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I love Equal Exchange teas. Sure, they’re bagged, but the taste is so well-balanced and natural. I first tried the Darjeeling and chai pyramid bags around 2009. Excuse the non-tea review, but the box is adorable. It’s the kind of box that you’d want to reuse as a box for paperclips/hairpins/cotton balls/sewing scraps/anything else that can fit in there. I used my boxes until they kind of died (and then recycled them).

Anyway, EE does Darjeeling well. The leaves they use really live up to the “champagne of tea” moniker. Sourced from small tea gardens in Northeast India, they work off of a sustainable fair trade business model which makes this tea that much nicer. I admit that I’ve only had a few other darjeelings, but there definitely is a difference for me. This tea has a warm taste that’s not bitter, even if I oversteep. However, the taste is also delicate and smooth. It’s really good with milk, but I prefer no sweetener.

Honestly, this is my Darjeeling. I’m not going to accept any other substitutes, even if it’s the most heralded Darjeeling, picked by magical winged kittens on the most auspicious day of the year in the most sacred of mountain promontories. It’s that good.

(PS~ I’m not sure if this allowed on Steepster, but the tea.coop site has a great video of Darjeeling being made by the Potong tea garden. EE will donate 1 tea bush to Potong for every view in October. More tea bushes = more nom!)

So on the scale of world importance, finishing a video game really isn’t high up there. That is, unless it’s Persona 3, one of the most depressing and mind-wrenching fake-dating-sim fake-rpg fake-SMT games ever churned out by the second-most-evil video game company ever (that would be Atlus; I claim that Nitro+Chiral is number one, even though I haven’t played any games they’ve produced).

Now I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with Perfect Peach (or tea at all). The truth is that Perfect Peach is perfectly suited for for P3. At least, for me it is. Brew it up strong in a mason jar and add some milk! A nice, soothing overtone of peach to comfort all your emoness over social links, a nice hint of lemon to perk you up through all the stairs you have to climb in Tartarus, and an underlying artificial flavor to remind you that the end is going to be so depressing that you’ll have to take a time out from life to recooperate.

You know what’s really sad, barring the end of the world that was supposed to happen in 2010? The fact that I can’t save the world because my sister stole the game and console from me and is not letting me play it because she said it was a stupid game and is playing it herself now. I mean, I was ~ 98.5% of the way through, I had gotten like 86% of the personae, and I had even prepared to drink a whole box of Perfect Peach in the last push to the end. …Now I just have this tea to console myself while I reassess whether I should still be playing video games at my age.

….At least the tea is tasty.

I’m really sorry for not being so active lately — my tea budget has dried up and I’ve been drinking tea more for the caffeine than for flavor nowadays.

Anyway, I’ve also noticed that I like to put milk in everything I can — especially oolongs. This will probably annoy some people here on Steepster, but really, it brings out the flavor, especially for this tea. I bought this tea as a little stocking stuffer for my sister about two years back, so it’s old and probably not as tasty as getting a fresh bag. However, straight from the box, it had a flowery, warm scent which was similar when brewing. The taste without milk was slightly malty, round, and warm. There were some nice middle notes of what I can only describe as “Asteraceae-like,” which probably means that it was the safflower. With milk, it was easier to taste the warm oolong and sweet peach notes.

I liked this tea, especially with milk. …I think I should revisit it, though, with a fresher sample…

I have to get up early in the mornings nowadays, so I’ve been making a 4-cup pot of coffee and downing it all to be able to get through the day. I know I’m ruining my morning tea habit and ingesting far too much caffeine to be healthy, but I’m actually kind of happy to be using all the old coffee that’s clogging up my tea stash.

This is the perfect tea for days when I drink too much coffee. It’s well-built and strong, but easy to mix with milk (anywhere from 10-50% milk), so it’s like cutting the caffeine and adding Vitamin D. The best of all worlds! Magnesium from the coffee, and calcium/fat/riboflavin from the tea-milk! I would totally overdose on this tea when I’m under the weather. It’s especially good with a little bit of honey.

From what I’ve read here on Steepster, everyone has an opinion on lapsang souchong. Being the not-so-gourment Steepsterite, I had no idea what that was. Luckily, the local co-op sells RTOP loose leaf tea in bulk, so it was really easy to try this tea out. I got about 2 cups-worth of leaves and prepared myself.

