Rishi Tea Organic Ancient Pu-erh Tuo Cha (Shu) - Tuesday, June 14th

I am, by no stretch of the imagination, an expert on pu-erh. I like it and I really want to try a whole bunch more...but I'm kinda intimidated by where to start. I read The Half Dipper daily and, frankly, most of the things Hobbes talks about I don't know. Not so much like "Oh, I think it means this" or "I guess it means that" because that involves some sort of intelligent guessing and deductive reasoning. No, this is more along the lines of "What the...wait...huh? Is that a real word?" The fact that pu-erh is a very traditional Chinese thing doesn't help. I don't speak a lick of Mandarin. But my Cantonese is superb.

Alright, passable.

Rudimentary?

Ok, ok, I can't speak any dialect.

So instead, I dabble. Here and there I get bits and pieces of cakes to try out and, for the most part, I enjoy the hell out of them. But I wouldn't consider myself a collector, or even an aficionado. I like 'em, a lot, but I don't actively seek them out. That would just scare the hell out of me.

That and the last thing I need is yet another beverage related hobby.

It's good to see companies that put out pu-erh products into mainstream stores that is both decent quality and economical.  Rishi Tea does this fairly well with it's line of blended pu-erhs, like their Ginger Pu-erh, Vanilla Mint Pu-erh, and Blood Orange Pu-erh (all of which I have samples of), as well as their non-blended ones like this one:

To say that pu-erh is an acquired taste might be a touch of an understatement. It's radically not like most teas. The sheng (raw/uncooked) has an intensely white pepper and grass flavor to it and the shu (cooked) has a deeply wet dirt flavor to it. And both, I've found, have an umami-like brininess to it as well. Strange stuff but addicting.

These tuo cha were provided by Rishi Tea for me to test out. Yes, tuo cha. What is that? Wel, it's this:

Wee little tea cakes and not the kind you eat either. It's actually the processed tea that's steamed and molded. I won't go into detail as I'm truly no expert but if you want a general glimpse, I suggest Wikipedia. Anyway, here's the notes:

Brewed in: gaiwan and tasting cup.
Water: boiling (212F)
Steep time: 3 minutes (as recommended)

First infusion: Nose is earthy. Kinda smells like pine too. Pretty quiet though. Taste is of hay and dirt. It's like licking a barn. Which honestly, isn't a bad thing. Molasses makes me want more rum. Mild bitterness but no astringency; very smooth. Not a whole lot of body though, seems kinda thin. Not too deep. Color is pretty inky.

Second infusion: Nose is almost gone by this point. Some earth, pine is gone. Bitterness is growing and the taste is fading. That pu-erh brine is coming out. Molasses is still there but fading. Hay flavor is gone.

Third infusion:  Nose is non-existant. Absolutely nothing there. Taste has lost the bitterness and now tastes more like cooked rice. Much more pleasant than the second infusion. Body is better, oddly enough, but still thin. At this point, I'd call it done.

For me, it's a good enough tea that displays the possibilities of the shu pu erh category. It is definitely an introductory tea as, for me, there are teas out there with more depth and that can stand up to more infusions. It is not uncommon to go for six or seven infusions out of one set of leaves but this really started tapering off after two. Would I pick it up again? Eh, probably not. I've had some AMAZING shu in my minimal travels so once you're bitten by the bug it's hard to go back. But I'd recommend it to someone that's never had it before. A damn sight cheaper than diving in headlong, I'll give it that.

Celestial Seasoning's Sweet Lemon Iced Tea (K-Cup)

My coffee is brewed by the Keurig system. I'm not ashamed to say it and neither should you. The Keurig system really is an excellent system for coffee and makes a nice cup. From the sounds it makes when it heats and brews, it is more than likely a vacuum system that allows the water to boil efficiently and quickly. The cups themselves are decent coffee types (Green Mountain being the pinnacle) of a variety of roasts, all sealed in self-contained filtration units in a non-oxygenated environment (I'm guessing a CO2 or maybe even an inert gas to protect the coffee). Suffice to say, I'm perfectly happy of having my daily cup from a Keurig machine as opposed to the Black and Decker Shithouse Supreme 6000 my dad uses. The key here is really the operating temperature. For the Keurig, it's about 192 while the Black and Decker's temperature is about absolute Kelvin. Since the temp. for coffee is 200...the coffee from that Black and Decker tastes like...well...antifreeze run through a hobo's underwear.

That's an assumption folks. Don't read into it.

The Keurig offers a lot of other choices for the K-Cups as well. Not suffice to stop at coffee, they have chai, hot cocoa and, strangely enough, tea K-Cups. I like tea. The main company that produces the T-Cups is Celestial Seasonings and, frankly, their tea ain't bad. They even offered an "iced tea" cup: a prepacked black tea, EVAPORATED CANE JUICE, and lemon K-Cup that you brew over ice. A pre-packaged iced tea mix that doesn't use high-fructose corn sugar? Nom. Here's a picture of the little bastard:

You can see the finished product on the right.

 Unfortunately, it is far more satisfying in thought than in application. To be honest...it was pretty goddamn gross. For being "sweet lemon" it wasn't sweet but rather super bitter and tannic. The flavor of the tea was flat and actually rather gross. The hibiscus they added didn't help things either. Curiosity got the best of me and I opened up the container.

Om.

Nom nom!

Yech. Obviously the finest quality floor sweepings from the CTC machines in India are used in this cup. The flavor is definitely an Indian tea, probably a cheap Darjeeling although it was difficult to tell over how absolutely cripplingly bitter it tasted. And it wasn't like I screwed up the directions either. The Keurig I have has two settings that produce two different volumes of liquid: 6 oz. and 9 oz. I used the 9 oz. and it was almost as bitter as Bill Hicks (but Hicks is significantly more tolerable). They suggest using the 6 oz. setting but that's approaching Hillary Clinton levels of bitter and look at how that turned out. Gonna have to give these cups a significant pass.

