15973 Tasting Notes
From the Regional Group Buy.
I set this one aside to drink today, and the timing of my Gong Fu session just happened to line up with when the Pumpkin Earl Grey bread that I baked today came out of the oven, so I wound up with a somewhat unintentional pairing of the two.
I think this is my first green tea from Columbia; I have to say I’m definitely looking forward to the Columbian Black tea over the green but I’m down to try just about anything once. Before I started eating the bread, my impression of this tea was sort of neutral at best? I found it rather grassy, but in a sort of lawn clippings/less sweet way? If that makes any sort of sense? Essentially – it was grassy but not so much a sweet or pleasant grass note. Also a bit smoky in the top of the sip, with a somewhat creamy finish. Very interesting overall; probably a bit closer to a Chinese style green over a Japanese just in flavour. Not really my sort of thing, though.
However, pairing it with the pumpkin EG bread was a game changer though because the bread was really rich and sweet, and covered a lot of the unpleasant grass notes I was getting. What it didn’t cover was the smoke note though, and that tasted wonderful alongside the pumpkin and citrus/bergamot. Lovely pairing of sweet and smoky!
Unfortunately, you can’t really commit to a tea on the condition you’re always going to be drinking it whilst eating Pumpkin Earl Grey bread because that means always needing to have PEG around and I just can’t ensure that’ll happen. So, I’m gonna have to play with the rest of the sample (maybe Western style) to see if I can enjoy it any better without the food pairing.
So today is my first day off in over two weeks…
While mostly I just want to be lazy around the house today, I figured I should probably also do something that I can count as productive. And I decided that productive thing would be baking some bread! Of course, I’m not a real baker so I used a box bread recipe thinger; but I customized it and made it my own.
The main things I added were pureed pumpkin, and of course I had to include tea! In this circumstance I used this Earl Grey and mixed the fannings from two of the tea bags into the batter, and then I swapped out the water for the recipe with a very concentrated Earl Grey brew. Like, five teabags for ten minutes sort of concentrated…
Also, I don’t own a bread pan apparently even though I was SURE I did so I had to improvise a little bit. So, instead of baking my bread in a bread pan I used a roughly loaf of bread shaped/sized casserole dish instead. Thankfully it worked just fine, and now I have delicious Pumpkin Earl Grey bread to snack on for my day off!
The bread is sweet, rich, lightly spiced and has wonderful pumpkin and Earl grey flavours exploding from it with each bite. I cut myself off a thick slice and also melted some Swiss Cheese on it as well, and that only added to the divine, sweet flavour. I’m just loving this combination so much; it’s the best thing I’ve baked in recent memory honestly.
The tea is the Columbian Bitaco Green Tea from LP’s Regional group buy. Review on that tea and the pairing to come next…
Advent Calendar Day Twelve
Wow, half way through already!? That seems kind of crazy.
I like this one a lot though; it very light and refreshing with soft flavour notes although it doesn’t lack in flavour. Primarily, I’d say this mostly takes like lime/passionfruit and has a borderline tropical like quality. However, it’s also got a really soft ginger finish which greatly compliments the lime. Other flavours which crop up throughout sips are freshly cut grass, from the base, and linden leaf.
One thing I’ve noticed throughout this calendar is that DF seems to really enjoy incorporating ginger into their blends. However, I don’t seem to mind that overall. They generally do it well.
First tea of the morning!
This is my first day off both jobs in… ages. Like, literally over two weeks.
So the plan for the day is basically just to enjoy as much tea as possible and relax. Sounds easy, right? Well – I’ve pretty well been confined to my room literally all morning because our new roommate hasn’t moved his stuff over yet, so he slept on the couch last night. Which is connected to the kitchen/main living space. I was trying to be polite and not wake him, but by noon I’d reached the point where I felt it was an appropriate enough time of day I could move about and not be an ass for doing it.
So I started by making myself, and him, a cup of tea and then making us each a bagel with maple chevre and some cubed pineapple. I was hoping the soft sounds of my making breakfast in the kitchen and the aroma of fresh food/tea would wake him up. No such luck; it’s now an hour later than when I’d initially made breakfast/tea and his food is still sitting on the kitchen counter untouched. Oh well, I tried.
The tea was actually pretty good though! When I first opened the sample packet like a week ago to smell it the aroma actually made me feel pretty uneasy/sick so I waited to try it and thankfully it sat well with me this morning/early afternoon.
I was SO excited for this one when I saw it announced for this AU collection; I’m not the world’s biggest bergamot/EG fan but I do have a soft spot for flavoured Earl Grey. I will say both the plum and clove, which are the extra flavours in this EG, come through quite strongly. However, do they go together is the more important question. The answer to that question is… kinda?
It’s just weird and slightly spiced but not really? Also, with the strong bergamot notes and the plum there was something sort of perfume like/chemical to the combination that seemed just a touch off to me. However, that said, whatever caused that seemed to calm down as the tea cooled, and the flavours came together a bit more smoothly overall as well. It wasn’t bad overall; just a little disjointed as a blend. I loved the clove flavour, though!
Flavors: Bergamot, Cloves, Floral, Lavender, Perfume, Plum, Stonefruit
This is a queued tasting note.
From the same night I was drinking the Sticky Pudding pearls from Q2T at DT while on shift. One of my coworkers pointed out to me that both teas I brought with me were “Sticky” teas, and we had a good laugh and the completely random coincidence of that.
