Tuesday TeaDay 1/10/12 Lemon of the Year 2011?

[Chip]

Greetings TeaFriends, welcome to TeaDay. Please stop in and share what is in your cup with us throughout the day. Also discuss the topic of the day.

We have been discussing $$$ of recent tea orders. Please continue to discuss this topic.

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. "Lemon of the Year 2011." What was your "lemon" or worst in the realm of tea for 2011? Please share details.

We are looking forward forward to sharing lemons with everyone today. Bottoms up.

[Nenugal]

Lemon of the year was some very horrible cooked pu-erh mini-cakes, that I got very cheaply from somewhere on ebay.

[brandon]

Funny you say lemon. Someone encouraged me to try "citrus sorbet" blend by teas etc. We wondered if the flavorants were food grade or industrial. Intense aroma of pinesol. Mildly caustic mouthfeel to match. Truely the foulest tea of the year. I am told... It is a best seller.

[bryan_drinks_tea]

unfortunately the 'lemon' tea for this year was a kuradashi sencha, a light steam, and a fukamushi - all from Yuuki-cha. It looks like tea producers in Kyushu were a little rushed this year, and the tea came out tasting rather off. what a shame!

[Xell]

I got some samples of second flush white tea, this tea had almost everything what i dislike in tea and had nothing, what i liked. Doubt i will ever again try white tea.

Really enjoying peaceful days after new year and drinking lots of genmaicha and hojicha. Those teas are really good to keep me warm, now i can see white breath even inside my room Good sencha doesn't really work well, since i can't use boiling water

[debunix]

This year it was a tossup between an 'oolong' from a non-traditional source that was as aggressively bitter as any black tea I've ever had, and a jasmine that was so strong it was like drinking perfume, horrid stuff despite being made with decent green tea. The jasmine was the winner, because it took longer to get the taste out of my mouth than the 'oolong'.

Today, Kirameki sencha from O-Cha, a delicious antidote to the memories of those unpleasant teas.

[brlarson]

My worst tea from last year wasn't bad at all, it just had flavors and aromas that seemed faded no matter how I varied the brewing parameters. It was an organic sencha from Miyazaki.

Started the day with Manten matcha again. Mmmm... very tasty.

[Chip]

I am going with a gyokuro (fortunately just a sample) that I received from friends at Adagio who received a bunch of sealed samples from someone in Japan wanting their business. The stuff was so disgusting, I could not even finish a single steep. It was about a year ago, and fortunately my olfactory memory has protected me from permanent harm by forgetting what it actually smelled and tasted of/like. I recall the term putrid.

I rarely toss a tea after one bad attempt ... hoping to give teas a second chance. Not this time, straight to the "circular file."

Began the TD with Guricha from Xell with the Mrs. Only happy tastes and aromas!!!

[teaisme]

I can only think of one small order as a lemon.
A few samples of semi aged sheng from 90's and 2000 were pretty disappointing and strange to me , I ordered roughly 30g of 3 different ones, two being really unremarkable and one being good but strange and out of balance, with nice huigan but oddly thin and moldy while smelling more dry and being sold as a dry tea from 90's......These three had almost no pull at all for me to rebrew (though I did, experimenting with different parameters) so likely the remainder 1/3 of the samples will just sit and age, hopefully for the better

Some tilohun from jing at work right now. Good stuff.

[fire_snake]

Some sort of black tea from Yunnan Sourcing (a sample) that tasted like feet. Nothing I tried improved the taste.

Christian

[Dinahsaur]

I found a gorgeous looking green tea from a stand in Kunming. It smelled lovely and the color was beautiful. Not long after I returned home, I gave it a try, carefully brewing it to green tea standards. The aroma of the liquor was pretty off-putting and, when I took a sip, it tasted almost sewery. It was plain gross.

I sort of figured it was just not to my taste because I'm not overly fond of green teas and only enjoy them periodically. So I gave the tea to a friend. Turns out my assumption was wrong. It was just straight up nasty.

A close second were some mini tuo pu-erh that I picked up somewhere. I don't really remember much about it, but I just remember it tasting more like dirt than the nice "earthy" quality I enjoy in a good pu-erh.

[SlientSipper]

I went to a tea lounge and ordered a Pu-Erh.
It was almost tasteless.
Tasted more like foul tap water.

Then there was this "hippie matcha"
tasted nothing like matcha...
didn't taste like green tea either.
it made me want to vote for Ron Paul for some reason...

[sencha]

Then there was this "hippie matcha"
tasted nothing like matcha...
didn't taste like green tea either.
it made me want to vote for Ron Paul for some reason...

I'm not so sure that was green tea you were drinking...

For me, the greatest disappointment of 2011 was Upton's Chinese sencha. I can't say you guys didn't warn me though...