90 Tasting Notes
I ordered two ounces of this tea for a crazy low price of $3.55, along with an order of Lin’s Teaware. The Teasmith’s Lin’s collection is mostly half price right now, I find the cups amazing with their heat distribution qualities. So I ordered cups, then turned around and ordered one more cup and this tea as well as some Rou Gui I have yet to try.
This tea blasts my nose with pine smoke when I open the bag. Western style steeping produced better results for me, my gong fu just ended up too light. I tried two different infusers after that, the Eva Solo and then just one from a Nissan insulated thermos which would likely classify now as vintage since I’ve had it 20 years. Finally I just dumped some of the leaves loose into the teapot and this produced the best brew. My son came downstairs to get a brownie from the pan I baked earlier.
“Mom come out here.”
“What,” annoyed because I’m drinking tea and typing which means leave Mother alone.
“I smell a brat cooking.”
“It’s my tea.”
“It’s not your tea, just come out here.”
But it was the tea. While I was thinking of the piñon incense I used to buy in New Mexico, my son who has never been to the southwest identified the scent of Wisconsin cheesehead childhood. It is his reference. I had him smell the bag of tea, and he was uncertain. He continued to hang a little on the stairs with a little wistful and crestfallen look, he kinda wanted that German brat he smelled to be real. He felt so sure he smelled grilling. Well of course we use wood briquettes to grill, or I cut green maple branches for smoking fish.
Because of my experimenting with parameters and adding water along the way, I can’t say exactly what I used but about 2 tbsp of tea for 28 ounces of water in a 31 oz Bonjour glass teapot. This was more tea than I really needed so I dumped less than half into the pot after the gong fu didn’t work out. Brewed at 208 F, my kettle is set for that temp.
Smoke is long and loud and the tongue tingles. Sweetness from the tea follows only with the long steep. The pine smoke is strong now and needs time to integrate more with the tea. I plan to tin up this tea and let it rest. The vendor site has a couple reviews on using this tea as a rub for meats and fish prior to cooking the meat. One person dried out the used tea and saved it for cooking too.
Flavors: Oak, Pine, Smoke, Smoked
Preparation
I wish I had read the Steepster reviews before buying this. The reviewers mention the sugar syrup or sugar whatever added to the tea. This isn’t mentioned on the website description at all. It just says sencha plus cherry blossoms and petals. What the tea really has is cherry marshmallows, like the kind of dried marshmallows in cereal like Lucky Charms. They dissolve completely in the brew. The website should have mentioned added sugar, instead it gives the impression of an herbal sencha blend, which this is NOT.
Leave it to my idiocy for not checking what my fellow Steepster people wrote. Actually it didn’t occur to me, I thought this was a new tea and wouldn’t be reviewed yet.
The tea smells like the cherry marshmallows but the cup fortunately doesn’t really translate the sickly sweet smell. The dry tea smells like a ton of flavoring and sweetener was added but maybe it comes down to controlling how many of the marshmallows you put in the pot, because the actual sencha appears to be just pure leaf.
I’ve had American Tea Room’s Sencha Ashikubo before, and for the price it is not too bad. This one tastes more vegetal in the cup than cherry or sweet. The sweetness might help with bitterness if oversteeped, but again it might change depending upon how many marshmallows you have in your brew. I could taste the spinach-y sencha and if I hadn’t smelled the bag or seen the marshmallows I wouldn’t have known from the taste that anything else was added. So that means I can stand to drink it and will likely finish the bag. I won’t buy it again, but I can at least recommend it as a pretty spring sencha that is mild and pleasant with no overpowering notes.
Flavors: Spinach, Sugar, Vegetal
Preparation
Cherry marshmallows… that’s odd. I tend to be disappointed when teas have sweeteners in them to have a taste appeal for drinkers.
I have some actual cherry blossoms from Japan that are used for tea if you’d like to try a petal in a cup of green one day.
We’re sorry that this tea is not to your liking. First off there is no sugar or added sugar in this blend. The description does not mention sencha at all but rather Kabuse – which is made from the tips of shade grown tea leaves. There is some natural cherry flavor added – but no sugar or a ton or anything. If you are not happy with this or any of your purchases we are happy to return or exchange this for something that might be more to your liking. I think you must be confusing this tea with something else as there are no marshmallows in this tea – those are actual cherry blossoms. We never state anywhere on our site that there is any sencha or that it is an herbal blend. It is made from Kabuse (shade grown tea leaves) cherry blossoms and some natural flavoring.
Kabuse is a name for a top grade sencha. It is sencha. Two other reviewers mentioned the added sweetener and one called it simple sugar syrup. Sugar is natural. I’m guessing the blossoms are coated in a simple syrup with cherry flavoring added. Marshmallows are simple sugar syrup, typically with vanilla flavoring.
