jing tea shop

Updated on 10-22-11 after doing a second brewing session with it

Experience buying from Jing Tea Shop: http://steepster.com/places/2780-jing-tea-shop-on-line—

Age of leaf: harvested spring 2009; received and brewed summer (and fall) 2011

Dry Leaf: Appearance just as shown on website: beautiful light and dark brown leaves. Aromatic, typical of other Yunnan red teas: malty.

Brewing guidelines: brewed a full six cups in standard ceramic teapot using 2” mesh cup strainer; three steepings, 1st a little of the boil and 2 minutes steep time, 2nd at boiling, 3 minutes, 3rd at boiling 4 minutes (brewed the next day, after keeping in fridge). Used a little Stevia to bring out the flavor. My second go around with this tea yielded three good steepings, and a decent forth.

Aroma: a mild malty aroma.

Color of liquor: Coppery.

Wet leaf: This leaf is amazing. There are very few broken pieces (probably from transport and handling) and it’s composed almost entirely of buds, with very few leaves, and a few stems. They are brown in color, where some have a light brown cast to them. The buds look very healthy (not withered looking as I have seen in some tea leaves/buds).

Flavor: Great! Sweet, similar to other Chinese red teas I have had, with the characteristic Yunnan malty flavor.

Value: Considering the quality of the leaf, and the flavor therein, the value is incredible! $5.99/100grams (currently sold out).

Overall: This is my second go around with this Yunnan red tea, and I was as impressed as I was the first time I tried it. Since the first time I tried it I have had a few other moderately priced Chinese red teas, and this one easily stands up to them. I iced some of it and it tasted wonderful! I warmed up some of it the next day, and it was still yummy. This is a beautiful looking, very reasonably priced and flavorful Yunnan.

I want to update my previous note, as this tea has surpassed every other tea in my estimation. It just gets better and better. And I did want to say that, personally, I don’t get any astringency. I am usually quite sensitive to it and dislike it almost as much as smokiness. This is not a cheap tea, but I just made another order, I crave it and I was worried about the low quantity in my cannister.

This is exquisite tea. I got a sample and had to have more, though it is rather expensive, by my opinion it is worth it. I do not get chocolate, or nutty at all. I do get thick honey, and sometimes, I swear I get sweet orange and others I don’t. I can get the floral undertone, or back taste. This is absolutely a special weekend tea. I just got a third infusion from it, which is pretty good for me, usually I don’t find a third infusion of black tea worthwhile, unless I want to drink it cold. It would be very hard to oversteep this one, it is just sweetly special.

This is one of my go to, every day favorites. Nutty and complex, just as they say, but also kind of “sturdy”. I get rather ridiculous, if a tea is too wonderful (and too expensive), I just don’t want to indulge in it too often. I’ll save it for the weekend when I can really savor it over the long mornings. This is one that I can do that with, but I don’t feel like I have to. I went ahead and really stocked up when they got it back in stock and it should last a while.

I love this tea. It is essentially the same as Upton’s Yunnan Rare Grade. I love to just stick my nose in the goodness of the scent in the container. It tastes like fruit and cookies. Lovely, lovely aromatic golden indulgence!

This was my first review of a tea, ever.

NOTE: Updated on 11-6-2011. I’d been drinking loose-leaf tea for about eight months and had tried about 20+ green teas as of the initial draft of this review.

Experience buying from Jing Tea Shop http://steepster.com/places/2780-jing-tea-shop-on-line—

Age of leaf: I received this tea in early June 2011 and brewed it as soon as I got it (the tea is listed as 2011 early spring harvest).

Dry leaf: Smells slightly roasted. Looks and smells fresh.

Brewing guidelines: Brewed a full six cups, six teaspoons, 170°, 1 Min, Bodum glass pot w/ metal infuser. Added a little Stevia to complement the flavor.

Aroma: Mild, pretty standard smell for any of the basic green teas I have tried so far.

Color of liquor: A bright lime green. A little cloudy.

