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I swear I change my entire rating system every few days.

This one I consistently enjoy. The combination of sweetly, very subtly floral notes with the savory quality of the nutty fullness they describe yields a very pleasant cup of tea. Ending my day with this is never a bad decision, and I’m almost always able to get more than one steep out of it.

Strangely though, tonight I was getting a weird feeling of…tanginess, after my sip. Tangy sweet-sour. It wasn’t present anywhere in the actual tea, so I’m…admittedly sort of at a loss as to determine where it was coming from. Bizarre.

I’ll confess: I’ve been drinking this as a latte.

Someone else (Ricky? Cofftea, perhaps?) was posting about matcha lattes, and since drinking a cup of just plain matcha doesn’t often appeal to me (sometimes it does, but only very selectively and only every now and then, as with almost all green tea) I thought I would give it a try. I haven’t the first idea what the temp or steep time are. My method is to mix water and milk (I use 2% for almost everything) at a 1:1 ratio in a pot on the stove, heat it until it’s hot but not so hot that it seems likely to bitter the powder, then I sift the matcha through the bottom of one of my mesh basket infusers to reduce it to fine powder and clear lumps, whisk it, and pour it into a cup into which I’ve already added a tiny bit of raw honey. The results are delicious. It’s a non-standard way to drink matcha, obviously (though my Japanese friend tells me that taking matcha with milk is pretty common in Japan, so I don’t feel like an utter heretic), so I’m going to avoid trying to review this matcha as compares to other matchas (especially as I’m hardly a connoisseur)…but I do like it. It seems tolerant of the method of preparation; I have yet to make a bitter cup. The caffeine content is fair, the color of the powder is rich and bright enough to promise that whatever their processing methods or sources are, they’re (more or less) legitimate, the aftertaste is sweet and grassy. No complaints.

I’m brewing this a little bit hotter than I was last yesterday, but it isn’t suffering in the least. I’ve been experimenting with temperatures for this and for the coconut pouchong in the hopes that I can figure out what produces the best balance of steep flavor and longevity through multiple steeps. Not quite finished doing that, but I am drinking an awful lot of both of them lately.

Yesterday I think I must’ve had approximately a bucket of this while I was sitting and writing, which is interesting — of the teas I ordered when I placed my Full Size Order from Golden Moon, this was the one I was most ambivalent about. The aroma of the steeping brew is still cause for an arch of the eyebrow; it’s pungent, woody, musky and floral all at once. My original note still stands — every flavor they describe on the label is immediately discernible in the final brew. The leaves — which are gorgeous, by the way, varying in color from black to a rich chocolate brown with silvery tips — produce what strikes me as being a rather complex cup of tea. In fact, sipping on it, it seems completely bizarre to me that this tea is unflavored…the uniqueness of the taste and the very distinctive character that it has for me is the source of some small amazement. Teas like this remind me to be astonished that all ‘tea’ — as far as white, green, oolong, pu-erh, and black — is derived from the same exact species of plant.

Giving this a big rating bump retroactively. Yesterday’s binge proved it well-earned.

I don’t have too much experience with gunpowder tea. The Adagio version that I tried dried my mouth out rather unpleasantly, and I’ve been more interested by dabbling in blacks, oolongs and whites than I have been in really exploring greens.

This brewed up to a yellow color I didn’t expect. Not quite dark enough to be considered amber, but too yellow in the cup to be properly called green, either, and very slightly cloudy (in my office where the lighting is less direct and bright, it’s hard to see).

It’s slightly less astringent and drying than the gunpowder from Adagio, but significantly more mild in every other way, too. The smoke flavor is lessened, and the green seems just as shy; there are no overt grassy or vegetal notes. They say that there’s a ‘lingering sweetness’ to the tea, but I’m not really getting that. I am getting a strange salty flavor that might be ‘sweet’ where ‘sweet’ crosses over with ‘smoke’, but then again that could be some indication that 3 minutes was longer than I needed to have steeped this tea.

