Oolong- Tien Hu Shan, in the big red tin

I had gone to an asian market a little over an hour away from my house week before last, and this was the tea I picked up.

Here is my brewing container, a 3 oz gaiwan. I will be using 5 grams of the tea, brewing it gong fu style.

This is the end of the first brew, at 45 seconds.

the resulting tea is robust without being overpowering or bitter. It tastes slightly of fruit and nuts, while still having floral overtones. All in all, a good morning pick me up- 

Flavor- 9/10 points

Price- $7.99 for 14 oz.

My new tea corner

This is my new tea corner! With views from inside, and a bonus Jack the Orange Tabby.

REVIEW- YEZI tea Jasmine tea pearls Mo Li Hua

I got some "free" samples in from yezi tea (i did have to pay shipping). one of them was these jasmine pearls.

There is just enough in the little pouch for one brew session, lets see how it goes.

Nice, tightly rolled pearls of tea, they have a very mild floral fragrance as well.

Into the pot they go!!

 A couple views of the leaves post first brew (just under a minute)

the light brew.

It was a little too mild and sweet for me, but I enjoy very astringent green teas. with the second brew I will up the brew time by two minutes.

the second brew was better, but still very sweet.

not bad, if you are into very sweet, buttery green teas. (not that I didn't like it, i just didn't love it.)

http://www.yezitea.com/pages/free-tea-samples-promotion

After some less than enjoyable weather, along with some winter blues and blahs, it's time to share in some new tea!

 This is a Puer mini tuocha. I recently got 105 of them (in 21 "flavors") from a vendor on Aliexpress.com (link at end of post). That is a standard sweetener packet for scale.

 there is one in my hand with the massive bowl of fun behind it.

 Sweetener packet for scale to the bowl.

 here it is unwrapped, see the little indent? that's from the machine that they use to compress the tea.

 here it is flipped to show the top.

 and a couple of close up views

 the wrapper ( I can't read chinese, so if anyone can, tell me what flavor this one's supposed to be, yes?)

 A couple of close ups of the wrapper- NOW it's time to BR-BR-BR-BR-BR-BR-BREW (hah. I've been waiting to make that yugioh refrence for years.)

 Rooster mug with old davids tea infuser from the mug that broke, mini tuocha, jug to dump rinses in, and a very messy desk, Check check check check and Check

 tea in infuser

 another angle

 boiling water for first  10 second rinse

 after first rinse

 dumping first rinse

 second rinse

 it's already fallen apart, hope that's not a bad sign.

 first brew

completely disentegrated mini tuo (after only one 1 minute brew)



I have to say, i have tried a couple of other ones from this bag before this, and none of them were this fishy.


i did two brews after this one and the smell and taste would just not go away. So the yellow ones are a bust.

The orange ones were good, and the pale green ones were good, the brown (coffee flavored, i found a coffee bean piece in it) was only ok, but none of them had been bad so far. maybe that one was a fluke tuocha.
NOTE: i am not expecting high quality puer here, i am expecting mediocre at best, but the other flavors had given me some hope that these were better-than-average for mini tuochas.
The product reviewed today, purchased with own money.

Chocolate strawberry yogurt scones

Ingredients- 

 1 1/2 cups ap flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 cup butter

1 cup diced strawberries

1/2 cup yogurt ( I used strawberry banana.)

1/4 cup to 1/2 cup milk

Optional- pink sugar for tops

preheat oven to 425 F

mix dry ingredients, then cut in the butter.

once it's crumbly looking mix in the strawberries and yogurt.

 add milk, until it reaches drop biscuit consistency.

spoon heaping tablespoons onto well-greased cookie sheet, top with sugar and bake for 8-10 minutes, or until firm to the touch.

CHECK THESE OFTEN!!!! they burn FAST if unattended!

Sunflower brand jasmine tea on a rainy day

It's raining, with pea sized hail here and there. I need something that tastes like spring. Floral, perfume-y even, preferably in a sunflower yellow canister.

This tea is so basic it should be in EVERYONE's cupboard.

a half pound (8 oz) cost me less than $ 5.

It's not a fancy dragon pearl jasmine, but it is a very floral, basic tea.

The tea from this brand is a honey gold brew, and it smells like perfume.

If you like floral teas, this breaks the meter.

You can get this tea at most Asian markets, or from amazon.com

Best brewed ~170 F with a 2-3 minute steep, lest it become astringent.

tea exchange and Fruta bomba

I just got my shipment in from my tea exchange partner, and am about to brew, for the first time, one of the teas sent to me.

teavana's fruta bomba.

normally I am not a fan of teavana, because of their business practices, but hey, I'll give it a shot.

