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Cinnamon, spice, peppery, nice. Like this as part of a mix with chamomile and hibiscus, or by itself.

Today opened one of my last packets of this tea, and brewed up a bit gongfu style.

The leaves open up to nearly fill the gaiwan, after starting out as a sparse little layer on the bottom of the cup. The expected sweet and floral start is incredibly intense. Somewhere about 6 or 8 infusions in there are a 2 or 3 in a row that are very spicy, then that fades away again, and it’s back to sweet and floral until the kettle is empty of hot water. Wow.

Can’t wait to try the fall version, but I am trying to be disciplined and finish the spring first. Yet, if I do that, how will I ever compare them properly?

This is a warm, wonderful puerh. Today I have abused it: took a good chunk of beeng, tossed it in a pot, added boiling water and ignored it for a few minutes, and then rinsed the leaves several times without further ‘steeps’, adding all to a thermos for drinking at work. And it is tolerating with with a warm, rich, mildly sweet flavor, some depth to it with caramel notes.

Will do a proper tasting later, but this is the 2nd brewing, neither under the best conditions, and it is a very forgiving tea.

This is a tricky tea: when perfectly brewed, it is delicate, floral, peachy, delightful. Steep too hot or too long and it does get bitter; steep with too much leaf and again there’s risk of bitter; but steep too little, and then it tastes thin and light.

It’s been a long time since I’ve weighed out this tea, which probably explains some of my problems with it, because it is a light, fluffy, irregular tea composed of very different sized pieces.

I ordered a sample of this tea with my first order from Yunnan sourcing. It is quite interesting. There is a lot of body and depth to this one, some bitterness that can be impressive with overlong steeps, but I brew it short, relatively dilute, and get a very nice cup of tea, with marvelous sweetness as I slurp/inhale, balanced by a depth of the later flavors.

About 1 gram per ounce/30mL of near-boiling water, flash rinsed, then 10 second infusions gradually increasing to a minute or more; this is a tea that can give lots of steeps.

Addendum: I have lost count of steeps, but now am certainly past 12, and it is still lovely.
Addendum 2: I finally got to the bottom of it, somewhere around 20 steeps. YUM.

The only hard thing with this tea is breaking up the very highly compressed brick to get chunks to brew. It needs a steady hand and a strong sturdy blade to slip in between the layers and work off pieces of tea.

After that, it’s all smooth. Boiling water flash rinse, then on to infusions, 30 seconds at a time, using a gram or more of leaf per ounce of water, gaiwan or yixing, as you prefer. This is not a tea with any edges that need rounding by the yixing. It is warm, sweet, with toasty caramel notes over a base of gentle earthiness, a perfect puerh for introducing someone nervous about this type of tea, or for those moments when you want something calming and soothing too.

I got mine from Yunnan Sourcing.

This is a rather toasty, mildly sweet green tea, in nice silk teabags (made a mistake when purchasing it, had intended to get loose leaf and didn’t pay enough attention).

I’ve brewed it a couple of times and the sweet green vegetal flavors predominate at first infusion, and the 2nd infusion and 3rd infusions are more toasted, less sweet, still mild and tasty.

I don’t really find it worth the high premium price, but it is a very nice tea, worth checking out if you want to explore Korean teas.

Ten Ren sells ‘Pouchong’ in several grades—1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. I first encountered it when I bought a green tin simply labelled ‘Pouchong’ at a chinese grocery store, and promptly put it in the back of the cupboard and forgot about it. A few years and a cross-country move later, I opened it and was very pleased by the mellowness of this very green-looking tea. I was quite surprised, when I looked into it later, to realize that it was technically an oolong, because to that point I’d only had some traditional dark roast Ti Kuan Yin and Wuyi Oolongs. I was happy to discover the TenRen store in my local chinatown and bought some of this ‘3rd grade’ pouchong because it seemed about the same price as what I’d bought in the tin.

It is a solid, but not spectacular, lightly oxidized oolong tea, sweet, tasting of hay and warm summer meadows, not strongly floral, and the sweet fades faster than with the handmade BaoZhong I recently tried. But it tolerates a wide variety of steep times and temps and is exceptionally forgiving of rushed or off brewing.

I like it best about 1g of tea per oz water at 195 degrees, infused about 30 seconds to start, and it is quite pleasant through 3-4 steeps, and better than plain water for several more, although the high notes of sweet and floral are gone by then.

A nice traditional roast Wuyi Yancha from Norbu, the spring 2009 harvest.

Brewed this one up several times, water 185-195 degrees, 1-2 grams of leaf per 1 ounce/30mL, infusions at 30-60 seconds apiece, in a small gaiwan. I can infuse it 8-10 times and still enjoy all of them.

It starts spicy/sweet, moves on to more earthy/fruity, and is delightful all the way.

I have too many good oolongs in the cupboard to have room for one more right now, but I’ll keep this in mind for the future. It’s not as strongly spiced as the one Rou Gui I’ve had, but the flavor goes longer than the Rou Gui too.

Mellow and gorgeous, but just a tiny bit tempermental: infused cool, it is sweet, vegetal, floral; infused too hot, it can get bitter and sharp. Notes of asparagus, peas and honey.

Infused 1g per ounce water at 160 degrees, 30 seconds for first steep, and up to 6 steeps at increasing times/steep.

I scented some of this with citrus flowers from my yard, and it was mind-blowingly good.