Classic Laoshan Black

This is tasty- dark chocolate and leather. I still prefer Verdant’s Laoshan Black.

TTB #7

So excited that this TTB includes some straight black teas! I love experimenting with different flavored blends, but sometimes you just want plain, delicious TEA. This one is lovely…super dark, twisty little leaves that smell strongly of cocoa. It brews up deep brown and chocolatey and resteeps beautifully. A very comforting tea for a cold January day.

Woooooow this is probably my favorite black tea out of what I’ve had before. I feel like I’ve had some good ones before, but they’ve tended to be similarly malty with some variation of nuts or cooked fruit. This is a lovely chocolate, not very sweet but like a pleasant dark chocolate—full and toasty. As the infusions progress, it gets sweeter and less bitter but never overwhelmingly sweet. It also has a lovely energy, very invigorating but not super panicky which is crucial. Highly, highly recommended.

It’s raining and cold outside, this is a great tea for afternoons like this. Honestly, this is close enough to hot cocoa where I would never need hot cocoa. I also have the green tea variety of this and I’m very excited to try that and see if there’s any similarities!

Trying this as a coldbrew because I’m feeling chocolate today.

1.5 tsp, 500 mL cold water 12 minutes
Resteeped with 500mL cold water, 25 minutes
It could go a few more times with progressively longer steep times.

Lots of flavourful tannins, roasted/toasted buckwheat, cocoa, rich, very dark chocolate. Texture wise it is quite thick, malty. They weren’t kidding when they said Loashans tasted like cocoa. My brew actually smells like hot chocolate. It is also flavourful enough that it would take milk well (although certainly not necessary).

(2016 version) This tea is robust and full bodied. The extreme malty flavor hits your palate immediately and stops quickly. It has a slight smokiness with mild chocolate notes to it. The aftertaste is a lingering vanilla sweetness. I do like this tea, however, it is outshined by its cousin the “Classic Laoshan Green Tea” in just about every category:Flavor, Complexity, Body, etc. so I will probably not order the black version any time soon (as the green spoiled me) but I would recommend this tea to others. If you are trying to decide between the green/ black; the black is not as heavy as its green counterpart IMHO. The green is very savory and heavy while the black is more laidback and sweet. Either way this is worth the price and I’m glad I tried both for comparison purposes. The cha qi is fairly energizing.

I’m sad. I opened a fresh pouch of this from YS today only to discover that the tea was mislabeled and was in fact laoshan GREEN tea and not black. I had confidence that Scott and team would resolve this for me but it seems like that’s only partially true, leaving a bit of a sour taste in my mouth beyond just this tea.

They were great at refunding me the price of the tea, which i’m thankful for but now if i want to get the actual tea i WANT, i have to a) pay for shipping again (which isn’t cheap) and b) pay more for the tea that i did previously because i bought i on sale. Never mind that i have to hope the tea is labelled correctly the second time AND that i’ve lost on the exchange as well.

All in all, i know i am not likely their biggest spender but now i’m completely on the fence about wanting to order again.

This is a delicious tea—my favorite YS black so far. If you like LP’s Chocolate Genmaicha, then you’ll like this one. Lots of cocoa notes, very smooth, and a hint of spice and malt. I’ve tried it once gong fu and once western, which I prefer.