Bitterleaf Teas

I feel like I’ve been sitting on this sample for a long time, but I’m not 100% sure how long…

I finally decided to cup it this weekend though; just a cupping because I have a smaller sample and I wanted to get a taste/feel of it before committing to a large Gong Fu session. I used 2.5g for my cupping set, and even though I had only planned to do the one cupping I actually ended up rebrewing the tea leaves three times because I enjoyed the flavour so much.

It was really quite smooth; not really any fermentation flavour. The sort of shou pu’erh that I think I would probably recommend to someone who hadn’t experienced one before or who had only had negative experiences. I found it really sweet and somewhat mild, at least for shou. Some earthiness for sure, but primarily I just kept thinking of maple, cream, malt, and oats. The same notes over and over with each steeping.

I guess I’m just a little surprised to see the other Steepster reviews for this; a lot of people didn’t like it or found it sort of fishy, and that is just so far from what my experience was. Maybe because I have had this sample for so long!? It may have just got a lot of time to rest…

Also, I feel like I just have to point it out – this tea is the same age as I am! I’ll never get over how cool it is to be drinking tea that was produced the same time I was born or, potentially (and as I’ve experienced with many other teas) earlier. That’s still sort of a mind boggling thing to me.

I received a free sample of this with an order a while back. I’ve also tried the regular Eden some months back, but at the time concluded it needed more time. My sample was essentially just a single piece of the brick. I didn’t have my more accurate scale on hand, but a simple kitchen scale that only has a display resolution of one gram hovered between 17 and 18g. I ended up using the whole thing in my 250ml Yixing clay teapot (Ben Shan Duan Ni). Massive, I know, but it brews amazing tea and the clay and craftsmanship are just stunning. Relative to the size the pour is actually really fast, seven seconds according to my mental clock, and the tea just shoots out like from a jet engine. Unfortunately I was forced to use a gooseneck kettle for this session and filling the pot full with it takes forever. Under such circumstances I would have never loaded in 17 grams for most teas, but since this was Yiwu, since it was huang pian and since it was all just a single tightly compressed chunk, I knew it would work out.

Just smelling the sample bag was quite an affair. Really fruity, with an artificial, candy-like quality to it. Then it clicked: gummy bears. The dry leaf smells just like gummy bears! I did a ten second rinse followed by a five minute rest while I sipped the wash. The liquor was mineral and fruity. More flavorful than you’d expect from just a single piece of compressed tea. I proceeded to do nine infusions, the timing for these being 20s, 16s, 16s, 16s, 18s, 20s, 25s, 35s and 75s. Sixteen seconds essentially represents a flash brew in this case given the kettle I was using to fill up the pot.

Little Eden lite started off light, mineral, slightly buttery with a bit of a sparkly mineral water sensation of the tongue. As the tea cooled, hints of fruitiness and sweetness started to emerge. After struggling to identify the fruit, the picture finally became clear and I knew what I was tasting: bananas, fried bananas with slight caramelization. That’s a new one for me.

Virtually every steep was very mineral, slightly sweet and varying degrees of fruity so I’m not going to repeat those things. Steep two saw the fruit moving from banana to perhaps a more peachy direction. Starting with the third infusion the tea started to feel quite easygoing, refreshing, hydrating and somewhat lubricating.

For the fourth steep I broke up the still largely intact large chunk into three smaller chunks and this really helped the color, which became immediately more yellow instead of pale and clear. The flavor was really nice now, not that I had complaints before, really fruity, really, really fruity. Not too sweet, not too dry. This tea is more mineral than I usually prefer, but overall it’s a very minor thing. The fruitiness was now a cocktail of bananas and a stone fruit of some sort.

The fruit moved toward apricot in the fifth infusion. I’m not sure if I was actually tasting some wood in the sixth steep or just thinking I could see this tea developing some of those notes in ten years’ time, but at this point the tea started reminding me a lot of Bitterleaf’s WMD and Hidden Gem. While there isn’t too much to say, the tea was good. Really good actually.

Starting with the seventh brew the tea was beginning to veer more towards acidic. The flavors were beginning to taper off as you’d expect, but the tea was definitely still going. I did two more infusions and while the tea could have most likely kept going with increasingly long steeping times, I decided to call it there as I’d frankly drunk a lot of tea by this point.