Despite a lot of people not liking the taste of lapsang souchong, I find this specific LS pretty enchanting. Now, I haven’t had any others, and I’m sure the quality and taste differ with each blend, but I’m happy with this. It’s smoky, strong, well-built, and aromatic. I also like that it can be watered down without affecting the quality — just add a bit more water if it’s too strong. I think that I would want to serve this at a Steampunk tea party, if those exist.

My family received a 400g bag of this tea (along with a gigantic bottle of honey and a big box of ramen) from our pastor when he decided to retire and leave the God-forsaken town of Nome, Alaska.

Anyway, I’ve had trouble keeping this tea in the bag. The bag itself is really not that sturdy, so I definitely suggest putting the contents into another tin or jar for storage.

The tea itself is really nice — when brewed accordingly to directions, it’s nice and balanced, with a light popcorn/popped rice taste over a warm green tea base. I’ve had Takaokaya’s genmaicha before, and I like this one more. It’s toasty and warm, but there’s no powdery taste. I’m having it with rasmalai and oatmeal, and it sounds weird to pair it with those, but it works.

I like to pull this tea out when it’s cold and snowing and icy and windy, which is the normal Nome weather. It’s like I associate this tea with Nome. …I wish I didn’t do this. Nome is horrible, really. If you can take one thing away from this review, it’s that you should never go to Nome.

Oh, this tea. Like most of the other Steepsterites, I found this at an Asian market — that is, the new Asian market in Moscow, ID, that has good turmeric, frozen lemongrass, some really nice peanut/sesame/adzuki mochi and Rotiland frozen rotis. One look at this place and it was instant love.

The only bad thing about this place is that there’s a $5 purchasing minimum. I can’t just pop in and get some Fruitery jellies or hot mango chutney — I have to buy multiple small things together. I guess that’s the reason I got this (they had mango Fruitery, and it was only $1.59). The tin of this jasmine tea was $1.99, and I’ve always seen it in the other Asian markets, so I decided to splurge. I was pretty glad that I did.

The smell from the tin is very floral, and the taste of the tea is, too. It’s incredibly sweet and aromatic, and really great for blah days. I’ve had pretty unhappy run-ins with jasmine teas before, so I was a bit wary of the strength of this tea. However, it’s not too bitter or too strong (unless you leave the leaves in for 30 minutes while drinking, which I did the first time). In fact, I brewed this tea, left it for approximately ten minutes, then remembered it. I thought it’d be horrible overdone, but it was perfect. It seems that the taste doesn’t change much from about 5 minutes to 10 minutes of steeping. Lucky me, since I’m the tea-forgetting queen of the world.

Overall, I’ve had good experiences with this tea. It may not be too special for someone who loves jasmine and drinks it regularly, but it’s good enough for me to keep it as a regular in my tea stash. Oh, and the tin is adorable.

This is a backlog going back to…. somewhere around the end of November. I’m that forgetful…

Anyway, a lovely lady whom I stayed with in a hostel in Alaska gave me a teabag of this, and it looked amazing. Because, you know, it’s from a company whose name involves the words “Organic” and “India” — it’s like they know who I am! If only they also included the words “bhangra,” “evil microbiology” and “thermal underwear,” then they’d really describe me.

Anyway, the teabag smelled floral and rosey right after being taken out of the pouch, so I was a bit worried. I mean, not like gulab-jamun worried, but just a bit eau-de-toilette worried. When steeping, I knew that this wouldn’t taste sweet, so even if I had gulab jamun worries, they were alleviated.

In the end, I actually liked the taste — it was mellow and relaxing. However, the scent was AMAZING. I don’t know, I may have to try this again, since I was running around Alaska and dealing with all sorts of not-pretty things, so this was super-feminine and super-pretty for me. However, this may be a very desi thing, since rosewater and gulab-ish stuff is very popular in general for South Asians. Then again, fried and super sugary things are also very popular, and that’s just too much for me…

Hm. It’s hard to rate this one. I’ve just been talking about other things. I guess I could say I’d get a box or two if it were in the local co-op, but I’m not going to go out of my way to order it online or anything. Though the scent is amazing. It would be wonderful to make bath products out of this tea. I would totally do infused oil with this if I had a source for it.