Random Steepings

Sipdown! 831.

Sil gave me the remnants of two of her matcha latte mix samples from Red Leaf (way back), and I finally got to trying one sometime a week or two ago. I made it with milk, because I’m silly like that (I assume it didn’t need milk? Or maybe I’m wrong), but anyways, it was pretty delicious. No need to add sweetener, because it’s already in there, and the powder dissolved beautifully. Since I wasn’t doing the actual taste test for Red Leaf, I didn’t feel the need to compare the two samples, so I wouldn’t be able to comment on differences, but I did find it enjoyable and easy to use, and honestly? If I didn’t have so much tea, I’d be tempted to pick up some of the pre-made mixes just because it was so easy to use. I didn’t sift my matcha, didn’t heat any water/milk (I used cold milk), and it was ready to go, and delicious, in a couple minutes. Yum. Thanks Sil!

Since I probably won’t drink it again I figure I will rate this here. There is a Taiwanese bakery not too far from where my parents live, and they always have coupons in the newspaper for a free Assam milk tea with the purchase of 5 buns. So I got a cold one and bought 5 buns, 4 for us to have later and one for me to have with my tea.

The one thing I did not know though was that the tea was going to be southern sweet. I wasn’t even asked anything about sweetener and holy cow if I could have I would have toned it down A LOT. The first taste was clearly hearty Assam but then it was like being slapped with sugar. I thought maybe it was going to be in a Hong Kong milk tea style but the sweetness didn’t taste to me like it was coming from sweetened condensed milk. It also didn’t seem as creamy but who knows I could be wrong, it just felt like that sugar syrupy kind of sweetness.

Totally have to give them props for actually saying it’s Assam rather than just calling it black tea.

The one good thing though is if you’re familiar with Taiwanese buns, they’re always so buttery and not heavy on sweet flavors, so having such a sweet drink brought out more of the flavor of the bun, which was a “milk cream” type. It made a mess.

I just got back from Taiwan and drank both all the and still not enough tea while I was there! So I have a lot of backlogged tasting notes to enter, most of which don’t have existing entries in Steepster. I probably won’t bother adding new entries if I don’t have a lot of details to work with, the source was random/unknown, etc. I was also super excited to write tasting notes about all the teas I brought back, but I came back with covid so that’s off the table for a while. I just slept through two whole days and all I’m drinking is ginger tea, in part because that’s one of the few things that can counteract the metallic taste of paxlovid for me. Among the more severe reasons covid scares the hell out of me, I worry about losing my sense of smell/taste and not being able to enjoy this hobby. So here’s hoping that doesn’t happen!

The first bottled tea I grabbed in Taiwan was a rose berry herbal tea from Uni-President at the 7/11 (I ended up grabbing something caffeinated too but forgot to note its name). This tea and a Ruby 18 I got later both turned out to have sugar in them. Misremembering Taiwanese bottled teas as less sugary than in the US, I had foolishly not bothered to engage the services of Google translate to confirm what I was actually buying! Womp womp. So this was just a whole bunch of different kinds of sugars mixed into grape juice and masquerading as an herbal tea, and I don’t have much else to say about it except as a cautionary tale to always check the ingredients and nutritional information!

I have missed Steepster so so much. I’ve been drinking tea but writing reviews has been a trial. I’m encountering a great deal of writer’s block—in reviewing books and tea, researching, even writing the odd email. But I think I am back. I think.

Awabancha was a weird experience. And in not a bad way at all. Weird as in it took me a couple of sips to understand. At first the faint taste of pickle-slight vinegarish saltiness— was kicking me right in the face. Definitely strange when you’re drinking tea. But I kept sipping and it kept growing on me. Sure, there is a slight pickle-ish bite but there is also a slight nuttiness on the finish. It’s definitely different and unique—it’s a step up in weird from pu’er. Perhaps not something I’ll reach for a lot but I will have the odd craving for this one. I can tell.

Thank you to Stacy for sending me this (and other) lovely teas.

P.S. Why isn’t this showing up on my Dashboard?

I have a tiny jar of tea on my desk at work, and the label on it has somehow fallen off, leaving me with a case of “unidentified tea”. I’m pretty sure that it’s a roasted oolong, likely something from Whittards, and probably even Formosa Oolong from them, but I’m not 100% sure, so into Random Steepings it goes. It is clearly a roasted oolong in taste – much more delicate than a black, and it has the same fruity taste that Whittards’s Formosa has. In any case a nice afternoon sip.

