Aged Yunnan Silver Needle White Cake

Now this is a white tea that I like!
The clove and the floral notes are amazing.

I guess I just like aged white tea :).

Story Time: I finally got my Iggy Pop and the Stooges CD in today. I got the original Raw Power CD; before it was horribly remixed. It is a lot less over buzzed and pushed unlike the new one. I just wish I could play it louder so I can get the full effect, but I think my mom is starting to doze off; it is 9:20 PM.

Tea Time: I don’t think I used enough for my first steeping. I tried first using my teaspoon, but I don’t think it will work for this tea. It didn’t have right color and hue has it did online

Steep 1: The smell of the brew is like earthy flowers. First sip was spicy. Almost like cardamom. Next sips are not as spicy, but they sort of cool your tongue and have this buttery floralish taste to it. Is this a maltyness I taste? definitely a product of the ageing, since white tea never has this. This almost taste like a white chia tea. I can taste cloves.
cooled: More maltyness and clove appearing with a buttery floral after taste.
And all this was from not using enough leaf!

Steep 1.1: This almost smells like a black tea. It’s earthy and malty smelling.
This taste malty for sure. It has a sort of spice to it and with a hit of clove. Very smooth and leaves a sweet, crispy floral taste on the tongue. It is almost like a black tea minus the coco or darker bite black tea has.
It has cooled down some now. It isn’t as sparkly or quite as floraly, but the malty is showing through more. Going to put this in the freezer to cool it down more…
Way more malty. I can still taste a bit of clove. This is not crispy anymore, but more smooth and buttery. It is like a black tea without the astringency or darker tones. SIP: do I detect some clovey coco? Hmmm….. I can’t tell if I like it cool or hot. Must test more

Steep 2: This smells almost like coco….. MADNESS! The liquor is Yellower as well.
hmmm… I can’t taste an uber difference. Though it cooled a little more that I liked. This is starting to have an unusual mix of black and white tea quality’s. Malty, clovey, earthy, sweet, tingly, floral, crisp. SIP: I made sure to try to breath in and sip. I am getting the faintest of coco malt from it. My tongue feels like it has a pinch of spice put on it, but not heat spice, sting spice.

more luke warm/cool: less flora sparkle, but more malt.

Later on: My tongue almost feels the same way after I drank the zhu rong. Sort of savory and cyan.

Cold: More of a malt taste with a strong clove and earthiness. It seems that when this cools it gets more malty and aged flavor. It also seems to have a bit of spice sort of to it. SIP: wow really strong malt and clove. Like a punch to the face. Not sure if I like it or not.

Steep 3: Seems more sweet and floral with clove malt mixed in. Dang, I burnt the tip of my tongue. I hope this doesn’t hurt my tasting. SIP: Still seems more floral and crispy with less malt. It seems sort of i don’t know, grainy… ricey. It’s luke warm now. Malty grain is there, but with what seems to be a bit more floral.
Cold: Not nearly as clovey as the other cold brew. It has a little bit more noticeable floralness to it. Very sweet and sliky. It almost seems to have a strong earthy malty……and even coco like after taste. I would say that the taste is more of a expected white tea, but with the maltyness of dark tea. Definitely taste more grainy as well. Interesting……..

Steep 4: Smell more floral
Starting to get more of a classic white tea taste. Very crispy floral and has a hint of clove. SIP: Still more expected white tea taste, yet slightly deeper.
More luke warm now. I am getting a bit more malt and semolina flavor. It also leaves a sweet and savory after taste. SIP: The clove and malty is becoming more pronounced. My tongue still has this spicy tingle on it. I am also getting some honeysuckle as well in the after taste
I am noticing Luke warm is more like a mix of it being hot and cold; it is a lot less clovey.

Cold: The clove once again is very pronounced. However there is hints of other floral flavors as well. Also the malt and more pronounced. There is more a of a lingering semolina flavor in the after taste. SIP: Still VERY CLOVEY. I’m not sure if I like this when it is cold. The clove can get to be sickening.

Ok by this point I think I am tea drunk and sick. I didn’t eat anything before I started, since I thought it might hurt my pallet. However I hadn’t eaten anything in a while. Ugh, my stomach hurts a little and my eyes feel glazy. It is because of this that I decided to stop and eat some pretzels and do a weird brewing session. Sometimes with teas like this I will brew them for a long time to extract all the liquor from them and get a supper over infused cup. I know this sounds blasphemous, but sometimes it works…… sometimes it doesn’t.