Obubu Tea: The Great Genmaicha Giveway

Being of Scottish and Irish blood, I completely respect and enjoy attempts at being frugal. My favorite dishes thus far usually involve some sort of meat that no self-respecting person would willingly choose. As a matter of fact, no self-respecting person would be able to eat it with no less than three tons of TNT and a belt sander. I'm a huge fan of braised meats, hearty stews, and lots and lots of offal. Haggis? Yes please. Tripe soup? Lay it on me. Shitty cuts of meat stewed and basted with broth until they turn into an unctuous mass of deliciously fragrant and soft meat? If you give me a serving of root vegetables with that I may die.

I also respect the need for frugality in beverages. Genmaicha is a personal favorite of mine. Genmaicha is a Japanese bancha (a cheap version of sencha), coupled with toasted rice. The theory behind the rice is, back in the old days, tea was...well...expensive as hell. What little people could afford had to be stretched as far as possible. By adding toasted rice, it imparts not just a deliciously nutty beverage but a deliciously nutty beverage that you can enjoy for a lot longer than just plain bancha. See? Frugality in beverages. Nice.

Obubu Tea has launched their 2010 Great Genmaicha Giveway, in which they will be giving away 3.5 oz. bags of genmaicha, direct from Japan, to 15 people each month this summer (June to August). I wholeheartedly recommend signing up. Their sencha is pretty damn stellar and their kukicha is delicious as well. They really care about tea and, unlike so many tea places these days, they're not just a company selling tea from the same damn supplier that everyone else has. Trust me, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have faith in the company. I don't endorse what I don't like. I have integrity. Dignity...not so much. I won't lie, when I first typed out 'dignity', I spelled it wrong. But integrity, yes.

To enter into the running, either join their Twitter page, their Facebook page, or sign up for their email newsletter. That's all. Fifteen lucky bastards a month will get a sweet sweet dose of frugality straight to their mailbox. Mmmm, toasted poverty.

EDIT: Sorry, their genmaicha is good. Not kukicha. That's what I was drinking while writing this. Whoops.

Bana Tea Company: Orchid Charm Sheng Pu erh - Sunday, Apr. 4th

Google is funny. A lot of the time it has ads that have nothing to do with what you like, despite how they tout the fact that their AdSense system is custom tailored to what people are looking at in their email or website. Last time I checked, a beverage review website's email doesn't necessitate a shitload of recipes for the many uses of "Spam". Unless this is a subtle hint about the amount of emails I get from Nigerian princes, then you are failing on the advertising part. Really Google, try a bit harder. The only time your AdSense ads make sense are when they start advertising programs that help you to "quit smoking in two weeks" and ads about AA meetings. As I've said before, thanks Google. Much love and faith from you guys.

Every rare once and awhile, every once in a blue moon...Google has an applicable ad. This time it was for Bana Tea Company. As I am perpetually on the quest for delicious tea that doesn't get a lot of exposure, I dropped by the website. I almost staggered a bit when I found out that they imported some very nice pu erh cakes. I emailed them as to what sampler to get because while I love pu erh, I don't really know much about the cake types. Yet. Yet, dear readers. I can't tell factory types apart in terms of tea styles and blending. I can tell their names apart. Sometimes. Anyway, the kind people at Bana Tea helped me out by sending me a mini sampler of teas, two sheng (uncooked) pu erh and one cooked. This is the first of three from the Bana Tea Company, their Orchid Charm Sheng. A 2009 vintage, spring harvest, uncooked pu erh from Lincang, Yunnan Province, it has reminiscent notes of orchid to it. I, honestly, couldn't get the orchid out of it despite my best coaxing. Here is a picture of it steeping:

Here are the notes!

Steep 1: 208F rinse. Pour in, pour out. Wash and open the leaves a bit.

Steep 2: (3o sec, 208F) - Brew color is a light tan. Nose of sea brine and greens. Slight woody/smokey quality as well. Taste is grassy with a raw wood like quality. A touch of spice, like sandalwood. Pleasant bitterness as well. Roasty hints on aftertaste.


Steep 3: (45 sec, 208F) - Brew color is now a yellow. Brininess on the aroma is gone. It's all wood and greens. Bitterness on the palate is still present, even a bit stronger but not unwelcome. Mostly just woodsy now. The spice has receded and that green flavor has receded. Astringency comes out too.

Steep 4: (1 min, 208F) - Brew color is a burnt yellow color. Nose is rather bland. Very limited vegetable smell, nothing else. Taste is wood, the green flavor is almost gone. Bitterness is still around but the astringency has vanished. One more steep and I'm gonna call this baby done.

Steep 5: (2 hours, 15 sec, 208F) - Yeah, that's right, 2 hours. I decided to do an experiment and let it infuse for a loooooong time. Alright, I won't lie. I did the fifth infusion and forgot about it. Whoops. The pu erh had pretty much petered out by the fourth steep so I wasn't to distraught. Why not drink it? Surprisingly enough, it is pretty interesting. While a two hour steep would make most teas bitter, this one...well...wasn't. It was very woody, almost like gnawing on a branch but it wasn't bitter at all. The nose, however, is non-existent. Whoopsie.

This tea was an interesting discovery for me. It took me a bit but this tea really showed me the difference between sheng and cooked/aged pu erh. It was a remarkable discovery and it really helped me define the merits of both a good uncooked and a good cooked pu erh. This was a decent tea. It is quite affordable, clocking in at about $7-$12, depending on how much you want. Here's a LINK.

Would I buy it? Yeah, probably. It doesn't look like it comes in cake form at all which is a shame because I'd like to see how this does aging for awhile. I like the woodiness to it at this point but I think it lacks a peppery, raw spiciness that a lot of pu erhs have. But that's just me.

GT's Organic Raw Kombucha (Gingerade) - Saturday, Mar. 13th

Readers, I won't lie to you. I expected this to be horrible. Really based on one sole thing. How kombucha is made
.
I refer you to the Wikipedia article on kombucha: "Kombucha is available commercially, but can be made at home by fermenting tea using a visible solid mass of microorganisms called a kombucha culture or mushroom."

