Vital Tea Leaf

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83
drank Ginseng Oolong by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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83
drank Ginseng Oolong by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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83
drank Ginseng Oolong by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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83
drank Ginseng Oolong by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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83
drank Ginseng Oolong by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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74

This is my ever day tea while I’m at work. I find it very light and enjoyable to sip on while I work. I usually pop 2 of them in a cup of hot water and slowly refill it throughout the afternoon. The first three steeps are probably the best.

I picked this bag up from Vital about 2 years ago while I was in SF.

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

Cold fighting, fat burning, taste bud lavishing

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

This is one of the few teas I have left from Vital Tea Leaf. I cannot wait to make another trip to that store!

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

Starting the morning with sticky rice!

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

A nice side drink to the morning bowl of oatmeal.

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

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70
drank Sticky Rice Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
1812 tasting notes

I’m still getting used to the flavour of this tea, but it’s growing on me. It does smell, and taste, like rice just out of a rice cooker. Good pu’erh, but not necessarily my first choice if I was given the option. It does smooth out from cup to cup though.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 30 sec

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61

Getting this tea was a story on it’s own, but I don’t feel like telling it – because i have a better one!

So, this was my first time having this tea since I was in China, over a year ago. It was pretty good, actually – the sweetness is really an interesting touch. The first infusion was really good, and the second brew handled a vast over-steep extremely well. (I was playing a game online, and I forgot about it… I do that a lot). This is the infusion I used for the iced tea.

So, here we are, the morning after, with the continuing iced-tea concoction experiment. The ginseng really overpowers the flavor – it’s the newest, and constitutes about half of the total pitcher. So far, it’s not undrinkable. Not much to say this time – it really tastes a lot like the ginseng oolong.
Color-wise, it looks a lot like the pre-made oolongs you find in asian markets, in large plastic bottles. I love that color.

I took this tea with a vitamin, though I hate how those vitamins make me feel – they’re really big, so they give me chest pains. Also, I don’t like having lime-green pee. So, why am I taking vitamins?
To help heal…

My new piercing!
This makes number two – first was my eyebrow, this one is an industrial.
For those of you who are not familiar with the terminology, an industrial is a metal bar through the cartilage of the upper ear.
For those of you who want to know, it’s pretty painful to get – but with that good kind of pain – and it makes things awkward. Like, sleeping, washing your hair, and taking off your shirt. Of course, I had a similar experience with the brow, but this one is more fussy. Also, I have to put my ear in a glass of saltwater twice a day.
For those of you who are questioning, hell yes it was worth it.

Oh, and for those of you who are shyly curious,
it’s pretty damn sexy.

Now the fun part!
I have a very perceptive sister, and since my parents are on a roadtrip, it’s just us, her baby, and the dogs in the house. It’s become an inconsequential game of Secret Survival. Last night, the game almost ended prematurely – my sister saw my glass of salt solution in the bathroom, which I covered with the excuse that my eyebrow piercing got infected, and I was just cleaning it out. She looked at me with her narrow-eyed, “you’re hiding something” look, and told me to stick out my tongue. Fortunately, my sister is not knowledgeable in piercing concealment, so she didn’t recognize the classic “long hair over the ear” trick, nor did she understand that it’s nearly impossible to hide a tongue piercing for the first two weeks. Dodged a bullet there!
Of course, my family will have to find out eventually, but let’s see how long I can keep this going. Gods, I love getting holes in my skin.

On a related note, I’m looking at a possible career choice :)

Preparation
Iced

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63

This is actually an oolong-green tea blend with ginseng infusion. The ginseng adds an interesting note, but isn’t too strong so as to mask the underlying aroma of the leaves. Aftertaste is lingering and pleasant, particularly if you like ginseng. This isn’t my favorite ever, but I love to break it out every once in a while to throw my taste buds a curve ball.

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78
drank Ginseng Oolong by Vital Tea Leaf
43 tasting notes

In a week, I’m moving. Being the sort of procrastinator I sometime am, I’ve waited until this last week to seriously organize the movement of my large furniture to other owners, as I’ll not be taking any of it with me. I’ll be traveling light and fast. Initially, I had planned on renting a U-Haul truck and taking the entirety of my material detritus, then I found out those trucks with a trailer would cost me about a thousand dollars. That works out to be about a dollar a mile, plus gasoline or Diesel. My furniture is worth about a thousand dollars, so it’d be cheaper to re-buy it all.

