Random Steepings

Tea type
Tea
Ingredients
Not available
Flavors
Whiskey, Berry, Jam, Raspberry, Strawberry, Sweet, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Peppercorn, Hibiscus, Sour, Tart, Yogurt, Garden Peas, Smooth, Butter, Spinach, Vegetal, Maple Syrup, Meat, Smoke, Creamy, Vanilla, Citrus, Artichoke, Earth, Roasted, Tea, Floral, Lemon, Pepper, Honey, Malt, Metallic, Bergamot, Dark Chocolate, Chamomile, Licorice, Licorice Root, Bitter, Medicinal, Peppermint, Roots, Fruit Punch, Orange, Spices, Tomato, Apricot, Brandy, Brown Sugar, Cream, Drying, Fruity, Mineral, Perfume, Raisins, Stonefruit, Straw, Bitter Melon, Camphor, Caramel, Citrus Zest, Flowers, Forest Floor, Herbs, Marshmallow, Nectar, Nuts, Plum, Round, Spicy, Thick, Wet Rocks, Wet Wood, Wood, Bread, Grapes, Bright, Citrusy, Dark Wood, Earthy, Hot Hay, Leather, Musk, Rich, Saffron, Savory, Tobacco, Candy, Mulberry, Berries, Juicy, Plumeria, Pomegranate, Rose, Sweet Potatoes, Almond, Cake, Mango, Chocolate, Graham Cracker, Apple, Cranberry, Pear, Red Apple, Melon, Lime, Alcohol, Coffee, Dried Fruit, Cedar, Cookie, Peat, Salty, Lavender, Mint, Astringent, Burnt, Celery, Char, Cucumber, Petrichor, Wet Earth, Tangy, Green, Herbaceous, Lemongrass, Candied Apple, Pleasantly Sour, White Grapes, Menthol, Sugar, Burnt Sugar, Green Wood, Hay, Peach, Pineapple, Dust, Lettuce, Sawdust, Pumpkin Spice, Mushrooms, Pine, Roasted Nuts, Carrot, Passion Fruit, Sugarcane, Chicken Soup, Musty, Tannic, Smoked, Grass, Nutty, Seaweed, Jasmine, Orange Blossom, Rooibos, Grain, Rice, Toasted, Toasted Rice, Tannin, Marzipan, Cherry, Coconut, Stewed Fruits, Toffee, White Chocolate, Blueberry, Honeysuckle, Ocean Air, Ocean Breeze, Peat Moss, Sand, Toasty, Narcissus, Spearmint, Pastries, Roasted Barley, Tropical, Anise, Loam, Sage, Red Fruits, Ginger, Clove, Cocoa, Pecan, Wet wood, Dirt, Hazelnut, Milk, Orchid, Pumpkin, Umami, Chestnut, Green Apple, Mud, Autumn Leaf Pile, Peanut, Orange Zest, Muscatel, Taro Root, Powdered Sugar, Vinegar, Lychee, Custard, Nutmeg, Oats, Freshly Cut Grass, Kabocha, Silky, Spring Water, Soybean, Squash, Viscous, Eucalyptus, Oregano, Vegetables, Yams, Salt, Decayed Wood, Toast, Popcorn, Apple Skins, Lemon Zest, Plants, Asparagus, Potato, Artificial, Dark Bittersweet, Cherry Wood
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Edit tea info Last updated by Cameron B.
Average preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 30 sec 7 g 12 oz / 357 ml

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1818 Tasting Notes

6105 tasting notes

Sipdown! 831.

Sil gave me the remnants of two of her matcha latte mix samples from Red Leaf (way back), and I finally got to trying one sometime a week or two ago. I made it with milk, because I’m silly like that (I assume it didn’t need milk? Or maybe I’m wrong), but anyways, it was pretty delicious. No need to add sweetener, because it’s already in there, and the powder dissolved beautifully. Since I wasn’t doing the actual taste test for Red Leaf, I didn’t feel the need to compare the two samples, so I wouldn’t be able to comment on differences, but I did find it enjoyable and easy to use, and honestly? If I didn’t have so much tea, I’d be tempted to pick up some of the pre-made mixes just because it was so easy to use. I didn’t sift my matcha, didn’t heat any water/milk (I used cold milk), and it was ready to go, and delicious, in a couple minutes. Yum. Thanks Sil!