This tea really surprised me. This is most likely the fruitiest sheng I’ve had to date and just one of the fruitiest teas in general. Fans of fruity dan congs would likely be all over this tea. At eight cents per gram this might very well also be the cheapest raw pu’er I’ve ever drunk. This might be the bargain of the year right here. I’d call this tea really, really good and possibly the most drinkable young sheng I’ve encountered. I got absolutely no bitterness or astringency, not even a hint of them, can’t say how much of a role the clay played. I’m not sure if this tea gets bitter ever and it would most likely be a prime candidate for grandpa style.

As mentioned, fans of dan cong should definitely check this one out. Those who like Bitterleaf’s WMD and Hidden Gem will likely be onboard as well. For my tastes the tea is a bit too mineral tasting as mentioned, but other than that it’s a nice casual brew. This would make for a wonderful introduction for someone new to raw pu’er or even quality tea in general. While a high-quality tea, it should not be mistaken for a high-end tea. The thickness and mouthfeel didn’t really seem to be there nor did I get any qi. On the other hand the flavors are great, longevity seems surprisingly good and even after drinking probably over two liters of this stuff I didn’t feel any lightheadedness, dizziness or issues with my stomach. I think the aging potential is there if you just look at Hidden Gem, but drinking it now seems the most attractive option. Then again at $21 for 250g you could easily buy a kilo of this and drink half, store half.

I need to try the regular Eden again once it’s had time to chill out a bit more.

4g in 80ml, its all I had from sheng TTB #3.
I just have to say—wow, thank you for including this, Jim, really knocked it out of the park for me. Very floral and jasmine-y, and delicious, sweet, with some balanced bitterness but overall very mild—yet not what I’d call weak at all. Apparently the 2018 is thicker so I’ll be getting a beeng of that, next BLT sale there is.

Reviewed what I had from the TTB#3, about 1:15 ratio in boiling water
I had no idea how to describe the rinsed leaves’ smell except for “sweet and sour pork”…certainly an odd note that I’m writing but its what I picked up. Not unpleasant! Just stuck out as odd for sure.
Steep 1-2. The taste is like a green vegetably savoriness+bitter melon, and very strong with an immediate chest feeling that I’m probably convincing myself is there given the name of the tea but again, its what I’m picking up. The energy from this is primarily in my chest and sinuses, again, oddly enough.
Steep 3: my neck feels very loose. There’s some lingering floral sweetness in the throat, nice for only 3 steeps in.
Steep 6: breaks into bitter sweetness in taste instead of bitter taste, with a continuing relaxing mild qi.
All in all I didnt’ get the really potent bodyfeels that others have described, mine was very mild and the flavor didn’t stand out to me as being excellent though it is indeed good tea.

Something else that I had Grandpa style at work earlier this week – and managed to nurse it all throughout the day too without the leaves giving out on me.

Definitely very smooth, and woody/earthy with just a clean and clear profile; not very “wet” tasting but more hinting at soft plum or date notes. Lacking a little bit of body, but still pretty rich. Really easy to sip on, and gives you a nicer body feeling too. Warming.

Gongfu!

Awesome midafternoon session with some delicious food today, because I was really just itching to flew my tea pairing chops. Also, it’s been a while since I last had this shou, and I wanted to dip into the cake of it because it’s really good.

What was I eating? Goat brie with plum spread and blood orange! I reaaalllyyy love shou paired with both citrus and berry flavours, and I really get the best of both worlds with this blood orange pairing; it’s a denser, sweet orange note that does almost have a red berry note to it! The plum spread is also a great complimenting flavour; sticky and cooked down/reduced fruit notes that mirror the jammy fruit undertones of the tea itself. The goat brie is the weirdest component of this pairing, but I like the weird sort of funk & creamy, richness with the woodier first few infusions

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9PpsRFAUgC/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFEeCB4_oAg

Gong Fu.

