teasandcheeses

Kotobuki, or, sometimes I learn things by mistake; Purple Haze

I had (most of) a nice mug of Kotobuki this afternoon while Skyping with my dad. We just recently started practicing using Skype for our weekly chats, rather than just the phone, because he will be leaving the country in just under two weeks, and will be away for a month.

Lupicia says of Kotobuki:

Taiwanese oolong tea scented with French mirabelle plums. Sweet and fruity taste.

It was a pleasant and not too sweet tea, and though in the catalog pic it appears to have three different sorts of flower petals (rose, marigold, and something purple?), it does not come across as overly perfumed.  Lately plums have come into season and I’ve gotten some in my produce box, and added them to my super duper juice in the mornings; this cup had the same sort of fresh plum flavor over a pleasant Oolong.  It’s actually sort of the Oolong rendition of the Yume.

The mistake? I thought I had drunk it all up, and usually I’m not very fond of cold Oolong.  But the last sip was waiting for me over an hour after I had gotten off the phone, while I was responding to emails and letting my haircolor set inside its plastic cap, and i gulped it down. 

Wow! Sweet and refreshing! I was nto expecting such a crisp flavor.  …So I might end up buying some Kotobuki to try as an iced tea, maybe even to cold steep like I did with the Grapefruit Green.

I ate my little wheel of Purple Haze in a sort of goofy fashion, because I wanted to eat cheese, crackers, and Tofurky slices, but I didn’t have the sort of crackers one generally uses for such things.  You know, flat crackers?

So Cypress Grove says this about Purple Haze Chevre:

The unexpected marriage of lavender and wild fennel pollen distinguish Purple Hazeand make it utterly addictive.

They’re not wrong. Now, most foods and drinks with lavender in them are intriguing enough for me to try once (provided it’s not something I just don’t eat; lavender bacon is for someone else…or for nobody, perhaps), but I usually get squicked by the sort of autocannibalistic aspect of it. It’s not just other people who associate the strong smell of lavender with me; I do it, too.  So it was a very happy thing to discover that, while the flavorings that the nice people at Cypress Grove roll their little wheel of goat cheese through are certainly detectable, they are by no means dominant over the tasty, tangy, creamy, crumbly goatiness of the cheese; and in fact, I would say that the fennel pollen is a stronger flavor than the lavender. In any case, it’s good stuff.

And it’s even good when you smear a bunch of Purple Haze down the middle of a slice of Hickory Smoked flavored Tofurky, then stick a series of Annie’s Snack Mix bunny crackers (or bunny or carrot pretzels) onto the chevre, then roll over the sides to make a weird little wrap-thing. It’s danged tasty. If a bit weird.

(almost out of) Grapefruit Green

No. That is not a plasticized-foil-baggie of weed. According to Lupicia:

Green tea flavored with fresh grapefruits makes a refreshing taste.

According to me, the grapefruit is dried, but yes, very refreshing.  So very refreshing. If you are the sort of person who likes the very faint bitterness of lightly-brewed green tea, and the crisp mild bitterness of the scent of a grapefruit being peeled, this might be your cuppa. When the tea is sipped warm, the grapefruit flavor kind of tingles. And of course, not sweet.

The tea is a somewhat grassy variety, as you can see above. It ends up looking rather like seaweed when hydrated, I think, but delicious nonetheless.  I end up with a good bit of dregs in the bottom of the cup with this variety (especially when I’m getting low, as I am on this bag).

I take tea (sometimes bagged tea, for convenience) with me when I travel, and I took some bags of this and a few other varieties with me last Spring when I went to Arizona for the wedding of some friends. I put a bag of the Grapefruit Green in a plastic tumbler, filled it with cool water, and set it in the hotel room’s mini-fridge to cold steep overnight. On a blistering Arizona day, that cold-steeped, slightly bitter tea was the most refreshing thing imaginable.

Oh yeah, and I did not hit up the tea shop after all. I met up with a friend and had a glass of shopping mall food court white wine, instead. Not that I need more teas. I just need more of this tea. Soon. Ish.

Apple plus Caramele

Sometimes, I am not content with two or three flavors in my tea.  

Lupicia says this about Apple:

Black tea scented with both green and red apples. A hint of sweetness is like gentle breeze.

