Strawberry Leaf Follow-Up #1 (Aroma’s)

Original Article:

Strawberry Leaf

Cracking open the jars, it was pretty disappointing for the most part. I felt for 2 of them the aroma was unpleasant without any redeeming qualities, 2 unpleasant with redeeming qualities, 2 not unpleasant but not impressive, and 1 impressive. I found that the aroma of dry egg shells was prevalent in almost all of the leafs, with dusty furnace being the second most common aroma.

Yellow (impressive) the only leaf which I enjoyed outright.
The aroma is less potent than green, and while the underlying aroma is similar, it also smells slightly sweet. There is no egg shell aroma, no dust.

Nectarine (not unpleasant but not impressive)
Eggshells, slightly sweet but also sour, dusty furnace.

70:30 Red:Green (not unpleasant but not impressive)
Popcorn kernels, dusty furnace, old well lived in carpet. The aroma in comparison to ‘Red’ is slightly less sweet.

Green (unpleasant with redeeming qualities)
The aroma is potent, first of all, it reminds me of spider webs. It is unique and unpleasant, comparable to hair oil or ear wax. A redeeming quality is that it also smells of corn pops cereal and how I imagine burned mature riesling would smell like.

Red (unpleasant with redeeming qualities)
Dust, egg shells, aroma is less potent and ‘wider’ than Green. Moistening the leaves doesn’t change the aroma, it is dusty through and through. It is one of the few that smells sweet like the yellow leaf.

Green-Yellow-Orange-Red (unpleasant)
Egg shells, mostly similar to the aromas of Green and Red. Eggshell and hair wax stand out the most. The aroma is the most similar to 70:30 Green:Red.

70:30 Green:Red (unpleasant)
Egg shells, the hair oil quality is very strong and almost makes me gag. It also smells like wet dog. There is a fruitiness like sour plums.

*An observation I have made at the end of writing this article is that, while I said there is no egg shell aroma in the yellow leaf, egg shell is the aroma of the leaf in very high concentrations. I probably have the least yellow of all of the jars, so the concentration is much lower. Perhaps that is why I thought it is more appealing.

The next phase of the test is to measure out a ratio as I do for tea and infuse the leaf into water. I will take another set of notes at that time and create another post.