So I drank this earlier last week on my day off, but I was feeling lazy and decided not to write about it on the same day. I slightly regret that choice now, because now I’m feeling a little fuzzy with recalling what it tasted like. I’m gonna do my best describing this, though…

So, all in all I got around fifteen infusions out of this – though the last ones were pretty lousy as I was drinking this during a conference call at work and the water in my kettle was cooling down a lot and not leeching out flavour from the leaves the same way it had been earlier in the session, and I just didn’t want to reboil it over the call since my kettle is SO LOUD when it’s boiling…

Up until we hit that point, I was having a jolly good time with this session though. This is a really clean and smooth tasting pu’erh even right off the bat. Like, I did a rinse but I got the impression that I probably wouldn’t even really need to. It’s also really woody tasting, which is a HUGE win for me. I actually picked this one up in the first place because I’d seen it described as incredibly woody tasting and that’s my favourite quality in a shou so I was kind of banking on it being an accurate descriptor. So pleased to see that it is. Apart from great woody character, I also thought this had some of that petrichor/slightly sweet wet earth taste that I also really enjoy in a shou. Combined with how clean tasting it is, it just really made me feel like I was out in a forest after a heavy rainfall – just soaking it all in. After infusion three or four some sweeter cocoa notes were introduced into the profile and just a little bit of a prune sort of undertone.

It was really pleasant, and basically just consisted of all my favourite shou sort of tasting notes! Very excited to revisit this one in the future, and just thrilled that I caked it.

The last of Bitterleaf’s 2018 Lao Man’e teas to be reviewed. I went slightly heavier on the leaf at 9.3g in a 130ml gaiwan which equates to 1g/14ml. To offset this somewhat I used only a couple of larger intact chunks with hardly any loose bits. I gave the tea a generous 10s rinse since it’s more heavily compressed than its brethren to give it a chance to start opening up a little. The wash was thick, but there wasn’t much taste yet. I proceeded to do fourteen infusions, the timing for these being 10s, 10s, 10s, 12s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min., 3 min., 4 min., 5 min. and 7 min.

The first steep retained the thickness of the rinse, but despite the slightly extended brewing time compared to my typical parameters, the taste was still very light and slightly watery. The second infusion was much bolder, although still very light in nature. I would actually say I over-steeped this one just a little. The flavors were generic grassy hay, with maybe a hint of sweetness. The tea soup was still quite thick.

Steep three was again thick, bold, but also somewhat watery I’d say. The taste was rather basic; a bit grassy, a bit mineral, a bit sweet. The fourth infusion is where the tea finally got going. The mouthfeel was quite lubricating and the taste sweet, but also very tart. The acidity was one that made me think of the white part of a citrus fruit between the skin and flesh.

The next infusion brewed thick and oily. There was hardly any sweetness now, but the tartness was still there. The steep that followed was very similar, but I could now detect a hint of bitterness lingering in the background, but you really had to be on the lookout to spot it. It is also worth noting that the flavors were starting to get stronger now.

Steep seven really amped up on strength and the tea was brewing up really strong now. It was also extra tart, but also quite smooth. The lack of sweetness in these infusions may be a deal-breaker for some, but others will find themselves wanting more. Between infusions I finally broke apart the final tight knot left in the gaiwan by hand and as a result the tea brewed up extra strong. It was thick, thick, thick. Pleasantly acidic, blended with very minor sweetness.

Steep nine was super, super strong. Thick, syrupy. Slightly sweet, with some citrus fruit and bitterness. I was actually getting proper bitterness now, which was nice. It was nicely balanced with the sweetness and this was probably the best steep. At this point I was staring to feel warm. Steep ten continued along the already established lines. It was thick, sweet and tart. There was some bitterness as well. The tea soup was really smooth and kind of dense.

If you’ll believe it, the tea actually continued to get better in the eleventh infusion. It was thick, smooth, lubricating and increasingly bitter, but still nothing crazy yet. At this point the tea was staring to live up to its name. The bitterness was so nice. It tingled my mouth in a nice way. At this point I was surprised to realize that I found myself preferring this to the regular version of this tea in some ways.

Steep twelve was even more bitter than before, but still really smooth and palatable. Super smooth and still really thick and syrupy. There was a nice sweetness as well. While steep thirteen was smooth, sweet and fruity, it was also the first time I detected some slight astringency. The infusion that followed was the last one I did. While there was still body, the taste was watery and the flavors were clearly tapering off. I considered the tea done and called it there.

