169 Tasting Notes
5th day of the Sara Advent Tea Calendar! As soon as the hot water touched the leaf, the kitchen smelled like… is that the guayusa? It smells like tulsi!
It doesn’t taste that much like tulsi. But it does a tiny bit to me. It’s sweet and herby with a hint of spice, cinnamon? It tastes like warm goodness. Mmm.
Flavors: Cinnamon, Herbs, Tulsi
Preparation
Coal!
In day four of my advent calendar from Sara, I got mystery cheap pu-erh. Labeled “Coal!”
I found Sara’s review of this tea, and it came in a sampler from Liquid Proust. She said:
“This one was simply labeled as ‘Cheap.’ Yup. Just that. No year, no sheng/shou differentiation, but I guess whoever got this didn’t pay much for it! Fair enough. I never judge a tea by its price anyway. Taste is what’s important!”
I boiled water, rinsed it for about 10 seconds, and steeped for two.
The aroma is neutral, very slightly eartly. The taste is kind of smoky, earthy, roasted, and like black tea. Not very good black tea… I’m getting a bit of a “Lipton” note. The aftertaste has an artichoke note.
With all the hype about this tea, I am shocked at how inoffensive it is. It’s better than plain Lipton (I haven’t tried their discontinued berry tea), and I’ve certainly had worse bagged tea in restaurants which I’ve gotten down. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I don’t hate it either, hence the 51% rating.
The taste lingers somewhat pleasantly in a “please don’t hate me” kind of a way.
Flavors: Artichoke, Earth, Roasted, Smoke, Tea
Preparation
EW. I tried a second steep. Well, a few sips of it. I found that “wet earth” flavor Sara tasted, yuck. And I tossed out the rest of that cup.
Now if you can picture the wet earth with tobacco smoke, that was pretty much my gong fu session in a nutshell.
Hehehehehe… COAL! At least you got the worst over with early in the month. No more evil Slytherin surprises, I promise. :-)
Aw, no homunculus tea?
Day 3 of my advent calendar from Sara!
Out of the bag, it smells like roasted chocolate! Mmm. I smelled it brewed and opened the TeaSource page on it without even tasting it yet. There was a train station I would stop at on the way to work, to catch a shuttle. It was near a chocolate factory, and a few days a week the whole area smelled like chocolate. This smell is bringing me back there.
I took a few sips. Roasted chocolate, and a hint of apple. Okay, I ordered four ounces.
Yeah, that’s good. I’ll bet it would blend well with others too.
Flavors: Apple, Chocolate, Roasted
Preparation
And would you believe I actually haven’t even tried this one myself yet? Maybe I should, hahahaha!
Oh I believe it. I have the first tasting note for it on Steepster!
Yes, I see the blend has been long updated since it was added to Steepster. Like I would ever send you something with marshmallows in it, pfft.
Day two of my custom advent calendar from Sara!
The taste of it brewed is vaguely vegetal. The color is very blue!
The flavor is very mild, but it’s… a bit vegetal and earthy. Like I just steeped some high-quality dirt. The vegetal notes are pleasant, and even the earthy flavor isn’t bad, just… not really my cup of tea. I love the color, and it could go well with other things.
Sara recommended combining it with honey and lemon juice. I didn’t have those on hand, but should pick them up when I want to brew the other sample bag.
Flavors: Earth, Vegetal
Preparation
Custom advent calendar day one! My good friend Sara brought me my first ever advent calendar of any kind, and it’s a tea a day! The teas aren’t numbered. It’s luck-of-the-draw. So I grabbed a tea for today! They have been pre-measured for steeping with 12 ounces, and she gave me a lovely Pusheen mug to drink them from. Also, it looks like I have two samples of each tea! Oh, the bag was 2.5 grams. I’ve only just noticed that Steepster doesn’t use decimals there.
Still, it’s a very limited amount; there are a lot of teas; and my memory isn’t that great. I’d better do a tasting note for each of these!
The smells of the leaf and the brewed cup are primarily black tea and fruity. I had to set it aside for a few minutes after brewing so I don’t burn my tongue. I’m sensitive like that.
The taste is a nice one-two punch of black tea and fruitiness. Possibly strawberry. The black tea and fruity flavors are together in a proper harmony as I sit in a gazebo surrounded by a flower garden, while cats and children run around and play and somehow don’t trample the flowers. At least, that’s how it tastes to me. That reminds me, there is a bit of a floral note too. The pleasant flavor lingers on my tongue for several minutes after drinking it. Thanks, Sara!
