What-Cha

Very delicious black tea! Thank you for the sample Marzipan!

Malty, bold, naturally sweet. Everything a good golden tips should be :D

Too smoky for me. It’s my fault, not the tea’s. I will rehome the remainder.

Backlog:

Those of you who are familiar with me are probably aware that Yellow Tea is my favorite type of tea. But it is something that I don’t really want to drink every day because I do love it so much – I want it to remain one of those special teas for me. For one thing, it’s a rather costly indulgence, for another, the tea just tastes that much more special to me when I have it once or twice a week as opposed to every day. (You can get bored with favorite teas too!)

This is a lovely, lovely yellow! Nice notes of bamboo, nutty sweetness, hints of flower and a light creaminess. A better than wonderful tea experience!

Here’s my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/09/02/huoshan-huang-ya-yellow-tea-from-what-cha-tea/

So after my morning green tea frappe I decided to grab yesterday’s leaf for a second cup of dark tea. I steep about 3 minutes. The color is a little lighter than yesterday (caramel today – orange yesterday). The flavor is still spot on, except I am enjoying it even more so. The musty/dusty top flavor rests on top of a stone kind of taste. Beneath that is a sweet fruitiness. This is definitely wonderfully earthy. Another thing that I notice this morning is how syrupy thick this feels. Maybe my tastebuds are just ready and primed today or more likely I should have waited before posting yesterday’s review. What a good start to my day. I’m two for two!

Dark Tea! I haven’t had dark tea in a long time. This one dry has an aroma of old damp logs decaying on the forest floor. It is like the log was partially on fire the day before and the rain put out the fire and washed away the smoky ash before I stumbled upon it. Brewed up Western mug style this is orange tinted. The cup smells musty/dusty but not off in any way. The taste is old damp cedar with spicy undertones. I catch some sense of charcoal as I exhale. The earthy aftertaste lingers. I hope to try multiple steeps next time but today I a lucky I finally got to have one cup. Rather enjoyed it.

cookies sent this one my way and while i’m not ever going to reach for a green tea over a black, i do enjoying trying things that aren’t my usual go to teas. This one strikes me as sort of an average sencha. It didn’t knock my socks off but it wasn’t bad. I think there are senchas out there i’d prefer more, but this was nice to try at least. thanks cookies!

I grabbed this tea because it’s getting ready to snow here and I wanted something warm, dark, and woody. (Alas, I’m out of puer tea or I would have turned to that.)

The aroma and taste are slightly smoky and woody with almost a hint of smoked salmon. It’s not at all bright or grassy. It reminds me a bit of a gunpowder.

mmmmm this is another tea from cookies who was generous enough to send me a few teas from a couple companies that i haven’t yet had the chance to order from, but want to.

this is a lovely tea. Something i’ll be picking up when i get to place my what-cha order. It’s smooth with a slight malty taste, with honey notes that come peaking through. I’m out of practice with drinking tea, so i’m not doing it justice..but this is really lovely. thanks so much for sharing cookies!

Nice flowery oolong smell. The leaves as they unfurl are quite pretty. It’s got a slightly buttery, flowery taste. Very nice typical oolong.

Thanks to Marzipan for this sample.

I had to rush this as I thought we had more time before we were out the door this morning. My fault.

I found it a little malty, quite fruity. Nice.

It was cold by the time I got back to it, so I had some, and then I threw it in the microwave. It was still pretty tasty. I enjoyed it.

This is a really delicious green tea. It’s floral and vegetal and grassy. It’s got a slightly sweet taste. It’s not a bright green taste like a sencha, it’s got a more mellow green taste.

Very smooth black tea. It has a warm and dark aroma and taste. Both are very welcoming. It reminds me of Adagio’s Yunnan Jig. It’s a nice simple black tea that I could give to friends who aren’t into tea without having to go into much explanation about what they’re about to drink.

This tea has been sitting in my cabinet for about 3 months now, overlooked and forlorn until today. Today is a glorious day. I had been debating about how much North Winds from Whispering Pines to purchase on Cyber Monday…..then….well, then I had this tea. This, for me today, is a game-changer tea. Whereas North Winds is a blend of 2 of my most craved teas (Yunnan and Fujian black, I believe), THIS tea holds all that is magical and wonderful in the above blend but does so in a much more organic way, as the flavors come together PERFECTLY, without blending…just as nature intended. The Yunnan is represented by notes of yam, cocoa, apricot….. the Fujian black is represented by the caramelized sugar, raisin… and amidst these are the honeyed malt….. Crikey, this is a wonderful tea. If North Winds holds you in rapture, make sure you try this tea…..it’s truly amazing what nature can do.

I was really excited to try this, because it’s something different, and I’ve been so impressed with What-cha’s offerings. The package directions recommend 3-4 teaspoons per cup, but this tea is long, spindly sticks, some pieces 10cm or longer, so not really well suited to being measured in teaspoons. I got out my scale and measured out 3g of tea for my cup, just pulling the sticks out of the bag with my fingers (a fork might have worked too – this is no job for a spoon.)

The dry leaf just smells like tea – that distinctive but unnuanced smell of tea bags. Steeped, the leaf is quite pungent, with notes of fruit, peony and wet wood.

The liquor is a rich gold and very clear. Flavour-wise, this is less complex and exciting than I was hoping for. Lots of hay, a kind of generic fruitiness, floral, some earth, and a note that I can only describe as lipstick. The mouthfeel is pretty smooth, but I’m getting a slight throat scratchiness from this.

The second cup was much the same as the first.

