592 Tasting Notes
I cold brewed a tablespoon of this tea in my water bottle. I meant to leave it in for 2-3 hours, but I accidentally took a nap and woke up six hours later… Oops? As a result, the tea was very bitter. I was drinking it alongside food, so I could take it, but I don’t think I could have had it on its own with that level of bitterness. Bitterness aside, I still wasn’t a fan of the cold brew. It was metallic and vegetal and basically just not my cup of tea. I can’t remember how this one tasted hot, so I will probably look up my older tasting notes if Steepster cooperates with me to decide how to use up the last of this tea.
Backlog. After being reminded of how lovely this tea is in a cold brew, I decided to steep it up hot for comparison. It’s still very nutty, but that nutty flavor kind of blends in with some floral, roasty, and other sweet flavors that I couldn’t quite identify at that moment. Even though the hot and cold brewed versions have such different emphasis on different flavors, I can’t really decide which I like better. Both were delicious, and now I’m trying to figure out the best way to steep up the rest that I have left.
Sipdown! Though, I never added this to my Steepster cupboard, so it’s a real life cupboard sipdown only. I had a sample teabag of this tea that I’ve been meaning to get around to but keep forgetting about. I recently reorganized all of my teas, so I’m steadily making progress from my new sipdown box. Anyway, I really love Momo Oolong from Lupicia, so I thought I’d see how this one fares in comparison. I think that the oolong version has more of a candy peach taste while this one has more of a floral, perfume-y peach flavor. That being said, I’m not really a huge fan of perfume-y teas, so that did put me off a little. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was just enough that I prefer the oolong version. I’m a little saddened by this because I’ve been in a black tea phase lately, and this would have been nice to add to the mix. No worries, though, because I now live near a Lupicia and I will get around to exploring more of their teas!
Backlog. So we drove my little brother down to college, which was a sad road trip. I had the honor of driving the awful grapevine/LA traffic leg of the trip, so of course I had to prepare a cold brew to take with me. I cold brewed a tablespoon of this tea in my water bottle for about 5 hours. I think by cold brewing, it really brought out the nutty flavor of the tea. It was surprising and delicious! It’s been a while since I’ve had this hot, but if the cold brew always turns out this nutty, I think I prefer to cold brew it. I’ll definitely be experimenting with this one again soon.
Thank you to Kat_Maria for sending this tea my way in our swap! I’ve been hesitant to try this one out because the one time I had puerh before, I did not like it. At all. But I figured that this is a flavored puerh, so I might as well give it a chance. While it was steeping, I could immediately smell those spices. It reminds me of an autumn candle scent (I’ve been sniffing a lot of candles lately), which was nice. It’s warm and cozy without that damp forest smell that I had from straight puerh. I think that the tea tastes like I would expect one of those fall candles to taste. A bit of cinnamon, ginger, and probably other things I can’t identify with the earthy undertones that I know are coming from the puerh. It’s nicer than I expected, but still a little perfume-y for my personal taste. I’m glad that I finally tried this one out, and I think I’ll let it rest for a bit and reach for it again in the winter (fall in California doesn’t get quite cold enough to put me in the mood for these types of teas).
Cold brewing Chinese greens is tricky, and this proved to be no exception. I put about 2 teaspoons in my water bottle into the fridge for 5 hours, and it turned out really bitter. Even putting the bitterness aside, I don’t think I really liked the underlying sharp grassy green tea flavor. I may experiment with cold brewing for a shorter amount of time (3 hrs?), but it definitely seems like this one is not a repurchase for me :(
Sipdown! I just realized I never actually added this tea to my Steepster cupboard, so I’m still at 99 teas. Now I’m kind of wondering how many other teas I have that I didn’t add to my cupboard… Anyway, like I said in yesterday’s tasting note, I used up my last two teaspoons of this in a cold brew in the fridge overnight. I think I may actually prefer this one as a cold brew because it just felt a lot smoother. I think the absence of bitterness and astringency really helped with that. It wasn’t much sweeter than the hot version, but that’s okay because sometimes I like just a nice bold iced black tea that doesn’t have too much sweetness to it. Another successful cold brew experiment!
I cold brewed this one again because I love the sweetness that the cold brew brings out. I’m not sure if it’s more of a honey kind of sweetness or something else, but whatever it is, I like it. Not to mention that it plays nicely with the cocoa notes in the tea. Now that the weather is cooling down a bit, I will definitely have to try this out hot!
Backlog from this morning. Good news is that I’m getting my family hooked on tea, so if their initial openness and curiosity holds up, I should get to my Black Friday sipdown goal of under 75 fairly easily. Today, I introduced them to this EB. It’s nice and bold with a little bit of a tartness to it that is hard to place. My mom thought it tasted like chemicals, but I wasn’t getting that as much. Despite that complaint, she did ask for a resteep, so I obliged! The tea held up pretty well in a resteep in terms of flavor and strength. There was some astringency that made it a bit unpleasant, but no one else seemed to mention it, so maybe I was just a little extra sensitive today. Anyhow, I stuck my last bit of this tea in the fridge for an overnight cold brew, so I’ll post the sipdown tasting note tomorrow!
I recently had an exceptionally terrible genmaicha at a Japanese restaurant. Usually the Japanese places around here have pretty decent genmaicha, but this one was somehow greasy and bitter, yuck. Which brings me around to this delicious sencha. I needed a solid Japanese green to lift my spirits after that experience, and this tea definitely helped me do that. It had that nice thickness with the vegetal and umami flavors. I also got a nice resteep out of the leaves. Though, the second steep was a bit metallic to me, but that may be because of the infuser? Anyway, a solid tea and one I will definitely consider repurchasing in the future when I run out.