Wet leaf: Army green, fresh looking. Grassy smelling. Chopped, but clearly fresh. There is a good ratio of buds to leaf, with few stems (and one, small, brownish looking leaf)

Flavor: Mild, similar to other green teas I’ve had. There is some familiar green vegetable flavor here, possibly spinach? As with many green teas I’ve experienced before, the flavor (and sweetness) shines through more once it’s cooled a bit.

Value: Great! $2.99/100g (sold out as of September, 2011).

Overall: Normally I use this tea to supplement my other higher quality green tea—-by blending it with them—-and it seems to work well with the every green I’ve tried so far, as the Bai Sha Lu does not interfere with the taste of those other greens. As expected with any typical tea, the flavor degrades through each steeping, each one steeped at a slightly higher temp, and longer steeping time; It gets astringent tasting if brewed too long—-three minutes or more (as with any green tea I’ve tried). I like to steep my greens three times (sometimes four) and the flavor of this one happily stands up fairly well through three steepings (not much flavor on the forth). If steeped for too long (over 90 seconds on the first steeping) it becomes considerably astringent. There was a tinge of orange color in the second and later steepings. My favorite thing about this tea: the color in the cup. It has a lime green color like no other green I’ve seen! I will happily continue to brew this tea on a regular basis.

This tea got shuffled to the back of the cupboard for a long time, unopened, and now I’m enjoying a first series of infusions, spicy, roasty, floral, sweet. It’s quite nice. The first was a little light, because I started with less tea in the kamjove than I usually do, but I didn’t adjust the infusion time. A little tweaking and reinfusing and all is much nicer now. I think it sat long enough (more than a year in the back of the cupboard) that it’s no longer competition grade, but still, a very nice tea.

Another day, and a more predictable and pleasant encounter with this tea. I really do need to watch the leaf to water ratio, because for me the delicacy that I enjoy here can be overwhelmed by the nuttiness if I overdo the leaf or length of infusions.

Just finished a session with the same Huang Shen Mao Feng that was rather unpleasant a few days back. This was a gorgeous brewing start to finish, 6 infusions of mellow sweetness, and the only thing that might have been significantly different was the leaf to water ratio (much less leaf, although I didn’t measure how much). I again used water about 150 degrees, in the same glass teapot, but every infusion was more reminiscent of my favorite An Ji white tea than of the deeper toasty notes I was picking up in the earlier session, and there was zero bitterness. It’s taken a 180 degree turn in my estimation from a tea that I would avoid in the future to one I want to keep on hand always.

Huang Shen Mao Feng from Jing Tea Shop

I was very curious about this tea in particular because I’ve very much enjoyed Norbu’s large-leaf green tea from Yunnan also called “Mao Feng”, but I suspected it was quite different from the ‘real thing’, and wanted to see what the original was like.

Medium green, thin twisty leaves

http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/5698368316/

5 grams in a 200mL pot with about 150mL of water, 150 degrees

First infusion 30 seconds, warm, sweet, a certain smoky/toasted/grilled vegetable background…..

2nd infusion 20 seconds, pale green liquor, the sweet warm flavor is still there, but the toasted vegetable flavor—not a bitterness, perhaps a touch of astringency in it—is dominant now.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/5697792635/

Ran out of time, so I added cold water and set the leaves to the refrigerator to try to get one more steeping out of them. But the resulting infusion, a day later, has a strong bitterness underlying a delicious fresh sweet vegetal flavor; I did not finish it. I also forgot to shoot the leaves after infusion, but they were pale minty green, long, thin, rolled almost into little cylinders.

I used a quite moderate tea-to-water ratio, and very cool water with short brewing times, all designed to moderate and minimize any bitterness. This is a tea that sat, sealed from the shop, for some months before I opened it, so it might have lost something re: freshness. Before assuming this just isn’t my cup of green tea, I’ll try it again—it took me nearly a year to ‘get’ Dragon Well, after all.

An excellent sweet, fruity, delicate silver needle tea.

I use a moderate amount of leaf, and let it steep cool and a little longer than most teas, because it’s so mellow there’s no downside to the longer steep.