John Ciubuc Send Message

Used around 4g, 90ml @ 212F.

Starting off with a really quick wash — small leaves = fast diffusions.

First off, the smell after wash was fantastic. Smelled primarily of roasted dark chocolate with cherry hints

Steep times were 5s, 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s, 12s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 40s

First steep. The smell was identical to hot chocolate. As for the flavour? hot chocolate. A tiny bit bitter but the trade off for that hot chocolate taste is absolutely worth it

Second steep. Imagine hot chocolate which has some cherry extract added to it. This is the second steep

Third steep. The dark chocolate with cherry hints remain. The bitterness is starting to change and open up with a woody flavour instead.

→Temperature is now around 190-200F

Fourth steep. Zero bitterness. No taste of the wood, but instead it tastes like hot chocolate with milk mixed in (i.e. milk chocolate).

Fifth steep. Cherry hints disappeared (probably due to lower temp), but the ‘dark hot chocolate’ taste moves towards a ‘milk hot chocolate’ taste. Quite delicious.

Sixth steep. Absolutely the same as the previous steep.

Seventh steep. Same as sixth, just much fainter.

Eighth steep. Same flavour as seventh, but getting much sweeter.

Ninth steep. Tastes like the eighth. Probably has a couple more steeps in it before going kaput.

Overall a really nice black tea. Instead of having the honey’d sweet potatoe taste that most chinese black teas taste like (at least from my experience), this brings to the table a whole new chocolate viewpoint towards black teas.

Really tasty and lasts for several steeps, highly recommend!

Starting off with around 3-4g, 205F, 90ml with a 5s wash.

Very sweet honey smell from the lid and the leaves themselves do have a combined sweet potatoe, honey, pear, and rice pudding smells. Seems verdant isn’t lieing about flavours this time!

Steep times were as follows: 7s, 9s, 12s, 15s, 20s, 25s, 30s, 35s, 50s, 5 minutes.

First steep. Flavour is much different than standard chinese black teas. A very strong fruity / pear taste to it, follows up with a ‘rice pudding’, sweet potatoe, and honey taste.

Second steep. Very strong honey, fruit, and sweet potatoe flavour.

Third steep. Same as second, a bit stronger

Fourth steep. Raised temperature slightly and resulted in less taste! Seems that if I let temp drop to the 190’s or so, it should be good. lets find out fifth steep.

Fifth steep. Flavour starting to wane, but still maintains that honey-sweet potatoe aroma. I also just ate dinner so that could be a factor.

Sixth steep. Mainly a honey taste but it’s getting fainter. Will need to do longer steeps here.

Seventh steep. The honeyed sweet-potatoe is back! longer steeps gave a slightly stronger flavour than fifth steep, and definitely stronger than sixth.

Eight steep. Forgot I was steeping so this one went 5 mins or so. But for a final, long steep, no bitterness just sweetness. Can’t complain.

Overall a really delicoius and surprisingly sweet black tea. I think this tea will average around 5 or so steeps til the flavour starts the dwindle, but those five steeps are excellent.

I used around 5g with 90ml, 185F approximately.

Started this off with a quick wash. Because these leaves are small and numerous, they have a large surface area and will steep /very/ quickly, so gotta be fast.

The first thing I noticed is the absolutely incredibly sweet aroma. There was a very strong ‘butterscotch’ scent that came from it. Smelling the leaves directly was a strong buttery vegetable smell that contrasted the sweetness though.

Steep times were as follows: 5s, 7s, 8s, 10s, 12s, 15s, 20s, 25s, 33s, 40s, 55s

first steep was a rather sweet, creamy, buttery vegetable taste. There is a strong floral flavour underneath the main taste.

Second steep has a stronger taste of everything. Much stronger floral taste. Seems that this tea is pretty sensitive on steep times.

Third steep. I swear these are like little baby silver needles — massive amounts of ‘hairs’ floating in the tea resulting in that tingling sensation you get with silver needle. Creamy vegetal flavour with a strong floral hint. Current trend is an increase in the floral portion of the flavour.

