The Tao of Tea

I thought it was okay. Pretty average but nondescript tea. It tasted like oolong tea, but there wasn’t much more to discern. I like oolongs on the greener side, but this lacked the brightness that others I’ve tried have exhibited. Had it with food and it was fine for that, but not a particularly interesting tea on its own.

Here is yet another tea I forgot I had in my collection. I went ahead and polished off it at the end of last week. I think I have now finally finished all of the green teas from last year. Drinking the Keemun Maofeng and this back-to-back meant that I spent a couple days overloading on teas from Anhui Province, but hey, it was fun. I used to really love Huangshan Maofeng, but now I’m not so sure. Since I have been gravitating more and more toward green teas from Shandong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Yunnan Provinces, it seems that I have been losing interest in many of the green teas produced elsewhere. By the time I finally got around to this one, it oddly did not seem like it had faded all that much, but I could not muster much of an opinion of it. It wasn’t bad, but unfortunately, it just struck me as being the sort of tea for which I would simply have to be in a certain mood to fully appreciate.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a flash rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 170 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by infusions of 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted pleasant, though fairly fleeting aromas of butter, grass, and green beans. After the rinse, I began to pick up scents of chestnut and pine. The first proper infusion brought forth a slightly malty aroma. In the mouth, I found hints of malt, grass, and chestnut backed by touches of butter, green beans, wet stones, and bizarrely enough, flowers. Subsequent infusions brought out strong pine impressions coupled with more robust notes of chestnut, green beans, butter, malt, grass, and wet stones. The floral impressions remained elusive, though I was reminded somewhat of both chrysanthemum and marigold at times. I also began to note emerging impressions of soybean, minerals, straw, and lettuce underscored by a slightly smoky presence. From the start of the session through its conclusion, the mouthfeel grew more and more mineral-heavy and alkaline. The later infusions were heavy on mineral, wet stone, and malt notes, though I could still just barely detect impressions of chestnut, lettuce, and grass.

A rather interesting tea, I enjoyed its very sharp, hard mouthfeel and pleasant mix of aromas and flavors, but I must knock it somewhat since it faded so quickly. Also, while I enjoyed the sharper, harder-edged mouthfeel for the most part, I would be willing to bet that it won’t be for everyone. If nothing else, this session reminded me of why Huangshan Maofeng normally seems to be a cult tea in the West. In the end, this was pretty good, but I would not want to have it regularly.

One of my goals in the coming year is to try a few more Keemun black teas. To this point, the vast majority of my experience with such teas has been limited to Hao Ya, so Keemun Maofeng is something of a new frontier for me. I finished a one ounce pouch of this one last week and found it to be likable.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a very quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 200 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, I noted aromas of malt, smoke, apricot, and honey coming from the dry tea leaves. After the rinse, I found new aromas of cocoa, roasted nuts, and brown toast. The first infusion introduced a stronger roasted nut aroma and hints of spice on the nose. In the mouth, the liquor offered notes of honey, malt, smoke, cocoa, and roasted nuts. Subsequent infusions brought out the brown toast, apricot, and roasted nut notes in the mouth. With regard to the latter, I was reminded of both roasted almonds and roasted chestnuts. I also began to notes emerging impressions of cinnamon, nutmeg, pine wood, cream, leather, and minerals. The later infusions were dominated by a mix of mineral, pine, malt, cocoa, honey, smoke, and roasted nut notes.

This was not a bad tea at all. It was extremely mellow and approachable for a Keemun black tea, and perhaps most surprisingly, I did not get much, if anything in the way of bitterness or astringency out of it. Though it faded pretty quickly, I very much enjoyed it. It served its purpose as an introduction to Keemun Maofeng. I imagine that it could do the same for others.

One thing I hope to accomplish in the upcoming year is reviewing a few more white teas. I have largely ignored them to this point in my reviewing journey. Though I went through a brief white tea phase back in college, white tea has never really been my favorite type of tea. I have always been more drawn to green, black, and oolong teas. I still hope to become more familiar with white teas, however, and have been taking tentative steps toward accomplishing that objective. I appreciate the fact that they tend to age gracefully and also often work really well iced. I first encountered this tea in iced form and I recall enjoying it. Unfortunately, trying it as a hot tea was a disappointing experience for me.

