Big Apple

Tea. Sipdown. Apples and things.
I’ve got projects and things so please excuse this terrible tasting note haha

I am inundate with sample pouches in my work stash. I can’t decide what to drink. I’m resolved to just sip down everything. At random. I grabbed this pouch first. The dry smell worried me. It was strong and kinda garbage-y. Brewed, the taste is less worrisome. The apple taste is super artificial, and there’s a desserty flavor to it. More like apple muffin than straight up apple. I can detect the refreshing qualities of green tea. Mineraly. Not horrible but I’d pass on a second cup.

Dry Leaf Nose: Rich apple notes with tea notes in the background.

Liquor: Golden yellow and clear with a very rich and ripe apple aroma.

Flavour: Ripe golden apples, fruity and spicy mingled with fine green and white teas. Green tea brings the spiciness of ripe apples to the blend.

After four cups, I’ve decided there is no way possible for me to brew this and actually enjoy it. There are notes there I adore for the apple, but I can’t seem to get the brew right. Still on the search for a perfect apple tea I guess.

Hmm. This is an autumnal kind of apple tea, which I confess kind of suprised me. I was expecting some more sour appleness.
But even though this is more of golden delicious than granny smith, its still a bit bitter.
This was only a sample, so I cant make another cuppa to compare. Hmm. A thoughtful tea.

Well, it’s official. Steepster is eating notes.

I don’t rate teas without writing a note for them. It’s just not the way I do things. I opened up what appeared to be a brand new sample of Big Apple, thinking I’d like to try something new. Then I log into Steepster and see that I had already given it a rating. Weird. I don’t remember ever having this before…

But I searched through all the notes for my name knowing I must have written one. Yet after 7 pages of notes, my name is nowhere to be found. I double-checked all 7 pages to no avail. I also keep a Word doc on my computer of all my Steepster ratings. I searched that doc and sure enough, there was a rating for Big Apple. So I have definitely had this tea before. Which means I have definitely written a note about it before. Yet there’s no note on Steepster. Sigh.

This is horrible. I don’t back up my notes. My ratings, yes. My notes, no. This just sucks. What else is missing? I tried to take an inventory, but of the random selection of teas I searched, up came notes right away. So I guess I have no idea what’s going on. I suppose it is possible that I wrote a note and didn’t post it, but there’s no such note saved in my Word doc backlog where I keep such things. This is totally bizarre. But enough is enough. You didn’t come here to read my whining.

ON TO THE TEA!

These leaves are very old. Like maybe as much as 2 or 3 years old. Even though the unopened sample package was intact, I can tell these leaves have aged. Although the aroma of the dry leaf is still pretty amazing. It smells like pure juicy apples.

This is a white green blend and the flavor of the base is mostly an aged green. I can taste a bit of the juicy apples, but mostly it’s like trying to remember the way a tea tasted a day ago. You can kind of remember but it’s clouded and not distinct.

I suppose I’ll leave the rating unchanged since it’s my fault that I let this sit in my cupboard for so long. It’s definitely not bad. It’s just not “all that it can be.” A nice apple tea though. Apple doesn’t always come across well in teas but it does here, even despite the age. I can definitely enjoy what little is left of this (it was a small sample). If only I could uncover the mystery of the missing tea note…Ooh, that sounds like a Nancy Drew novel!

EDIT: Whoa, what the Hell? You know when you post a note and a clip of it appears at the top of the page after you hit submit? Well, up popped my old note! I clicked “Read Full Note” and it took me to the full note! Then I came back to the Big Apple tea page and searched through all the notes. Sure enough, I could find my old note but not the new one I just wrote & posted! AHHH!!! Steepster!!!! FIX THIS!!

I’m having a go at this one because I wanted to see what the new format was for tasting notes. It’s much longer, I must say and I don’t really enjoy the scrolling.

This tea smells just like green apple candy flavouring. Like whoa. I’m not a huge fan of that but it’s not turning me off either. I added a bit of sugar because flavoured greens and whites make me wary like that and I’ve never this before. It was from a trade a while ago and I don’t remember who sent it to me, Sorry! Also, don’t suggest a flavour if you don’t want to lose your tasting note. It opened up my mail window and I lost all that I had entered. Opening on a new tab would have been much preferred.

It tastes rather thin and is less strong than the smell would have it but I taste less apple candy and more actual apple. I’m not sure if I’m just suggestible from Roswell Strange’s note but I do pick up a hint of caramel as well. This is a pleasant enough tea and I am glad I got to try it.

This is the 2nd time I have tried my free sample from DT. The first time I was dumb and fallowed the instructions on the pack…… never again.

Ok the dry leaf of this smells EXACTLY like Jelly Belly beans green apple with a hint of carmal. The wet brew smells similar as well. I have to say though, I am not digging this tea. The little bit of the tea base that pops through is ok, but I get this astringency from it; though I didn’t brew it in a glass tea pot and stuff. The flavor unsweeten is ok. It has a weird sour note, and just taste fakey though due to the artificial flavoring. Usually I am not too sensitive to artificial stuff but it seems in my tea I notice it more; seems black tea’s pull them off better. The flavor just isn’t working. When I added a spot of sweetener it helped pull the flavor together better, but it was still meh.

I kinda wonder why they used artificial flavoring for apple. I mean white and green teas can already taste crisp and sweet. If they just kept the dehydrated apple pieces and used natural flavoring it would taste more like a real apple.

Overall I don’t like this tea. It just taste fakey and ick. I am not rating due to the lack of water temp measuring and playing around with it, but if I was going to rate it I would give it a 50 or lower

The last of the samples which came with my order, this was an interesting thing to try but it’s not going to end up in my cupboard. To me, it tastes like very light apple juice with a bitter green chaser. It’s still a huge improvement on the Salted Caramel, but I think the Pineapple Oolong was more enjoyable.

Big Apple is yet another sample from my order with David’s Tea. It’s definitely not something I would order on my own but I like it. In fact, I think I love it. Like a lot. And I hate apple so this, as a whole, is quite strange.

Big Apple tastes like the all the things I love about applesauce without all the things I hate like the texture and mushiness. The apple was nice. Not at all overpowering or jolly rancher-ish. There was a very nice spice flavor—perhaps nutmeg. I don’t know where it came from—maybe the green tea—-but it was appreciated because apple without nutmeg is a boring apple. I also got a strong buttery almost brown butter or caramel taste. I am not sure where that came from so I may be imagining it or maybe it’s from the white tea.