Fourth steep. Tea remains creamy, vegetal flavour begins to fade whilst the floral remains strong.

Fifth steep. Took a close whiff and it still smells like butterscotch. The vegetal flavour is very faint now with floral being in the lead adopting a rose-like taste to it. The tea itself is now getting sweeter, which is interesting.

Water temperature drop between fifth and sixth steep. Guessing it’s around 170 or 160F now

Sixth steep. The lower temp did a charm. Floral flavour isn’t so strong and the sweetness is enhanced instead. This is my favourite cup of this tea so far.

Seventh steep. This is what I love about white teas — after several steeps the flavour just changes into something wonderful. Vegetal flavour is completely gone now, instead a really sweet fruity taste is coming out. Taste is somewhat similar to a mixture of apricot and plum, without any of the sour, bitterness, nor tart. Can’t smell that butterscotch flavour anymore but man, it’s almost like some sort of fruit juice now.

Eight steep. The creamy, fruity flavour is really strong now and it’s wonderful.

Ninth steep. Fruity flavour is now accompanied by an awesome creamy honey flavour. This tea just won’t stop giving me surprises. Keeps making me drag the rating slider to the right haha.

Tenth steep. Can’t believe this tea reached this point. Fruity and honey, can’t complain.

Eleventh steep. Jinxed myself, finally out of flavour here.

Wrapping up, the after taste is very very light and in a way, feels like your mouth is ‘aerated’. It’s like a nice mouth refresher. I still am impressed this tea lasted through so many steeps (and had full flavour until the very end!)

I do want to stress that this tea is one of the more sensitive ones when it comes to temperature and steeping times. I have used hotter temperatures and I have used longer steeping times, both of which made the tea to taste absolutely awful (I would rate it 20 out of 100). But when done properly it’s a quick, refreshing little cup of tea.

New tea with an attractive description, lets try it!

It does indeed come pressed in a sort of ’hershey’s bar’ look like in the image, which is a first for me.

I started off with no wash, but also using less amount of tea that most people would do (around 3g instead of 5g). Using around 110 ml at around 205 F.

Steeps were 10s, 12s, 17s, 24s, 30s, 45s, 1min, 1min30s, 2 min, 3min

First steep was faint, probably due to low time and low leaves. It has a flavour very similiar to whispering pine’s Huron Gold Needle Shou Pu-ers, with Cacao, Coffee, Creamy being present. However, it is much smoother and has a very flowery feel to it. Steep was a relatively light color

The smell of the tea (after first steep, no wash) was like freshly turned over dirty with floral hints. Quite nice.

Second steep has a very rich red-brown look to it and smells very sweet. Flavours are more pronounced and contains an underlying floral layer to it. More ‘earthy’ and ‘fresh dirt’ taste to it.

Third steep has a primary earthy and flowery taste to it. Also by now the tea has fully ‘disassembled’ in the gaiwan, making it pretty easy to see what’s pue-erh and what’s honeysuckle. Quite a nice little thing.

Fourth steep is primary a mineral/earth taste with floral hint. A little bit of a honey taste but not much.

Fifth steep is the same as fourth, but no more honey!

And all the rest of the steeps keep the earthy + floral taste to it. The last few steeps started getting lower on flavour, but much sweeter instead.

This tea is pretty interesting considering you can see the honeysuckle flowers in it, and I mean literally. You do see the stems but you can actually see the entire flowers as well, which is really neat considering it was incredibly compressed in the first place!

Overall I think this is just an average earthy puer-erh that has a novelty regarding the honeysuckle. I’ll try this again with 5g and see if there’s any major difference that occurs.

Edit: Still on the 3g but I’m steeping for very long times (about 5 minutes). It now has a super sweet, vanilla taste. I will definitely have to revisit this with 5g and see what’s up

Edit 2: Did another session with 5g. Consistant with the earth-dirt taste throughout, and because of the increase amount of tea, it’s harder to get to the ‘end stage’ steep. Overall, an amazing tea if you like drinking dirt, mediocre one otherwise.

starting off with a quick 5s wash. The smell is an absolutely wonderful mixture of honey, steamed buns, walnut, vanilla, and cocoa. The color looks of a ‘deep honey’.