Preparation
Iced 8 min or more
Sil

you are so not going to get to 800…lol

Kittenna

Challenge accepted.

Sil

GOOD! haha

TeaLady441

Yes! Do it!

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1220 tasting notes

Since I probably won’t drink it again I figure I will rate this here. There is a Taiwanese bakery not too far from where my parents live, and they always have coupons in the newspaper for a free Assam milk tea with the purchase of 5 buns. So I got a cold one and bought 5 buns, 4 for us to have later and one for me to have with my tea.

The one thing I did not know though was that the tea was going to be southern sweet. I wasn’t even asked anything about sweetener and holy cow if I could have I would have toned it down A LOT. The first taste was clearly hearty Assam but then it was like being slapped with sugar. I thought maybe it was going to be in a Hong Kong milk tea style but the sweetness didn’t taste to me like it was coming from sweetened condensed milk. It also didn’t seem as creamy but who knows I could be wrong, it just felt like that sugar syrupy kind of sweetness.

Totally have to give them props for actually saying it’s Assam rather than just calling it black tea.

The one good thing though is if you’re familiar with Taiwanese buns, they’re always so buttery and not heavy on sweet flavors, so having such a sweet drink brought out more of the flavor of the bun, which was a “milk cream” type. It made a mess.

TheTeaFairy

Interesting and even weird that they would serve tea southern style :-), you would think being Taiwanese, they would carry some type of Taiwanese tea! But at least they make the effort of serving tea! And I had never heard of Taiwanese buns, they sound yummy.

momo

Yeah, I am guessing it’s because of the area. One time several years ago, I tried to stop at a McDonalds just for unsweetened tea and they don’t even have any that isn’t already sweetened. I think I had been drawn in because of a $1 iced tea sign, well, apparently I’m the only one that sees that and expects at least an unsweetened option!

I think they just do some different fillings from Chinese ones, my favorite is buttercream and I have just learn its name is nai you bao. They’re all huge and really cheap and amazing.

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1146 tasting notes

I just got back from Taiwan and drank both all the and still not enough tea while I was there! So I have a lot of backlogged tasting notes to enter, most of which don’t have existing entries in Steepster. I probably won’t bother adding new entries if I don’t have a lot of details to work with, the source was random/unknown, etc. I was also super excited to write tasting notes about all the teas I brought back, but I came back with covid so that’s off the table for a while. I just slept through two whole days and all I’m drinking is ginger tea, in part because that’s one of the few things that can counteract the metallic taste of paxlovid for me. Among the more severe reasons covid scares the hell out of me, I worry about losing my sense of smell/taste and not being able to enjoy this hobby. So here’s hoping that doesn’t happen!

The first bottled tea I grabbed in Taiwan was a rose berry herbal tea from Uni-President at the 7/11 (I ended up grabbing something caffeinated too but forgot to note its name). This tea and a Ruby 18 I got later both turned out to have sugar in them. Misremembering Taiwanese bottled teas as less sugary than in the US, I had foolishly not bothered to engage the services of Google translate to confirm what I was actually buying! Womp womp. So this was just a whole bunch of different kinds of sugars mixed into grape juice and masquerading as an herbal tea, and I don’t have much else to say about it except as a cautionary tale to always check the ingredients and nutritional information!

ashmanra

How exciting! I hope it was an awesome trip!

Martin Bednář

I would love to trip to Taiwan even with Covid aftermath.

Michelle

Let’s hope Covid doesn’t affect your sense of taste. Sending good vibes your way!

Kaylee

Thanks Michelle! Right now my smell/taste are dulled but not totally gone, so I’m hoping they come back. Martin, the trip was amazing and I’m glad I went, but I’ve been pretty seriously ill for two weeks so only time will tell whether the risk was worth it – right now I have a lot of wonderful teas that I brought back and can’t enjoy, and don’t know when I’ll be able to again.

