New Tasting Notes
This tea is a prime example of a “green-tasting” oolong (in my opinion). While it is not my preferred flavor profile, it’s still a tasty cup. I’m getting nutty, lightly fruity, asparagus-like notes from it. The first cup seemed quite vegetal to me, but the second steep has calmed down remarkably. Both cups are smooth as can be. A big “thank you” goes to Jillian for sending me a sample of this. She mentioned Wuyi Yancha’s “re-steeping power” in one of her posts. I’m looking forward to getting a few more cups out of this!
Today I’m focusing on samples. I hope. Well, that’s the goal. Who knows how I’ll actually do on it. I’m feeling sort of blah due to the combo of a sinus headache, a spider bite, crappy weather and miscellaneous other stuff that I won’t whine about here. But on the plus side, I have this tea from Angrboda to try and I’m quite excited about that!
Okay, I officially hate this tea because it’s delicious and there is no way for me to easily buy more. It probably has the cleanest end I’ve ever had with a smoky tea. Heavy smoke on the front followed by a faintly sweet note that lifts the taste a bit and then a clean, smooth finish. But it doesn’t skimp on the smoky so it ends up being a strong, bold but still smooth and almost gentle tea with hordes of flavor. This tea is so nice and soft spoken while it smacks me around with bold smoky that I can’t help but love it and want to cuddle with it.
3g/8oz
Preparation
And that’s why I nearly had a panic attack in the shop when they told me they had taken it off the shelf because nobody else was buying it. Didn’t even think twice when offered the rest of what they had. First time I’ve ever bought a POUND of tea and only one kind!
Yummmm.
I can totally understand and would have done the same thing – it’s pretty delicious!
I think I’m on a Yunnan kick today. This tea has beautiful leaves and has a rich malty smell. I get notes of chocolate and caramel with a slightly peppery finish. The steeped tea has a sugary raisin smell. The body and mouthfeel are full and this is just a very nice tea to sit and linger over.
Preparation
I received an AWESOME package from MandyB today! Thanks Mandy! This is the first one I am trying…and enjoying it. It’s earthy yet semi-juicy. It’s masculine – yet a little feminine. It’s Bold but not too bold. Pretty good, indeed!
Preparation
I can’t believe that I have taken this long to write about this tea. I have almost finished the tin and this is my first note. I love this tea. It is my go to morning tea during the fall. I seem to change morning teas with the seasons. I usually drink this one with just some unprocessed natural amber sugar, but this morning I thew a splash of my wife’s “skinny caramel machiato” coffee creamer for a little tea latte and I must say this was the best I have ever had this tea taste. The milky creamer brought out the rich malty taste that the tea naturally has and the caramel just enhanced this. I highly recommend giving this a try.
Preparation
I like Black Dragon. It is lighter than other Lapsang Souchongs I’ve tried, but that’s not bad. This tea might be a good beginning brew for anyone who is trying to develop an affinity for the Lapsang Souchong. It could be a staple for those who like their Lapsangs to taste a little bit less like the dregs of a Webber Grille. I can certainly see this tea as a cupboard staple.
SECOND STEEP: In the second steep the natural sweetness really emerged full-throttle (if sweet can throttle this did it!). I still like the tea a lot. My affinity for smoked/sweet flavors is all the more satisfied by the second steep. It feels a bit as if somebody put a very sweet Bar-B-Q sauce in my tea.
Preparation
My stomach was not quite ready for the holiday food that I had yesterday. I feel awful today. Today’s tea is all about recovering a sense of balance. Golden Moon calls this the most gentle of green teas, and gentle sounds reeeeeealy nice.
Maybe two minutes was too short of a steep, because I am getting barely anything – hot water with the faintest…I don’t even know how to describe it. Hay? Not really grass, definitely not floral… Even though it’s not firecrackers or revelations, it’s very nice for a queasy tum.
Steep 2, 3 minutes: string beans!!! Again, very light. Strangely enjoyable in a “tonic” sort of way.
Steep 3: lighter string beans. Still comforting, but I think this is it for these leaves.
I enjoyed the second steep the most. It really did help settle my stomach and I liked drinking string beans a lot more than I liked drinking asparagus :) I won’t be buying a tin of this, but I’d be into trying snow sprout from some other tea companies. It’s a really nice tea for when you need to tilt the scale a little more to the wholesome side of things.
