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It’s official; I live in hell. And see this little bird nest? This is my return ticket to sanity.
Back from my first tea shopping trip in nearly six months lo and behold the gas has been shut off! Apparently thespecial split December payment arangement was poorly coordinated so my and dozens of others all had their bills automatically payed two days late. Happy Holidays from the gremlins at customer service.
Fortunately we have emough space heaters to survive at 63 F in the living room/kitchen-until a fuse blew. I had to stay up to fix and prevent another. I had no problem keeping vigil-my stomach kindly did so by trying to rocket its non-existant contents whenever I breathed in.
So of course I burned the first tuocha with 190 water! Crazy laugh Isn’t that HILARIOUS?!
Only 5-8 more hours until the gasman gets around to us.

I am obligated to increase the rating for versatility. This tea tastes so amazing and swampy and floral on its own it took a few cups to even consider the addition of monofloral honey but it was a great idea. I’ve tried a couple different kinds of honey and they’ve all paired perfectly with this tea and created amazing flavor profiles well worth the slurped sugar intake. A blessing for my constantly partched throat, as this is one of the few teas I have that I’ll sweeten.

In innerchild terms:
This tea + Honey= superb!
My favorite combination is carob tree honey or blackberry. The carob creates a rich red, fruity layer to the tea’s grassy malty tones that tastes a bit like cacao nibs and one of my favorite chocolate bars: Pralus’s Madegascar. <3

Definately not the best vanilla tea out there but I think this one of the best bagged teas. We keep this one around because it’s convenient; perfect brewed double strength with equal parts water and Trader Joe’s vanilla hemp milk. They’re probably literally made for one another.

I’ve always been on the fence about Wuyi oolongs and this one is keeping me there. I’m a little disappointed because I don’t really get barley or honeysuckle notes (and I just had tea with real honeysuckle; hence the disappointment) but I do love the promised and delivered raisin sugar taste. Besides that, Chrine said my overall impression of all steepings with “toffee coffee.” It tastes fine but it just doesn’t feel harmonious.

This tea is really growing on me. I couldn’t sleep and needed mild caffeine to kill my headache and sore throat and Honeysuckle was the first cure my groggy glasses-deprived eyes could distinguish. With lemon and a spoon of raw honey this fixed my throat, stimulant withdrawl and hopefully my insomnia.
It kills me to think that when spring starts and honey is fresh, this tea will be STALE. Bah-humbug. T_T This tea would be so good fresh and whole. Republic of Tea should follow their philosophy and sell their healthful wares in loose leaf form. Eh, I’m getting cranky. 　 お休み～

Huzzah! A happy and prosperous new year to you and whoever produced this tea! This was perfect companion to our “leap into the new year” ginger-orange frog cookies. I must admit, the single serving size per tuocha is part of the reason we picked this.
(^_^);

I rinsed the tuocha for 20 seconds into glazed gaiwans. Taking Jenn-cha’s experience into consideration, the third steeping was one minute and thiry seconds (I’m wary of straying from the 2-3 recommendation of Tao of Tea but also 2-3 minutes?!) and lo! Jenn-cha knows more than Tao of Tea! It came out with sweet and complex wood flavors. There’s oddly more oak than rose. But I swear peat moss and turbinado sugar were part of the tuocha! This was so good everyone went right along wtih the “weird” smelling your teacup. The leaf in the teapot smelled bizarrely like seitan, vegan bacon and rose.

The third and fourth steepings were both two mintes and yielded more mellow flavors that crept towards timothy hay and very little rose. The leaf in the pot smells more like damp hay and old straw piles. It was interesting to taste the natural sweetness of the tea and the actual sugar in the gingerbread. I prefer the sugarless tea.

Fifth steeping-At the suggestion of my rose loving mother we added some rose hips to the pot. What the hay? It says four steepings and was wrong about that.
I highly recommend this little addition towards the last couple of infusions because the fruity, strawberry sweet flavors were amazing with the hay and raisin flavors in the tea (and replaced the now undetectable rose petals). It was like drinking a summer day at the horse farm without the barnwork.
Out of curiosity I’m putting the leaf in the fridge overnight to see if it lasts for a sixth infusion tomorrow. Partially out of curiosity and partially because I need sleep.

Edit: Sixth and seventh steepings were weak but still had mellow orchard grass hay, plum, turbinado sugar and walnut tones! Maybe if I don’t wait over night I could get eight steepings with shorter times.

Mmm. I love the first cup of a new batch of tea. This tastes better more like honey than I remember, especially in how thick it tastes. I rememer trying some of the last canister with orange blossom honey and nearly slurped it down like matcha! I need to find some honeysuckle honey to try with this…

This is just the midmorning pick-me-up I neded with the ginger shortbread from yesterday. This is the best jasmine green I’ve had. Half the new Year’s cleaning down, half to put off for an hour so I can time finishing with snack and another cup of this.