Zhi Tea

Advent from Dustin Day 16
I’ve had some terrible chais over the last few days, so this was a nice surprise! Tastes like cinnamon sugar with a drizzle of chocolate. So cozy.

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I was excited for this one, as I really like apple cinnamon flavored things. I have a couple of apple cinnamon tisanes already, but I’ll never turn down trying a new one!

Anyway, this isn’t very apple-y. Which isn’t surprising because I didn’t see many apple pieces in the pouch. The spices are right for an apple cider feel – heavy on the cinnamon and clove and very warm overall. But it’s mostly just a spiced honeybush, with almost no apple at all.

A shame, but still fairly tasty and I’m glad to have tried it!

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Courtesy of VariaTEA!

I think I made this with a little too much water, but it’s still quite tasty. The honeybush taste is very pastry-like, so to me this is closer to an apple crumble than apple cider. The spicing is fairly light, mostly cinnamon with a bit of clove over a base of sweet apple and a touch of creamy vanilla.

So in my opinion, it’s a bit like apple crumble with a side of ice cream! Much tastier than I expected. :)

SIpdown from VariaTEA. This is nice. I don’t often have white teas in my cupboard but i’m not opposed to them. I quite like the refreshing blueberry in this one, even if it is a lighter tea. :) Nice to try and sample, but while i enjoyed it – i still prefer a blueberry black :)

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So blueberry white tea is one of those teas that immediately makes me think someone is reselling catalog blends. It’s not quite as telling as some kind of “Japanese” cherry sencha, but it still gives me that impression. Zhi claims to blend their teas in-house, yet they have both of these types of tea. So that raises a little red flag for me. Probably undeserved, but there it is.

But anyway, this tea is okay. Decent, even. The blueberry part is really more like blue raspberry to me, and it has that candylike artificiality to it. I don’t mind candy-esque flavors in tea really, but I do find it slightly odd against the more mellow, haylike, and slightly herbaceous bai mudan base. I just feel like the combination of the more natural, earthy tea with the almost cotton candy-like flavor is a bit cacophonous.

So not one I would order for that reason, though I’m always on the lookout for good blueberry teas…

Tea Swap Sample Sipdown Catch-Up! 1 of 4 (9)

This sample is from my swap with VariaTEA!

Zhi Tea is actually native to Austin. I haven’t been to their location yet, but I definitely plan to go!

This one’s just okay. The bai mudan base is smooth with soft hay and oat notes. There’s a bit of dry autumn leaf flavor as well. According to the description, the blueberry here is from botanical blueberry extract. But somehow, to me, it still tastes somewhat candylike or artificial.

It’s not bad, but not great either. I do like the idea of white tea and blueberry together though, as blueberry oatmeal is one of my favorite flavors.

Second time tasting this tea now, in my tea class. I’m starting to think this particular tea might be a bit of an acquired taste. I like it a lot better this time around than I did last time. I didn’t feel the same cooling sensation but the bitter aftertaste is significantly less noticeable. Not entirely sure how my classmate prepared it, but I imagine she must have done something different than the last time I tried it since it tasted so much better. Still has the same mildly chocolately smell that I love!

Not a fan of this tea so far, but I’ve heard a decent amount of hype about oriental beauty so I’m gonna give it another shot later one. It tastes pretty watery at first and it has a bit of a sharp-ish aftertaste. It’s also fairly bitter, but it felt like it had a mild cooling sensation to it that I did like. It also smells a little like chocolate, which I love!

I added this to a tea smoothie made with raspberries. Though it seemed at times I could sort of taste blueberry, most flavor was drowned out by the tart raspberries. So I will have to try this another time on it’s own.

I think the apple cider i’ve been drinking isn’t the apple cider you guys have been drinking haha. This one was apple-like…but i wouldn’t go so far as to call it cider. Mostly it was just weird. Maybe i’m the weirdo but this one wasn’t for me. Appreciate the share always VariaTEA!

First major snowfall in Toronto means first 3 hr drive home. So that sucked. However I came home to my customized SipsBy box complete with this tea which actually tastes like a hybrid between a chai and apple cider. It is quite nice. I also set up some cocoa chili pumpkin tea (another one of the teas in the SipsBy box) in chocolate milk to cold brew. Given there’s actual chilis in it, fingers crossed that doesn’t curdle. Now back to sipping on this…

The BEST!

Good, not great, TGY. Awesome for iced tho, and for a kinda big gong fu session.

iced: 8g tea, 240g water @195F for 4 min, pour over 200+ g ice

gong fu-ish: 8g tea, 150g water @195F. 1st steep for 1.5 min, then 30 sec for steep 2-4, then add 30 sec per steep

Had a hard time dialing this one in, but I think I got there.
only time for one steep: 7g tea, 16oz water @boil for 3min
multi steeps: 7g tea, 30 sec rinse with 195F water, 200 ml water for 1.5 min, add 30 sec per steep afterwards

Darker/more heavily oxidized oolong, nice sweet rounded notes of dried fruit competing with some damp woody and slight leather tannic notes

touch of bitterness in the grassy notes, finishes delightfully stone fruit-y

Two veeery different approaches to this one:
Western (6 g to 16oz water @205F for 3’) will give you very floral notes with touches of peach and nectarine on the back end.
Gong fu (6 g to 3.5 oz water @195F for 1.5 min, then 30 sec steeps afterwards) will give very vegetal front that flows into a very bread-y, cinnamon toast crunch-ish sort of finish.

This milk oolong is pleasant because the milk flavor isn’t too overwhelming. Just enough to be there. Not too much.

GCTTB

Well, this is a pretty nice assam. Smooth and malty. Is there coconut? Not really. It is a little creamy and slightly sweet so perhaps that is where the coconut comes in but I find myself searching for the coconut flavor. If this were simply an assam tea it would be a nice option but I find myself wanting more from a tea that has coconut in its name. Thank you Mookit for adding it to the box. It was a fun tea to try :)

GCTTB Round 6

Cold Brew!

Originally when I was looking through things in the box to try I skipped past this one, but then putting things back in the box I gave it a second glance and I’m really glad I did because this cold brew was absolutely phenomenal!

The coconut notes were just so rich and had the perfect level of sweetness and freshness! It really, really strongly reminded me of coconut macaroons. Like, instantly I was able to place that sweet confectionery treat and it was so satisfying! Buttery, creamy, and with vanilla undertones. I wanted to dunk it into milk; but of course I was drinking a tea and not eating cookies, so that wasn’t totally feasible.

Excellent though! Truly excellent.

Another Zhi tea sample I got for Xmas! I’m always impressed with a tea that I can enjoy without any additives. A lot of the time with blacks they have to bitter of a bite, especially malty breakfast teas that I have been loving on so much lately, so I adjust them with cream and sweetener. This tea however is super smooth and creamy on it’s own. The assam and coconut merge so well together that it is hard to tell the two apart. Most coconut teas that I have encountered are green unless it is a mix of many flavors that uses coconut to add something, not be the focal point of the tea. I am enjoying this enough to debate if it should be a staple in my collection, but coconut has tendency to go bad faster than I can finish a bag, so maybe sample sizes are a better route for this. Hmmmm….. tea things to ponder.

I’ve had this sample for a while now and it still hasn’t grown on me. What are the tv watching people saying these days? “Does it spark joy?” The answer for this tea is it does not. It has a decent base and isn’t bitter, there is some smooth rose flavor in there, but it just doesn’t excite me.