Yeah. It's made out of a f*@king bacterial mushroom. Seriously, look at this picture from the Wikipedia page:



It looks like a corpse floating in a jar. That's how you make kombucha. It looks like a bloody devil's drink or something, scooped out of the river Styx. Gyahhhhh. To be honest, I'm not even sure why I tried kombucha. I suppose it has to do with two things:

A. It is made of tea. It uses a tea base loaded with fermentables (sugar) in a controlled pH environment, allowing a fermentation using a special culture to take place.

B. It is fermented. I excel in fermented things. Beer, spirits, wine, sauerkraut, kimchi. They're tasty.

I found a bottle of GT's Organic Raw Kombucha at my local store Adams, one of the best stores in the world. I had been meaning to try this voodoo beverage for awhile after chatting with a few people about the supposed medicinal wonders of the beverage. My mom had always told me it was pretty damn horrible and she grew it once when I was very young. She said she took one sip and pretty much blew chunks. Spiffed biscuits. Prayed to the Porcelain Gods. Took a phone call on the white phone from Ralph. This did not paint a happy picture in my mind of how this beverage would taste. But, to prove my journalistic integrity and grit, I decided to try it. It's time to step outside my comfort zone here. Time to really try the weird, wacky, and the wonderful. That is what I profess to do, so by gods, I will do it. Here it is:



I chose Gingerade because I like ginger ale and, in case I did get queasy, at least there would be some ginger in it to calm my stomach against the hordes of nausea. There was a slight problem with it though. Since it was raw, it was un-strained. This meant that there were cloud-like nebula of "mushroom" floating daintily through the bottle. It looked like Bespin's Cloud City, only instead of clouds it was icky floating bacteria. This grosses the shit out of me so I decided to filter it into a cup and pour it back into the bottle. This is what the filter caught:


At this point in my quest I started both doubting whether or not I should continue writing my blog but rather just fade quietly into the inky depths of obscurity. I also started fervently praying to any god that would listen or I could think of. I sat down at my computer (the bottle is sitting next to me as I write this) and I indulged in a sensory immersion.

It smells....like Easter. Remember dyeing eggs with those Paas kits? A delightful afternoon was spent dissolving those colorful little tablets into a vinegar/water mix? It smells like that vinegar/water mix. As Patton Oswalt puts it so eloquently, it "smells like a vinegar fart". The taste is...interesting. There is a definite tea background, in this case a black tea. This tea background is quickly overshadowed by a powerful wallop of vinegar tartness which fades into a crisp ginger taste. It is...unique. It's not bad, actually, but it's much too acidic for my tastes. It pretty much tastes just like putting a dropper full of tea in a glass and filling to the top with apple cider vinegar. It is obviously not disgusting (I've had about a quarter of a bottle) but it's definitely not something I could drink regularly. It's just too damn acidic. The supposed health benefits might have me drink some of this cut with water every few months as some sort of detox of my system. Because, let's face it, all I do is drink and smoke. My body could use the toxin flush.

NYC Coffee And Tea Festival

NYC is a cool place but I'm not sure I could ever live there. Commute? Probably. There are a lot of things that I really enjoy about it. This can mainly be summed up as the sheer volume and eccentricity of cultural cuisine represented in the metropolitan area. Just walking down the street yielded several restaurants of all different cultures and regions. As an amateur foodie and professional fatty, it was pretty great. Definitely something not available upstate. Not just in food but in beverage too. In the city, not only is beverage a necessity but a pleasure as well. Eclectic and artisan tea shops, coffee shops, bars, etc. are abundant in the city. As a bound-in-blood drinker of all of life's imbibe-ables, this too is quite awesome. There seems t
o be almost a certain respect for the craftsman's art of good coffee and tea in the city. Upstate i
t's far less pronounced. Many places focusing on tea (like the tea shop that got me started) quic
kly go out of business. I feel that upstate, tea is something you find on the grocer's shelf, pre-sealed in tea bags. It's not a loose beverage. Coffee fairs better but only because it's wake-up juice. The local coffee roaster does booming business and has for years but it almost seems like its viewed more as a jump-start to the day rather than a beverage worth a sensory investment. These are just my thoughts though.

As you may or may not know, over the weekend I covered the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival as press. It was, in short, wonderful to see so many either curious enough to drop a Jackson on the entrance fee or those dedicated to fine beverage. Both were there in spades, let me tell you. The 11th floor of the 7West building seemed like a vast sea of coffee and tea when the elevators first opened on that slightly cold but exhilarating February day. I entered the room and hit the road running, so to speak. There were vendors to peruse and companies to chat with and hell if I was going to miss any one company. I won't give you a play by play of the THREE AND A HALF HOURS I spent there but rather the highlights. Here we go:

Highlight one: Hancha Tea. Run by Yoon Hee Kim, a woman quite adept with all nuances of Korean tea. There were some fabulous samples there. The mulberry tea was quite nice with a flavor that stumped me in a delicious way. It reminded me of a buttered root vegetable (they said it reminded them of butternut squash). They had a chrysanthemum tea too which I didn't actually like due to its inherent natural sweetness. It was like drinking stevia in water, to be honest but a lot of people at the show raved about it. To each their own, I suppose. The final and best thing about the Hancha tea booth was the one purchase I made that day: individual pu erh cakes in both raw and cooked. They are no larger than an Oreo cookie and no thicker than a pack of matches. Circular with the classic pu erh dimple, they individually packed in small sealed plastic packaging. The cooked is very earthy and robust while the raw (my favorite) has a delicate peppery-ness and spice to it. I can't find a whole lot of info on it (the packaging is in Chinese) so if you know Mandarin (I think it is), let me know. I've got a project for ya.

Highlight two: Montauk Beverage. You know how I feel about these guys. If you don't, look here. Raymond was a very nice guy and his product is fantastic. You know the drill. Buy en masse.

Highlight three: Harney and Sons. You also know how I feel about the Harney family. I won't bother linking the multiple reviews I've done of their teas and facilities. Unfortunately, none of the Harney family was able to make it. I did manage to meet their newest exchange student who is here from France working in the factory. She was exceedingly nice and put up with my tea geek tendencies. If you're reading this, French girl, sorry I didn't stop back to see you. I had a train to catch.