I put about 4g of leaves in around 200 F water.

Infusion times were as follows: 7s, 9s, 12s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 1min30s, 3min

The first couple steeps keep a fulfilling steam bun, vanilla, and honey taste. The third steep had a slight ‘darker’, cocoa like hint to it. Later steeps headed towards being more mild in nature while keeping the steam bun, vanilla, honey trinity taste stable and upfront. Latest steeps get quite smooth and a little malty, but that depends on steep time.

Quite a pleasant tea whose flavour tastes the same as the tea smells. It is consistent throughout the session and is one of my go-to teas at the moment.

Updated this review ten months later, check past the dotted line below. TL;DR added on the end.

Typing this review while drinking the tea at the same time.

I started this tea off with a flash infusion / wash of 5s. The flavour from the tea scent smelled quite like mesquite wood, which was very pleasant.

I recommend brewing this tea slightly under boiling. This removes the bitter taste present at higher temperatures and makes the tea more mellow overall.

On the first cup, after letting the temperature cool down more, the flavour changes and actually gets stronger despite no changes being done to it. A strong ‘wet wood’ flavour comes out. It surprisingly adopts a slightly sweet taste, not unlike raw sugarcane.

Second steep initially tastes like wet wood, dry grass, and sugarcane mixed together. Not bitter and not overpowering, just mellow and soothing. So far, brewing this tea at a lower temperature really makes it taste much better (did some steeping at around boiling, was not sweet and generally bitter, not recommended). The after taste, tastes strongly like a ‘sweet mesquite’. Rather pleasant.

Letting the temperature drop, the flavour becomes less powerful, but sweeter instead. It’s almost like this tea can’t make up its mind.

Using around 140mL for the third steep, so letting it sit for about a minute. Tastes like the previous steep, just a bit stronger and a very very slight apricot hint in the back. Steep 3 is actually the ‘sweetest’ of them all; it is still a subtle sweetness but it still is there. A slight bitterness starts emerging as the tea cools, but that might be due to the 1 min steep time.

Overall not a bad young sheng. Not a huge fan for grass-like pu-erhs, but this one was quite relaxing with no real bitterness.

Ten months later. I’m now more experienced with teas so lets give this guy a go again!

5s wash at 205F. Using around 4g for about 120mL

Wet aroma is really neat, a bit smokey with wet grass, oak, wood, and just a bit of vibrancy as well.

So first steep flavour is mellow and not that sharp, but has a leafy taste to it (well it’s tea leaves I know but still), and it tastes a bit like autumn. very faint hints of sweetness, but mainly grassy. Not terribly exciting, but it has a significant relaxing effect on me, really enjoying that.

So second steep is neat, different from my previous note! It’s very light, despite having around a 20s steep. Very light consistency, but a little sharp as well. Not bitter or astringent at all. You can start testing the minerality from it. A bit leafy but no longer ‘overpowring’ as before. Smooth leaf, not too much sweetness again, but incredibly calming.

Third steep. again, light flavour despite longer steep, but now it’s sweet. Still has a bit of a woody leafy taste to it, and dryness is creeping in (that’s what I get for trying to brew it too long), but incredibly calming and relaxing.

fourth and fifth steeps maintains the same.

TL;DR

It’s so neat how the flavour profile changed so significantly from the previous. Sweetness is honestly not there, but instead it starts off a little sharp in taste and then mellows out. It then becomes rather soft, grassy, leafy, and woody, but it is incredibly relaxing and very very mellow. The astringency is on the middle of the tongue, which is rather unique for me. I have to readjust my rating and put it a tad higher: This tea is excellent for relaxing. Not terribly sweet but isn’t bitter at all. Nice.

Quite a nice and calming tea. The jasmine is present but not overpowering, but instead supplementing the creamy melon taste that permeates throughout each sip. Extremely relaxing and enjoyable white tea, I highly recommend it.

Edit: Using a higher amount of tea (around 5g from the usual 3g) and with the proper temperature resulted in an amazingly sweet and candy taste. What a fun tea