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87
97 tasting notes

I have missed Steepster so so much. I’ve been drinking tea but writing reviews has been a trial. I’m encountering a great deal of writer’s block—in reviewing books and tea, researching, even writing the odd email. But I think I am back. I think.

Awabancha was a weird experience. And in not a bad way at all. Weird as in it took me a couple of sips to understand. At first the faint taste of pickle-slight vinegarish saltiness— was kicking me right in the face. Definitely strange when you’re drinking tea. But I kept sipping and it kept growing on me. Sure, there is a slight pickle-ish bite but there is also a slight nuttiness on the finish. It’s definitely different and unique—it’s a step up in weird from pu’er. Perhaps not something I’ll reach for a lot but I will have the odd craving for this one. I can tell.

Thank you to Stacy for sending me this (and other) lovely teas.

P.S. Why isn’t this showing up on my Dashboard?

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Butiki Teas

You’re welcome! Glad you got to try this! :)

TheTeaFairy

Welcome back :-)

Angrboda

I’ve had those not showing up on Dashboard troubles as well, and it seemed like most other people if any at all couldn’t see it either. This one is showing up for me though.

graceatblb

Butiki Teas-I will be sending out your teas tomorrow. I keep adding pu’er to it. I hope you like them :)

TheTeaFairy- Thank you :)

Angrboda- I tried to post it 3 times before it showed up. Thankfully, I copy/pasted it or I would have had to type it all over again…and my memory is not the best.

Butiki Teas

Thanks, graceatblb! I can’t wait to try them! :)

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423 tasting notes

I have a tiny jar of tea on my desk at work, and the label on it has somehow fallen off, leaving me with a case of “unidentified tea”. I’m pretty sure that it’s a roasted oolong, likely something from Whittards, and probably even Formosa Oolong from them, but I’m not 100% sure, so into Random Steepings it goes. It is clearly a roasted oolong in taste – much more delicate than a black, and it has the same fruity taste that Whittards’s Formosa has. In any case a nice afternoon sip.

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612 tasting notes

This isn’t random actually, it’s Eco Cha’s Tsui Yu Jade Oolong. But for some reason a couple companies’ entries—Eco Cha, Vintage Tea Works—just won’t let me add to cupboard or write tasting notes; any time I try it just redirects me to my dashboard.

And it’s a shame here, because this tea is wonderful. I have this weird kitchen set-up where when the dishwasher’s on I can’t use my electric kettle (shorts the electricity) nor use the kitchen sink as a water source (our dishwasher hooks up to the faucet…I knew that’d be a huge pain and begged my husband to bother connecting it directly to the water tank but he wouldn’t, so here we are :b). This gets really annoying this time of year when by the time I have a guaranteed free moment for some real tea time right after dinner it’s hard because the dishwasher needs to be on doing the day’s load. I think I’ve figured out a decent solution for now though—I prewarm my king thermos and then fill it with the right temp water from my electric kettle, seal it nice and tight, get out the gaiwan and a tea meant for resteeping (so oolong or green usually), and then turn on the washer. As it does its thing I have a little private gongfu session. Very nice!

Anyway, got this as part of Eco Cha’s recent promotion. The site directions for gongfu brewing are kind of confusingly unusual, so I didn’t follow them exactly but did what I’m used to doing (quick rinse, more leaf and less water, short steeping times, a bit cooler than boiling). Figured if it wasn’t optimal and I should follow their directions I have enough left to do so. But I was pleased with my setup—the first few cups yielded a marvelous true-fresh-flower fragrance, a little like jasmine but also like honeysuckle or summer flowers. Remarkable stuff, not unlike some of Verdant’s best spring offerings (Hand-Picked Early Spring Tieguanyin, White Jasmine). The flavor is sweet and clean and slightly herbal, smelling a bit like clean hay as the flower scent tapers off. Eco Cha mentions this is great cold steeped, and I can definitely see that—it has a lot of the qualities the tastiest cold steeped green teas I had this summer (like Bilochun Green) have. It edges towards grassy as it cools, but the sweetness and true-flower aroma make that pleasant. In the middle of winter this is a fantastic way to transport yourself to a warm sunny field out in the country on a late spring or early summer day. This is a spectacular tea that merits the hype of the company’s copy. The price is quite reasonable considering the quality too—under $4 an ounce or (if I’m calculating right) about $1 a session.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 1 min, 0 sec
Eco-Cha 一口茶

