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I thought this was pretty wonderful. Very smooth, and nothing really unpleasant about it at all. I prefer most black teas to be a bit more mild, so I steeped it for 3 minutes exactly and it was perfect, no milk/sugar was needed at all.

I’ve never tried white tea before, so I was looking for a cheap way to see what it was like. I found this at a local organic store; unfortunately, they did not have any loose-leaf white, but this was only a couple of bucks, so I figured what the heck.

I like it ok, it definitely has a mild, sweet taste to it. I’m sure it gets better than this, but I don’t really have anything to compare it with at this point.

Definitely worth the cheap price, and now I want to try out what the good stuff is like…

So after a pretty uncomfortable experience with my first cup, I read some brewing tips from some book I found in a Teavana store. It said to use 1 3/4 tsp. of tea for every 8 oz, and steep for one minute at 205 degrees. I approached this advise with caution, because it didn’t seem like MORE tea would solve the earlier problem of the tea punching me in the face with the burnt-rice nutty taste on my first sip. The temperature also seemed a bit high for green tea.

HOWEVER

I tried it, and steeping it this way made a drastic improvement. The rice-taste, while still present, is much more subtle and blends well with the bancha to create a pleasant, smooth cup.

Kudos to that book.

The dry leaves smell absolutely incredible, however, following the Teavana steeping suggestions leaves a pretty mild flavor, I prefer something stronger. Next cup, I think I’ll add a bit more than 1 tsp of tea and steep for 3:30 or longer.

On second cup:

I lowered the steep time to around 4:25-4:30, and added a tiny bit of milk. Now, this is basically perfect, new favorite black tea.

First sip, you’re pretty overwhelmed by the nutty taste, it took me halfway through the cup before I could detect much of the green flavor underneath. After that, I suppose it’s a smooth, relatively balanced tea that leaves a pleasant taste in your mouth. I just think the cooked rice/popcorn taste was pretty overpowering. Not my favorite, but not awful.

this is my first assam tea, so i’m not entirely sure what to compare it to. it definitely has a smooth, yet astringent and dry taste. makes for an excellent breakfast tea. i think 5 minutes might have been a bit too much, i’ll try 4-4.5 next time.