Morning Sun

Tea #3 for the day. I spent some time Friday night updating my spreadsheet with the uncatalogued tea floating around the living room. Final count is over 300!! Which is not great…I’m taking in tea faster than I’m drinking it. And not just in number – weight as well.

My pie chart is interestingly even. Tea count has pretty equal amounts of black, white, oolong, raw, & ripe with little bits of green/herbal. But I mostly drink blacks, oolongs and whites. Therefore, I need to work on drinking ripes and raws.

Tea itself: bright & fruity, citrus?, creamy aftertaste 205F, 2min. Not a lot to it.

This is a one off Sample provided to me by Mandala. I really don’t know what to expect with this tea though.
I brewed it 212F/2:30/12oz I don’t know how much was in the sample though but I used up the entire thing.
This one has an interesting flavor to it. I’m getting tobacco, cherry, and a bit of metallic flavor. Also there is some amount of Malt and Bitterness to it as well for the black tea itself. It’s certainly not a bad tea. It just has a different flavor to it. Good tea though. I’ll give it a rec.

Thanks to Nicole for the sample!

This is a beautiful tea. The gold and black curled leafs are absolutely gorgeous both dry and wet/unfurled. I didn’t get my smell in the way of the dry leaf (possibly because it was just a sample size as opposed to a bag full) but the wet leaf smelled deliciously malty.

I brewed this first sample taste Western and did 3 steeps of 1,2, and 5. All three steeps were dark and flavorful. Malty and sweet, this tea was close to exactly what I wanted it to be. I would strongly consider buying an ounce or two of this tea.

I’m a big fan of dian hong! Morning Sun brews up a strong up which I like. I used roughly 8 oz of 200 F water for 1 heaping teaspoon. I wanted to be careful about the steeping time and did 90 seconds for the first steep. It was a strong, aromatic cup without much astringency. The amber color infusion tasted like honey, dark fruits, and malt. I could taste dark cherries, chocolate, and toasted walnuts.

Backlog…I had this two days in a row, just one steep each, but each steep was the same leaves. I could not remember if this was a pu erh or a black, but upon tasting, I got really lovely thick and chocolatey notes, with a little bit of spice. It was really a pleasure to drink, and I need to try some in my gaiwan at some point. Though my gaiwan is so tiny that it hardly bears making anything in it because I only have the teeny weeny cups (3) or a regular tea cup size (and it would take like 2-3 steeps of the gaiwan to fill the tea cup). I think I need to find a drinking vessel somewhere in the middle, though I might just get a new gaiwan…I had no idea it was so small when I got it…but it is super cute and I love the design.

Anyway, many thanks to OMGsrsly for sharing this with me. It is really spectacular!

Another great sample from Nicole! Thank you! This one looks really similar to the Yunnan Sourcing sample of Black Gold that Nicole also sent. Hmm. There is plenty of gold here. It looks like a variation of a snail tea. Black and gold tight bundles that somehow artfully unravel into these huge leaves. The flavor is fantastic. The deep amber cup has all the characteristics I love in a black tea: at first it is floral or like wine, then there are slight pepper and smoky notes, while being malty, honey yet still rich. Hints of fruit. This is really somehow everything except a chocolate tea, which surprised me. It’s a very complex tea, very intoxicating and addicting. I think the favorite that I’ve tried from Mandala over the years. I probably didn’t need to use 1 1/2 teaspoons, one heaping teaspoon would do, but it was fantastic steeped this way anyway. Three solid steeps with none of that oversteeped oaky flavor some black teas tend to have. I’ll try the YS- Black Gold with these parameters.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons // 10 minutes after steeping // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 6 min a.b. // 2 min
Steep #3 // just boiled // 5+ min

I judged this one incorrectly before I drank it…I read the descriptions on here and figured I wouldn’t like it, as smoky doesn’t really seem to be my thing. I was wrong, as I really enjoyed the smokiness, and I didn’t find it overwhelming at all. It’s a thick tea, with decent strength…nice for the morning, as the name indicates. Thanks for this sample, Nicole…great to broaden my horizons!

I’m tasting tobacco on the breath out. Way better than any morning cigarette I’ve ever had.

This is a tasty tea. It is slightly malty. I am getting another note that I think is frequently described as baked bread. This is not as good as the one from Mandala I was drinking yesterday, I think that one was Black Gold.

I steeped this ono time in an 18oz teapot with 2 tsp leaf and boiling water for 1 min.

Another one from Nicole!
This one wasn’t nearly as strong as the other one I had. In fact I had to drink like half the cup before realizing what it tasted like. Guess that’s what happens when you are eating food and drinking a new tea at the same time. xD
But eventually I could pick the flavors out.
The main note I got was earth, which I really dislike in teas. But there was a decent amount of honey flavors to not make the earthiness too overwhelming. Which is good. But overall, I wasn’t a huge fan. Those nature flavors are just killer for me apparently xD
Anyway, happy to have tried more teas from Mandala though! Thank you so much, Nicole!