A sipdown! (M: 5, Y: 33), prompt: A tea with a three word name
Decided to gongfu remaining 7 grams of this tea. Preheated gaiwan gives me impressions of very strong pithy lemon, along with that typical Darjeeling profile which I am not much able to describe, then some herbals and meadow flowers.
First 15 seconds steep is strong in that lemon peel flavour, that I have detected as well in western steeping. However, much more mellow, a bit resembling a green tea — there are notes of hay and grass seeds. Round flavor profile too.
Second steep was as well 15 seconds long, made very similar results in terms of flavours and scents, on the other hand, all of them are stronger.
Third steep with doubled time and it’s like a green tea with freshly squeezed lemon. There is lots of lemon in taste, but not so throat shrinking note. And the base is much more like green tea for me — that meadow and grass seeds note, not so common in black teas. But FF Darjeelings are often like that.
Another 30 seconds steep. It’s more grass seed instead of lemon zest. It’s much less prominent here.
Fifth steep was terribly oversteeped and I have killed this tea with it. I completely forgot I filled the gaiwan, got distracted, and well, two, three minutes passed. What ends up with three minutes steep? A very strong, but with not so strong astringency, and overall, surprisingly, it’s not bad.
I tried another steep, about 45 secodns long, but as I said, it’s killed and thus it produced nothing but weakly flavoured grass seed water.
82? Maybe not that much. I mean it was better, but it hasn’t me impressed that much that I will likely re-order. 77 is a new rating.
