See note on the original Caravan:
https://steepster.com/Morgana/posts/44892#likes
Except the link doesn’t work (why?), so I’ll repeat it here:
So here’s what happened.
I put this into the Breville to steep, and then forgot about it and took my 4 year old to pre-K. When I came home I remembered, and the timer on the Breville indicated it had been available for drinking for approximately 54 minutes.
I figured it would be cold and probably not very good, but I tasted it anyway.
WOW.
It was lukewarm. But the first thing I noticed was the mouthfeel. Thick. Not really chewy, but thick and textured, somewhere between broth and syrup. And then, unexpectedly, the most wonderful flavor. Gently smoky, with a naturally sweet, smooth undercurrent of tea that tastes like… bread on the initial sip, and as it rounds out in the mouth, plums?
Enough. I have to go make more of this and see how it is hot.
While it’s making, I’m backtracking to the dry tea. Fairly large, brown tippy leaves. A very smoky smell, that has the salty, meaty smoke thing going on.
And yes, it’s even better hot! The thickness of the mouthfeel isn’t as apparent, but there’s a carby sweetness, sort of yam-like, to both the aroma and the flavor. The smoke is an accent, not the main event, but a noticeable one. There’s a lot of depth and character here, something that reminds me of what I like about Samovar’s black teas. That particular quality is more apparent as the tea cools. Too cold, as my first cup has now become, and the magic goes poof. Would not recommend this as an iced tea. But any range between right out of the pot and lukewarm is delicious. Like a nice wine that’s left to breathe, it changes with time. One flavor may not be better than the others, just different and equally wonderful.
I was moved to give this a 100, but I can’t bring myself to do it on a limited edition. It would just be too sad to have decided on a perfect tea, and then have it be unavailable.
I can’t really improve upon what I said there, except that this being no longer a limited edition, I have given it my first 100 rating!
It’s a rich Yunnan with some smoke around the edges, and it is sensational.
Preparation
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Regarding your link – it’s because you have underscores in your username, which are used to format text as italic. So it makes the text italic instead of printing the underscores, and breaks the link. :P
How bothersome!
Usually there’s some mechanism to “escape” special characters like that so that you can print them literally. It’s often a backslash (\), but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work around here… :(
This sounds SO good It’s a shame that it’s a limited edition though.
It made a return, and as long as A&D is around I expect they will keep bringing it back periodically.
Regarding your link – it’s because you have underscores in your username, which are used to format text as italic. So it makes the text italic instead of printing the underscores, and breaks the link. :P
How bothersome!
Usually there’s some mechanism to “escape” special characters like that so that you can print them literally. It’s often a backslash (\), but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work around here… :(
This sounds SO good It’s a shame that it’s a limited edition though.
It made a return, and as long as A&D is around I expect they will keep bringing it back periodically.