Another gongfu session of this from last night.
I followed the advice mrmopar gave after my previous session and stuck with shorter steeps at a lower temperature this time around. 6.5g of leaf in a gaiwan with 90C water and steeps ranging from 5-30 seconds.
Mrmopar was right – brewing at a lower temperature with short steeps does get rid of a lot of that bitterness. I think I’ll stick to 90C as my default temperature for young shengs from now on.
How was this tea based on these new steeping parameters? Fruity, vegetal, with a typical “sheng” tart flavour. It kind of reminded me of vanilla yogurt. No smoke. Some astringency on later steeps as it coated my tongue. However, near the end of the session I was developing a headache and I felt bloated from having over a litre of liquid in my belly.
This wasn’t bad, but I don’t think I’ve been quite as seduced by this poundcake as other Steeptsterites. Considering that Paul from White2Tea has announced he only has about 100 cakes of this left in his new warehouse, I’m happy to let others have their chance with it.
In the meantime, I used up about half of the free sample I got from the W2T sale. I’m going to send the rest off to Ubacat, since she expressed some interest in it.
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Woo Hoo! Glad it worked. This is a bruiser if steeped too long. Just on a side note if you rinse a tea and let it sit a while for allowing the water to open it up a bit it works pretty well.
I did an experiment using a scale a while back. I put 10 grams of tea in a Gaiwan and set the tare to zero. I then rinsed the tea and reweighed it and guess how much it weighed…..
20g?
Very close. It’s funny how that dry tea can absorb that water that quickly. That’s why I usually rest it after the rinse to wake up a bit.
Woo Hoo! Glad it worked. This is a bruiser if steeped too long. Just on a side note if you rinse a tea and let it sit a while for allowing the water to open it up a bit it works pretty well.
I did an experiment using a scale a while back. I put 10 grams of tea in a Gaiwan and set the tare to zero. I then rinsed the tea and reweighed it and guess how much it weighed…..
20g?
Very close. It’s funny how that dry tea can absorb that water that quickly. That’s why I usually rest it after the rinse to wake up a bit.