New Tasting Notes

I drank this tea grandpa-style. I add ~3 grams to a 15 ounce mug for the first infusion, and typically add a pinch/a few leaves to each following infusion.

Sipdown

Tried again. I noticed a lot less of pretty much all of the things I mentioned before.
Just isn’t my thing. That first steep or two before the ball really breaks up are fine. But once they do, I just don’t find any enjoyment. There’s less nuance in the flavor I perceive.

Another cold steep of an old blend. Tastes like a slightly earthy Chinese black + vanilla, which does still bring out some chocolatey notes. The mint has completely disappeared, at least steeped this way. It’s fine but I think I’d like it better hot.

This will be my first tea log here, so hello, Steepster! I’m Calli, and I’ve been drinking tea since…I think about 2009? I also used to spend a lot of time lurking on Steepster circa 2011-2015, so I blame you all for my tendency toward chattiness whenever I’m blogging. Here’s hoping that this style of tea-logging has not gone too far out of fashion over the years since I’ve been gone and that I am not therefore too annoying for using it. As for why I was gone – health problems, mostly, and during the last two or three years of that time, I just…stopped making tea for some reason. Now, one of my fandoms has accidentally led me back into tasting and ‘learning’ to drink tea all over again, so I figured I might as well document The Journey Back somewhere.

This tea is not, of course, part of the fandom tea activity that’s helping me slowly learn to use my tongue properly again. This tea is one that kind of stuck around in a limited capacity even throughout my absence from the Land of Tea, and is something I buy in boxes of fifty bags at Fresh Market a time or two per year. For many years, I drank all my tea without adornments, and I still do for the most part, but Taylors of Harrogate Scottish Breakfast was always an exception and still is. I always drink this tea with a generous dose of honey (generic wildflower – the current bottle that was supposed to last all spring, but which might, given how early pollen season has started around here, make it another two weeks at most, is Sam’s Club Member’s Mark) mixed in and after letting a slice of lemon float in it for a while. This is because I have absolutely wretched spring allergies, and very strong black tea with honey and lemon is one of the few things that helps with the bevy of symptoms which inevitably outwit, outplay, and outlast my daily doses of Allegra. Sometimes I have to repeat the treatment a time or two throughout the day on a very bad day, but as a rule, I’ll be basically okay after I stop sneezing over and over again, and this mix usually has the power to make me stop sneezing.

Strange shout-out time: I picked up the idea to try this method from a fanfiction author who writes really excellent long-form Chronicles of Narnia stories and goes by rthstewart on Ao3 and ff.net, and is also the reason I’ve spent way too much of the past few years on Ao3. Would definitely recommend checking her out if adult perspectives on Narnia, fiction that deals fairly seriously with religious ideas without devolving into junk religious-genre stuff, or World War II spy dramas (yes, I’m quite serious – these fics were also what led me to read the work of John le Carre) appeal to you at all.

Taylors of Harrogate isn’t, for probably obvious reasons, mentioned by name in the amusing tales of Edmund Pevensie’s attempts to survive partially presiding over a court which prominently features a lot of tree spirits every spring, but it’s become what I imagine when rereading those bits. The box says it’s a mix of second flush Assam and unspecified black teas from Kenya which is supposed to be ideal for soft water, and a bit of quick-googling reveals that my home region apparently has either soft or even, in places, very soft water from the Chattahoochee River, so perhaps this is another reason why the tea and I get along well. This cup was made in a “1990 – Bouquet 100 Years of Royal Albert” mug, which Google says holds about 400ml, and with one teabag. The box says the net weight of the 50 teabags is about 4.41 oz or 125g, so I divided 125 by fifty to try to figure out how much tea might be in each bag. The answer I got was 2.5, so 2.5 grams is what I’m going to assume is the average weight of tea per bag for this blend until/unless I get better info. My apologies if any of these calculations is inaccurate – like I said, I’m still learning my way back around tea after being ‘gone’ for two and a half years.