The Bitter End Lite surprised me. Based on the first half of the session I did not expect myself walking away recommending this tea, but in the second half it really came into full bloom. Two observations I made are that I feel I over-leafed this tea. I would consider 1g/15ml perfectly adequate with no reason to go above that unless you really want to. Second, my recommendation would be to break up the tea more than I did. The tight compression will take a long time to come undone, and otherwise you will get wildly inconsistent sessions in the first several steeps. We all appreciate leaf integrity, but a couple of broken leaves aren’t going to matter that much.

For the price this is a hella good tea. The strength is good, longevity is exemplary and somehow this brewed up way thicker than either of the two other Bitter Ends. I would have to revisit the regular version of this tea (I’m out though) since it may have already changed over the past two months, but I actually found this session more bitter than my encounter with the non-huang pian rendition. All three teas are good though and each have their own strengths. While this one is not necessarily quite as high quality and well suited for aging as the other two and more geared towards daily drinking, that does not mean you could not age it – while also drinking it – since it’s so inexpensive. Stock up on a few of these and you’ll be good for a while.

Sipdown (644)!

This was a free sample with my last BLT order, and one that I thought would be a really nice sipdown that I could knock out that would still yield a really pleasant/memorable Gong Fu session. What I didn’t expect was how fucking BEAUTIFUL that session would be. I took a ton of photos, and not to be totally immodest but they look really damn good.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmj3b-fnjee/?taken-by=ros_strange

Didn’t overly track infusions – something like ten in total, but I stacked them two at a time in a larger pitcher and poured into a much bigger cup that the teapot I was brewing in. So while I steeped ten(ish) times in total in the pot I really only drank five cups of tea. If that makes sense!? I’ve been pretty into stacking infusions lately – it just works well for me in terms of flow of the session.

The first half of the overall session was a lot better than the second; the tea was a lot sweeter and more fruity. A mix of peach, really juicy orange, and a sort of cherry flavour. Bright, ripe, and really smooth. It was almost like drinking the tea version of fruit salad, with a more sharp grassy and vegetal undertone and finish. The second half of the session leaned way more heavily into the undertones that had been present in the first stacked infusion – quite sharp and grassy, with really intense vegetal element and a whole lot of bitterness and astringency. Some mineral taste, and a bit of a dry woody quality as well. It was much more reflective of the sort of sheng/raw pu’erh type of profile that I personally really don’t enjoy and so after a couple of these infusions I decided to just stop brewing.

To be clear, just because it evolved into a profile that was something I didn’t personally enjoy at all doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a good tea – I REALLY enjoyed the early infusions, and the other ‘half’ of this tea’s profile is definitely something that would appeal to other tea drinkers – but as someone who’s just really not super fond of Sheng/seems to have a really distinct profile that I enjoy from Sheng I just knew the rest wouldn’t be for me.

Very grateful for the sample and experience, though.

Wouldn’t normally enjoy singin’ that corner baggie blues but this Stirling is music to my taste buds.

I kinda like broken leaf anyways for the extra minerality and because the gong fu session gets goin full steam right away.

Keep it comin’ Bitterleaf. Got any other bottom bag material?

Update: I’ve drank through about 75g of this tea over the last 6+ months and still find it quite enjoyable. Will be ordering more for this coming summer and having it in my rotation as maybe not a daily but two or three times a weekly drinker.

Being a tea that is the left over bottom of the bag material gives it a unique mix of materials and qualities. Lots of buds (especially smaller buds), some bits of huang pian, broken leaf, and a higher than normal amount of beat up and oxidized bud and leaf. I wouldn’t say I prefer a more oxidized young raw but I do enjoy them for variety. These qualities combine to give a richness to the tea that could almost border on muddy but does stay pretty clear and crisp.

Good bitterness when pushed and good balance of more bitter than astringent (just how I like it) with a not overpowering sweetness. Nice hui gan, good texture, many steeps.

