I’ve been avoiding this one because its mushroomy earthiness hasn’t sounded appealing lately, but today I thought I’d see what else I could get from it. Compared to my first tasting note, increasing the amount of tea and brewing with boiling water resulted in a very citrusy tea with the earthiness pushed to the background. Not too bad, but the citrus is a bit too much.

For the next cup, I lowered the temperature. This brought out some sweet chocolate in exchange for some of the excess lemon, spice, and earthiness. It’s much more balanced now; however, that sheng-like weirdness that I mentioned in the first tasting note isn’t there at all when brewed this way. It’s just a nice, mellow black tea, more casually enjoyable yet somewhat less interesting. I’ll have to try gongfu again. My first attempt was nothing but mushrooms…

Flavors: Chocolate, Citrus, Earth, Mineral, Mushrooms, Pepper

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I mostly drink roasted oolongs, Chinese black tea, Darjeeling, and occasionally sheng puerh, aged white tea, or Japanese green tea. Assam, Ceylon, etc., don’t interest me much, and I don’t like flavored tea except Earl Grey and chai.

I don’t think rating tea is very helpful when everyone rates on a different scale and looks for different things in tea, so I will probably never rate anything I review.

Aside from tea, I also like single origin coffee, wine, and craft beer. Other interests include listening to and making music, music-related electronics, sci-fi and fantasy, writing, and cooking.

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Michigan

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