Highlight four: Bailey's new coffee creamers. No link yet and I accidentally left their press docket at home. Whoops. I'll have further details on this next week when I get back to my house. They had a few flavors. I tried the Hazelnut and it wasn't any different than most other Hazelnuts but it was a bit richer. It was extremely interesting to see a traditionally alcoholic beverage brand branch into a non-alcoholic market but I'd reserve judgment until I see price points.

Highlight five: The Great Spirits Baking Company. Orange almond cake soaked in Patron Citronge. Apricot ginger cake soaked in Drambruie. They were extremely moist, absolutely delicious, and had a proof. Happy Scott is happy. I realllly wanted to try the Pyrat soaked dark chocolate raisin cake and mocha double chocolate chunk soaked in Padron XO but the stand was mobbed. Sad Scott has empty tummy.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Fang Gourmet Tea. This was, without a doubt, my favorite stand at the festival. I rounded a corner and came upon a huge set-up of all things tea. They had extremely handsome yixing clay teapots, beautiful gaiwans and...stacks and stacks of pu erh. Lots and lots of pu erh tongs (not the grabbing pasta type but the seven cake stacks of pu erh sold as one unit). It was...beautiful. There were ladies briskly brewing up tea to try. They had an excellent oolong that I tried straight off the bat. It was sweet and floral and delicious. I wish I could remember the name of it. I then tried a rose tea that I didn't care for. I was desperate to try some of the pu erh though. One of the kind workers informed me that you could sign up for their Fang Tea Club (complete with membership card!) and you could get a discount on a gong fu style tea tasting. Well hot damn! After signing up and dropping ten small ($10 a person) we sat at a beautiful tea table with a very nice guy bustling about and pouring tea. He was brewing in the gong fu style. Minimalist infusions (about 30-45 seconds) done in a well sealed gaiwan that was drained into a communal pot and distributed into tiny little cups. The big pot may seem odd but its actually a nice feature. To pour directly from the gaiwan would leave the cups later in the pour with a stronger infusion. The jug allows a uniform infusion for all.

When we first sat, Ki (our amazing tea guide) was into a steeping of "Big Leaf Loose Pu erh". It was an incredible infusion. It had a definite aged quality to it with a sea brine like taste and earthy-ness that mellowed as the infusions progressed. I don't know what infusion we started on but we sat for 6 infusions of that leaf and watched it evolve. It was...delicious. We then moved onto the Dong Ding Oolong Honey Aroma which ended up being the tea I had tasted when I first stopped by. It was rich and slightly grassy with a honey tinge in the background and a tart astringency that oscillated through each infusion. It was...very good and Ki said it was a classic Taiwanese tea that pretty much put them on the tea map. Ki was a collector of yixing pots and had some pots in his collection going back to almost 400 years old. I keep telling myself that using yixing pots and gaiwans is a bad idea mainly due to the fact that I find them incredibly beautiful despite their incredible price. I'm also extremely clumsy. Bad combo.

Ki enlightened me to the fact that they do monthly tea tastings in Flushing which I am planning on attending at some point. I've already mapped things out and I can get to their store in two stops from Poughkeepsie once I'm home for break. Or, well...for good come summer. Graduating is a bitch. All in all, this booth was the highlight of the trip and I will definitely be visiting the Fang Gourmet Tea shop in Flushing at some point. Ki recommended a few pu erhs that they have to me and...well...damn it, I think I have to buy them. For the sake of the blog, of course.

The festival itself was nice and I enjoyed going. There was ample room and plenty of good cold water to cut the massive amount of caffeinated and piping hot beverages that flowed freely. The women's bathroom had a line (according to my press buddy, my mom. Hi mom!) but the men's room was devoid of users. Other than that hiccup, it was a great day and a pleasure to attend.

And now...some pictures of the gong-fu tea tasting. First, setting out the cups. He then filled them with hot water to bring the porcelain up to temperature:


Next up is filling the gaiwan with hot water. At this point, he'd already had the pu erh in there for a few steeps (he actually forgot how many steeps we had done):



Letting it brew:
Getting ready to pour it into the pot:


Filling the cups:


Dinner of champions:


Yeah, that's right. I shave with The Art of Shaving Sandalwood products. Such a smooth shave. Love that crap.

Finally, a picture of the warning sign on the train in case of emergency:


One of my favorite things is to ignore the wording under the pictures and interpret it myself. Here's a rough estimate:

1) Pretend you hear an evacuation siren.
2) Don't step into a puddle when you pretend to evacuate the train.
3) Go back into train and go one car up.
4) Lock door. Wave to everyone outside.
5) Rejoice in a now empty car! Pick your favorite seat.

Peace Tea Razzleberry Tea - Wednesday, Feb. 10th

Fun fact: I also reviewed Peace Tea Ceylon, Green Tea, and Sweet Lemon. Go read up on it, holmes!

Another game of Peace Tea Rorschach! This is better than video games, I swear. I wish each can was different, honestly. This can has some pretty awesome things on it. First, we start withhhh:


The chihuahua that stares into my soul. Creepers. It actually reminds me of Scrappy-Doo, everyone's least favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoon right after Penelope Pitstop, the stupidest concept for a cartoon ever. Ever. We move across the can to:


The Oddly Disfigured Asian Girl. After a mysterious chemical explosion in her college's research lab, Oddly Disfigured Asian Girl is on a quest to find the evildoer who sabotaged her work and cost her a face so pretty it makes Christina Hendricks look like shit in a paper bag. A paper bag that is on fire. Next is the ever present celebrity endorsement:


To me, it looks like Nick Nolte and Mickey Rourke ran headlong into a brick wall and then were surgically fused together in order to save both their lives. Either that or a redheaded version of an 80 year old Kurt Russell. Take your pick.


Finally, the obligatory "What the Hell" moment. What is it, you ask? My interpretation is a suspended chile pepper and a panda wearing a Monster Energy bandanna. Awesome.

As for the tea, this is (so far) the best. The sucralose flavor is non-existant, the raspberry flavor is pronounced and quite nice. The sugar means its not overbearingly sweet and it's damn quaffable. I recommend this, on top of the sweet can artwork. Of course, my school has stopped carrying these wonderfully cheap canned delights and has reverted to Honest Teas, which are about 1.50 more. I'll review that soon. Like...tonight.

