Silver Trip by Daoli

Silver Trip by Daoli 
Often when it is nice weather outside I enjoy having my tea outside, i don't have a special place for tea out there or anything like that it's just Lyra and Me sitting outside on the front steps having tea.
Today is a good day for having a green tea outside so I decided to try Silver Trip sample from Daoli Tea,
Daoli Silver Trip is made of slightly fermented raw (or sheng) pu’er tea from the Yunnan province pressed into small nuggets. Silver Trip undergoes very little fermentation and has taste, aroma, and texture characteristic of green teas. Try Silver Trip now to enjoy its fresh and invigorating taste or let it age naturally to develop a more mellow and soothing flavor. These neatly pressed coins are made of top-grade sheng puer from Yunnan’s Wuliang mountain. The Chinese name of this tea (yinya) reflects the fact that it predominantly consists of silver (yin) buds (ya) – young shoots of the first spring vintage. It also contains a small proportion of delicate stalks that add some natural sweetness to the palette.

This little tuocha is pretty to look at with little silver fuzzy buds pressed together and has a nice slightly sweet aroma.
The taste of this one was very nice, sweet and vegetal with a slight pleasant astringency. It has very bold almost white tea flavor to me that develops more into young raw puerh flavors after a few steepings with a slight spicy almost peppery bite to it while still remaining slightly sweet and vegetal.
Only thing I did not care for about this tea was the amount of visible stems in the tea after steeping BUT the description of the tea states that they are there to add natural sweetness to the tea, I'd just rather see more whole leafes and buds than to see sticks and stems.


http://eng.daoli.eu/products-page/teas/silver-trip/
http://teaspotting.com/shop/laocang-yinya-silver-bud-sheng-puer-xiaogongbing/

                                                             
                                                                    Baby Girl Likes it!

Jasmine Trip From Daoli

Jasmine Trip From Daoli 
http://eng.daoli.eu/products-page/teas/jasmine-trip/
http://teaspotting.com/shop/yunnan-molihuawei-jasmine-shu-puer/
I'm not really big on flowery teas or Jasmine teas either Unless I add it to the tea myself, I find that most of them have either too much or too little jasmine but that's not the case with this one.
This has a most wonderful jasmine scent when the leafe is dry and a nice earthy puerh scent with a touch of jasmine when steeped. 

The flavor is just perfect, the Jasmine is prominent without being too much and masking the flavor of the tea itself.
I've had many jasmine green teas that just aren't my thing and honestly usually a jasmine puerh isn't either don't get me wrong I think they are quite nice sometimes but chances are that I wouldn't purchase one for myself, if i did purchase one it would most likely be this one tho and I would only drink it when I wanted something special or if I have had company to share it with.

The tea itself is very nice I can tell because I can actually taste it through the Jasmine, its just slightly earthy and has a really nice sweet puerh taste, I'd  love to try it without the Jasmine in it.

Sorry I couldn't take some prettier photos of this one but honestly the spots where I usually shoot my photos are all still cluttered up with things all out of order and moved around and that bugs me and I don't want that reflected in my photos so this is the best I could do at the moment.

Sorry for lack of posts!