Cwyn – Kabuse is not another name for a top grade sencha. It is partially grown in the shade and then the tips are plucked.There is no sugar at all and no simple syrup either – it may have a syrupy taste – but there is no added sugar or marshmallows and the cherry blossoms were not coated in sugar. Of course you are entitled to your tasting opinions – and we are happy to exchange this for you if you like – but we do want to make sure you have the correct information from the vendor. We are well aware of how this tea is created – and there is not one gram of sugar anywhere – or any sweetener of any kind added to any portion of the cherry blossoms or the tea. There are only three ingredients: Tea, Cherry Blossoms and Natural Flavoring.
The correct name is kabusencha, here is the Japanese かぶせ茶. This is an exceptional grade of sencha, which is a broad term for covered or shade tea. Sugar is considered a natural flavoring. I appreciate that you want the vendor information included, but I remind you that the vendor description is already in the database. This is a forum for tea drinkers to share their impressions. If I wanted a refund, or had a question, I would contact you directly. I am skeptical of wholesale descriptions. This is why we have tea forums for tea drinkers to share impressions.
Senchas are not grown in the shade – Only three Japanese tea types are Gyokuro, Kabuse and Tencha – cha is the word for tea – and Kabuse + cha is the word not Kabu + Sencha. the corect word is KabuSECHA – not KabuSENCHA – Sencha means small leaf Sen + Cha. I am only trying to educate you as I see you like tea – I have been in the business for nearly 15 years – and just want to make sure you have the correct information. We have no reason not to disclose any ingredients or give incorrect information on our website. Some websites do list Kabuse as a type of Sencha – but this is factually incorrect – Japanese Teas are divided only two ways – Light Grown and Shade Grown. Light Grown teas are Bancha, Sencha and Tamaryokucha – Shade Grown teas are Gyokuro, Kabuse and Tencha.
All sencha and yes your Kabuki (masked theatre indeed) are covered at some point prior to harvest. This varies literally by the grower. I can go purchase Kabusencha or kabusecha covered 3 days prior to harvest, 10 days prior to harvest, or covered for longer. At $15 an ounce, I’m not terribly likely to believe this is top grade, full shade grown tips, because if it were the tea would cost $60 an ounce and up and nobody would put marshmallows in it.
If the readers are interested, I suppose I can put up a YouTube video steeping the “cherry blossoms” so people can see them dissolve. But I doubt anyone really cares.
This doesn’t help… But, I’d watch the video :p
Says the guy who dug up Proust and steeped him. :D
I got a generous sample of this tea from klasektea.com with the purchase of teaware. I’m not seeing the tea on the website as of this writing, but it is early May and 2015 teas are just arriving in shops.
Normally I’m not a fan of Darjeeling First Flush which is really just plain wrong of me, since it is a miracle of tea processing. The floral scent of this picking is unparalleled. Having said this, for some reason this tea hit a sweet spot for me last night and I stayed up until 5 a.m. drinking it. Maybe the spring blossoms and lilacs outside got me in the mood for this fresh floral.
This tea is the bomb! It is not so cloyingly floral and doesn’t go bitter when brewed hot. I know it’s wrong to brew this much over 85 C but I usually want a little bitterness so I go 95 C. Brewed about 1 tsp of leaves gong fu in Lin’s Ceramic 100 ml teapot and cup. I continue to be hugely impressed with Lin’s cups especially, the heat distribution improves the mouthfeel of just about any tea I’ve tried. It is like a round bubble of warm tea in my mouth when I take a good sip.
Another thing I noticed is this tea lasted for more quick steeps than others I’ve had in the past. I long brewed it on steep 7 and still got a strong cup.
Flavors: Floral, Honey
Preparation
This is the huang pian cake in the 2012 Chawangshop Yiwu line of cakes. I purchased it in 2014 for $12, it is now $14 in 2015. Read the vendor description carefully so you know what you are getting because the cake name is a little misleading. The tea is supposedly 1/2 Yiwu leaves, and all the leaf is supposed to have been picked prior to April 8. Leaf quality is thin and papery.
I packed a lot of leaves into my gaiwan, expecting this to be on the lighter side, which it is. The first two steeps confirm the smattering of Yiwu leaves but I notice on steep 1 that boiling water kills the tea and flattens the flavor. 190-200 is more ballpark for this. On steep 3 and subsequent steeps the other “half” of the leaves emerge with a rather ordinary plantation apricot flavor. The little Yiwu sister is chased away by her bigger and badder brother.
Not much body here, in steep 5 I’m swishing the leaves to add a little steep time. And nothing offensive in the tea, very light overall but I’m disappointed at the rather ordinary taste. I wish this had kept the Yiwu leaf throughout or even some Laotian leaf for that other half. But then the low price speaks for itself. Given the amount of leaf I used, I can probably use up this 200 g cake quickly.
