Catherine Baratheon Send Message

Sipdown!

My 1st one since getting back into tea as a special interest 2 months ago. Since then I’ve amassed 5 months worth of tea, assuming I only have one session a day.

Haha the way I deep dive..

Anyway this chamomile is often a fine line between weak and tasting oversteeped but when you get it just right, it is lovely.

Shall be trying more chamomile from different brands now though.

Presence is everything.

I got to brew and drink this with all the time in the world today. And it becomes a completely different tea when I do so.

Having this for the first time while I was rushing to get to work, I could not notice a single thing about it other than ‘Chinese black tea.’ But today, I took a sick day and just sat with the tea and my experience of it.

100C, Western style with 1 tablespoon in 200mL for 3 steeps. Afterwards, I contemplated what tea to have next, and then promptly chose to brew another tablespoon of the Imperial Golden Needle.

Beyond words and descriptions, I simply enjoyed it without bothering the cognitive mind with specifics. I like when vendors are detailed with their tasting notes, because it gives me the option to search out those notes in the tea without bothering to go down memory lane to retrieve those impressions myself.

Power of suggestion. Which is what most of reality is, anyway. But sincerely, I agree with Brendan’s descriptions. The chocolate-covered strawberry note comes out more as the tea cools, by the way. It’s one of those teas where I notice that the temperature it is drank makes a change to the notes in each sip.

Longevity isn’t quiiite there for this tea, but maybe other premium oolongs have spoiled me for that.

Enjoyed this for many steeps nonetheless and it was a wonderful character in my day.

Oolongs mean I’m having a day off at home where I can really observe how the tea changes across 10+ steeps. I lost count.

I also haven’t kept proper track of temperatures, steeping times, leaf to water ratios and the like. It hasn’t been a measuring kinda mood for me, and I love that.

But I do note a vague recollection of enjoying this tea more when brewed at 85C for a few steeps, then gradually increasing to 90C, 95C and 100C later on.

Shall try it at 100C with flash steeps at some point, because I’ve read that’s the way to brew Dan Cong. And it’s my first Dan Cong, so I’m open to all suggestions.

I loved this so much after only maybe four sessions, that I’ve dedicated a clay teapot to Dan Congs already.

The peppermint adds a slight refreshing element to the blend which makes me hungrier than chai normally does. It feels very nice to support digestion after a meal.

Brewed stovetop and into a tumbler to sip during client sessions. Hit. the. spot.

I mean, yes they’re talking about all kinds of trauma and challenging material, but the chai being thisss good at the same time.. life is still good y’know?

Enjoyed this light-medium roast Da Hong Pao. I love bright notes of fruit nectar in rock oolongs. Lingering aftertaste, which is always much appreciated.

After 3 steeps Western style-ish with 1 heaped tablespoon of leaves with 200mL water in yixing, the brightness peters out and it doesn’t become the most interesting tea in the world but I continued to give it another 3 steeps at 100C for a long unknown number of minutes just to keep drinking a tea without adding too much caffeine.

For the price, it’s very reasonable quality. I only bought 2 × 7g samples and wouldn’t purchase more. The next size up is 100g, and there’s so many other teas I’d rather try.

Oak, vanilla, charcoal are the predominant notes for me in the first 1-3 steeps. After that, it becomes more earth and honey. I lose count of how many steeps I get from this. Probably around 10.

I don’t even know how to describe my style of brewing this. It’s not quite Western, gongfu, or grandpa. I do a heaped tablespoon in 400mL yixing for my rock oolongs, filled halfway with water. I don’t count how long each steep takes, just whenever I feel like pouring it out into the pitcher. 90C for a few steeps, then 95C for a few steeps, then 100C after maybe steep 5 plus pouring boiling water over the pot to extract what I can from the later steeps.

That’s the beauty of a proper day off when I don’t have to really consider linear clock time. The concept of seconds and minutes just become abstract and irrelevant. I just pour when I feel like it and while the day away.

Very nostalgic to order from Whispering Pines again, and it was the main thing which made me feel justified in the absurdity of ordering tea which went from China to the U.S. to Australia where I live. Mostly I’d just order direct from China.

But the ethos of Whispering Pines is very beautiful to me and I like supporting that.

How lovely to be able to take my time and enjoy this tea properly on a day off. I had previously pounded this down in a rush for work and did I notice much about it? No, because tea appreciation is so often about presence of mind and it just hadn’t been there.

I’m not sure if I oversteep my teas in comparison to the average Western-style brewer, but I always have to use a solid heaped tablespoon of leaves per 200mL to get the strength and depth I like from a tea. It’s contrary to the half a tablespoon suggested, but I’m getting rather good at brewing intuitively.

Would love to have presence of mind to gongfu this one day.