DrinkingTeaAgain Send Message

Sweet bread and warm fruit smell in the warm gai wan! So enjoyable to smell and sit with.

First steep 15 seconds: Oh my, super super delicious! So sweet and textured in the mouth! Makes me salivate and lubricates my mouth. I didn’t want to share it lol. (alas, I did). Maybe it is a pear sweetness? I can’t really say, but very yummy.

Second steep 15 seconds: Still sweet and textured, with a savory quality added in. Definitely lubricating and making me salivate still.

Third steep 30 seconds: Sweetness replaced with a savory rich quality that I can’t really describe. It’s very good and still textured.

Fourth steep (time passed…): Taking on a nice white tea quality. Some kind of sweet leaf taste that I get from large leaf white teas.

Fifth steep (time passed…): More of the same. A solid white tea kind of taste.

I had this the same morning as drinking a super bitter tea, so the complete lack of bitterness was exactly what I was looking for.

Big fan of this, and it’s organic too which is great. It’d be amazing if it’s unique character lasted a little longer.

Very pungent and bitter. First ripe I’ve had in a while where the bitterness dominated the experience. I’ll come back to this one in a couple months to see if anything’s different.

As of now, even a 10sec steep after a 20 sec wash created a thick bitter brew that coated my mouth with bitterness that water didn’t immediately clear away. The thick soup I like, the staining bitterness not so much.

Every subsequent steep continued to be bitter. I actually drank the wash because the cake looked and smelled clean, and it was quite good. Dark chocolatey and woody. I was like . . . LFG. This will be nice. However, I never tasted those notes again. Hopefully those notes are a sign of what’s to come in time, but as of now it is unpalatable to me. Sleep on this for a bit.

Holy cha qi . . . it certainly wakes you up.

(I may revisit sooner and brew differently. We’ll see. Better tea to drink atm for sure.)

Extremely interesting and compelling brew!

I put like 10-12g in a clay pot and hit it hard. Warm smell was very unique, so I knew something excellent was incoming.

The brew is super smooth and rich, with a lot going on. Thick and textured. There’s definitely fruity and vanilla notes to the taste, but it’s not overly sweet per se. It’s more darkly rich with bright notes dancing around the core richness. Complex and delightful.

6 steeps of ripe perfection. Nothing to say other than that this tea is really fucking good. 10/10. It’s better than most offerings from larger tea vendors.

Two sessions with this tea: One in a purple clay pot, and one in a gai wan. I’m still getting a sense of how this particular clay affects the tea, so I wanted to compare them.

Clay:

First steep: Super soft, lubricating, rich experience. Fairly light brew, so deceptively textured in the mouth. Indeed, very much texture-driven for me, which is nice. The taste was a rich fermented taste; hard to describe to those not familiar with fermented tea. Not quite chocolatey. A rich, almost starchy, almost sweet, kind of interesting taste. A clean fermented taste. You know it when you taste it.

Steep 2 – 4: The same as the above, which was nice, though slightly less texture each time. Naturally, as it’s loose leaf. A sweetness did start to come through as the richness gradually faded.

Ceramic:

First steep: Very lubricating, soft, velvety texture, with a rich fermented taste. Oil slick on the top. I wouldn’t say sweet at all. I know rich doesn’t say much, but that’s really what it is to me: rich, clean fermented taste. I didn’t wash it this time, just straight into the first steep. (Cha Qi hit me nice at this point). Texture was I think more pronounced from the gai wan.

Second steep: More of the same, which was delightful. Again, very texture-driven and non-specifically rich in taste. Slight sweet chocolatey taste, too.

More of the same in subsequent steeps.

Ceramic brought out more character. It’s already a soft tea by nature, so ceramic is probably ideal as it doesn’t need clay to slightly mute the harsh notes and bring out the texture. There aren’t any harsh notes. Very good tea in my opinion. I love clean young rich smooth (thick, though this one wasn’t thick) ripe tea. Does run out of the goods on the quicker side, though.

Filled up the bottom of the gai wan with leaf. Delicious roasted, toasted aromatics.

First steep without a wash is very soft and sweet, a little floral but also bread-like. Delicate, and yet decadent.

Second steep changed to a more toasted rice kind of quality. Also something else in there, like a sweet seaweed quality. Interesting and good.