Flavors: Apricot, Floral, Hot Hay
Preparation
Really? I filled up my gaiwan for this…I can smell what I call “mall puerh” a mile away, that incense-y store flavor you can find in a million cakes on EBay and Taobao. This is just sad, leathery old poor quality “tea” to which a few young “white buds” have been added in as a sprinkling. Some of the tea is just black leaf along with brown, leathery leaves. You can talk to me all day long about brewing it “cooler,” but nothing will improve this leaf. I can’t believe a company online which is trying to be nice actually would put their name on this cake, but whatever. I’m a person who wants to like a tea, but I’d rather drink dandelion greens from my yard than this.
From the Sheng Traveling Tea Box.
Preparation
hmm. wow. I haven’t had a bad tea from Norbu myself but have never tried this one.
This is a good example of that “tastes vary” comment I made the other day. As you know, could be many different variables involved here but many people have enjoyed this particular tea (although I know nothing about the condition of your particular sample). Also, agree with TeaBrat and say that Norbu is a fine tea seller.
Not a tastes vary situation. This is about quality of base material and this one is intentionally deceptive in its creation. There are fresh young buds on top of old, poor quality tea. If the whole sample is evenly bad I could question the sample. Norbu seems to mainly source from India, the deception here is in China. This tea is either not what Norbu sampled for purchase, a bait and switch, or just unscrupulous wholesale source.
Wow. I’ve got to jump in on the side of “tastes vary,” since I’m the one who put it in the box. This is one of my favorite teas, though it doesn’t really taste like a pu-erh: more like a white tea with character.
Cwyn – I must respectfully disagree for my experiences with this tea (I own a cake and I have enjoyed it at least six times) are totally different from that which you describe. After reading your comment, I pulled out my cake to look at it again. My cake is full of buds throughout. While I do not have your particular sample, I can say that I have shared this tea with a few people and reading over the other Steepster notes posted, your experience is definitely an outlier. Since you pulled it from a teabox, is it possible that somewhere along the way moving from person to person it might have been switched or mislabeled? As I am sure you already know, this is a rather light delicate tea and I have found that it performs better at a temperature below 205 degrees.
The temperature is a good point. I found it OK at 200 degrees, but fell in love at 185. I also looked at my beeng, and it is salt-and-pepper. I then looked at a Mandala silver bud and saw the same thing. They both seem to be about 50% bud. I think it’s just the style.
BTW: I checked my notes on the S&S TTB and I don’t think this was a tea that I added (though I own a beeng and considered adding some). Stacy from Butiki provided some tea to help start the box, including a sample of “Norbu cake”. It is possible that this tea isn’t white buds at all, but a different Norbu cake?
Really I have no idea, DigniTea, this was a sample with loose tea and a small chunk, and not a cake with the wrapper. I did not get 50% bud at all though. Maybe 3 white buds and a gaiwan full of leathery brown leaves.
The idea of the TTB was to choose some teas from the box and write reviews. This was my observation of the leaf and I don’t think the temp will change the leathery brown leaves. I can respect people may not agree on teas, but I’m not going to change my opinion.
Dr. Jim, increasing the temp and pushing the tea is a way to test if the tea breaks down under the pressure. Good base material will not. This is a normal way of testing puerh tea, the sample is mostly puerh tea.
Sorry to re-open this, but I found a few grams of the Norbu that was added to the tea box (I removed a few samples before sending the box out). This is definitely NOT the 2011 Spring Norbu White Buds, as it has virtually no buds, while my beeng is full of them (though the bud to leaf ratio appears to be about 1:1). I can’t address Cwyn’s comment on the quality; she’s much more experienced in drinking pu-erh than I am, but at least we can say that Norbu is not mis-representing the tea.
I ordered a 100g cake of this to go with the 2013 Spring and 2014 Autumn I already own. I also am not quite believing this is really Spring pick from Jan or Feb.
The cake is rather brown and loosely compressed and looks exactly like my Autumn cake. This isn’t spring pick, it might contain some spring tea from previous years, and then pressed from loose into a cake in 2015. But it isn’t fresh spring tea. I have my 2013 Spring to compare also which I can tell was pressed fresh, it is tighter and clearly had a lot more moisture. So it is maybe spring maocha PRESSED in 2015. So I explored tea selling and relative truth in my blog post using this tea and another tea. Http://deathbytea.blogspot.com
Having said that, I like mild teas with floral Yiwu profiles, they are kinder on the stomach. The strength of this one doesn’t approach the intensity of something like Last Thoughts at white2tea, but is similar to Chawangshop’s Ban Payasi. The Ban Payasi is from the Laos side of the border, but has the same trees as the Yiwu side of the border, and the price point is lower than for a Yunnan tree. Anyway, milder Yiwu profile teas are one of the few young sheng teas I like to drink. The leaves on my new cake show browning so I know it is a blend with older tea.