Sorry for lack of posts on the Blog here lately, I'm not sure how many folks actually follow my blog but I know some do and I'm happy for that :)
The reason for lack of post is actually a few reasons combined, Firstly I've been dealing with some personal issues with depression this year and have been really trying hard to keep it from getting the best of me.
January wasn't too terribly bad but February was horrible with Lance and my Mom both in the hospital Lance with a hip replacement and Mom with a brain tumor. 
I spent the majority of February at home alone stranded with no ride and that didn't do very well for my mental state of mind either because I felt alone and scared and trying to cope with bad news, It just really sucked bad.
Lances surgery went well and he spent some time at his moms recovering he is home now and doing well other than one mishap where his hip popped out of socket he had to back and get it fixed but he is just about back to normal and those worries can be laid to rest I just have to take really good care of him and he has to be really careful right now.
I think the thing that has me down the most is what my Mom is dealing with and having to go through It is eating me alive to see my Mom sick, She went into the hospital in February for removal of a brain tumor which the doctor at first thought to be benign and could be removed with no worries or threats But we got Bad news instead, The tumor was actually two tumors intertwined and could not be completely removed safely without brain damage and they are both cancerous so She has to go through Radiation treatments and Chemo and I'm very worried and scared for her. She is not quite the same now after surgery and I can't help but wonder if she will ever be the same again. It is hurting me really bad and I'm still not sure how to personally deal with my emotions about it I just really very scared and my mind is always thinking about her.
I was already in depression when we found out about this and I've dealt with depressions all my life but at this point I'm in a really strange state of depression that I've never dealt with before and that also scares me, I don't want to loose my mom nobody does but I don't want to loose my mind either and I feel like I'm going to loose both soon, i'm just so scared, I try to have faith that everything is going to be OK but it is very hard.
To tell the truth I've had plenty of time to write a blog post and I've even drank plenty of teas to write about and i haven't lost interest in my blog or anything like that Just my mind is preoccupied with other things at the time and its kinda hard to stay focused on things like writing a blog post and such and I've been trying to spend less time online and more time with Lance and Mom and Family.
And to top things off March is no better because Monday we had a Huge Hailstorm here and brought us lots of damage to our home and property which is just adds more emotional crap for me because our house right now is so messed up inside and outside, I never thought that hail could be so devastating but thats just because I never saw hail like this before, we had baseball to softball sized hail destroying everthing here, our car is messed up so bad that we are stuck with no ride our house and all the houses in the neighborhood look like they have been through a war or something, it really looks like everybody got shot to hell and back with machine guns or something. We have insurance to pay for it all but that don't change the fact that it happened and really don't offer much comfort when your home is destroyed and everywhere you look is a mess, it's really heartbreaking.
I know that it's not the end of the world yet and things will eventually get better but right now it just don't feel that way, and I know that what we are dealing with is nothing compared to some disasters that others have faced and it could be a lot worse but it still hurts and it is still very depressing to me and is lot for me to deal with.
Sorry for the sob story but sometimes it helps to talk or write about things and I wanted yous guys to know what was going on currently in my life.
I have had a few good days and I learned how to make green tea turn pink lol Also Ive drank plenty of teas that I will write posts about soon but I couldn't even get any good photos right now for the posts if i wanted to because of the mess here,Here are at least a few tea pics and some damage pics I took.

Black Tie-Guan-Yin from Upton Tea Imports

Black Tie-Guan-Yin from Upton Tea Imports-
From Fujian province, this is a fully oxidized tea made from a cultivar normally used to produce Tie-Guan-Yin Oolong. The cup has a round flavor, with notes of red wine, and toasty hints. The aroma has a sweet note and a subtle hint of cocoa.

http://uptontea.com/shopcart/item.asp?from=catalog.asp&itemID=ZK58&begin=0&parent=Teas%3EBlack%3EChina&category=Other+Congou&sortMethod=0&categoryID=13

Super Good! Very tasty, pretty and smells great!
This one has a sweet aroma in the leafes that almost smells like chocolate while steeping, very nice scent that makes ya just wanna close your eyes and stick your nose in the gaiwan after you pour the water off and I did just that several times lol.

The leafes are pretty to look at also, they look like they are little leaves twisted up like little needles, as the leafe steeps it un twists into pretty little leafes and tips.

The taste of this one is wonderful, to me it is slightly woodsy with bold notes of cocoa maltyness and maybe caramel, kinda malty and just really super good.
The second and third steep were the best, they were malty and tastes of so much of cocoa it was almost like it was a flavored tea or something and caramel hints with some  roasty toasty characteristics of a darker oolong and the flavor was lingering in the mouth with a slight bitter.
by the fourth and 5 steeps it had lost the maltness and caramel hints but the woodsy note is back and the cocoa notes are still there, on the fifth steep a slight "whiskylike" note somehow came about.