Hi,

Just commented on the promotion post as well, but wanted to say thanks over here in case you don’t see that one.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write in about your experience with Eco-Cha Tsui Yu Jade Oolong. I just read your notes (the link you provided above). Great to hear you really enjoyed this Tsui Yu. The batch the you tried is almost gone (we have about 10 boxes left at the time of this post). Andy (our tea sourcer) is out at the farm today picking up the winter 2013 batch that we tried last, brought home, continued to drink throughout the week, and then decided to purchase. We’ll be putting that up soon.

Thanks again for taking the time to write and for helping to get the glitch in our tea page here resolved.

I hope you enjoy our other teas and would love to hear what you think of those too!

Thanks for the comments as well on our current gong fu brewing method section. We really want our site to be as useful and informative as possible so every bit of feedback helps. I’ve taken your comments to mean we should add some more detail to the gong-fu brewing directions. Did I get that right?

Thanks again!

Nick
Eco-Cha

ifjuly

Hi Nick. I think they’re clear enough, I was just surprised to see the steeping time was as long as for Western style. I haven’t tried it that way myself yet, but that seems really long! But I’m also no expert, mind.

Thanks for the nice reply. It was really a pleasure to drink on this wintery day.

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1759 tasting notes

A colleague shared some Pu-erh tea picked from a 200 year old tree.
What an experience! A light tea with a sweet, maple syrup note throughout all infusions, and intermittent notes of clay, malt, spun sugar, linen and oak. 
Unfortunately I had a few interruptions that threw off my timings a bit, so I had to fudge the follow up infusions a bit.
Also, I really need a way to maintain water temperature! My teapot cools down fast and I haven’t got a thermos big enough to hold that much liquid. For some reason my kettle keeps the heat, but it stays above where I need it to be, and then when I pour it into another vessel, its below where I need it because of the air exposure… tea snob problems
Not that it bothers me TOO much. Still, I wouldn’t mind doing it as per instructions the first (and in this case, only!) time.
Ah well. I really enjoyed it, and methinks I had a tea-buzz going on as well. Sweeeeet

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C
Stephanie

Was it a raw or cooked puerh? Sounds like a sheng maybe? Puerh is the best to get a tea buzz going IMO :D

Christina / BooksandTea

It sounds like you found a new job, based on this post. If so, congrats!

Indigobloom

Stephanie, sorry I should have mentioned that! Definitely uncooked. Usually I get a bigger buzz from the cooked variety so I certainly didn’t expect that :)

Indigobloom

Christina, sadly not so much. I finished my tea courses at George Brown. The girl who gave me this sample is a puerh importer.
I figured I better behave like who I want to become haha

Indigobloom

(not an importer, just a professional!)

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615 tasting notes

I crawled out of my anti-social hidey-hole today and got together with a friend, which ended up with us sitting in Starbucks and chatting for the better part of five hours.

Of course, now I’ve had more caffeine today than anyone rightfully should.

But at least the trend started with a pretty lovely pot of Da Hong Pao from a local Asian restaurant. It had the right mix of woody, loamy and a bit of apricot-like sweetness to make polishing it off a pleasure.

gmathis

Friend time—sounds wonderful!

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88
892 tasting notes

Working on finishing samples today! Thank you to whoever sent me this one! It’s called Apple Bliss but I can’t seem to find it. The asroma is very warm with apple cinnamon. The flavor reminds me of dried red delicious apples dusted with cinnamon. Quite enjoyable and one of the better apple teas I’ve tried.

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100
523 tasting notes

I haven’t yet restocked Thin Mint from the Tea Spot, so I made my own. I had a little bit of Hojicha left from Dens Tea and a bag of Peppermint from Arbor teas. It came out pretty good. The peppermint is a bit brighter than in the Thin Mint blend since I obviously don’t know the exact proportions, but it doesn’t matter. Mint+Hojicha = yum no matter what.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 4 min, 0 sec

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