Artichoke Green

I made a huge pot of this tea to sip while I do my NaNoWriMo writing. Most of my writing energies has been put towards this as I started late, thus needed to catch up on my word count.
Finally, I hit par today, 20,000 words and plenty of time today to get ahead. Phew!

Artichoke green – I enjoy how sweet this tea is, in a vegetal way. I don’t mind this tea sitting in a tea pot or travel mug for hours, it seems to keep decently. Gah, I have so much of it! I should really trade out some.

Well, I just dumped my first cup without giving it a full cup to judge.

I love artichokes. I like green tea. But for me? This tea is utter and total fail. FAIL!!!* The smell of the dry leaf was very artifical and the brew smelled and tasted like someone dumped old perfume in it. I tried to not dump it, I really did. Nope. I sat here and stared at it for a full 15 minutes, wanting to not dump it, but NOT wanting to drink.

Dumped.

*(originally read “FAIL!! FAILITY-FAIL-FAIL with a side of FAILsauce and pureed fail with fail butter.” But I decided that I should probably cut back on the hyperbole.)

Backlogging. I went to Ikea yesterday with my parents and picked up several pieces of furniture! woo! As I was putting them together, I had some of this artichoke green. :) yum!

Thanks to AwkwardSoul! I am thoroughly enjoying this cup of tea! I used a fair amount of leaves (2 tsp to 8 ounces of water) and put it in my steeper. They expanded quite a bit. I only let the kettle get to the point of steam coming out, but I didn’t use a thermometre. It steeped 4 minutes. This tea is sweet and almost pepperminty. With grassy goodness! I may order some!

The Final Sipdown: Day 6.3

Another tea from Auggy that I received way back. As a person not enamored with artichokes, I was not super enthusiastic about trying this tea, but I decided to stop whinging about it and JUST. DO. IT.

The tea smells exactly like White Cucumber. Well, maybe not exactly, but exactly what I remember White Cucumber smelling like. Luckily, I had already developed a steely resolve towards finishing this sample and could not be deterred from dumping it in the Breville and sending it off.

The liquid smells of fruit.

It tastes of…I’m not sure. Fruit? Faintly. Blandness [because sure, you can taste blandness]? Faintly. Water? Yes. Bitterness? Yes, at the back of my tongue. White cucumber scent? Unfortunately, yes, in the finish. Artichoke?

…

Again, I’m not really sure. I think I get it a bit at the finish and in the aftertaste, but the taste of artichoke is rather distinct and I feel like it would be more obvious.

I think I put too much water in when I made this tea because it’s rather weak. Likely this was a subconscious effort to reduce the flavor of a tea I reckoned I wouldn’t like. Either that, or it simply hasn’t held up as well as the other samples I have tried thus far [though the smell would certainly protest loudly]. Regardless, the flavors I found were not fantastic.

As it cools, it is not faring any better, and so I will bid this tea adieu without regrets.

Teas Downed: 15

From the HHTTB

I sipped this while teaching, & it wasn’t anything memorable to me.
Not bad, just not memorable.

its too fruity for an artichoke. i was a bit disappointed with this one because i am an artichoke fiend! i only get fruity from this. maybe if i steep it longer i can get more of an artichoke flavor out of it… it smells faintly like marinate artichokes thought so ill give it that. i sure hope the toasted sesame lives up to its name

i will be trying this one again to see if i can try to get that veggie artichoke flavor

This is the last of my sample. I really enjoyed this one. Will likely order again next time I’m buying from Adagio.

What in interesting tea. I smelled the leaves and was turned off by the strong artichoke scent, even though I like artichokes. After steeping, the artichoke scent was much less pronounced, but I couldn’t really smell the green tea. After cooling down a bit, the tea mellowed out, but I’m still not tasting much green here. Too much artichoke.

Not a bad tea, but to me the artichoke was a bit overwhelming.

well, first steeping, following directions exactly was non-interesting. i may have been biased by the fact that the dry tea smells awful, super fake flavoring like. second steeping, i forgot about it, and it sat for about 10 minutes, and y’know what? it’s a little better. added a little honey, and it is even better! however, that doesn’t mean it is a hit or anything. i think i was expecting something more like vietnamese artichoke tea, made with actual artichoke plant parts (not “natural artichoke flavor”), which isn’t caffeine-y, so doesn’t actually have tea in it (i think). if they’d added actual artichoke bits to green tea, might have been better, possibly.