I could not resist since this one is a black tea I tried my second session of it with a little sweetener added and I was not at all disappointed I enjoyed it very much, With sweetener this tea is most delicious very much like a flavored tea of dark chocolate, Sweetener brings the cocoa notes in this tea to the front line and gives it an awesome dark chocolate taste, there is even a slight bitter that you get from dark chocolate. all other flavor notes in this tea when it was unsweet are masked by the sweetener that enhanced the cocoa into chocolate, just plain delicious is alls else I can say.

I you try this one please do drink it straight without sweetener at least at first but please do also try it sweetener you may love it even more, It's totally different but really delicious both ways, I think it may even make a decent Iced Tea if it isn't sweetened too much.

Dragon Feelers By Butiki Teas

I think my nose is getting a little messed up,maybe I'm catching a cold or something which means that my taste might be a little bit off today but I'm going to have Tea anyways and I'm going to write about it, right now now I'm having "Dragon Feelers" By Butiki Teas  because I just so happen to find a "lost" sample of it, I'd have already written about had I not lost it and really glad to have found it.

1st steep in the Gawain was 3 minutes as per directions, it brews up a nice clear yellow color with a slight green touch (according to Lance*), the taste was very delicate but quite pleasant slightly vegetal flavor that i just can't place, tho the taste was delicate the flavor of the tea was above the line. No bitter or astringency just wonderful tea flavor.

2nd steep I added 25 seconds,it yielded the exact same pale color and that same wonderfully delicate tea flavor as before but of course slightly stronger and this time unknown pleasant vegetal flavor became kinda like sweet peas?? not sure, it was very delicious tho :)

3rd steep I added another 25 seconds putting total steep at 3 minutes 50 seconds, the color was a little more clear/transparent this time Lance said it still had it's yellow but lost it greenish tinge, taste was slightly weaker than the last steep but otherwise the flavor was pretty much the same.

4th steep full 5 minutes this time the color was just a pale yellow and the taste was very slight, the flavor this time was starting to fade, in fact the flavor really faded a good bit between these two steeps, I'm afraid this tea is near it's end.

OK That was my original writings on this tea from my notebook from the lost sample, I had not intended on writing a blog post on this one at first so I missed out on photos of the dry leafe so I talked to Stacy at Butiki to see if perhaps she had a few other photos of the dry leafe that weren't on the site she didn't BUT She is a nice Lady and She sent me another sample of it to try again and take some photos :)

I'm glad for the second sample also because at the time of my first writting I think I was catching cold or something because my nose was messed up pretty bad which could have changed my taste also So now I get to try this tea all over again and Re-write about it with good tastebuds.

1st steep this I get same yummy tea flavor and slight vegetal taste of maybe of green beans or sweet pea not sure still but vegetal for sure, this time tho there was a slight difference that I did not pick up before and that is a slightly metallic twang, but not at all in a bad way in fact very pleasant, what is that? the best I can describe like I said is slightly metallic.

2nd steep this time I add 2o secs to each steep just because, kinda consistent with the first again nice a vegetal but slightly stronger this time but still pretty much same as before that slight metallic note is still present but like I said its quite enjoyable(again I ask myself what IS that?), good to swish around in the mouth.

3rd steep, almost the same but the metallic taste that (which now I'm really enjoying) is trying to go away I wish it would stay tho I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, I look at other folks notes on steepster to see if I can figure out if anybody else got that or what, alls I see there that may be it and that I don't understand is a word that is also in the description "marine" that I have no clue what that means. I never had a Marine before lol, is that the word that describes this metallic taste? I'm not sure, the word marine makes me think of water from the ocean, surely ocean water has metallic minerals or something in it so maybe that's it. 

4th steep still slightly vegetal but same as the last time I drank it not much else to say but that it's starting to fade at this point, tho I will get another steep I think it is just about spent.

5th steep long time(didn't time it) almost just hot water now the only flavor I get is when I breathe in after a sip, very faint vegetal taste there.

This Tea is has very delicate and light and never was it very strong at all, I think the 2nd steep each time was the best. Thanks to Stacy for the generous sample I had enough for one more session, and I went for it just could not resist.
I tried my usual short steep of just a few seconds and Surprise nice vegetal flavor comes out very faint tho.
Then I did 3 minute steep and added sweetener and Yummy! if sweetened it takes on a honey-like taste, like alfalfa honey, tho I prefer it without the sweetener. 