Fruity. Not just a little apple flavor like with some spice teas, but lots of in your face fruitiness. 

Not unpleasant unsweetened, but with Splenda, the papaya flavor really shines.

You can't even tell that it's a green tea, which disappoints me, slightly. 

I give this tea a 5/10, because it has lost the flavor of its original tea base, and all that's left is the papaya. 

I steeped 5 grams at 175 F for 2 minutes. 

It's a Super Ginger Saturday, for some hard work today,

I am helping  a friend of my mother-in-law get a former student set up in her new apartment after a barrage of bad situations, so I need a caffeine-free tea that has a nice wake-up flavor, and to me, that means GINGER!

I have some Super Ginger from DAVIDsTEA that was purchased for me by my mother. It is a blend with green roobios, ginger, and peppercorns, so it's spicy, and very bright.

I'm making it in my nalgene, for this is another go go go day.

this post would be longer, but I need to get moving.

Rose dark tea revew, Plus the nalgene H2JO combo.

This morning I fixed myself a nalgene full of rose dark tea from new mexico tea company, I had recently "re-found" this tea while searching for something in the back of my tea shelf, and had discovered this, which had fallen behind the shelf.

Rose dark tea is a compressed shu (or 'cooked') pu erh (puer, pu er) tea, with the inclusion of rose petals.

It is pretty much impervious to over-steeping, or high temperatures, which makes it perfect for brewing it in my nalgene. ( I have a busy day ahead.)

As you may be able to see, the tea has been compressed into a really cute heart shape.

This is the tea brewed to my liking. plus a bonus chihuahua (meet Bonnie, I'm her "therapy human")

 I brewed it in this setup (a nalgene and H2JO), and yes, that IS a fuzzy sock I am using as a tea cozy.

This is the H2JO, a filter for tea/coffee made for the nalgene. It is a very fine steel mesh with an EXTREMELY rugged plastic connector.


The tea is, how I brew it, a dark, rich, velvety brew, with a HINT of roses.

I have noticed that with a shorter brew time with a higher leaf to water ratio, the rose flavor is MUCH more pronounced.

I typically just add more boiling water throughout the day as it gets stronger, but I don't ever notice it getting bitter. if it gets too weak, i just add another tea heart in.

bonus: if you use the nalgene with the H2JO, you don't really need a cup, you can drink it straight out of the container.

As I think back

As I think back, over my first pot of tea for the day, I wondered, "What got me so into tea into the first place?"

Starting off, looking at the first time I saw something other than liptons, I must have been about 7 or 8.

I saw a pretty orange box of something called "Bengal Spice" from Celestial Seasonings, and I asked my mother if we could buy some, because I thought it sounded fun and exciting.

it was a whole new world, and at first, I hated it. That "Bengal Spice" was sour, and far too spicy for my young self.

Fast forward to the first few years of high school, and I'm guzzling so much coffee that it's giving me palpitations. Everyone is looking for a solution, any solution, to get me to not drink so much caffeine.

I wouldn't drink decaf.

But what would I drink?

Enter whole foods, and a brand called Republic of Tea.

In particular, Blackberry Sage.

Now, that, I liked.

Not just a little, but a LOT.

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A few months later, I end up in San Francisco, visiting my father and my step-mom for christmas.

We wandered around china town, as I wonder aloud about how to get the same flavor of tea we had at the Empress of China restaurant, when lo and behold, here enters Red Blossom Tea Company.

They were wonderfully helpful, explaining grades of jasmine green tea, and how they were processed, letting me smell everything.

I walk out with 8 oz of sparrows beak jasmine, enough, I hoped, to last me until the next time I could visit, in July.

I drank it every day. my mom had gotten a teavana perfect tea maker and some loose tea for christmas from one of my aunts.

I became obsessed with tea, brewing it for friends, brewing it for school, as a demonstration for a speech.

Then came college, and back to coffee, for a while.

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But coffee bored me.

it all tasted the same, to me.

 I hated the jitters and shaking hands.

so I moved from my dorm so I could have a kettle. (no heating elements allowed in the dorm room, I was even getting my coffee from a local coffee shop off campus.)

That's when I found adagio. $2 sample sizes, hard to pass up for a poor college kid hooked on tea.

Everyone started to help support my habit.

birthdays, tea.

wedding, electric kettle,

thrift store teapots on tuesdays.

christmas, tea again.

and so on, until I realized.

I'm obsessed.

and I wouldn't have it any other way.

What I am drinking today- Rose Dark Tea from New Mexico Tea Company from a rooster tea pot, into a rooster mug.