I’m finding I’m not an enormous fan of the smell of it, either. Again, that could be because I brewed it (accidentally) toward the outside of the recommended brewing time, so potentially a matter of my preferences versus the tea. Alas, I will not likely find out for certain either way, as my sample of this was consumed by this cup (and the hideousness of my experience attempting to steep the other gunpowder I have a second time — producing that ashy taste, gross — will prohibit me from attempting the same thing here).

Not horrid, but not on my list to buy. Inoffensive, but unexciting (and slightly unappetizing due to the salty note). I know there are better greens out there.

Neither the best chai I’ve ever had, nor the best chocolate-flavored tea. With those statements in mind, it’s not terrible as either one of those things, though I confess that I spent a good deal of time with my face practically inside of the pot as it sat on the stove, just trying to find and lock down any smell of chocolate whatsoever. Adding milk helped.

The flavor is pretty subtle, though. What you’re going to get, mostly, is cinnamon. As chais go this is a pretty mild one; I wouldn’t mind keeping it on-hand to blend, but I’ve had too many good stand-alone chais to be particularly excited by this one…it makes me feel as though it’s missing whatever it would need to give me a good kick (and I feel as though chai has to be able to do that, if the hot milk from the latte isn’t going to put me to sleep instead).

Yeah. The more I sip on it, the more I sort of wish I’d picked something else instead…it’s drinkable but not even remotely special. Boo. I’m laughing a little about the tasting note someone else posted about the tea being like cocoa-dusted pencil wood…that’s pretty accurate, actually.

My order of the stuff I liked best out of the GM sampler (Lapsang Souchong, Sinharaja, Coconut Pouchong and the Imperial Formosa Oolong) came in today, woo! My review of the flavors in this tea still stands. Nothing new to add about it here, save that after brewing I caught the VERY distinct aroma of gardenias. That’s a heavy, cloying smell that’s hard to mistake for anything else; perhaps I can attribute it to having been too impatient to cool the water as much as I did the last time I had this tea.

Today’s weather is MISERY. It’s sleet-snowing like precipitation is going out of style, and bitterly cold. It’s the sort of weather that makes a person want to hibernate.

So, of course I’m having a dietary explosion of epic proportions. I ordered some pastries (delivery! Sinful!) and when they came in, I brewed up a big fat cup of this to sip on while I ate a napoleon. Paired together alongside the prospect of a cozy day indoors in my pajamas playing the recently-released Mass Effect 2, and I am at this moment in time almost giddily, inappropriately happy.

(Actually, some of the excessive giddy silliness might have come from being made to sit through watching Johnny Weir ice-dance to Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. That is the sort of thing that definitely changes the course of one’s day, lemme tell you.)

I was feeling sort of like spoiling myself a minute ago. I’d wanted to save this to pair with some sort of dessert, but then I started putting my gym clothes on and thinking ‘I really do not want to run today’, and decided once my shoes were on that I was going to banish this morning’s overdose of Earl Grey with a cup of something indulgent. I’m a wee bit concerned that the cup is going to be too strong…it seemed like a greater quantity of leaf than the rest of the single-serving 2-cup sample packets have had in them. I assumed this was a result of the jasmine or something, so I went ahead and brewed it anyway, but now I’m not so sure.

It definitely smells like…cream soda. Cream soda with something else in there, and I’m not quite able to think of what the ‘something else’ is. …grape? That seems a little odd. Maybe that’s just something the jasmine is doing in my nose.

I have no trouble whatsoever getting jasmine out of this aroma. The vanilla is easy to find, but the pair of flavors are both so balanced that pulling them apart is something I’m finding difficult to do. I feel as though the jasmine wins, though. If this were a jasmine-vanilla cage match, it would go five rounds, probably involve a lot of grappling, and jasmine would win by virtue of just being on top the longest.

No, maybe we have to scratch that. Jasmine wins in the nose, vanilla wins on the tongue, coasting in for a surprise finish that I think must be aided along by the black tea, which shows up through the floral jasmine unexpectedly. There’s a nice sweetness on the finish.

