Tea Social Networking

I just joined steepster.com (check out my profile here: http://steepster.com/mjutan) It is a super awesome site, basically Facebook for tea drinkers. It's really funny that this exists and I really like it. They have a "virtual cupboard" which is hilarious and I just really love the design of the site. Great forum too that helped me on my search for a tea kettle last night.

Anyhoo I've started to post some "tea reviews" on there so I thought I'd copy one over here too. Good times. :)

Lapsang Souchong by Twinings

This was my first foray into Lapsang Souchong and it is pretty tasty… and pretty, pretty, prettttyyy weird. I heard that Winston Churchill liked this tea and that makes sense, it tastes more like a fine bourbon than a tea. :) It’s awfully unusual so don’t serve it to distinguished guests who have only ever drank PG Tips. This is more like a punch in the face than a tea, so be careful. But it definitely has it’s time and place.

Note that it has a very distinctive odor. Put less politely, it STINKS. So if you put it in your tea cupboard, it will spread it’s smell around like an unwanted college roommate. I had mine in the Twinings Box and it couldn’t contain this power house. I had to eventually chuck out the box and just put the tea bags in their sachets into a ziplock bag. That seems to have roughly done the trick so that everything in my tea cupboard doesn’t also taste like Lapsang Souchong. What a crazy tea!

Anyway with all this yapping it’s still a great tea. Seems like probably some people have gone nuts and made a much stronger version of this tea so I suspect despite it’s insanity that this tea is actually “tame” as far as Lapsang’s actually go. I am keen to experiment some more though. It’s very weird, but it’s a fun and interesting tea. Never had anything like it before and it’s an acquired taste, which I quickly acquired. 

Have fun and be careful. Your Grandma (unless she is super awesome) will probably hate this.