I noticed prior to brewing some of this up that I was forced to revisit my most frequent complaint with the teas I have been receiving from The Tao of Tea; the leaf quality appeared to be utter shit. There were tons of chopped and broken leaves and a lot of dust. I do not know whether this was a shipping issue or a storage issue on my end. This morning I broke open a pouch of their Nepali Oolong and Keemun Maofeng and the leaf quality looked great in comparison, so it may just be an issue with select teas.

Anyway, I prepared this tea in my familiar, personalized form of gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose leaf material in 4 ounces of 170 F water for 8 seconds. This infusion was chased by 12 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds. 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes. I normally stop at either the 5 or 7 minute mark with white teas, but I just did not want to press on with this one.

Prior to the rinse, the dry leaf material emitted aromas of herbs, hay, straw, and honey. After the rinse, I picked up touches of grass and nuts. The first infusion did not really bring out anything new on the nose. In the mouth, the liquor expressed notes of straw, grass, and hay backed by touches of herbs, nuts, and honey. Subsequent infusions introduced impressions of dry leaves, tree bark, butter, malt, candied orange peel, lemon zest, rose, and minerals. I also picked up on clearly defined notes of chestnut and almond as well as more distinct herbal impressions (thyme, basil, eucalyptus, and rosemary). The later infusions were mostly dominated by notes of malt, minerals, and hay, though I could occasionally pick up fleeting impressions of nuts and herbs.

I know this is supposed to be The Tao of Tea’s introductory white tea, and I do have to give it some credit for working well as an iced tea and having a lot of aroma and flavor components, but I think they can do better than this. The tea lacked longevity and was more astringent than a Bai Mudan should be due to the poor leaf quality. Also, good Bai Mudan should not have much of a grass presence-it has always been my understanding that grassiness in a Bai Mudan is the mark of a lower quality picking. If this were a Shou Mei, I would not be as hard on it, but all I can say is there are much better teas of this type out there at more than reasonable prices. Consider seeking them out first.

Sipdown no. 13 of 2018 (no. 369 total).

First day back at work. I set up the Breville with the last of this to steep tomorrow a.m. along with some extra sencha as I didn’t have enough of this.

It was particularly nice as a work tea today, what with the constant rain and the constant grey skies and all.

P.S. I said in my original note that I was going to count the two packets of this as separate sipdowns, but in the end I combined them in a single tin. So I’m only recording it once.

I also have two packets of this and I’m going to count them separately for sipdown purposes.

It has been a while since I had a genmaicha. It’s one of those things where I never find myself sitting around going, “you know, a genmaicha would really hit the spot now,” but when I have it, I enjoy it.

Usually, when I have genmaicha, the mix also has matcha in it. This one doesn’t, and the tea’s color isn’t green. It’s a medium yellow color and clear. The aroma is as expected — toasted rice.

The flavor isn’t as robust as I recall genmaicha being, but that could be because of the matcha factor, or it could be because the leaf is old (but it was stored in a dark, dry place, and hermetically sealed).

I quite like it, though. It’s a gentler version of a genre I enjoy from time to time.

Sipdown no. 40 of 2018 (no. 396 total).

Nothing to add to previous notes here.

I didn’t rate this the first time I tried it, but I think I’m ready now.

I tried it the past few days as my take it to work tea, steeping at the full 4 minutes suggested.

Even with the additional steeping time, this isn’t among my favorites. It’s tasty enough, and does have a very interesting bamboo shoot-like flavor and aroma. But it’s not a strong enough flavor for me.

Sometimes a less than amazing flavor is perfect for a work tea, because you aren’t distracted after each sip with the thought of how good it is.

In this case, the distraction is me constantly asking myself whether there’s something else I could have done to make a stronger flavor come through.

Don’t look now, but this is the 666th individual tea I’ve written a note about.

Steepster says otherwise, but that’s because there are three mystery teas in my log (teas I never tasted nor possessed, nor even came into the same room with as far as I know). I can’t get rid of them no matter what I do. I’ve written to the Steepster overlords, but I fear that, like the two mystery private message notifications that won’t go away, this is a break that no one knows how to fix.

I have two packets of this. I’m treating them as separate for sipdown purposes because it’s container space I’m really counting.