Peace Tea Sweet Lemon Tea - Thursday, Jan. 21st

Hey, did you know I also reviewed Peace Tea Ceylon, Green Tea, and Razzleberry? You should probably check 'em out.

Oh goodie goodie gumdrops! It's time for another Peace Tea Rorschach test! Interpreting what the drawings on the can are is half the fun of this beverage. The other half is the fact that it's actually decent for 99 cents and it uses real sugar. But first, the pictures.

Alright, here we go. Here's a frontal view of the can. This time, instead of the cool cyan blue they had for the Ceylon tea, we get a bright and cheerful yellow. Yay! But wait kids, the fun hasn't begun yet, let's play "Guess the Characters!" First we have....



This little guy kinda reminds me of either an oddly shaped, semi-humanoid Muppet (think a young Waldorf) or Danny from The Shining after a few "special" brownies. Yeesh. Next up?

A very thirsty grandma! Long day of watching Matlock? Need a small pick me up before that bridge game with the gals at the senior center? Don't want coffee but don't feel like getting the caretaker to brew a cup of tea? Slam down a can, ya old bat! It'll make ya feel alive and your mouth lemony fresh! The best part? It's actually a bearded guy with a mohawk. I love these damn cans. Finally, last but not least, we have a celebrity endorsement:


That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Charles. Bronson. Promoting from beyond the grave. Good gravy, I love these damn cans.

As for the tea, who the hell cares? No no, I kid. It's not too bad. The sucralose flavor is pretty much masked by the lemon flavor which doesn't taste completely natural but also doesn't taste like watered down Pledge either. Honestly, I would recommend these more for the can than what's inside. Which, I'm sure, will make my friend Ryan very, very happy.

Peace Tea Imported Ceylon - Wednesday, Dec. 30th

I've also done reviews of the Green Tea, the Razzleberry, and the Sweet Tea. Since they're linked for your convenience, I'm pretty sure you have to read them now. Besides, the other ones have my interpretations of the can art. 

I love iced tea. I love tea in general but iced tea is an especially fond portion of my beverage consumption. I am, by blood, almost half Scottish so a good deal is also something I'm especially fond of finding. Enter canned iced tea. Arizona puts out about 20,000 kinds of canned iced tea (including the Arnie Palmer, the greatest beverage in the world) in a huge 23 fl. oz. can. All for a whopping buck. $1. One greenback, one smackeroo.

Needless to say, they rank high on my list of Awesome Quaffables.

However, one thing that bothers me about Arizona is they love to use HFCS, or high-fructose corn syrup. It's not that I don't like drinking it because I'm afraid it's bad for me and it'll make me fat (I'm a beverage reviewer and I'm already fat), it's mainly because I don't like the mouth-feel it gives beverages and, honestly, HFCS is generally just too damn sweet. So, while walking through the grocery store I saw a beloved 23 oz., $1 can of tea and I reached for it. But it wasn't Arizona. It was a company called Peace Tea.



As you can see above, the artwork on the can is pretty cool. There's a hand giving a peace sign (obligatory) as well as a guy that looks like Merlin, an Indian chick, a guy in the background that looks like an Oompa Loompa wearing a red chef's hat, a cow, and Clark Kent at 50 off in the far corner. I'm gonna hedge my bets on this is supposed to be the local people of Ceylon. For the record, I want to live there if it means living near Merlin and a neon-blue cow. Anyway, the tea itself is pretty good. The color isn't thin and watery looking, it's thick and rich like a good brewed tea. The smell itself is pretty muted but it smells like a black tea (albeit not a very fine one). But the best part of this beverage is that it's made with real, honest-to-goodness cane sugar. Om nom nom! This tea comes so close to perfection I can almost taste it. Almost. The first sip is glorious: ice cold, perfectly brewed tea with the fresh sweetness of real sugar and just a hint of citrus bite from citric acid. Then the last bit hits. This sickly sweet, chemical-like sweetness.

Fuuuuuuck.

The last ingredient in this tea is made with my bane of manufactured sweetners: sucralose. You know this by its brand name of Splenda. I hate Splenda solely because the first taste of Splenda dupes you into thinking its sugar, then the aftertaste is like the baby of HFCS and a gallon of methanol. It's this sickly sweet artificial taste that kills it. And this tea doesn't have a lot of it, but just enough to piss me off to levels I've never been to before in my life. If it didn't have the sucralose in it, I would just start funneling this into my body as quick as I could buy cans. But Captain Splenda has to come in and give me a big 'ole "Screw you, buddy" and then leave me with a can of tea that could have been so very perfect.

So, yeah. This is a thinly veiled rant against manufactured sweeteners. I hate them and my degree is probably responsible for creating them. Sweet-N-Low, Splenda, Nutrasweet...they all need to burn. HFCS needs to be dropped into the deepest mineshafts the world has. Plain brown sugar or agave syrup are the best things to sweeten things with, bar none. Oh, and maple syrup. That stuff is great.

Furious Cupping and the Harney and Sons Ti Quan Yin

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I've been swamped with end-of-semester work. Also, I've been furiously and unabashedly cupping tea to submit my reviews to Teaviews.com. Since I've been slacking quite a bit, I figured I'd put up some images for you to enjoy. Some delicious Bamboo Yi Wu Pu erh from Norbu Tea Company (after about 4 steeps):



Some equally as delicious Jasmin Silver Tips from We Are Tea:



And finally some Kaze Sencha from Boulder Tea:


As promised, my final review of the Harney and Sons Ti Quan Yin, pictured below:

Brew 1: color of pale yellow (above). Smell was earthy and...hoppy...very flowery as well. Taste is wet earth, peach, and fresh cut lawn.

Brew 2: same color. Smell is more pungent. Smells of apricot/peach and fruit sweetness. Jasmine. Oxidized and deep. Tastes peach, green grass. Has a sweet/sour quality to it like a good lemonade.