I steeped it for three minutes with a sand timer, the way I timed tea when I first started drinking it over a decade ago, and the final liquor is a pretty medium brown that looks excellent against this white china. It started out darker, but the slice of lemon seems to ‘bleach’ it a little. Looking through a list of shades of brown, it seems like the cup ends up somewhere near Hex #B7410E (Rust) or Hex #CD7F32 (Bronze). When I take a swallow, the first thing I get is the lemon (perhaps it accentuates the ‘brightness’ cited for the Kenyan teas), followed by an even mix of strong, if somewhat generic, black tea and wildflower honey. I’m sure the tea would have a more distinctive individual taste without the honey and lemon, but I can still tell I’m drinking tea here and not just hot water with lemon in it. It’s dry on the tongue, which I believe is one of its natural attributes which is probably also accentuated by the lemon, and it’s strong without tasting thick, at least in this adulterated form. The associations it brings to mind, if I can be forgiven the abstraction, are things like a sunny morning in a cozy kitchen and someone cheerfully telling you to drink up and get on with your day, which is…more or less what I’m going to do now that I’ve got a decent amount of my old medicinal friend here down my throat and my brain feels a little clearer. It’s definitely not a tea I’d drink for a Fine Tea Experience, but it’s wonderful as a morning pick-me-up. Don’t delay washing up any tea things you use with this one, though, because if you do, it will stain – those tannins are powerful! Do not leave any cup or pot you’re especially fond of in the sink to be washed later, at least not unless you’re trying to ‘season’ your mug in the traditional British fashion.

Cold brew sipdown of this ancient sample! Very pleasant and refreshing as a cold brew, with the mint and lime predominant – I think the watermelon flavour has faded a bit with time.

Got this in last month’s Tearunners box. You can really smell the orange and vanilla in the dry leaf, but it kind of disappears in the brewed tea? Or at least it’s very subtle, with a nice sweetness from the vanilla and just a hint of the orange. The combination of black and puer in the base is actually really nice – in the first steep the black is predominant and the puer just rounds out and deepens it a little. On the second steep the earthy notes from the puer are a bit more prominent. A nice, comforting start to the day.

I will admit to having been swayed by the Tealyra description and reviews posted on their site. And I had not seen eelong’s tea note here on Steepster — a note that might have dissuaded me from purchasing Rosy Earl Grey. However, I have been captivated by roses and rose scents since childhood, and was eager to try this blend. And I liked it! Mostly. I do also enjoy jasmine scents (and have before remarked on my memories of summertime play amongst the Star Jasmine bushes as a kid in California).

I do wish tea purveyors would be more strictly precise in their claims and ingredients. When a claim of “bergamot essential oil, jasmine, lavender” is made, I expect to find those precise ingredients listed, and not obscured behind the anonymity of “natural flavors” or a vague compound ingredient like “jasmine green tea”. The dry leaf was nicely fragrant of rose petals (not rosehips), and I was optimistic.

I steeped (a single cup) western style, according to direction: 1 tsp leaf in 8 oz (boiling alpine spring) water, for 3-1/2 min, in a stainless microscreen infusion basket. The jasmine aroma was more pronounced in the tea vapors, though I also detected scents of rose and bergamot. While sipping, I found it easy to identify each of the named ingredient flavors, largely in my sinuses, but with bergamot on the sides of my tongue, and with the lavender arriving late to the center back of my tongue in the finish of each sip. I only saw the green tea leaves and smelled their jasmine, but couldn’t really parse out a distinct taste of green tea. Perhaps the green tea accounted for the slight bitterness and bite with a little astringency that I noted (and which Tealyra described, too). The clear amber color undoubtedly came from the black tea content, though it was only barely detected as a flavor. Finally, in the last few sips of the cooler tea, I got a powdery floral hit on the roof of my mouth. Overall, this was a satisfying springtime bouquet that I would recommend and continue to enjoy from time to time, giving it a rating of 75 today, mostly docking points for the use of generic flavorings rather than actual biological components. I prefer a cup of plant origin, rather than the cheating of chemistry, which steals the magic.

I did not detect any notes of bubblegum, as reported by eelong. Thankfully.

I bought this at a Renaissance festival, and it’s much tastier than I anticipated! It reminds me of a ginger beer, so it’s doing its job well! That ginger zing is perfect, and it’s backed up by some apple to round it out. The cold resteep tastes almost the same as the first steep. It also comes in a cute tin that looks like a soda can.

The “drag” feature doesn’t work on my phone, so…
I used 3 g leaf in a moderately-sized gaiwan, 200 F water, brewed for one minute.
This is the Spring 2024 wild silver needle from Verdant Tea.
I don’t have a ton of experience with white teas, so I had to play around with it a bit. Lower temp water just didn’t work. The flavor definitely came out with water 200F to boiling. I don’t think I’ve had artichokes before so what came to mind were a light combination of vegetal and slightly sweet, fruity notes – apricots, yes.