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From my shou/yarn trade with sarsonator. Thanks! :)

Drank this at noon. Let’s see if I sleep tonight. lol.

It’s becoming more an more apparent to me that 160ml is just too damn big, especially for when i’m using mini tuos because that’s when I can’t adjust the amount of tea. Anyway, I can’t afford another yixing so I have to make due with the one I’ve got. for a few of the steepings I only filled 3/4 of the way and that seemed to help :)

rinse, rinse, pause, 5s, 10s, 20s, 30s, 6m

1st steeping (in and out, ~5s): Chocolaty goodness. All of my ripe puerhs seem to be tasting like this now. lol. I think this one tasted closer to milk chocolate than dark chocolate though.

2nd steeping [3/4] (10s): This one was kind of weak because I had let the water cool down by accident. My bad. Surprisingly the color was still really dark though!

3rd steeping [3/4] (20s): Temperature back up, the flavor is more like the 1st steeping again, mmmm, just not quite as chocolaty, more plain puerh flavor.

4th steeping [3/4] (30s): Chocolate gone, just simple sweetness.

5th steeping (6m): So I’m basically done at this point, just wanted to see what a long steep would taste like. Answer: EXACTLY like steep #4

All in all, a pretty good mini tou. I liked it :)

Backlog, last week

I’m not sure if I did something wrong, but this tea was just OK. No special notes to speak of, just ripe puerh. :P

<3

rinse, 8s, 10s

Goodness gracious! The tea is soooo above my level right now. I’m not ready. I’m clearly not ready for this. Is it called Golden Monkey because it’s supposed to smell like a monkey? woo! O.O Thank goodness it doesn’t taste like how it smells. There’s so much going on with this tea that I really don’t know how to describe the taste at all. Looking at the flavors highlighted at the top I think the malt, leather, and molasses are standing out to me the most right now. That’s such a crazy combo of flavors! Which must mean I’m close because my taste buds were just too confused!

Dry leaf: long; some green, some brownish green

Liquor: greenish yellow

1 infusion (5s): This tea is different from the 2 other dragonwells I just tasted. My eyes lit up when it hit my tongue because I could immediately sense a difference. It’s hard to put into words the difference between this tea and other dragonwells. I guess you could say it’s sweeter, brighter, and greener in taste. Simply an improvement in quality.

Dry leaf: very long leaves with a nice green color

Liquor: greenish yellow

2 infusions (5s, 10s): Nothing much to say about this. Didn’t find any special flavors/notes. Just good green tea!

This week is going to be all about challenging the conceptions I’ve built about tea throughout the first leg of my tea journey. I’ve written off whole categories of tea including green, black, and sheng (too grassy, too boring, too savory) but that was so many months ago that my tastes have changed, and my brewing methods have changed and I’m sure that many of the teas I didn’t like it was because I brewed them incorrectly.

I wasn’t optimistic about this tea when I looked at the dry leaf because they are nearly gray in color which I believe signifies low quality, but I went ahead anyway.

2 infusions: (5s, 10s) Not bad! It does taste a bit grassy, but not so much that it bothers me. I actually like it. It has a verry small hint of floral note at the end. Surprised that I noticed that.

Of to try more green teas!

Ok so I was crazy last time I said this tasted like “dark” but “not chocolate.” This is straight up liquid dark chocolate. But better because I normally find dark chocolate to be too bitter and prefer milk chocolate, but I really like this tea.

1st steeping (5s): Very strong, very dark chocolate, very delicious, ever so slightly bitter.

2nd steeping (15s): A little on the weaker side compared to the 1st brew. Same taste just not as bold. I think this is because the temperature had dropped to 201 when i brewed this one.

3rd steeping (5 min): so after hearing about crazy 8 minute, 15 minute etc. steepings I decided to go out on a limb and do a really long steeping time and see what happens. I didn’t want it to get cold, though. So I stopped at 5. Surprisingly, the strength of the brew was somewhere between steeping 1 and 2. Closer to 2 even. It wasn’t very strong at all! It made me think what would happen if I had done steeping number 3 for somewhere around 25 seconds like normal o.O At first I thought that maybe this tea just doesn’t have as much stamina as I thought, but looking at other tasting notes I know it has too! I’ll just have to try using more leaf next time and see what happens.

Oh, and by the way, I usually stop at 3 steepings due to caffeine sensitivity, but I did 2 more brews just to feed my yixing pot. :P

Once again I’m trying to cut sugar out of my tea drinking experience. It’s really hard! Sugar is one of the toughest addictions to quit you know. Anyway, I drank this tonight without sugar and it’s better than how it tasted last time I tried it sugar-free. I must be getting better. I think rooibos tastes best when you let it steep for a really long time. It has a subtle sweetness to it.

This is one of those teas that I’m glad that I was able to sample before committing to buying it. It’s was actually really good on the first steep and pretty good on the second steep, but after that I found it difficult to get a good amount of flavor out of it, even when steeping for several minutes. So while it does taste nice, I prefer my teas to have a lot more stamina than that so I doubt I’ll be purchasing this one.