A quite nice oolong. The peach was unexpected but pleasant. My mom loves the shit out of this so it's always available in the house and that makes me pretty glad. So, yeah. Still going to be busy for the next few weeks, so posting will be sporadic but I'll do my best to do an update at least a few times.

By the way...is it just me or does the title of this post sound like a total bad-ass band name?

Woooo, tea time!

While my actual birthday was uneventfully boring, the birthday celebration was definitely not. Mainly because I got some kung-fu tea action going on. I had needed something to properly cup my tea (as my Krispy Kreme mug with jury-rigged teapot strainer in it wasn't cutting it). So, for my b-day, my parents got me a Harney and Sons tasting set, fresh from their store in Millerton. Here she be:



Look at her. Ain't she a beaut? Made in Sri Lanka of white porcelain, it holds one perfect cup of tea. But, in order to make a perfect cup of tea, one needs appropriately hot water. Before this momentous occasion I had been using water from either a coffee maker or a stove fifty feet from my room. In a kitchen that smells like vomit and failure. Yuck. So...using some spare cash I had in the form of an Amazon gift certificate, I bought myself a Zojirushi 3L hot water pot. Thar she blows:



Yeah, it's really nice. My only problem is you can't just set it to heat to any of the lower temps (140, 175, 190) straight away but rather you have to let it boil and then cool. Not a fast process. Regardless, it does make a fine cuppa. Seen here is the American Tea Room Genmaimatcha I have to review for Teaviews.



All in all, this little setup will make my life significantly easier. Oh, and I can cup tea quicker. And boy howdy, do I love tasting tea.

Birthday Bloggin'

So today is my birthday. 22 is not a very fun birthday, to be truthful. I took a 5 hour train ride from home and studied physical chemistry on the way. Rather uneventful. Thanksgiving was delicious, as usual. We finally popped a bottle of wine with dinner. AND THE WINE WAS HORRIBLE. YES MOM, IT WAS SO BAD IT MADE ME WANT TO CRY.

My mom reads my blog (a mistake) and she made me promise that I didn't "blog about how my mother served a horrible wine". It was actually pretty good. Not a whole lot of flavor but pleasant fruit notes and the label was pretty cool. It had two mice on it and it was from Germany. Not bad stuff.

A very nice and relaxing break. I managed to get a bunch of cupping done and I visited Harney and Sons to pick up some more tea. They finally got in some specialty pu-erh teas so I nabbed some of that. There is a Maocha loose (Ziyun) and a Sheng cake (90's CNNP) pu-erh that I got tasting samples. I wanted to try them there but I made the mistake of going on Black Friday. Yeah, I'm that brilliant. You can view their notes here and mine are forthcoming. I also stole a shitload of tea samples from the home stash so be prepared for those to come.

Oh! I didn't actually mention this, but my first tea review was published on Teaviews on the 24th. Link is here. I have another one up there as well, so I'll try to stay on when they actually publish and post a link on here.

Anyway...stay tuned here. There's quite a few things in the work, including some big-ass things. Monumental things. Things that I pretty much didn't expect to happen because I'm such a tiny blog. Score one for the little guy, I suppose.

Teaviews

So, after applying to Teaviews.com, I have become a full-time reviewer for their website. Glorious. Yeah...that's pretty much all I have to say about that. Go check it out!

CTC Assam and State of the Uni...Blog

Drinking a nice cup of CTC Assam, one of the lower grade Assams offered by Harney and Sons. CTC stands for "Crush, Tear, Curl", a cheap method of automated tea picking that often results in broken bits of tea instead of whole leaves. Normally, I'm all about the full leaf and single estate teas but, as I've said before, there is a time and place for blends et. al. The CTC Assam is the stronger parts of an Assam. My favorite, the Mangalam, has a wonderful body to the liquor. It is strong and assertive and classically "black tea", but it also has a malty sweetness as well. CTC Assam is all "black tea" flavor. It brews dark and astringent, with a wallop of a body and a rather muted nose. The nose smells slightly of the wonderful maltiness but the taste is straight up black tea in your face. No frills, no layers of flavor, nada. Just good old fashioned straight tea. I'd throw a picture up here but you're really not missing much. They look like brownish BBs, curled up into tiny little balls that release this pungent tea upon hot water's command. Why am I drinking this tea?

I have food poisoning.

This and soup have all been thrown down the hatch successfully after waking up to a wonderful morning puke. Missed all of my classes, have to turn the homework in tomorrow. I feel significantly better now and tea, soup, and massive quantities of water have been input and not output, so it looks like we're in good standing.

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In other news, I've been pondering about this blog and what I want to do with it. So far I've seen some interest in the topics I've addressed. This makes me relatively happy. It's always nice to wake up, check my Google Analytics, and see how many sheep I have shepherded to my ideas. This said...I'd like to expand further and increase traffic. I want the world to see what I have to say, damn it, no matter how crude and blue I work. I'm currently sifting through how to operate Dreamweaver in order to fill out the website and domain I've acquired and I'm always actively searching for anybody who is curious enough to contact me about anything I've written as well as what I should write about. I'm also extremely open to press samples. Really, I am. I had quite a few up on bat over the past few weeks that I've perused through and, dare I say, it was a rather entertaining endeavor for all parties involved. In the coming days I still have to do a review of Pocket Shots (they sent me a vodka in a "sturdy" package, expect Hammer Time), but other than what press releases companies graciously (and quite mysteriously) send me, I am extremely limited by my own personal funds. I'd like to continue reviewing beverages at the rate I do, but its getting...costly. In the coming months, I may shift a bit more to tea as samples of tea are significantly cheaper to acquire than beer ($7 for 40 cups as opposed to a $2-$3 beer). Either that, or I may start dipping back into the cheap beers, a la the Malt Liquor Adventures. I do suppose most of you enjoy seeing me suffer.

Regardless, if anyone has any questions, comments, concerns, snide remarks, off-the-cuff remarks, crazy remarks, or fish, please email me. The email is drinkreviews AT gmail DOT com. Sorry spammers. I love email, but I only like emails from people that aren't trying to extend my pen 15 or make my non-existent girlfriend/wife/spouse/mistress a lot happier in certain places of sleeping (or...well...not sleeping, be that the case). I'm talking about a bedroom. Sorry, not good at subtlety.