Preparation
The dry leaves of this tea have some very unexpected high brightness to them.
The wet leaves are powerfully dark green, but not muddy.
The cup is a vibrant yellow green color and smells more like the dry leaf than the wet.
The low temperature and extremely short steeping time means this is a tea about which one ought be paranoid about over-steeping by even 15 seconds, let alone more. This stuff will get into kale and kombu territory quickly, I think.
I seem to have timed it right, because the cup is surprisingly soft, but not weak.
This is one of those teas that makes you want to act like you’re in a Japanese movie for the whole day. Something meta-physical with deep symbolism in the cinematography. Traditional tea ceremonies juxtaposed with neon loglo and racer motorcycles. Seedy night clubs and Shinto shrines. You do everything in swaggering slow motion in a slight drizzle, but are kept centered and focused on your task by the carefully wrapped flask of this tea you always have with you. Some things in the land of the rising sun will never change. A flock of birds startles across the sky.
Baby spinach in a lemon vinegar, fresh hay, and something almost like candied ginger without the bite.
Preparation
I’m really beginning to love this tea for breakfast. Its a Yunnan and I’m learning to love Yunnan teas. Its rich and malty with chocolate and caramel notes. It has that raisiny sugary smell which is nice in the mornings. The tea has very light astringency and no bitterness I can find. All this and I don’t need to adjust temp and the amount of leaf to get it. One teaspoon of leaf to 8 oz of boiling water, 4 minutes and there you have it. I really don’t need anything complicated in the mornings. Thank you Rishi and Yunnan.
Preparation
The gaiwan method is good for more than just greens, I realised. And then I found this baby in the cupboard where it had been stuffed in a tin and forgotten about. I’ve had it before, brewed western style. I wasn’t sure how much leaf to use, but I winged it and used too little. I can’t remember much about other than I was a bit disappointed about how weak it seemed.
Trying it with the gaiwan today. Still not sure how much leaf to use and I couldn’t really judge it on how much space it took up in the gaiwan, because it’s so compressed. So I crossed my fingers and then added a little extra with an thought to the first weak attempt.
I did two pre-steeps of 30-45 seconds each.
First real steep was at 30 seconds It smells like a rainy day. Wet dogs. Also earthy, but a mild sort of earthy. Mostly though, I’m thinking umbrellas and wet dogs.
The flavour is sort of bitterness dissolved in rain water. I definitely used too much leaf here. It’s almost coffee-y and this is NOT a good thing. It really tastes very much like tea that has been served from a pot usually used for coffee.
BLERGH!
It’s very disappointing and I just can’t drink this, so out it goes. Good thing about the gaiwan is that it’s actually a very small amount of tea being discarded here.
Second steep was also 30 seconds and I’ve taken about half the leaf out of the gaiwan. That helped. The aroma remains the same, but it’s smoothed out a bit. The taste is earthier and definitely better. But it’s still a bit bitter, and not really…
Well, it’s drinkable, okay?
I kind of wish I could try to recreate the traditional tibetan way of brewing here, but since danish grocery stores don’t stock yak butter, that’s not possible. Maybe I’ll try an approximation with cow butter later on, but I’m not promising anything.
For the moment I’m not really terribly impressed, but it does have a certain win-factor in being a compressed pu-erh. Never had that before.
(Tea 1 of 8 in the my-boyfriend-is-awesome series)
I think I’ve already established that I have a mega sweet tooth. On rare occasions, I’ll try a tea, be satisfied with its flavor as is, and opt out of adding sugar or honey.
It is a testament to the flavor of this tea that I actually tried it sweetened, THEN unsweetened, but liked it much better unsweetened. That’s a new one!
So I got two boxes of this and have been rapidly converting people to join in its wonder. I can see where people that want the strong, earthy mouthfeel of a pu-erh are disappointed, however, I think that regardless of it’s name, this is just a wonderfully flavored black tea.
Still converting followers to join me in drinking this tea, six down, many more to go…
This will be the first in a short series of backlogs, I have been drinking tea, including new samples from Adagio and Ricky, but I cannot rate them on first taste.
I have been drinking a lot of tea in effort to reduce my cabinets, I have successfully cleaned out three of the large teavana tins, yay! Working on some more. See previous review for this tea, my rating has not changed.
I did however try this one hot with half and half, it made it creamier, a little thicker, but still delicious.