I recommend breaking into this choco style brick the way you would any normal brick or cake. The compression is not too heavy. I find that if I try to break off a square piece I end up making even more dust and broken leaf and that these bricks don’t seem to like to break at the perforation anyways.

finished off this beautiful malty-stone-fruity tea yesterday.
:(

all I want is dianhongs, give me all of the dianhongs.

um, so this is beautiful. is that weird to say? I wasn’t going to get this because of the price, but I probably ordered it while in a sleep-deprived fugue, and then it showed up and I was like ???? guess SOMEONE has to drink this, and since I’m the only tea drinker here, it had to be me. the indignity.

the dry leaves are like the dried remains of some lovecraftian beast, long and pointy and full of doom. I don’t know how to describe the smell, other than complexly delightful, which again is weird since describing the leaves as lovecraftian and full of doom. delightful. BUT DAMN FRIENDS, this was chocolatey, malty, and beautiful and I’m gonna have to save the rest for a Special Occasion. this is Special Occasion tea. also good for watching-the-rain-with-your-cat days.

The WMD was one of my favorite teas of 2017 and this years is up there as well…but I’m a big fan of Mansa teas as they seem to combine the floral notes of Yiwu area teas with the backbone of a Menghai. This tea is no exception. This years WMD is very similar to how last years tasted this young except last years was fruitier early on while this years has a more vegetal pea soup character akin to a Japanese sencha or gyokuro. This seems like a common theme this year. Teas that had lots of apricot notes the past few years seem vegetal and minerally this year. Don’t know if it’s different climatic conditions or what. This tea steeps forever and bitter vegetal oily sage and camphor notes fade to sweet orchid and lemongrass. Potent, meditative energy emerges from this tea starting with a tingle in the forehead then spreading through whole body. I see why some monks believe that to drink the good stuff and not meditate afterward is a waste. This is a small vendor that sources a modest but diverse assortment of teas. All are worth sampling but this one is the flagship.

Nice floral and fruit notes with a subtle backdrop of camphor and mild bitterness. Nice balance and quite refreshing. There is a honey like sweetness that grows in later steeps. Not super thick and oily but not thin either. The qi present and uplifting but not brain zapping either. A fine tea to sip while lazing around the garden on a summer afternoon. I examined the leaves after steeping this out and the stems were nice and thick . Pretty bud heavy too. Very nice material for the price and well processed as well. I’d recommend this tea for sheng beginners who are transitioning over from green and white teas.

I slept for like 12 hours today and then spent the next several hours drinking this. I can’t say how many steeps I did, but I liked it? maybe it made my stomach hurt though….I don’t know. today was a weird day and ?

I was kindly gifted a pair of these with an order. I’ve never drunk pu’er (technically heicha) advertised coming from outside Yunnan, so I was interested to try this. I was drinking this away from home and thus didn’t have my 100ml gaiwan on hand. As such, I ended up making due with a 130ml one, which I filled up to around the 100ml mark.

Normally I rinse dragon balls for around thirty seconds, but I recalled the description mentioning these balls requiring only around twenty seconds, so I followed that recommendation. I let the moisture penetrate deeper into the ball for around five minutes while I sipped the wash. Both the dry and wet leaves have a quite smoky scent. Smoky at least to my nose. The tea soup itself was still quite light, but sweet and oily and perhaps a bit fruity. This tea was very promising so far.

I proceeded to do eleven proper infusions, the timing for these being 6s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min. and 3 min. The first steep was still quite light, probably lighter than the rinse due to the shorter time, but the quality was there. The tea had a nice, soft mouthfeel, accompanied by a sweet taste with perhaps a hint of the smoke from the aroma. After the second brew, the dragon ball had already come apart completely. As one would expect, the resulting soup was now much bolder than before. The very nice mouthfeel continued being the highlight here. The flavors were soft and enjoyable. Sweet, maybe a bit vegetal if I stretch a little.

The third steep was even bolder. Quite bright. Maybe a touch tart. It kind of tasted like hot leaf juice, in a good way. It was also quite refreshing. The fourth brew was one of the money steeps. It was thicker and very flavorful. This is going to sound weird as it’s a first one for me as well, but what I tasted was egg yolk. Really, really good. The aftertaste was incredibly sweet.

While the fifth brew was still very flavorful, the tea was starting to show first signs of beginning to simplify. Texture-wise it was very easy to drink. The following infusion was really sweet, with the whisper of smoke making a small return in the finish. There was maybe some vegetal character as well and the texture continued being really nice.

