Kaylee Send Message

Day 6 of the Tea Thoughts winter countdown box. I wasn’t expecting much after reading other tasting notes and seeing Jann’s impressions, but decided to give this a try anyway. I don’t really drink pu’erh, so I don’t have a benchmark for good, bad, etc. I brewed this up in one of my little gong fu teapots. After a quick rinse, the first steep was 200f, 1 min, and the leaves were still pretty packed. Unsurprisingly, the brew was fairly weak and nondescript. It faintly reminded me of a green oolong, but weaker. For the second steep, I went longer – 3 min – and that was almost certainly too long. The brew came out bitter and sharp, almost like drinking horseradish. By now the leaves had opened up, so I went back to 1 min for the third steep. It was still really harsh and abrasive. At this point, I gave up. I don’t know if it was user error, a lack of experience with pu’erh, or the tea itself, but this just didn’t work for me.