This isn’t random actually, it’s Eco Cha’s Tsui Yu Jade Oolong. But for some reason a couple companies’ entries—Eco Cha, Vintage Tea Works—just won’t let me add to cupboard or write tasting notes; any time I try it just redirects me to my dashboard.

And it’s a shame here, because this tea is wonderful. I have this weird kitchen set-up where when the dishwasher’s on I can’t use my electric kettle (shorts the electricity) nor use the kitchen sink as a water source (our dishwasher hooks up to the faucet…I knew that’d be a huge pain and begged my husband to bother connecting it directly to the water tank but he wouldn’t, so here we are :b). This gets really annoying this time of year when by the time I have a guaranteed free moment for some real tea time right after dinner it’s hard because the dishwasher needs to be on doing the day’s load. I think I’ve figured out a decent solution for now though—I prewarm my king thermos and then fill it with the right temp water from my electric kettle, seal it nice and tight, get out the gaiwan and a tea meant for resteeping (so oolong or green usually), and then turn on the washer. As it does its thing I have a little private gongfu session. Very nice!

Anyway, got this as part of Eco Cha’s recent promotion. The site directions for gongfu brewing are kind of confusingly unusual, so I didn’t follow them exactly but did what I’m used to doing (quick rinse, more leaf and less water, short steeping times, a bit cooler than boiling). Figured if it wasn’t optimal and I should follow their directions I have enough left to do so. But I was pleased with my setup—the first few cups yielded a marvelous true-fresh-flower fragrance, a little like jasmine but also like honeysuckle or summer flowers. Remarkable stuff, not unlike some of Verdant’s best spring offerings (Hand-Picked Early Spring Tieguanyin, White Jasmine). The flavor is sweet and clean and slightly herbal, smelling a bit like clean hay as the flower scent tapers off. Eco Cha mentions this is great cold steeped, and I can definitely see that—it has a lot of the qualities the tastiest cold steeped green teas I had this summer (like Bilochun Green) have. It edges towards grassy as it cools, but the sweetness and true-flower aroma make that pleasant. In the middle of winter this is a fantastic way to transport yourself to a warm sunny field out in the country on a late spring or early summer day. This is a spectacular tea that merits the hype of the company’s copy. The price is quite reasonable considering the quality too—under $4 an ounce or (if I’m calculating right) about $1 a session.

A colleague shared some Pu-erh tea picked from a 200 year old tree.
What an experience! A light tea with a sweet, maple syrup note throughout all infusions, and intermittent notes of clay, malt, spun sugar, linen and oak. 
Unfortunately I had a few interruptions that threw off my timings a bit, so I had to fudge the follow up infusions a bit.
Also, I really need a way to maintain water temperature! My teapot cools down fast and I haven’t got a thermos big enough to hold that much liquid. For some reason my kettle keeps the heat, but it stays above where I need it to be, and then when I pour it into another vessel, its below where I need it because of the air exposure… tea snob problems
Not that it bothers me TOO much. Still, I wouldn’t mind doing it as per instructions the first (and in this case, only!) time.
Ah well. I really enjoyed it, and methinks I had a tea-buzz going on as well. Sweeeeet

I crawled out of my anti-social hidey-hole today and got together with a friend, which ended up with us sitting in Starbucks and chatting for the better part of five hours.

Of course, now I’ve had more caffeine today than anyone rightfully should.

But at least the trend started with a pretty lovely pot of Da Hong Pao from a local Asian restaurant. It had the right mix of woody, loamy and a bit of apricot-like sweetness to make polishing it off a pleasure.

Working on finishing samples today! Thank you to whoever sent me this one! It’s called Apple Bliss but I can’t seem to find it. The asroma is very warm with apple cinnamon. The flavor reminds me of dried red delicious apples dusted with cinnamon. Quite enjoyable and one of the better apple teas I’ve tried.

I haven’t yet restocked Thin Mint from the Tea Spot, so I made my own. I had a little bit of Hojicha left from Dens Tea and a bag of Peppermint from Arbor teas. It came out pretty good. The peppermint is a bit brighter than in the Thin Mint blend since I obviously don’t know the exact proportions, but it doesn’t matter. Mint+Hojicha = yum no matter what.