The strength continued holding up in the seventh steep, but we were definitely entering the late steeps now. The liquor was sweet with a nice mouthfeel. Highly enjoyable. The sweetness left lingering in your mouth was crazy. Steep eight had a really wet and juicy texture. I could taste a fruity tartness, reminding me of the white part of an orange between the rind and the flesh.

Steep nine was very clean and still pleasant, but the flavors were now definitely starting to taper off. The soup was sweet, with a touch of orange rind present as well. The tenth infusion didn’t mix things up all that much. The soup was clean, sweet and mineral. Really nice and easygoing. Steep eleven was finally the last one I did. At this point I was starting to find the tea less enjoyable than before. It had flavor and sweetness, but it was starting to taste a bit diluted. Overall still quite pleasant though. Very clean and pure. I could have tried one more brew, but I decided to err on the side of caution and call it here.

Overall this tea was really good. I’m definitely a fan. This is a tea I can highly recommend to both those new to raw pu’er as well as seasoned drinkers. I got absolutely no harshness like bitterness or astringency and in terms of flavor Outlier should be quite approachable to new drinkers. At the same time there is a lot here for more veteran drinkers to enjoy. While priced as high as a quality Yiwu tea, it is as good as those teas and made quite affordable by being offered in dragon balls. If you’re wary of Outlier because of its origin, don’t be. This stuff’s good.

This is a review for the gold grade dragon ball. I wasn’t drinking this at home, so I didn’t have my 100ml gaiwan at hand, which would have been better suited. Instead, I ended up using a 130ml gaiwan which I filled up to a point which is about 100ml. I didn’t weigh the ball, so we’ll just assume it was around seven grams. I gave the ball a thirty second rinse which I normally do with these things and tasted the wash while I gave the moisture five minutes or so to penetrate deeper into the tight little knot. The taste was different from what I’m used to seeing from young sheng. It is possible I’m being influenced here by the name, but somewhat similar to the Hai Lang Hao 2015 Yi Shan Mo, I was definitely tasting some plum, although this time it was fresh plum, as opposed to the more jammy plum found in the Yi Shan Mo. As you’d expect from such a long infusion, there was body already and the stone fruit aftertaste was quite long-lasting.

I proceeded to do thirteen more infusions, the timing for these being 8s, 5s, 5s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min., 3 min. and 4 min. While the body was still light and the flavors themselves light in nature, the tea started off with a fair amount of strength already. The flavor was quite unique: a floral sweetness accompanied by some sort of oily taste (not texture), perhaps rapeseed. The aftertaste was long and I could still taste it between infusions. In the second steep the oil and flowers were joined by white grapes. The texture had now improved and become quite luxurious.

The third infusion presented the tea at its boldest yet. I was now tasting more of the skin of the grapes than the flesh and while the floral notes were still present as well, the overall flavor profile had shifted more towards earthy/mineral tones. The finish was fresh and refreshing. Instead of oily, the fourth infusion had now become much more creamy, like melted ice cream, in a good way. The tea continued to maintain its luxurious feel.

Steep five presented the tea probably at its boldest. It was now much more earthy, lacking nearly all of the prior higher notes. The soup was thicker, more savory than before and quite brothy. The infusion that followed continued heading into a more mineral and metallic direction, which I didn’t particularly care for. At the same time, the finish started showing signs of a sweeter vegetal nature. The body was still holding up and the tea itself was quite refreshing and even a bit cooling.

While there was till strength, I was a bit surprised to find the flavors already starting to taper off around the seventh steep. At the same time the tea was beginning to lose my interest as it was starting to become more generic. The taste was chiefly mineral, vegetal and metallic. To prove me wrong, the next steep suddenly greeted me with a fairly thick broth which embodied the sweet taste of peas. While this is something I may have tasted before, it is something I’ve never identified before. It felt like another victory for my palate. All that palate training is paying off.

While the body didn’t maintain its high viscosity, the texture remained quite nice though in the ninth steep. There was still plenty of flavor and I was tasting more of the pea pods than the peas themselves now. The tenth brew was similar, but now started to show some signs of harshness. The taste was part mineral, part vegetal. Mouthfeel remained very enjoyable, smooth, almost oily, luxurious.