Steep 5: After brewing for 25 minutes in a makeshift gaiwan in about 8-9ish ounces:
This smells is like a black tea…..hmmm
With no sweetener: The liquor color is a clear light brown…. Interesting. This taste like a black tea, but with clove and not as deep, and with a little astringency.
Sweeten with agave: Taste more like a black tea, but the bitter astringency is gone. It’s definitely clovey. It is like black tea, but less strong, yet not washed out. A lot stronger coco malt as well. Very smooth…

Overall I am very intrigued by this tea. It has such potential that when I can I am going to buy a cake to age it more to enhance its flavor. I must say that the whole time I was tasting this though I kept thinking how this would taste if used for a chai or with a added fruit flavor. Something to help complement its’ profile.

P.S. The Liquor become yellower with every infusion. Also the wet leaf smells like a black tea with bits of coco.

I would recommend this to pu’er lovers and white tea lovers

Unrelated: This is one of my favorite songs from the Album I bought
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPyUXb2QwDM&list=PL0F4F1D0F36A715C1&index=70&feature=plpp_video

Specifics
Used a mug covered with a saucer as a gaiwan; and would pre heat before brewing.
Water amount: About 6 ounces for all but the last infusion.
Leaf: um I think 5 grams, or close to that.
Steepings: Fallowed the directions from the site except for the last one.
Sweetener: non except for the last.

this tea is so mellow that i think i’m probably not sensitive enough for it.
i already know i have a poor sense of smell due to years of horrid allergies. and that i tend to like my food really spicy and really salty for this same reason. because taste is actually like 80% smell or something. so i think really this tea is just too subtle for me to understand and appreciate. which is sad. but also makes sense. perhaps with more time i can reverse my sinus damage. that would be cool.

Sample from @VerdantTea. Rinsed once with 205F water. Infused for 2 seconds, decanted, infused again (for 4 seconds), and decanted into the same cup. The color of the liquor is pale yellow and perfectly clear. The aroma is slightly floral with some biscuity malt. Extremely pleasant. Similar notes in the flavor; slightly sweet biscuit, a hint of honey. Very drying on the finish. An enjoyable cup of tea.

This tea will age nicely.

I went to Verdant Tea’s website, and followed the steeping directions carefully.

This tea was very easily separated from its former cake shape. The leaves didn’t even break or snap when separated at all.

Leaf Quality
Excellent. The dry leaves were sort of fluffy. Fuzzy leaves with pale-green underneath. They smelled very sweet, and almost grassy. They were very light, and I needed to add what appeared to be more leaves than usual, to make the proper brew.

Brewed Tea
I brewed this tea twice. The first time, was as the website specified it. The second time, I experimented to see if it would taste different. It did. With the directions from the website, the tea leaves yielded an extremely light- yellow, and crystal clear drink. The smell was wonderful. It was sweet, with elements of honeydew, and a sweet vegetal aroma. The taste was light, and harder to grasp than the smell.
My Method: I took 5 grams of the leaves, and put them in a clear teapot. I brought water to about 80 degrees Celsius, and poured them over the leaves. I know that white teas can handle steepings of 3 to 4 minutes, so I decided to stop steeping at 3.

With this method, I got a very floral, and sweet cup. I hadn’t noticed the floral notes using the website’s directions. The liquid was also a more yellow-green color, but still very clear and light. There was a nice sweet-earthy taste at the end of the cup as well. I really like that the character changes well (a sign of great aging potential).

I think I’ll buy the whole cake to let it age.

Interesting. Aged silver needles seem to have picked sweetness somewhere which actually makes this tea tolerable for me. I am still no fan, but at least I can enjoy the taste.

And the individual leaves are so fluffy… :)

This is good! Smells very healthy, like hay with a hint of floral. This tea is definitely crisp. It tastes of cloves and floral but I find the after taste to be buttery. It kind of does taste like white cake haha I think it would taste like it more with some honey. I really like this :)

I like this one a lot. I wish I’d been paying more attention while drinking it. That’s the problem with drinking new tea at work. Ah well.

I love the mouth feel. It’s almost bubbly. That’s one of the things I enjoy about a good white. This is a good white.

It’s got a beautiful color and aroma.

I love how malty this tastes. I hadn’t read reviews of this tea in a while when I tried it so I’d forgotten that. Hay, malty, just a touch floral. Delicious.