As always this was delightful; it made me think of the former ASM Zoe though. I always meant to bring her a sample of this one because it’s one we talked about at length and in great detail, and she’s such a hardcore oolong fan. However, I never ended up getting any to her before she moved to BC…
She would have adored it, though.
This is a queued tasting note.
Brought this one with me to DAVIDsTEA to drink on shift earlier this week. Everyone was pretty excited about it/the dry smell. It’s so sweet and rich smelling and the name and then the appearance of the leaf really draw you in.
Here are the notes I scribbled on my cup drinking it:
- Added milk
- Malty, sweet, caramel, freshly baked bread, cocoa
- Smooth with no bitterness, minimal astringency
- Almost tasted like an Assam profile?
I loved it a lot overall; the one change I think I’d make is a slightly shorter steep time because I went with around five minutes, and I’m pretty sure that’s where the astringency came from. Also, I think I’d like to try it without milk as well – the primary reason I added it in the first place was to soften the astringency, and if that wasn’t an issue I don’t think the milk would be needed.
Drinking a cup of this one cold brewed before I head off to bed.
Or attempt to head off to bed, that is.
Our roommate situation got resolved today: for a while we’ve been searching for a third roommate and struggling to find one. However, our good friend James ended his relationship with his girlfriend today – and since they were living together in her apartment that meant he needed somewhere to move, and quickly. So, that timed out nicely for us. It’s unfortunate circumstances for him, though.
It’s somewhat weird, though. James used to spend A LOT of time at this condo because he was dating our old roommate Shauna; and then they broke up and he stopped coming around because that would have been awkward. The room he’s moving into now is Shauna’s old room; I bet that feels strange to him. In addition, up until like three weeks ago he was technically my boss at work? I mean, I worked in a totally different area of the store (Value Village; not DT) but he was my superior. Eventually, because of mutual friends and what not, people are going to figure out we’re living together now…
That’s not a HUGE deal; it wasn’t a secret between coworkers that we were friends outside of work. However I think this MAY be an eye opener to some people just how close we were outside of work. I don’t know if that will affect things for me or not? I suppose I’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.
And then of course there’s just the fact that James is a LOUD person. He’s been in the condo less than five hours now “officially” and the sound of blaring video games and him and Trey drinking/gaming together is already significantly louder than I’m used to the apartment being at this time of night. I’m hoping it’s just the excitement of them living together (they’re best friends) and that over time that’ll tone itself down a little.
So yeah – those are the things I’m mulling over tonight while I drink my cold brew…
Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
Yikes, I hope things turn out well for you. These types of situations can get frustrating over time, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Yeah, I feel you on the noise thing. Some people seem to carry noise around them. They don’t seem to have the same need for silence and peace that others do.
My new neighbours, over a year now, are like that. There is always sound and noise coming from them. There are children jumping, crying, babbling. Adults talking or screaming or laughing. TV on. Sports noise on. Exercise motivation on. Noise and sound. All. the. time. I know, it’s just life for them, but damn.
In my experience, it is best to introduce your need for, occasional, quiet earlier rather than later with people who share your space.
So let me tell you a tale…
A few nights ago this was my cold brew for the day – the same day I ended up heading to my mom’s for the evening rather unexpectedly to help out with a family project/Christmas thing for my Grandma. Whenever I head over to my mom’s house I try to bring tea with me for her to try.
So, she of course asked to try what I was drinking. I had to awkwardly tell her that I’d brought with me the one tea that she happens to currently have more than 30g of at her house. In fact, no only does she have more than 30g but she probably has closer to 300g of it. Oops.
I enjoyed it though! Happy I bought some of this for at home.
Tonight’s cold brew…
I wasn’t sure what I was going to think about this tea to be honest – and in fact I’m still a little undecided on it now that I’m drinking it. I enjoy the blueberry notes I’m getting a lot and appreciate that they’ve very natural and not overly sweet, but that said the flavour is a little delicate/fragile overall and I can’t help but wish for something a bit more bold. I’ll have to play around with steep times/leaf used, I think.
However – the best part of this brew is by far the aesthetics! The liquor colour is a gorgeous borderline periwinkle though, obviously from the blueberries. So pretty looking!
Holding off on rating for now…
#ProjectTeaWall
A green chai!? Well, after my delightful Green Rooibos latte I figured I better get something I wasn’t looking forward to out of the way on the Project Tea Wall list…
I’m never going to be the world’s biggest Chai fan, but honestly this wasn’t awful. I’ve certainly tried worse green teas since starting Project Tea Wall, that’s for sure. Part of why I think this didn’t completely flop for me was that it’s not actually that ginger heavy, and the vanilla does a wonderful job keeping this sweet and balancing out the spices. Also, the green base does a nice job keeping this lighter feeling too. Though, there was definitely some astringency going on.
I actually think I may need to make more of a legitamate effort trying some green based Chai from other companies ‘cause I’ve tried a few green Chai blends now and I think I have a better success rate with them over traditional black based Chai. In fact, Tea Desire’s Apricot Chai with a Gunpowder base is one of my all time favourite Chai blends, and by a long shot…Friendly reminder that I’m not currently numerically rating DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently seasonally employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
The black has a very strong licorice/anise taste.