A wonderful day for tea

Today was a good day in the world of tea. In the world of chemical engineering it was kind of a travesty, but tea had a good day. Nay, an excellent day. Received a package from home today and it had an awesome surprise for me: a new teapot!



Isn't she beautiful? This leaves me in a quandary though. I now have two teapots that I do so love dearly. I don't want to be a neglectful parent. I don't want to stow my old iron tetsubin back in my closet. She's awesome and a potentially lethal weapon. This is her:



Ah, a father's pride for his daughter is an amazing thing. At this point, I'm not sure what I'll do with both of them. I may use one for green tea and one for black tea for reasons really beyond my grasp. It seemed like a good idea though. The black one does hold heat significantly better, not being made of cast iron, so maybe I'll use it when I'm not really paying attention to the tea but I want a few cups while working on something.

In other news, I'm drinking a cup of Lemony Gunpowder. It's the Gunpowder Green I referenced awhile ago, but with a delightful lemon-like topping. Its not bad. I prefer single estate teas but my mom bought this thinking she liked it and...well...realized she actually didn't. So I gave it a good home. It's pretty good. Vegetal, grassy green tea with a slight smoky flavor, all topped off with a light undertone of citrus. Not too bad. The balance is nice but I just can't get this tea to brew right. It always seems a touch bitter and I'm almost 100% sure I'm using the correct temperature and not too much tea. Other than that, it does brew up a decent cup for a cold winter day. Also makes good iced tea too.

Finally, my Harney and Sons Fall Catalog showed up. I won't lie. I did a happy dance in the post office. Some chick looked at me like I was nuts. Well...fat and nuts. But I get the first part a lot.

Harney and Sons Genmaicha - Monday, October 12th

Oh boy. Rochester has now slipped from "slightly cold" to "fuck you cold". Today averaged in at below 50. Sweet hooba jooba, how time has flown by. Tonight I'm bracing myself against the perpetual onslaught with one of my favorite green teas: genmaicha. Do I know what it means? Nope. What I do know is that it is a Japanese green (Sencha, I think) with a little sumpin' sumpin' added to it. That little sumpin' sumpin' is toasted rice kernels. Refer to pic:



How awesome is that shit? It's like drinking the best parts of movie theatre popcorn and green tea, all in one cup. But without that disgusting fake butter crap, the yelling kids in a R rated movie, and peace and quiet. You may be able to tell I don't go to movies often. Seriously, who brings 9 year olds into movies like Sweeney Todd? Ridiculous.

Regardless, the tea itself is a delicious commodity in my dorm room. The pleasant herbal, grassy astringency of a good green tea combined with nutty, sesame-like flavors from the toasted rice make it an excellent cuppa. I highly recommend the Harney and Son's blend (its really all the tea I find worthy) so you should probably order a tin ASAP.

In other news, a few things up on the billet. I should be getting the samples from SakeOne relatively soon, as well as some of the St. Martin beer. Finally, I discovered PocketShot and they're going to be sending me a sample as well. Hopefully they send a few because I want to stress-test those things. I'd link everything, but I won't until I try their products. SakeOne gets a link because they're damn tasty, even when I'm paying cold, hard cash. So take that. Also, sorry about this weekend and the promise of a website. I was supremely lazy. Next weekend I purchased campus-sponsored tickets to a wine tasting so I'll have pics of that thrown on here once I sober up. And, finally, I just washed out the "angry hand grenade of failure" and it smelled like someone lit a skunk on fire with a flaming turd. My room now also smells like a frat-house on a Sunday morning. Blech.

Harney and Sons Mangalam Assam Broken Tea - Wed. Sept. 30th

Ok, its a bit lackluster, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry I haven't been posting a lot this week, but Physical Chemistry (also known as Quantum "I hate my life" Chemistry) has really been getting in the way. Tonight I spent most of my night studying for this horrible test and I really feel like I'm not all the way there, nor will I ever be completely there. So, in the truly responsible fashion...I decided to post on here. Yes, folks, I am that dedicated to my degree. Unfortunately, the beverage of choice tonight is not alcoholic (my test tomorrow is at 8am, which is bullshit for a senior). Tonight's beverage of choice is tea!



Not just any tea, folks. Despite my alcoholic demeanor and appearance, I have an unnatural fondness for tea, especially black tea. I buy most of my tea from Harney and Sons, which I visited in a blog post in mid August. I am, right now, quaffing a mug of my favorite tea by them: Mangalam Assam. Their Assams are really stellar. They are also rather expensive. The Mangalam Assam Broken has a generous amount of the honey-sweet golden tips from the flush and give it this really delicious malty, honey, and slightly astringent flavor. Really, really good stuff. It is, however, rather expensive per tin and its the cheaper of the Mangalams, with the most expensive being the Mangalam Assam Full. I prefer the Full but with the rate I consume tea, I can really only afford the Broken. But if I had the cash, I'd be all over that Full like...well...me on a bottle of scotch older than I am. As I said to my friend, I'm all about the cougars of the scotch world. Aww yeah.



Anyway, here's a close-up of the tea itself. Notice the flecks of golden deliciousness. Like Golden Grahams, but significantly more awesome. These give it that honey flavor that rocks my goddamn socks straight off my feet and into the laundry hamper. Yes, it's that good. Go, readers! Buy it and relish in the company that I love. Also, quaff deeply. The quaffing is my favorite part but I assumed that you knew that by now

The Road Less Traveled (in the Summer)

My latest absence has been due to general maladies et. al. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday with my surgeon who said that, yes, I am doing significantly better and, yes, I may be cured for a significantly long time. Thus, beer (Pork Slap out of a can) and wings (Max's Memphis BBQ wings, a dozen and the hot wings, a dozen) were in short order to celebrate my victory against the gods that are trying to keep me down and out. The morning before was a magical tour of my favorite portion of the east coast. Now, I've been up and down this fucker a good many times, but my favorite place is, and probably always will be, The Berkshires in western Massachusettes. Normally, we typically head to Stockbridge, MA in the winter for a Christmas stroll and feast at the Red Lion Inn. We decided to head out to Great Barrington, MA (close by) but this time we did it in the summer; a new experience for me as I have only seen the journey in its snow-robed glory. Great Barrington is a quaint town with an excellent selection of eclectic shops, such as professional cookingware and used vinyl (hell yes), as well as a crowning achievement of all civilization, a brewery. Really, a brewery (or at least a local beer) is a mark of a quality region. It was once said by Frank Zappa (a personal hero that I would have gladly taken a bullet for) that:

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some sort of football team or some nuclear weapons - but at the very least, you need a beer."

