Premium Tai Ping Hou Kui Green Tea

This tea is amazing.

First of all, the leaves are perfectly whole, just dried and flattened out. They are so HUGE. It almost felt sacrilegious to put them into a cup and pour boiling water over them.

The dry tea smells slightly vegetal, similar to cabbage or spinach but not quite. The smell is familiar to a vegetable soup base.

The brewed tea brews up fairly strong. There is definitely a vegetal flavour but it is very light and mild. It is not floral, but it is not strong cabbage, it is just somewhere in between. It is smooth and creamy. Just slight butter notes.

This tea is delicious. Thank you Angel from Teavivre for this free sample. I appreciate being able to try such awesome and high grade green teas.

Had this twice now, thought I reviewed it already but maybe I reviewed the wrong tea or something, hah. Oh well.

What a unique looking tea! Flat, crisp green leaves. Huge! Like nothing I’d ever seen before.

Vegetal for sure, but it wasn’t off putting, even though I don’t necessarily love drinking spinachy green teas. It is very fresh tasting, nice and light for this time of year.

I enjoyed both cups I drank from this packet!

Thank you to Angel at Teavivre for the sample of this tea! It was a different green tea experience.

I’ve got a major wishlist started for a teavivre, though I don’t think it will include any green teas.

Angel was incredible enough to send me a sample of this for me to try. This might be one of the most unique teas that i’ve had recently. I love the way these leaves look. They’re like flat pressed seaweed or something. You can even see the lines of the leaves. it’s just really neat to look at. drinking this, it’s also a unique taste. I don’t get the same vegetal taste from a lot of greens. Instead this has a sweetness to it. It’s fresh and really nice, but i can’t place my finger on the taste. i still prefer the dragonwell from teavivre, but this is a really neat tea to have tried. I feel like this would be a good tea for anyone who really like greens.

I am not sure if I brewed this incorrectly, but I found it very vegetal and all I could think of was seaweed. I must have done something wrong, because some of the notes mention sweetness. I found no sweetness in this cup.
I will not rate this at present, because I will try it again later and determine a better opinion of this tea.
I probably oversteeped because these leaves are HUGE!

I am in love with this tea – the whole experience! First of all, be prepared to be blown away by the size of the leaf for they are huge — thin, whole, flat leaves with lovely shades of green coloring in each. They are very delicate and paper thin like tissue paper. The tea leaves are fully hand-crafted and truly a sensational work of art.

I like to brew tai ping hou kui teas in my clear 12oz Chinese tumbler with screw-on filter for drinking. 180 degree water with 12-15 long leaves. It is always a pleasure to watch these tall soldiers stand at full attention in the water (this is the fun factor for me). The tea aroma was vegetal and sweet and was a very pale yellowish-green color. The flavor is sweet with clear vegetal overtones and I was able to detect a little citrus. I drink it down to the point where the tumbler is only 1/3 full and then I top off with more water. I had fun sipping this one all afternoon.

Thanks to Angel and Teavivre for letting me enjoy their new harvest of green teas when they are at their peak of freshness!

What a unique green. I’ve never seen anything like it! The leaves are huge and very dark bright green and pressed flat. The scent is crisp fresh veggies.

The liquor is extremely vegetal, slight tart cherry notes, and very little sweetness. I actually rather like this. It is a welcome change from all the buttery super sweet green teas I’ve been drinking lately. This one is different and has a lot of character!

Another from Teavivre. I got to brew this in my glass teapot. Yeah! The leaf is so interesting. Long and flat. Is it just me or does anyone else think it looks like green beef jerky? lol. The dry leaf scent is fresh and grassy.

I steeped the entire 5 g sample for 1 1/2 minutes in 12 oz of 175 F water. To me this borders on bitter without crossing the line. Teavivre says it is not bitter at all. I like the edge it gives the cup but I am wondering am I doing something wrong?

This is buttery with a taste of corn and peas with maybe some light green bean notes. For my preferences the closer to room temperature the better the flavors develop. A very nice tea that is kind of dragonwell like but completely different.

I received this as a sample courtesy of Angel and Teavivre. I was definitely excited to see this one, this is just about the last variety of Chinese green tea that I have yet to try and it’s been on my “to do list” for a while.

The dry leaf is very beautiful, and I was surprised to see just how intact these large, flat, elongated leaves stayed through shipping. There were very few broken pieces, I’m impressed. While it was brewing, it smelled very similar to a dragonwell, but with a stronger vegetable aroma. I was conservative on the temperature as I usually enjoy my green teas better that way (160 degrees) and I steeped it for two minutes.

I am sipping on the tea as I write this, and I enjoy it very much. It’s a beautiful sunny day, and a nice refreshing green tea is just what the doctor ordered. It is light and refreshing. The predominant flavors I pick up are absolutely those of green beans and peas as others have noted. I always expect a vegetal flavor in a green, but it is intriguing to me just how easily I can pinpoint the flavor of this one as those particular flavors! There is a very subtle element of silkiness/“buttery” flavor but it is just a light accent. There is a pleasant and refreshing brisk/astringent quality to it also. I just can’t get over how beautiful and interesting the appearance of the leaf is!

The overall character of this tea is invigorating and refreshing, and I am enjoying sitting in the sunshine and sipping it. Thanks a lot to Angel and all of Teavivre for the sample.

These lovely green leaves really are huge, and the large flat leaves fill the sample packet from end to end.
They do not seem to expand a lot more once brewed, but do become so soft and velvety, and have a soft vegetal scent with a hint of corn silk and perhaps tender green beans.

Brewed color is a clear yellowish hue, and smells sweet and buttery.
Taste is gentle and smooth, and has a sweet creaminess with the mild notes of green beans and corn. So deliciously sweet!!

I like very much, and thank you Angel & Teavivre, for sending this beautiful tea for me to try.

Today was my second experience of Hou Kui, thanks to our friends at Teavivre. This Premium Tai Ping Hou Kui leaves a lasting impression—both for its appearance and for its taste!

The dried leaves are truly spectacular to behold. They also take up a huge amount of space and weigh very little, being extremely thin. They are large in size but smashed to paper thin. Actually, they might be even thinner than paper! And the color is bright green veering chartreuse!

The taste strikes me as somewhere between Long Jing and Mao Feng, with a chestnutty facet but also a hint of vegetal flavor. It’s closer to Long Jing than Mao Feng, but Hou Kui does not taste exactly like Long Jing. Now that I’ve depleted my samples, I am adding this unique tea to my wish list!