The small bit of harshness was gone for the eleventh brew, never to make a return. The strength remained good. I was still getting the peas. The texture was now almost a bit grainy. The sweet aftertaste was long and while it still had the peas, it actually reminded me a lot of vanilla. This made me start thinking that perhaps the two aren’t that far apart. Surprisingly the twelfth brew was still showing a lot of legs. The soup was full, sweet and lubricating. Quite enjoyable. The thirteenth steep was finally the last one I did. I was now starting to lose flavor proper and finding the tea itself less enjoyable overall. While there was still body and the familiar pea sweetness was there, I decided to call it here, because even if there were a couple more brews in these leaves, I made the educated guess that I’d seen all there was to see.

Overall the gold grade was really good. I received a free sample of the silver grade some months back and although I sessioned it, I don’t think I wrote a review for it. Although my memory of it is hazy, I do believe the two teas share some similarities like the early floral aspect and the emphasized texture and aroma. At the same time, my experience with the silver was that it was much more muted in flavor and became much harsher in the later steeps. The gold grade seemed to have much more strength, even better texture and it was just much smoother overall. Even though it’s not quite a fair comparison since I wasn’t drinking the two side by side, for me the differences were huge.

The quality of the material is very high and while this was one of the more enjoyable sessions I’ve had of late, at the same time this was one of those teas that are fun to try, but not something I’d necessarily be looking to revisit. And there’s nothing wrong with that, most teas fall in this category for me anyway. The gold grade is probably the most enlightening in the context of trying out samples of all three grades. For drinking now, it’s a really good tea. I actually ended up buying a cake of the ripe pu’er version made from the silver grade material, so those intrigued by high-quality shu pu’er might want to check that one out as well. It has my personal stamp of approval, for what that’s worth.

Sipdown (722)!

Finished off Western style because I didn’t have enough leaf left to steep it Gongfu. I wish I’d taken better notes of the taste during any of my steepings because, although I know I enjoyed this tea, if someone were to ask me to describe the flavour I feel like I wouldn’t be able to. My answer would just be something vague like “Oh, really good”…

A morning Gong Fu session! I can’t say I have a whole lot of those, given that I’m not a morning person & generally try to postpone waking up for as long as humanly possible. I quite liked having tea as the sun rose though; so maybe I’ll try to have more of these…

I drank this Gong Fu while getting ready to spend last Saturday at a Sugar Shack; so I was steeping brews in between doing things like shower, getting dressed, looking up directions, etc. – I 100% lost track of the infusions because of that, and there were certainly a few infusions throughout the session that got very awkward steep times because I was juggling other things. It would have been nice to be truly present and at my tea table for it all, but it was still a good experience.

A lot of my favourite black tea notes present in this tea – freshly baked bread, raisins, honey, caramel, sweet potato, walnut. Very solid, indulgent and decadent tasting tea. Plus, beautiful aesthetic to the leaves! I wish they opened up a little bit more by the end of the session, since they were certainly steeped out (not a TON of leaf life) – but very happy regardless. Also didn’t see a whole lot of flavour progression past the first two steeps; just the same notes because with a rise and then decrease in intensity.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BvuEQ0Rli_F/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwfFJ5B-pQg&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ&index=39&t=0s

(This song is a total bop – really recommend checking it out.)

Sipped slowly, during a D&D campaign.

I can’t remember who it was in the Slack tea chat who recommended ordering this one, but whoever it was is a genius! I don’t know why I was sleeping on this tea – it’s a really nice black tea. Lots of the rich chocolate notes that I really adore in a Dian Hong, but also malt, oat, French Bread, honey, and a bit of that “autumnal leaf” sort of quality. I rarely Gong Fu steep black teas anymore unless they’re Taiwanese in origin but I bet this actually would be a really nice tea to steep up Gong Fu, like BLT had recommended…

This tea delivers unforgiving, punishing, mouth puckering bitterness that lingers. Needless to say, I was so impressed by this effect that I had to write a couple of lines about it here :)

We did not care for this tea. It seemed over-toasted, lacking in complexity, and was pretty mediocre.
Expensive and had an unusual flavor for this type of tea.