…And this about Caramele:

Sweet nostalgic aroma of caramel and almonds. Delicious straight or with milk.

And of course I thought to make a caramel apple tea. (No milk, though; I have had each of these teas alone, and the apple is just slightly astringent in a way I would not assume would taste good as a milky tea.)

(Those are marigold petals, by the way. There are tiny bits of dried apple in the Apple, and bitsy toasted almonds in the Caramele.)

Okay, how does it taste? Interesting. Good. (These are not helpful descriptions.)

The flavors actually balance one another out in a way I quite like: I sometimes do not pick the Apple tea because it’s a little bit sour, and the the Caramele sometimes gets skipped over because it’s too sweet.  The actual tea flavor is a nice sort of neutral black tea background, and the  added flavorings and bits combine well on top. The scent is more of caramel, while the aftertaste is more apple-y. I steeped the first cup about three minutes…I think. I was not paying attention as closely as I sometimes do.

It looks like I might find myself in a mall with a tea store before meeting friends to see Much Ado About Nothing this evening. Oh, dear. 

All Day Breakfast

Once upon a time, I was a serious coffee drinker.  I drank coffee - usually black, no sugar - for the experience of drinking coffee.

Then one day I started reacting poorly to coffee. I’m not sure how to put this delicately.  I could digest coffee; I just had to choose between digesting coffee and digesting food.

Anyway, I do sometimes like a hearty tea with a flavor which, while not coffeelike, has some of the same characteristics. The All Day Breakfast fits this well.

Republic of Tea says this about All Day Breakfast:

Finest Chinese Keemun Leaves Blended with a Touch of Silver-Tip Oolong Leaves

I think there are more uppercase letters there than necessary, but only by a bit; this is a bold tea. Rich. And if I were the sort of person who ate a pastry for breakfast, this would match it nicely.  No sweetness; a nice broad almost chocolatey flavor, without any sugar or sour to it. It also just looks like a nice rich tea, and reminds me why what I call “black” tea is called “red” tea in some tea-drinking locales.  If this were beer, I’d call it a red beer.  But alas, “red” tea means rooibos around here, and blech to that.

I steep it about two or three minutes on the first pass.

I like to use one serving of loose tea for three to five cups throughout my workday. The majority of the caffeine is going to be in the first cup, and steeping that cup longer than it needs isn’t going to give me more caffeine or better flavor.  The second cup will probably get about five minutes of steeping, and the third about the same or maybe a little longer. A tea with this much flavor, and no sweetness, does not need the bitterness I’d end up with from oversteeping.

Ume Vert

This post is the blog equivalent, for me, of sliding my feet along the ground and slowly moving my arms around, trying to find a wall.  Here goes.

Lupicia says this about their tea:  

Fresh plum flavor makes this quality Japanese tea even more appealing.

Steeped three minutes.  The steam smells like a nice grassy green, with an equal amount of freshly-sliced-plum scent.  It’s not a sweetened or candylike plum, which pleases me.  

I tend to order a few varieties at a time, restocking favorites and trying (more, more, more!) new flavors. Between that, and the monthly catalog/newsletters from Lupicia and Republic of Tea, I end up with a few samples single servings lying around. This was one of those.

The flavor, once the tea has cooled enough for me to drink it, is nice and wide, i want to say fat,in a very nice way. not quite rich, but smooth.  Smoother than I expected in a green tea.  

Flavor-wise, I usually prefer black to green.  Sometimes herbals, but please, do not ever give me rooibos, nor yerba mate, for different reasons.

Today, I choose a green tea sample partly because I sometimes pay attention to the idea (which I mostly see attributed to Chinese medicine) that green tea cools, and is helpful for inflammation, whereas black tea warms.  It’s not cold outside, and I am recovering from a sinus infection/throat inflammation sort of bug.  I have an acupuncture appointment later.  

The Ume Vert is pleasant, but probably won’t taste as good to me when it’s fully cooled (so it’s not something I am likely to make whole pots of); it’s got just enough of that faint green bitterness to tell me I’d better drink it all now or write it off.

I do appreciate the not overly sweet fruit flavor, though. I’d drink this again, but I would not rush to buy in quantity.