* Lance is my other half, when I speak of colors in my posts it's him that tells me the colors because I'm Colorblind :) 
**Now YOU can see the color yourself, Did he tell me right?? lol

Lance say it looks like little pea pods or something which I agree, My friend John saw it and said it looks like   wheat to him, either way it is very nice to look at.

 Lance says the steeped leafe looks like Over sized puffed up Rosemary to him lol

Black Snail from Upton Teas and A Rant about mean people :)

This is a pretty good and cheap tea for everyday drinking, it's right up my alley when it come to what I personally want or expect from a tea so I just like Cheap Teas? I don't think Cheap has nothing to do money and a lot less to do with value than one may think, Example You buy second flush blah blah Darjeeling that cost much and highly "valued" by other tea drinkers then you make a cup at home and you are "Um..I don't care for this that just cost me 32$ for 75g BUT!! the day before this happened you may have bought this tea 8$ for 250g and you made a cup of it and you personally love it, to YOU it may be much better than the expensive stuff, So Cheap Tea? I don't think it exists really there is only Good Tea and Bad Tea and Tea that suits YOU personally, If a "Cheap" Tea taste good to you them drink that stuff up! I was once told that I'm "Not a respectable member of the Tea Drinking Community" and that my blog post's are "meaningless" because I "drink and talk of Cheap Tea" WELL I suppose that to this person "Cheap" = "Bad". What was said about Me and the "Tea Community" may very well be true BUT I don't think it's true about cheap tea or if it is true it's because I'm not a good blog writer and NOT because I drink cheap teas, anyways OK So This is a really good "CHEAP" Tea It has notes of cocoa and caramel to me, it is thick and creamy and very tasty, it even goes really well with sweetener and milk/creamer in fact I think I enjoy it strong with milk & sugar best, It really taste like milk chocolate that way, I hate to bring out the sugar and cream but this tea is worth it. Also back on the subject of "Cheap" Teas I don't enjoy this tea better with sugar & milk because it is cheap and needs that to be good, It's quite wonderful just on it's own, there again it's just a personal preference thing, just how I prefer it. This post may be hard to understand and I maybe rambled and talked about "cheap" teas too much but I'm just really tired of mean people online saying mean things to other for no reason at all, I know it's human nature to do such thing but the Internet takes the "HUMAN" out of it and it's much easier online to say mean and hurtful things to a person when you don't have to look them in the eyes and says, hiding behind your computer screen makes YOU a Coward and the fact that I'm NOT calling you out by Name to You precious "Tea Drinking Community" makes me feel like the better person, Yet Again,You Know Who You are!!  I know that thousands of folks probably blogged and status updated about this same thing I know I have before but sometimes it helps to just say what ya gotta say. Another thing about this conversation with this person was their use of term "Tea Drinking Community" as of it were there own private secret social circle and that they are the president or godhead and that all members must be "respected" by this person and such I'm sorry but F@&K THAT!  I Do Not Wish to be part of such a "Community" of mean people, Some "tea" folks I meet online are pretty cool but honestly "most" of them are really standoffish, rude, arrogant or just plain mean, I'm not sure why, Does Tea make folk mean? Do I need to stop drinking it now So I don't end up being that same person? Anyways Sorry for the rant but hey this shit happens so much, not that this post is doing anything about, there is nothing you can do about except just go offline and stay away from such people. OK enough and back to the Tea, like I said I enjoyed this one with milk and sugar not because it needed it but because I just wanted to because it was really good, I like teas this way sometimes I just don't like having to bring out the cream and sugar and all cuz I'm picky and that is a whole different setup from my "usual" but this one really just almost taste like a chocolate flavored Tea with milk and sugar, Really I have had "Milk Chocolate" Flavored Teas that just come nowhere near this one. See don't judge a book by it's cover or a Tea by it's price.

                                           It looks Strong cuz it is, i like it that way :)

                                                                   In different light.

         Not sure how these chicken tenders got on here, Oh Well! I had no pics between BL-CH lol