Lavender Dream - Lavender Hibiscus White Tea

This is again a tea that’s pretty old, but not too old. Only maybe 3 years.

Steeped, this smells a little odd, but definitely like lavender. Lucky, because that’s how I figured out which one it was :D What’s annoying, however, are all the little lavendar flowers floating at the top of my cup. This is supposed to be strained, I guess.

The taste is difficult to place. It’s weird. I think I can taste the white tea… oh yes, it’s definitely in the aftertaste, and I think I’m tasting lavender. Not getting hibiscus at all (this is relieving, actually). Will update this later if I can figure out what I’m tasting.

Probably not a tea I’d pick for myself. I think I like lavender in small doses, but this is a bit much. I’m also not really sold on flowering teas. I care about flavour, not presentation :P (Yes, I know the tea experience is visual as well, but that’s not the biggest part of it for me.)

ETA: Egh, I think I can taste the hibiscus in the second infusion. Also white tea aftertaste, which is good (also prominent in the first infusion, whereas hibiscus wasn’t). The hibiscus doesn’t work here, IMO. So decent marks for the white tea, but minus points for weird hibiscus tart bitterness.

AUGH! Seriously, I keep getting a lavender bud in my mouth and thinking it’s a bug. Ick.

I wasn’t overly keen on this tea, it had a very mild taste which you would expect from Lavender but the tea is not one of my particular favorites. I am a huge fan of anything Lavender so my quest to find the best Lavender white tea is on.

Today’s tea was picked with lazy luxurious mornings in mind. I started with a hot, refreshing shower after picking out just the right outfit for the wedding this afternoon. Got wonderfully soft and squeaky clean. Wandered my house in first my towel and then my mid-thigh length crème silk robe while boiling water and finding something to nibble one. Roommates woke up finally so there was passing of BPal since I’m letting Christine sell the very few I own that I didn’t like.

The house is being shown again today and the roommates have left as well, so I’m laying on my bed enjoying the wonders of the tea and silence.

The above picture is actually from during the second pot of this tea. The first pot steeped to about twenty-five minutes was almost so dark you couldn’t see the leaves in detail and the flower in the center at all. Which tells you a bit about the first pot off the bat. This tea shouldn’t be steeped as long I think. The smell that reaches your nose the first time you pour it is strong and heady with a very soft sweet vibe. It’s incredibly a lavender smell. Given the normal long steeping this one is actually much too strong and bitter in all truth, leaving a dry taste in your mouth.

Second pot left to steep while I was neatening up my room a little for the walk through, writing up this post, and of course taking the picture about is actually much prettier, smells softly of only the hibiscus but has almost no taste. I may end up giving this flavor another try with a much shorter first pot steeping time, but with the touchy first pot and almost nonexistent second (when each is supposed to steep three pots) I’m not a really big fan of it.

Three more until my Numi sampling is done….and I just noticed doing this the scrapbook layout changed. Plus, scrapbook no longer has it’s own connected webpage from live journal but has been integrated into the mainframe of the live journal site. Interesting.

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