I didn’t believe the directions when they said that this should be steeped for four minutes, but next time I’m going to try that. 1:30, my usual green tea steeping time, is probably giving this short shrift.

I smell the bamboo in the aroma, a sort of green, woody smell. But this isn’t, right now, giving off as much flavor as I expected and the liquor is very pale. It has a very interesting rose gold color.

I’m not going to rate it yet.

Time to make another effort to reduce the number of backlogged reviews. I polished off a one ounce pouch of this tea a couple weeks ago. I found it to be a very respectable, approachable Yunnan black tea.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a very quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose leaf material in 4 ounces of 200 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry leaf material emitted aromas of honey, cedar, and citrus. After the rinse, I discovered new scents of roasted nuts, wood, cream, and malt. The first proper infusion brought out touches of spice and pine. In the mouth, I found notes of citrus, malt, cream, wood, roasted chestnut, and honey with slight undertones of smoke and chocolate before a mostly nutty, malty finish. Subsequent infusions brought out the cedar and pine in the mouth, as well as clear touches of orange zest and stronger smoke and chocolate flavors. I also began to pick up notes of caramel, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, dates, bread, minerals, and red apple. The later infusions offered fleeting impressions of bread, malt, and minerals with hints of roasted chestnut and orange zest. There was a brief hit of brown sugar sweetness that lingered on the tongue after the swallow.

For the price, this was a rock solid Yunnan black tea. Though it was not quite as smooth or as sophisticated as some others I have tried, for what this was, it was very nice. I didn’t take notes, but I also brewed this as an iced tea and it was good. I definitely think this could make a very good introduction to Yunnan black teas for those who are curious or a reliably good, consistent budget brew for regular consumption.

Revising this to add that I finished it and it’s sipdown no. 4 of 2017 (no. 285 total) because the page appears to be broken. The note below was from tasting last week.

When I last got derailed from my serial obsession with tea into some other obsession for a while, I believe I had picked this one as my next “take it to work” tea.

When I started my new job, which isn’t so new anymore (I’ve been there more than 18 months), I started taking a Timolino of green tea to work every day. Then I discovered that the company made Numi teas available in bags, and they had a couple of greens so I got lazy and stopped making the tea before I went into work. Instead, I started making it at work. After a while, I started to get tired of the two greens, then I stopped drinking tea for a while.

Which brings us to yesterday, when I went back to trying to establish the Timolino habit. I think I had had this before but I hadn’t ever written a note about it.

Now, unfortunately, like pretty much all of my tea it is rather far past it’s “tastes best by” date, but I’ve never let that stop me before. The dry leaves range in color from a medium-dark green to a silvery green and they’re geometric and stick like. They remind me of what herbals with lemon grass in them look like. They have a sweet, grassy, almost haylike smell.

The tea is a dark golden color and clear. It has a grassy, sweet aroma.

It tastes pretty much like it smells. Rather refreshing without being too drying in the mouth. It’ll be a pleasant commuting tea for as long as it lasts. I could see buying something like this again, maybe. Hard to know at this point as I don’t ever see myself buying more tea given how much I still have.

Today was rough. I ended the previous day with a very strong beer (DKML by Founders Brewing Company, a 14.2% abv malt liquor aged in bourbon barrels) and woke up feeling loopy and weak. By the time I took my morning tea, I was feeling even worse. The tea hit my stomach like a very large fist and I ended up nauseated. After a couple unhappy and unproductive hours at the office, I called it a day and went home to recover. To be fair, I think my rough go of it today was more due to the night before and general fatigue though, so I can’t really place all of the blame on this tea. It was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Now, before I go any further, let’s back up a bit. At some point late last year, I started buying up Dan Congs like crazy because I realized I was not very familiar with them. I bought this one, two other Dan Congs, and a roasted oolong blend from The Tao of Tea at the same time. After receiving them, they were all stored in one of my sealed tea totes. I broke open said tote over the weekend and began cleaning it out. I had and still have so much tea on hand that I decided to sort out some stuff to give to friends and family. Pretty soon, I found myself developing a thirst and decided to try this tea on a whim. I had been doing some research on traditional Dan Cong brewing methods anyway and couldn’t wait to try to adapt some of them to my preferred gongfu procedure. Upon opening the bag, however, I was crushed when I discovered that it contained mostly broken Mi Lan Xiang leaves. Soldiering on, I plucked out 8 grams of the most intact leaves, primed my 4 ounce gaiwan, cleaned and primed my cup, rinsed the leaves, and proceeded to brew. The first infusion was only 5 seconds. It was followed by infusions of 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted fruity, slightly floral aromas with a hint of woodiness. The rinse allowed me to pick up distinct impressions of honey, wood, damp grass, butter, nectarine, peach, and yuzu. The first infusion brought out vanilla, orchid, and grapefruit pith. There was a hint of nuttiness too. In the mouth, stone fruits, honey, butter, grass, and wood ruled the day, though I could kind of pick out some underlying nutty and floral impressions. Subsequent infusions brought out the vanilla, orchid, yuzu, and grapefruit pith impressions in the mouth. I also began to pick up impressions of roasted almond, chestnut, cashew, cattail shoots, apricot, sour plum, lemon, pomelo, osmanthus, marigold, and petunia. Minerals showed up too, as did something of a muddy, almost clay-like earthiness. The later infusions were earthy, woody, and grassy with a more distinct mineral presence and faint wisps of citrus, roasted nuts, butter, and stone fruits.