I didn’t feel guilty breaking up this new Misty Peaks cake and adding it into a crock canister with the other Misty Peaks teas I have. The level of aging is about the same for them all. And hopefully they are indeed single-origin! I’ve been looking for a nice crock for my Misty Peaks tea for some time and finally found a nice one which looks lovely on the shelf.
Flavors: Floral
Preparation
Get some samples of YS purple yiwu tea it is probably half the price maybe less especially if you get autumn which would be even lighter on the stomach. I can send you a sample of the cake I have if you would like
btw eye spy the W2T puer pick if your blog post ;)
Actually my pick is from Yunnan Sourcing, the $2 pick is the same everywhere. I do have a purple Yiwu from YS as well^^ haven’t tried it though.
Thanks for the informative review! I’m still learning, and your comments in Instagram and here are helpful!
oh whoops yeah it seemed like it was generic still like the thought espically since he branded the ones he sent out with a pair of yiwu this month, both being way out of my price range so I almost dont want to try them for fear I will like them
try the ys purple yiwu mine is super fruity berriesque not super complexity almost like the kool aid but a nice transition tea
Happily my new teapot set arrived from Camellia Sinensis, and my heart sank to find this 09 tea as the sample in the box. Of all the tea types, Darjeeling is one of my least favorite. So I approached it with some fear and trepidation. My familiar tea experiences are primarily with puerh tea. So naturally I’m far more comfortable with dirty, musty, moldy tea containing dried bugs, pods and pubic hairs. Really I am just not sure what to do with clean tea. Do I rinse it? Or is that sacrilegious?
Neon green in the cup. Tastes like sour corn. Guess I won’t be rating this.
“Not enough dirt, mold, bugs or pubic hairs.” That’s quite the tea review. ;)
Side effect of drinking puerh all the time, and then picking up a fresher premium leaf and not knowing what to do.
My advice would be to steep it like a green tea. Darjeelings are weird. :)
haaaaaa!
What about that new teapot? Which one is it?
It’s Lin’s Ceramics. Still getting used to it. The spout really arcs the tea like a baby boy on a changing table.
My first note got eaten by Steepster…:(
This shou is friggin’ awesome, and I believe I got the parameters down perfect. I aired out this shou for six months. My tea pals can tell you how long it took me to learn that aged offerings need airing!! I’ve learned that the aged teas from white2tea require this kind of patience but to trust TwoDog on his choices, if it ain’t good then I didn’t air it long enough or I didn’t brew it right. The longer an aged tea has been stored in China, the longer it really needs to rest and air out after arriving to really be the best.
I brewed up this 20 g melon in 180 ml Zhuni clay teapot to let it expand but then I used about half the water! So about 100 ml water after doing four rinses. The lump of shou sticks up above the water line. I’m on day 3 STILL flash brewing past 15 steeps. Smells earthy in the pot but the taste is the reward, mushrooms, dates, cherries, cacao, thick port wine flavored brown brew of goodness and double happy dance. Brew it thick and thicker with less water, this tuo is 20 g for a reason and the makers knew what they were doing when they made these! Oh yeahhhhh….
Flavors: Cacao, Cherry, Dates, Mushrooms, Red Wine
Preparation
HOLY **** you steeped the whole tou cha at once?
Oh heck yeah. Three days and I’m still steeping this right now as I write! I’m now at the add water and swirl pot before pouring phase, which means just a hair past flash brewing. The key with this one is brewing the whole thing, it takes two days to begin to unfurl so you are getting a kind of timed steeping due to the compression. Zhuni is a nice dark red clay, very good for heavy teas like this.
This sounds like quite the experience :) Why is it short of a perfect 100?
Lately Lao Cha Tou is just edging out regular shou for me.
ahhh okay so its only a solid tea rather than something worth fanning about?
I’d have added something but I have to try this CWYN BRUTAL SHOU TECHNIQUE :)
6 months!!! i thought 2 weeks was enough.
I’m confused now where I got this sample, I’ve received many samples lately. The tea was in a Baggie and then a small labeled box. Something must have happened to it. This tea had no scent, no color in the cup and no flavor. It Refused to Infuse.
I love good LS. The cups, the pot…. You are tempting me again ;))
I know, we have that bad effect on each other. I have bought way too much teaware in the past month, heh.
BTW, Lin’s ceramic is forcing the resellers to sell at their target price. This is why the Lin’s products prices at Camellia Sinensis doubled (actually, it was even more than that) a few months ago.
Yeah I had a post up on the Teaware topic about that. Even at the target price, for similar capacity and quality, the teapots are fairly ballpark. What I find to be pricey are the accessories, gong bei and so on.
Update: used the steeped leaves as part of a rub mix for roasted chicken legs. Yum!