Flavors: Floral, Fruity, Strawberry, Tea
Preparation
I tried a sample cup at the San Francisco International Tea Festival and had to buy some on the spot. I don’t collect a lot of black teas, mostly green. My favorite is houjicha. But this black tea is great.
It took me a few tries to get the amount of leaf just right. I may need to buy a tea scale. Now it tastes just like the sample they served. I get a smooth black tea flavor with strong honey notes and scents. It doesn’t taste bitter at all, but rich and full of light, whatever that means.
Flavors: Honey, Tea
Preparation
I had this at Hidden Peak Teahouse.
First Steep: The smell reminded me a little of houjicha. It was very vegetal and tasted of artichokes. very smooth.
Second Steep: The oolong really opened up and filled the steeping cup. There was a strong smell of artichoke. There was still vegetal/artichoke flavor, with a slight hint of floral flavor and roasted toastiness. The flavors came together in a nice balance.
Third Steep: There was a lighter flavor like black tea mixed with green tea, with a vegetal note at the end.
Fourth Steep: Lighter still. It was more thirst quenching this time, with a slight citrus note.
Fifth through Seventh Steeps: Continued to get lighter in flavor, less complex.
Flavors: Artichoke, Citrus, Floral, Roasted, Tea, Toasty, Vegetal
Preparation
I did a sipdown of this 12g bag that came with my Adagio ingenuiTEA Bottom-Dispensing Teapot. I think I got four servings out of it. The packaging says to steep for 7-10 minutes! So I did 7 minutes for the first steep and 8 for the second.
First steep is very cardamom-heavy, while it’s more balanced with a second steep. I hot-steeped using my IngenuiTEA and then added a little almond milk for flavor and to get it down to my usual drinking temperature. I’m a little wimpy with drinks that are too hot for me.
It’s odd for me with a chai to prefer the second steep, but there you go. It’s unbalanced, but it was free, and drinkable. I tried it without almond milk too (brewed it yesterday and forgot I was out of milk), but prefer it with. This last time I used Almond Breeze “Hint of Honey,” but I can’t taste the hint through all the spices.
Flavors: Cardamom, Cinnamon, Clove
Preparation
Wow, that’s a long recommended steep! Unless the intention is to prepare it for latte, I don’t normally steep black teas so long myself.
One of the things I’ve noticed from doing a chai-heavy month this month is a lot of cardamom-heavy blends, myself! What is the deal with all the cardamom? I definitely have found that for the cardamom-heavy blends, I prefer them with milk, too. It definitely cuts it back a bit. I definitely like the more balanced chais though, where you can savor more of the spices and I can enjoy plain, but are still good with milk if I feel in a latte mood.
What is a treacle sponge? It’s apparently a pudding, but when I first opened the tin, it smelled like a delicious cookie. I wonder if there’s a good way to make sugar cookies and flavor them with this tea.
Anyway, it tastes like delicious cookies, and I also like it with a little vanilla almond milk. I drank it hot. I wish it were part of Bluebird’s permanent collection, but at least I bought a nice 0.15 kg tin of it. My friend recommended it to me, and thanks for that!
Flavors: Cookie, Ginger
Preparation
I’m still waiting for my Bluebird order, but am also glad for the opportunity to pick up more of this! Doesn’t look like it’s going to win the election, but it had my vote!
When I sampled it a while ago, I remember it having a very buttery mouthfeel, and a caramel flavor. I never had a chance to try it as a latte off my sample before, so once I have a chance to try it again I definitely want to try it that way, as well.
Guayusa is a close cousin of yerba mate, the two caffeinated herbals from South America. I find guayusa to be a bit more naturally sweet than yerba mate, but they both taste sort of like gunpowder green tea to me — a sort of tobacco smoke, grassy green taste (I usually get sort of hay-like notes from both guayusa and yerba mate), with occassionally mild notes of coffee bean (I usually get more of the coffee notes if the leaf has been roasted, which it was not in this case).
Tulsi is an Indian basil that has three varieties, and usually when I encounter it in tea, they are typically using a blend of the three types rather than just one (krishna, rama, or vana). Krishna tulsi has more of a purple color and a taste described as being clove or pepper-like, rama tulsi has green leaves and a more mellow taste than the krishna variety, and the vana variety has light green leaves and is described as having a more citrus flavor. Tulsi to me typically tastes a little minty and a little citrusy with a peppery aftertaste (for a typical 3-varietal blend).
There is lemongrass in this, which would account for a lot of that herby, grassy citrus flavor.