Despite the lower-than-expected leaf quality (to be fair, I did purchase this tea very shortly before it went out of stock), this oolong delivered a lot of flavor at a very reasonable price point. The slick soapiness one would generally expect from this type of oolong was there, but it wasn’t all that distracting. It also had a little more staying power than I would have expected. I would almost be willing to bet that a full leaf version of this tea would be amazing. As is, this was rock solid and would make a very nice introduction to the joys of Mi Lan Xiang.

Seemed like kind of a bland, generic oolong to me. Perfectly decent for drinking with a meal or mindlessly at work, but nothing particularly noteworthy to make it distinctive or a favorite. There are oolongs out there that I like better and will buy instead in the future.

I think everyone who has been reading my reviews realizes that I have been going to great lengths to finish the green teas I have bought over the past year. This was one of my later acquisitions and I recently bumped it up in the rotation since I tend to like Yunnan Mao Feng green teas. I seem to recall buying this because the price was ridiculously low for an organic tea. That should have tipped me off to the possibility that this may not have been the highest quality organic green tea, but I could not resist. I learned a lesson from that. This was the most boring Mao Feng I have ever had by a long shot.

I stuck with a Western-style preparation for this tea. I simply could not motivate myself to gongfu it. For one thing, most of the leaves were broken, so I figured it would make a mess. Also, it just was not that interesting. I started off by steeping a teaspoon of loose leaf material in approximately 8 ounces of 175 F water for 2 minutes. I then conducted a second infusion at 3 minutes and stopped there.

Prior to infusion, the dry leaf material emitted mildly smoky, grassy aromas with a hint of nuttiness. After infusion, I picked up aromas of hay, smoke, grass, and pine with touches of chestnut and citrus. In the mouth, I mostly picked up fairly weak notes of malt, hay, grass, lemon, chestnut, pine, smoke, and minerals. The second infusion produced a slightly stronger nose with greater citrus, smoke, and pine presences and a touch of indistinct floral quality. The mouth followed suit with stronger chestnut, pine, smoke, malt, and lemon notes to complement a growing minerality and lingering touches of hay and grass. I got a little bit of floral character, but could not place it and quickly gave up trying. I also picked up hints of asparagus and seaweed.

This was a disappointment. I cannot do much more than reiterate that I found this tea to be boring. Actually, I will go a step further and call it unengaging as well. I definitely would not recommend this to anyone looking for a good example of a Yunnan Mao Feng.

This is an absolute morning favourite of mine. I always gaiwan this tea.
It’s beautifully light and refreshing, nice lingering nutty and autumnal notes with a light caramel finish.
Wonderful tea, I normally get about 3-5 infusions with a 2-3 tablespoon serving.

