Rishi Tea

Bright/neon green liquor. Very fresh, grassy. Not bad, but not my style.

Red berry fruit, hibiscus, rosehip layer beautifully over the earthy ginseng. Taste is really good. This is a superb elixir.

Deep Reddish brown amber. No smoke and not tons of “toasted” flavor but definite rich, gently, slow roasted notes. Some juicy, subtle plum fruit. Verging on black tea. Just not a ton of dimension.

Reddish greenish amber. Substantial toasted barley notes. Distinctive and different than the Adagio Ti Kuan Yi. Nice. Brisk, round and satisfying palate. Solid.

This was a sachet. Broken pieces. Nice, strong citrusy aroma. Again, like the ‘supreme’, missing the luxuriousness and vanilla notes of my favorite earl greys. Citrus is overpowering.

Lemony citrus aroma from the leaves. This brews to be aromatic but is more high tone perfume and less cream than my preference. Missing vanilla and cornflower aroma. Very brisk, needs milk and honey.

Can definitely smell the Valerian strongly. Also notes of rose and fennel. Juicy almost red berry quality. Really nice… Next morning update: pretty hungover! One tablespoon too much for me, need to go with half in the future.

Like red zinger with a more rooty, earthy taste.

All mint. Very strong and very nice texture and sweetness, but the mint really overpowers.

Delicious. Buttery, rich. Very good quality. Soothing nighttime tea.

Really great. Pineapple, cupcake, hefty cinnamon. An all time favorite herbal tea.

Great balance, with a real sweetness from the fennel/licorice root.

Thanks so much to Roswell Strange and VariaTea for organizing this TTB! I had a lovely time with it, and it will be moving on to AJRimmer tomorrow. I made this hojicha from the Strange VariaTea TTB a few times and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I can say that the sarsaparilla’s root beer note is very strong when this is cold, in a nice and almost tingly way. Hot, I just really struggled to describe the flavor or even decide whether I actively liked it. Jury very much still out. I ended up keeping it because I couldn’t get the box closed without taking out another tea, so I chose this one because a) I like hojicha a lot, b) I definitely like it when it’s cold, and c) I’m intrigued by how difficult it is for me to describe it when it’s hot.

Strange VariaTea traveling (herbal) tea (powder) box? I’ve been wanting to try Rishi for a while, so it was nice to see this in here. The powder itself is kind of a muddy and unimpressive yellow, which made me apprehensive. As soon as the water hit it, though, a glorious, spot-on aroma of passionfruit wafted up. My apologies to everyone after me who won’t get to drink this because I will be keeping it. It made for a really great morning latte. Bonus: the excellent and very specific kind of sweet-tart of passionfruit brought back pleasant memories of fresh fruit on our Taiwan trip earlier this year.

derrrrrk. Thank you for this.

The mountain air is getting chilly and the leaves are dropping in fits… I love having seasons again. I opened up my drawer of magical powdered things in anticipation of some kind of cozy-thick latte thing… ended up with a lukewarm cup of summer in front of the fire.

I maybe leaned a little light on my powder-to-water ratio here, so the faint reminiscence of Theraflu is totally on me. I always think of gooseberry as a kind of nondescript flavor, so rightly expected the passionfruit to be the leading layer…. but hot damn, if the scent of summer in the backyard - drying grass and sweaty bodies and sun-hot gooseberries - weren’t exactly what my brain found when it went digging.

I’ll save the rest of this for next summer, I think. Dreamy.

Rishi recommends gong-fu brewing 8-9g in 150-200ml @212F for 45 sec for the first 4 steeps.
Per Rishi: “Smooth and silky with a deep fermentation taste and sweet and malty notes.”

Unfortunately, it’s not sweet, rich, viscous, or full-bodied.

I’ve tried 210F & 30 sec. I’ve also tried my normal brewing parameters. It was ok, but nothing impressive.

Pot-brewed per package recommendations & also by my usual gung fu method.
Cert. Organic, but lacking in flavor. There are much better choices available in shou pu-erh.

Dry aroma: Barely there but if it were fresh I am sure it would be stronger with woody notes.
Liquor aroma: Malty. Slightly woody.
Flavor: I would not call this robust. But to be fair my parents don’t drink tea much and I don’t drink tea bags much. Also don’t know how long this tea has been in their cupboard let alone been around. Granted the packaging looks fresh. Still…. I think this could be stronger. It’s not terrible but the slightly woody, slight varnish, slight malt… it’s too much slight for an English Breakfast.

From beerandbeancurd!

Made with cold non-homogenized 2% milk and stirred. At first the beet powder clumped a little on top, but after letting it sit in the work fridge for several hours, the mixture completely homogenized. Color is like one of those flesh-colored crayons with a pinkish tint.

The taste is a near copy of restaurant Thai iced tea but more natural tasting. Less thick (which I appreciate) because it’s not made with condensed milk — really satisfying and chuggable. The beet extract powder with its earthy sweetness lightly balances the richer cane sugar taste. Am I imagining the floral suggestion of the gardenia flower extract?

I don’t understand how this has such a spot-on flavor with only 4 ingredients! That black tea extract powder must have a major malty-vanilla tilt to it.

Not only would this powder be perfect for people that like to cook Thai/Asian food at home, but I also think it would make a killer ice cream.

This came as a free sample with my order. I’m not the biggest fan of houjicha, but the toasted, nutty flavor does seem pretty perfect for the cooler fall temperatures we’re getting here in Wisconsin this week! Probably not something I’d order again, but I’ll sip down this sample.