Third steep: darker, more pungent (stronger tasting), toasted kind of quality, though still soft in the mouth. It’s a curious starchy, salty, toasted kind of taste. Slight astringency in the background, too. No bitterness at all.

Fourth steep: More of the same, though also starting to flatten out a little bit. Clearer sense of astringency.

Fifth steep: a bit flat to me. Not bad per se, but just a basic ‘spent’ black tea taste.

Overall yummy tea that’s definitely worth drinking multiple times. A 100g bag will last a while when in rotation with other teas as you only need 4-5g for a good session. It’s above average to me, but not great. To me, a lot of gentle black teas start out real strong and fade pretty quickly. It may be worth doing a full teapot or hai cha worth of tea instead of gong fu. I’ll check that out next time.

Warm smell in warm gai wan: exquisite, floral, sweet, with a funky quality. (I love when dry leaves have an inexplicable funky kind of smell mixed in. It tells me there will be character to the tea.)

150 ml gai wan was half full of dry leaf.

30 sec first steep: light amber color, highly fragrant. Sweet nectar smell and taste. Very sweet and delicious. Savory note in the background that I suspected would come out more in later steepings. A bit thin in the mouth, but still textured.

Second 30 sec steep: amber color, less sweet smelling. Interesting taste and smell that’s hard to define. Sweet starchy leafy kind of taste. I really can’t think of a food or drink to compare it to, but some other delicate fragrant teas like Oriental Beauty can be like it.

Pushed it at 195F for 1 minute to see what that was like. This was great. Reddish tinge to the brew. More of the sweet nectar with some lubricating texture in the mouth. Very delightful and complex taste.

Kept going as such for several more steeps. It’s a good tea for sure, and organic as well which is nice. Definitely one to sample. I wouldn’t say it’s amazing, but it is very good. Very drinkable. It’s not a tea that leaves you like . . . meh, whatever. You’re definitely like . . . mmm, that’s good. Though again, not 90+ in rating in my opinion, which stands for truly excellent and exceptional. Would probably also be good in a large teapot or pitcher, too.

12g of leaf in a 180ml pot. Not always filling it to the top. So this session pushed the tea a bit.

This one is cheap for 100g of leaf, but surprisingly better than some of the other cheap mini cakes I’ve tried. I found that it gives up the goods quickly, and so there are only 2-3 good steeps (at least to my preferences).

First infusion was slightly thin but had a smooth, soft, dark chocolatey, cacao kind of taste to it. Rich. I suspected that the next steep would hit the spot a bit more. I wasn’t wrong…

Next infusion I let steep a little longer and filled up the whole pot, as I thought this would be the peak experience of the tea. Indeed, it was. The richness and bittersweet dark chocolatey quality was stronger, and the brew was soupier and darker, all of which I loved.

Next infusion was drinkable but the good notes were mostly gone, replaced with an earthier and minerally kind of quality. I drank it but concluded that the session was over for me.

For the price, you can get a glimpse of some nice ripe puerh tastes. It gives up the goods quickly. You can try to drag it out with shorter steeps, but I found that it’s not as good as pushing it and maxing out the taste and texture over a couple steeps. To each their own though. (available as of 2/2023)

Pretty basic and flat tea here.

Decent warm pot/warm tea smell. Enjoyable aromatics.

12g of leaf in 180ml pot. 20 sec wash. Lid on to steam and loosen the leaves.

First infusion was very earthy, woody, and minerally. Fairly thin and dark mahogany color. Subpar mouthfeel. Overall not too great.

Next infusion was more creamy and smooth, with the highlights of the tea coming out. Not super great, but not bad. More of the woody and earthiness, but somehow a bit more palatable. It’s kind of a flat taste overall, though, which is harder to describe. Just kind of . . . plain. Oil slick on the surface of the brew which is nice to see, so it’s somewhat lubricating in the mouth.

Next infusion: pretty much more of the same. It doesn’t get more exciting than smooth, woody, and not bitter, though it can get bitter around the edges of the mouth when pushed as I did.

I didn’t max out the leaves because it just wasn’t compelling to me. I don’t remember any of the sessions of the 100g cake being memorable. I personally won’t buy again. It’s dirt cheap, though. (available as of 2/2023)