I really like the idea – to preserve old-growth tea “forests” by harvesting their uniquely-flavored tea leaves. But this was simply not the tea for me, unfortunately. I’ve stated before I’m not much of a black tea drinker, but I do typically like Earl Greys. This one, however, had a far too dry character, and much too little bergamot to be among the few black teas that I enjoy. I hope others like it to keep the preservation project going but I won’t buy it again

Backlog/Sipdown

I had this one on Sunday night after coming home from a mini tea trip. I wanted something to drink before my friend had gone home, so we pulled this sample out to finish. We mainly talk about the teas we have and rarely spend too much time writing notes. I find that working something out verbally with another is much easier than writing. We do take brief notes on the tea (I’ll take a lot more when I’m alone), but there’re times when neither of us want to write, so we just enjoy the tea with a vinyl, board games with my wife, or outdoors on a hike. Either way, it is better to share tea with little to no notes, rather than alone with an abundance of notes, I suppose.

Notes: I noted that the tea took a little bit to “open up.” After the third steep, there were hints of “fruit in the aftertaste,” but we were unsure what fruit we were tasting. Finally, we concluded at steep # 7 that throughout the session, the tea became smoky, but less of Lapsang and more of burning cigarette in the distance; while tasting a pear almost immediately on the tongue (which faded just as quickly).

I thought that this was a nice tea and I am grateful to have tried it. Thank you again eastkyteaguy!

amazin taste

UPDATE: By adding a ton more leaves per cup than recommended and steeping it for a very long time, you can discern a little green tea flavor with a slight citrus note. It still doesn’t seem like anything special to me though.

I don’t know what’s going on with this one, but I’m getting almost no flavor of any sort out of it. I have tried steeping per the recommendations from Tao, I have tried adding more leaves per cup, and I have tried upping the steeping time to nearly 10 minutes. Yet every time I somehow end up with what feels and looks like a mug of plain hot water. It’s maybe like an exceedingly light white tea. No sign of citrus flavor or aroma either.

This has been my evening tea for the past several days. I bought this one some months ago, but just never made the time to crack it open and try it. By the time I got around to it, I wondered whether or not it had started to fade. Fortunately, this tea lasted very well in storage. It was lively and flavorful in the mouth, demonstrating no obvious signs of age.

I prepared this tea using a two step Western infusion process. Per The Tao of Tea’s recommendation, I used two full teaspoons of loose leaves rather than one. It isn’t actually necessary to use that much, but I found that the additional teaspoon really focuses the already powerful lotus aroma and flavor. Rather than steeping at the recommended 160-170 F, I opted to steep this tea at my usual 175 F because I personally find this temperature to work best for me when I am brewing non-Japanese green teas. Anyway, the first infusion was 2 minutes in 8 ounces of 175 F water. The second infusion was 3 minutes.

Prior to infusion, I noted that this tea emitted a powerful aroma of lotus. It was still there after infusion, though aromas of corn husk, damp grass, hay, and malt from the tea base were apparent. In the mouth, the lotus was quick to make its presence known. By mid-palate, gentler notes of cream, malt, damp grass, corn husk, hay, and straw arrived to provide a semblance of balance. The finish was short, smooth, and packed with creamy, malty, and exotic floral tones. The second infusion was predictably milder and smoother. The grainier, grassier, and maltier notes were more pronounced, though the lotus was still front and center. The only real difference that I noticed was a hint of minerals on the tail end of the finish.

As far as flavored/scented green teas go, this one was quite nice. I especially appreciated that the tea base was just aromatic and flavorful enough to provide some depth and balance. Too often I find that teas of this sort, especially those offered at lower price points, can be painfully one-dimensional. That was not the case with this tea. At the price I paid, it was pretty much a steal. Check this one out if you enjoy floral teas.

This is a nice toasted oolong; the kind i mean when I say “Chinese Restaurant Tea”. It is mellow and has some notes of plum when sipping. There is a bit of an aftertaste that is reminiscent of green apple tartness. I think i either need to steep it longer or add more tea. It was a little weaker than I like based on instructions on Tao of Tea site.

This is a very well rounded and savory Green Tea with a lot of subtle flavor if brewed correctly. It is very smooth almost silky and leaves a wonderful moist aftertaste lacking astringency. I don’t get as much of the “buttery” mouth feel as I have had in other similar Greens which is a little disappointing but the tea is still very satisfying nevertheless. I would purchase this again for sure.

Well, I did it again. I started steeping this tea and then my co-worker distracted me into searching the web for a dog she could adopt and then I realized it had been steeping for at least 5 mins. So, the good news is that this tea can be completely abused and still taste ok. I’m still not finding much interesting about it but it is drinkable.