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I have now tried all the teas from Jo's distributed tea tasting except the pu ehr. All these teas are from Camellia Sinensis.
Si ji chun:
This oolong was recommended as lilac-scented, but contains no actual lilac, which was appealing because I am very fond of lilacs, and @cattitude is allergic to them. Of the half dozen teas we ordered, this was the one I was most interested in trying.
The dried leaves do smell like lilac, as did the first pot of tea I brewed. Other than that, I think I made it too weak, and should use more leaves next time. Cattitude also liked this.
Having now made two more pots, with significantly more tea leaves for each, yes I like this. The advice on the package is for making one cup (8 oz.) of tea, and my little blue teapot holds twice that.
Dragon pearls:
The package says to brew this at 85 C, but I got distracted and let the kettle boil until it whistled, then waited a moment and poured from a little higher than usual. 90? I used eight pearls in one of our smaller mugs. The resulting tea was mild, sort of a background flavor without feeling as though there's something missing. When I described this to Jo, she was surprised, because she always uses more pearls than that, and she almost always likes tea weaker than I do. So, I will use more of the tea next time, but it will do just fine for when I want something hot and little if any caffeine.
Chai:
When I first tried this, my notes were "It's a light (mild?) tea, and the spicing is much lower-key than I expected from sniffing the dry tea. What I'm tasting is cardamom; I think there are other spices in here, but I'm happy to have cardamom as the dominant note." (That was with sugar and a little cool water, but not milk.)
Adding some extra tea leaves (my usual Assam) made a chai that's more to my taste, though milk overwhelmed the flavor.
A third mug worked better, in part because I shook the package of tea before spooning it out: all the tea leaves had landed at the bottom, as had some of the other spices.
This is less intense than the Stash chai I've been drinking, though more interesting. I probably won't reorder this, but might try one of their other spices. The advantage of the Stash is that it's sold in tea bags, so each mug has about the same tea:spice ratio as the next.
Maple tea:
Another flavored tea, which I got on a whim. Like the chai, it's milder than I expected; the maple is an undertone to the black tea flavor. I was surprised to find that it needed sugar (the tea blend contains enough maple sugar for flavor, rather than aiming for sweet).
Jin Die is a noir de chine and wasn't to my taste at all--vaguely grassy rather than tasting like tea.
Overall, this was fun, and I will probably get more of the si ji chun, though maybe not until I get to visit Montreal again.
Si ji chun:
This oolong was recommended as lilac-scented, but contains no actual lilac, which was appealing because I am very fond of lilacs, and @cattitude is allergic to them. Of the half dozen teas we ordered, this was the one I was most interested in trying.
The dried leaves do smell like lilac, as did the first pot of tea I brewed. Other than that, I think I made it too weak, and should use more leaves next time. Cattitude also liked this.
Having now made two more pots, with significantly more tea leaves for each, yes I like this. The advice on the package is for making one cup (8 oz.) of tea, and my little blue teapot holds twice that.
Dragon pearls:
The package says to brew this at 85 C, but I got distracted and let the kettle boil until it whistled, then waited a moment and poured from a little higher than usual. 90? I used eight pearls in one of our smaller mugs. The resulting tea was mild, sort of a background flavor without feeling as though there's something missing. When I described this to Jo, she was surprised, because she always uses more pearls than that, and she almost always likes tea weaker than I do. So, I will use more of the tea next time, but it will do just fine for when I want something hot and little if any caffeine.
Chai:
When I first tried this, my notes were "It's a light (mild?) tea, and the spicing is much lower-key than I expected from sniffing the dry tea. What I'm tasting is cardamom; I think there are other spices in here, but I'm happy to have cardamom as the dominant note." (That was with sugar and a little cool water, but not milk.)
Adding some extra tea leaves (my usual Assam) made a chai that's more to my taste, though milk overwhelmed the flavor.
A third mug worked better, in part because I shook the package of tea before spooning it out: all the tea leaves had landed at the bottom, as had some of the other spices.
This is less intense than the Stash chai I've been drinking, though more interesting. I probably won't reorder this, but might try one of their other spices. The advantage of the Stash is that it's sold in tea bags, so each mug has about the same tea:spice ratio as the next.
Maple tea:
Another flavored tea, which I got on a whim. Like the chai, it's milder than I expected; the maple is an undertone to the black tea flavor. I was surprised to find that it needed sugar (the tea blend contains enough maple sugar for flavor, rather than aiming for sweet).
Jin Die is a noir de chine and wasn't to my taste at all--vaguely grassy rather than tasting like tea.
Overall, this was fun, and I will probably get more of the si ji chun, though maybe not until I get to visit Montreal again.
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