This morning I am enjoying this sample that I got from a Steepster friend, thank you friend!
At about 10 seconds of steeping time, the first two steeps are pretty strong. It is a potent tea with woodsy flavors, a nice fruitiness and quite a bit of bitterness in the finish. It has a bit of smoky aroma, but not too much smoke in the flavor.
I decided to lower the water temp for steeps #3 and #4 to about 200 f. I feel that the bitter and tobacco notes have taken over this one to the point where I don’t really feel like drinking it. Not sure if it’s just the mood I am in or the tea itself, but I think I will try this again on another day, it’s making my stomach hurt a bit even though I already ate breakfast. Such is the dilemma with sheng… but it seems that overall some of the other tasters enjoyed this more than I did.