aroma. The color of the tea is a pinkish-brown color that is very pretty. The flavor is reminding me of a mellow Chinese green tea, as I’m getting that slight beany flavor that I find in Long Jings and Pi Lo Chuns; there is also a weak, floral oolong quality, though the vegetal flavor comes on stronger. There is no bitterness on the sip, but the tea does leave my tongue with a fairly strong lip-smacking/tongue-drying aftertaste. I’m curious if cold-steeping this would eliminate that and create a more refreshing “clean green” flavor.

It’s a nice enough mellow, afternoon pot of tea sort of brew, and I’m glad for the opportunity to try it!

Sampler Sunday! This is the last of my California Tea House samplers, which I brewed in my large teapot (I am not regretting that investment!) The dry leaf has a strong lemon zest aroma, but is pungent enough that I’m wondering if this tea is going to have that floor cleaner/furniture polish sort of lemony taste to it, rather than juicy, citrusy lemon. I have been pretty impressed with the blends from this company so far, though, and there are quite a few chunks of vanilla bean in this sample, so I’m hoping for a sweet/creamy element.

The tea is light red-orange color, not as deep a red as a typical rooibos brew, and the aroma still smells a little more medicinal lemon to me rather than desserty… Tasting it, it really is an odd, pungent sort of lemon… and it isn’t really the sort of lemon flavor that appeals to me. Perhaps it’s the amount of lemongrass in the blend? Because the start of the sip is a sharp citrus note but then it quickly pulls me into something else that is more herbaceous, and I think that hay-like/herbaceous quality is pulling more of a medicinal taste out of the rooibos base, as well. The flavor is coming across with this mildly alcoholic/floor cleaner vibe, though not as badly as some artificially lemon-flavored teas I’ve tried. The lemon tastes more like a citrus zest to me… a lemon-lime citrus zest, rather than a juicy, tangy lemon. And for all the vanilla bean I saw in my sample, while the tea does have a sweetness to it, I’m not getting a vanilla note or a creamy element. It doesn’t even seem to be coaxing out the honey/vanilla notes from the rooibos base.

The other California Tea House teas I sampled were major hits for me, but this one is a miss. I actually like Tazo’s grocery store bagged tea, Glazed Lemon Loaf, better than this.

Sampler Sunday! I want to finish off my California Tea House samplers, so I pulled out my big ol’ teapot again and decided to brew up this tea as my afternoon pot while watching Japanese dorama with Todd. I have one more rooibos sample which I’ll probably brew up this evening.

When I cut open this sample, it smelled very heavily of orange peel/orange zest… which I suppose makes sense for something boasting itself as “marmalade” flavored. Interesting enough, oranges aren’t listed in the ingredients on the package… huh. It has preserved peaches, pineapples, lemon peel, and licorice, but smells a dead ringer for orange peel!

Brewed up, the earthy aroma of the pu-erh comes forward more strongly, but there is still a syrupy sweet fruity aroma of oranges and apricots wafting from the cup. The tea brews a nice, dark brown, and the flavor is very nice; I remember trying one of those pu-erhs stuffed in a tangerine once and it didn’t have a very strong orange flavor, it was more of a light, floral, orange blossom feel, while this is what my brain was expecting from the tangerine-stuff pu-erh — I’m getting a rich, earthy flavor, a bit like wet stone or minerals, and then a strong ripe orange note. There is definitely a stonefruit quality to the fruitiness, as the lingering flavor on the roof of my mouth tastes like apricot jelly rather than oranges. During the sip, though, the flavor is very citrus-forward. The tea has a very warming quality to it, as well.

So far, I’m really enjoying these California Tea House blends… but alas, they are another of those places that only sells in 4 oz. sizes. Siiiiiiigh. Tea shops, PUH-LEAZE, would it really be so hard to package 1 oz. and 2 oz. options as well?

I’m on Day 2 of a severe migraine, but back at work, because I’m so tired of the underhanded harrassment any time I’m “out of work for more than a day for a headache” because they don’t understand how chronic migraine works (and this is with FMLA from my doctor on file… I seriously wonder what good it does). So I feel like utter shit, but just have to get through these eight hours. Meeeeeh. This is one of my old “vacation teas” that I got from a vacation to San Diego from a tea shop called The American House — they appear to source the majority of their blends from International Tea Importers, a quite prolific tea blend wholesaler. Metropolitan Tea Co., another large blend wholesaler, also has a Black Currant black tea blend, but their ingredient list is different, which is the taletell sign of which is which.

I remember when I tried this before I found it horribly bitter/astringent, but since then, I’ve really refined how I make black teas for my personal tastes (I use a lot less leaf and shorter steep times than is typically “recommended” by most) and using my typical parameters (this cup was 3g for my 400ml work thermos with a 3 minute steep in 205F water) I am not having that problem… there is some mild drying, but it’s mostly quite smooth and really tasty! I wouldn’t put it up there with Lupicia’s Cassis and Berry, but the base is a nice mix of malty and autumn leaf notes, with just a hint of spice toward the end of the sip, and the black currant flavor is rather full and juicy. It isn’t naturally sweet thanks to the fruity, so a bit of sweetener may make the fruity notes pop a bit more; I’m finding it fine as is, though, as a rather rounded black cup with a strong currant presence. I think I’ll make this as an iced brew next time.

Throwback Thursday! This was one of my earliest teas, and certainly one of my first flavored green teas. I remember when I was new to teas I found it very fussy and had a lot of issues with bitterness/astringency if it wasn’t brewed just right, but somehow I feel revisiting it now, a good year later, I probably wouldn’t run into that problem. I have a better grasp on not overleafing or oversteeping greens now. I am more worried about age degradation than anything else, since greens are known to not hold up well over time.

I never did much iced tea in my early tea-drinking days either (that came later), so I don’t think I ever cold brewed this one, either, and that is pretty much my standard for fruity greens, now. So this brew was prepared as a cold steep overnight. The tea is such a lovely pale yellow and has a very pungent fruity aroma. The flavor is a crisp, clean flavor that is actually more of a floral flavor than strongly fruity. The green tea has a very refreshing clean sweet grass flavor, and there is a strong spring florality present, reminding me a lot of jasmine blossoms, and then a very gentle, subtle sweet-tart fruity note that is a bit like raspberry or pomegranate that lingers on the back of the tongue. The floral note to the tea is perhaps a little strong with a slight perfume-like flavor, but it isn’t perfume-like at all in aroma and doesn’t aggrevate my head in the slightest; the aroma is very berry-sweet and fruity. Overall, it’s quite nice and makes a nice iced tea for the spring weather. I do think I’d like it more if there was a bit better balance between the floral note and fruity note in the tea, but also appreciate that it isn’t swimming in a strong artificial fruit flavoring that overpowers the base green tea, and I can taste a nice clean grassiness.

It’s a good tea, but I think after having tried so many greens now, I am not as crazy about it now as I was when I first tried it, and had so little exposure to flavored greens (I originally scored it at a 90). So I’m lowering the score, only because after a good year or so of tea drinking, in comparison to so many other teas, it just doesn’t strike that high of a rating for me anymore. I do still quite enjoy it, though!