My second (or third, or fourth) hand washer and dryer were things that couldn’t go, because they’re very large, very heavy, and, in all likelihood, redundant to washer and dryer that would be in the apartment unit I’m moving into. I posted them on Craigslist for fifty bucks. No e-mails about them after several days, even someone trying to talk me down from the discount price. So, at work, I announced- “Hey, does anyone want a washer and dryer?” and someone said, “Yes, how much?” and I said, “If you can take it tonight, we’ll move it,”

We moved the white metal boxes to her apartment and she reheated some stew and cooked up a big bunch of this Vital Tea in a pot in the stove. I resisted being a tea snob and criticizing her for using way too much leaf and adding cold water to the leaves prior to putting the pan on the stove and not timing anything. Hey, it’s not my tea here.

Turns out it was great. She claimed she felt a good tea should be abuse friendly- that it shouldn’t matter how you cook the tea, it’ll turn out awesome. I reminded myself- “It’s just tea,”

I re-steeped the tea (in the same manner) three more times and each time, as a good oolong should, tasted a bit different and usually better. The third was my favorite. I’d definitely recommend this stuff, even though I don’t know where you get it.

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55

A smooth, buttery green tea. It has the classic vegetal signature of green tea, but it coats your mouth. Unfortunately, it produces a fairly bitter cup—I tried a variety of steep times (3-6 mins) but even on the low end, it still is a bit bitter and begins to taste watery. It’s okay, but I’ll pass the next time.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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67
drank Blue People by Vital Tea Leaf
11 tasting notes

A better-balanced blend of ginseng to oolong than most “emperor teas” of this variety. The base oolong isn’t of the highest quality, but then you wouldn’t want it to be as the subtleties would be wasted underneath the blanket of sweet ginseng. It’s a nice pick-me-up or something to drink when your palate isn’t clean enough to appreciate more refined teas. A fun and comforting tea. It’s a tea I’d buy again from Vital Tea Leaf

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 0 min, 15 sec
Pithy

There is no ginseng in this tea. It’s aspartame.

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91
drank Manderin Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
57 tasting notes

…it has been quite a while since I drank it the last time. Even though summer may not be the right season for this warming and rather spicy brew I could not resist in opening one of those teas last week.

Except a shy hint of mandarin scent the tea hasn’t go much nose. The color of the first brew, I drank it from a highball glass, was good. As rich and dark one might describe it.
I kept the steeping temperature below 80 degrees Celsius which created a kind of velvety effect on the tea while I drank it. A very, very smooth but intense brew when it comes to flavor. It always amazes me how it heats up my body. Very awakening.
With the second brew I always tend to be a bit more bolt in regards of the water temperature. The color of the tea turns extremely dark. It almost seems as if the liqueur became more thick and rich, too.

I guess one might get a endless amount of brews out of one single portion from this leafs. It probably would get one through a whole day if desired.
I personally stick with two brews per tea a day. Usually a green tea between 10.00am-11.00am and then a dark tea (Oolong, Pu-erh or English blacks) in the afternoons. Three or four times a week a strong milk tea in the early morning.

Preparation
170 °F / 76 °C 2 min, 30 sec

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91
drank Manderin Puerh by Vital Tea Leaf
57 tasting notes

…in the beginning it seems to take a strong grip on one’s tongue and fills the body with heat.The cigar notes that go hand in hand with those subtile mandarin flavors are overwhelming…by the time one has reached its 3rd brew the roughness seems to be tamed and the whole story gets a more silky, female side. But still:
The cigar note, very masculine, clearly dominates the surprisingly shy mandarin
scent…but in a good way.
If it’s a fresh harvest it will last for 4-5 brews.
If it happens to be older then one year…2 brews max.
Damn strong tobacco that is. I recomment to stay away from it after 4.00pm.
Makes one go mental while trying to find some sleep…which most probably will not arrive sooner on your doorstep then midnight….

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 0 sec

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93

Sharp and bright, leaves this brilliantly effervescent feeling on the back of your tongue

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