As it cools, the jasmine is making an effort to reclaim the title. I suspect if I let it cool even further there would be more upsets in store, but as with most long bouts involving lots of grappling, I feel compelled to chalk it up on the board as an even match and change the channel.

As with most sweet teas, I’d be curious enough to try it iced. I could definitely drink this more often than I think I want to drink plain jasmine tea; the vanilla brings a fuzzy warmth that the jasmine — which I find can be a bit cloying, at times — benefits from.

Again, the steep time is soft. I’m not sure, exactly, that it’s correct.

Ready for the least-inspired tasting note I may ever write?

Here it is:

‘Mreh.’

It’s drinkable. The tea base tastes brighter than the last two Earl Greys I sipped on today. Ceylon, perhaps? The result is a pretty one-dimensional cup with a brighter, definitely more citrus-y flavor than the other two had — there was an actual chunk of dried citrus in the leaves, so that explains that.

I do appreciate that the tea taste in this has a stronger presence than in the Tea Guys cream blend, but the rest of what’s going on is pretty underwhelming, so while it moves in the right direction, it’s still very heavy on the bergamot with the vanilla taking a far backseat, with the result that it tastes to me a little bit like some sort of…cleaner.

A nice cleaner, mind you. Some kind of cleaner I wouldn’t mind using in my kitchen because it would smell good. But even so…

I should probably admit that at this point today I’m sick to death of Earl Grey. Take this with a grain of salt. ;) As a matter of fact, if anybody has been curious about trying this (I understand it’s relatively new as an offering), let me know. I have a tiny sampler tin, but I’m willing to just send it elsewhere; I have more of the Tea Guys blend than I’m likely to be able to drink while it’s fresh, anyway, and I can’t see myself wanting a whole bunch of this.

Not entirely sure on the steep time of this, as I was finishing making lunch at the time. Could have been 30 seconds in either direction.

That doesn’t really matter, though, because this tea tastes virtually the same no matter what I do to it, as long as it doesn’t wind up oversteeped by some ridiculous margin. The aroma of the dry leaves is still fantastic. I love the smell. I still prefer this Earl Grey to the one I tried earlier from Golden Moon, but I suspect that it’s the additional cream element that draws me and not so much anything else. This one has the sweetly aromatic fullness of an Earl Grey cream tea that I love, but the more tea I expose myself to the more I’m forced to come to terms with the fact that Tea Guys teas are always going to be somewhat limited by the quality of the tea leaf they’re using. It’s not of such quality that it could stand alone and compete with most other plain, unadorned teas I’ve been drinking, and no matter how decent the blend is, that’s always going to make a difference.

I can’t help but feel that I’m still searching for the perfect cup of Earl Grey. What I really need is a delicious black paired with the sweet, buttery richness of actual Madagascar vanilla and just enough bergamot to lighten the flavor of the brew. That is what I want. Someday, I will find it.

It’s still one of the most fragrantly pleasing teas in my cabinet. Or maybe that’s just my pre-existing bias; this is a holdover from the very earliest days of my digging into tea, generally, and for a long time it was my go-to morning tea.

It’s a very passable Earl Grey.

It’s also just a very basic one. There are no surprises here. The flavors are very forward; behind them there’s a little bit of something like honey that I wish had a greater presence in the overall taste. I could drink this over sandwiches at lunch or brunch with milk/cream and sweetener (which is really the only way I ever drink Earl Grey, for whatever reason) and be satisfied with it, but I don’t think I’ll be ordering any more of it. There just isn’t anything about it that lifts it up above the endless heads and shoulders of other Earl Grey teas, and I think I’ve grown pretty fond of the added vanilla element in Earl Grey cream teas.

It smells good though. Mmm, lavender.

Thinking I’m going to brew my other two Earl Greys (both of which are of the aforementioned cream variety) and see how they compare.