I am inclined to agree with the masterful lyrical poet that came up with the likes of Muffin Man, Joe's Garage, Titties and Beer, and all of the Apostrophe album. Seriously, St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast is amazing. However, I digress.

Our trek lead us to the Great Barrington brewery, a bastion of fine beverages and GIGANTIC GODDAMN MEALS. These weren't just "healthy" portions, they were of the "hungry lumberjack" variety. We started off with the ever-popular mozzerella sticks, which were beer battered (probably in the pale ale). They rocked, even though the marinara sauce was a little too thin. My friends ordered burgers, which seemed pretty good, although they didn't ask how you wanted it. I crave my burger barely cooked, somewhere in the rare to medium-rare stage, so when they got something about medium-well, I was glad I went with the NY Grill. A huge slab of seeded rye bread, topped with a generous portion of both corned beef AND roast beef, slathered in russian dressing and coleslaw, with a frosty-peak like coating of melted swiss. This thing looked like half a damn cow coated in cheese and it tasted awesome. This, of course, was paired with this beauty:

Yeah, sweet huh? The Brewer's Choice, clocking in at $4.50 for 5, count 'em, 5 3oz. tastings of beer brewed in the pub. From left to right we have the hefeweissen, the stout, the brown ale, the pale ale, and the pilsner. The top favorites for the others were the stout, but we all agreed on the excellent pale ale. It was a standard pale ale, hoppy and crisp, but it had a remarkable aftertaste of beautifully clean and fresh malt. It was first hoppy, then it was like biting into a fresh baked piece of bread. I couldn't get enough of it, so I brought home a bomber (22 oz. bottle). The pilsner was excellent as well, very clean, crisp, and damn easy to drink. The brown was too similar to a stout for me, all deep roasted malts and not enough hops. The stout was like an Old Rasputin, but without the alcohol, and not as good of a balance between the coffee and chocolate flavors. The wheat was not bad, with prominent clove and banana, but it was rather sweet, almost toffee-like. The mention of toffee brings us to the latter part of the meal: dessert. We opted for two desserts to share: a slice of chocolate stout cake and a bowl of cobbler. Here they are in their half-eaten glory:

That piece of cake is only 2/3rds of the slice we got. The cake was actually drooping slightly over the sides of the plate, as referenced by the gigantic chocolate smears all over the plate that make it look rather unpresentable. The purple tinted bowl was the bowl of blueberry-rhubarb cobbler which was fucking amazing as hell. I'd never really gotten into the "fruit + rhubarb" combination as a dessert before but that bowl of sweet, sweet fruity justice rescued the mix in my mind.

At this point in time, I'd like to reflect that you should probably go and get a drink, maybe a snack, take a bathroom break, or just avert your eyes for a few minutes to avoid strain. This was a long-ass day, and I'm not fucking stopping now. Oh no, this is going to be a whopper of a post. So, take your intermission and rejoin the Drinking Train.

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Choo chooooo, all aboard!

Ok, so. After our run to the brewery, we had to run a few errands (one of my comrades had a doctor's appointment). We decided to hang out in the waiting room, as it was about 90F out with probably the same percentage in humidity. I browsed through a copy of Food and Wine that I enjoyed so much, I snuck it into my back pocket. It was from October '08, so I don't think it'll be missed. But yeah, score-a-palooza on that one.

With the remaining hours of the day burning themselves out like a fading lightbulb, we decided to bring civility, class, and respect to our generally slovenly selves. I am, and always have been, not JUST a big fan of alcoholic beverages. I typically drink my weight in tea in a year. No joke either. So we decided to go to Harney and Sons, a world-famous tea shoppe. Yeah, shoppe. It's that fancy. And they let us in! This isn't your ordinary tea place though. This is an amazing wonderland of fragrant teas. And the best part is? You can try them. There is a wall of teas that you can choose to try from. Don't believe me? Here:
Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's not the entire room. There's about 6-8 feet on each side of what I caught with my camera. I couldn't fit it all into a 10 megapixel camera. Let that sink in.

Each of those tins is filled with tea that they pour out into the lid, scoop some into one of their Harney and Sons Brewing Apparati and Hearty Quaffing Bowl setups. That little spigot in the middle (one of several), contains the correct temperature water for the tea. This is poured into the brewcup, a timer is set and the tea is ready when you hear the beep. Like...Supermarket Sweep? Here's a pic:We did a mini-flight of Assam teas (some of my favorites due to their intrinsic honey-like sweetness) as well as mini-flight of Darjeelings, both first and second flush. That's the Gunpowder Green that my friend Pat tried, which is excellently smoky yet vegetal at the same time. It was an exciting time for all and I walked away with a new tin of Genmaicha Matcha, a Matcha form of Genmaicha, or Japanese green with puffed rice.

Pat made a comment back to the car that I should start adding tea into the blog, so I probably will. I drink far more tea than I do whisky and beer (which should tell you something), so I'll probably throw some reviews of my current stashes up soon. All in all, however, an excellent day. And I got a sunburn on my arm for the first time in years. I don't leave my room much. Namely...at all. Pretty much just to go get more tea, whisk(e)y, and cigars. Also, I'll have a formal review of the Balvenie DoubleWood up by the weekend, hopefully. Its been an interesting nosing session, but the tasting is fucking me up hard. I think I need to water it a bit, because I'm really having trouble distinguishing flavors through the alcohol. If anyone has any ideas on that, let me know. Email is, as always, in the profile thing on the side.