Interesting tea. I’m not wild about it, but I’m glad I tried it.

This is a nice medium bodied black tea. It brewed up surprisingly dark after only 2min. The aroma is actually a bit floral, but the flavour is more fruity. A bit of drying sensation in the mouth by the end of the cup. Reminds me a bit of a 2nd flush darjeeling?

So, I am going to do something new…I am upping my previous rating from 76 to 85, why? Because I am sitting here waiting for my sweetheart to arrive (last leg of his 16 hour road trip! Wooo!) and to keep myself from being too antsy, I needed tea.

Rummaging in my pile, I found the last of this sample and decided, eh, why not? I am probably not going to pay that much attention to it. Brewed it at 200 degrees, on a whim, and steeped it for 8 minutes…and holy moly that is tasty!

Plum notes are there, along with hay and a delicate chestnut and sweet corn finish. It still pales in comparison to Kenyan Silver Needle, but it much improved on a higher temp. If I wanted a really mild silver needle, like if I feel really sick or have a sensory hell migraine, this would be such a soothing tea.

I might actually have to get more of this now that I know its little secret…and now back to watching Minecraft tutorials…man, redstone is hard! I wish I would have taken the electrical elective in shop instead of robotics!

Ah snow, glorious glorious snow. It was foretold that we would get 4-8 inches, and maybe we did, but since it was so warm the snow was really just a pile of very pretty slush. Ah well, snow is snow, but I am a little sad my pans for building a snow fort and then having tea in said fort went down the tube. So instead I pierced my nose and caught up on past episodes of Ghost Adventures. Also, my mom is a total jerk for baking an amazing gluten free pumpkin, giving me a tiny taste, and not letting me have anymore until tomorrow. That pie is killing me, it belongs in my belly.

So today’s tea from What-Cha is a little odd, and by odd I mean purple. Specifically it is Kenya Silver needle Purple Varietal White Tea, so it is a white tea that looks purple, thanks to a funky little pigment called Anthocyanin. Where the leaves of tea are usually green, this varietal is eggplant purple (same pigment that makes said eggplants purple, along with a ton of other purple plants) and in theory give the tea even more antioxidants. As per usual I could care less about the health benefits, what I care about is the taste (and smell too of course) though it being slightly more drought, frost, and pest resistant than its green cousin is really fascinating. One more thing before I get into the sniffing of the leaves, Anthocyanin does not change the smell, but it does give a slight boost in astringency, you can thank this pigment for blood oranges being a hair more bitter than other oranges. Ok, so, how do these leaves (that look more dark grey than purple…hehe, they are Drow!) smell? Kinda funky, actually, like a blend of peony flowers and kettle corn (hello Kenyan Silver Needle) and prunes, a bit of red wine, and and sharp, dried, leaves. It smells peculiar and I kinda like it, but also find myself doing the ‘huh’ head tilt.

So, I decided to go grandpa-bowl-style for this tea, into my fancy bowl it went for a nice long winded sipping session. The aroma wafting up from my cups was again a bit odd, blending the peony blossom, sweet corn, and delicate notes of Kenyan Silver Needle with slightly tart plums, prunes, bamboo leaves, and tomato leaves. This tea has a lot of things going on, but it is surprisingly delicate and light.

At the beginning the taste is mild, a really smooth mouthtaste, surprisingly no trichome fuzz on the tongue. It starts with a light sweetness of sweet corn and peony blossom along with cooked oats and tomato leaf. As it steeps more, I never notice any bitterness, even after 20 or so minutes sitting in water, the grain quality becomes richer, but not sweeter, like corn and oats with a touch of distant flowers.

Sadly it did not survive very long, it only took one topping up of water before it was rendered mostly tasteless. I also experimented with my gaiwan and got more or less the exact same effect, steep one was nearly identical to the beginning of the bowl method, steep two like the long steep, and steep three was nothing but the ghost of a tea.

I think I would really like this tea if I never met its really hot friend Kenyan Silver Needle, I know that sounds a bit mean, but I feel like the purple varietal really wants to be Kenyan Silver Needle so badly that its own unique features get lost.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-cha-kenya-silver-needle-purple.html

It has a woody – almost wet wood – aroma and a smoky taste. It is reminiscent of lapsang souchong but without the “dirty gym socks” aroma and taste that is associated with that tea.

My husband said it tasted “like dirt and wood”.

Working my way through my What-Cha samples. :) This time I’m trying two: Nepal 2nd Flush 2014 Sencha Green, and Nepal 2nd Flush 2014 Dew Drops Green. 3g for 8oz, 75C, first steeping 2min and 2nd 3min.

I don’t know, you guys, I’m so bad at green teas. The biggest difference I’m finding here is in the leaves. The Sencha has this cool pine-needle look, that unrolls into leaf pieces, stems, some buds I think. The Dew Drops are rolled into little balls, and unroll into leaf pieces. Once brewed, the tea smells and tastes like green tea, lol (see? so bad.) Grassy, green, maybe a tiny bit of sharpness but no unpleasant bitterness. I don’t think I could reliably tell them apart. A nice green tea but not particularly interesting to my (obviously uneducated) palate.

Working my way through my What-Cha samples. :) This time I’m trying two: Nepal 2nd Flush 2014 Sencha Green, and Nepal 2nd Flush 2014 Dew Drops Green. 3g for 8oz, 75C, first steeping 2min and 2nd 3min.

I don’t know, you guys, I’m so bad at green teas. The biggest difference I’m finding here is in the leaves. The Sencha has this cool pine-needle look, that unrolls into leaf pieces, stems, some buds I think. The Dew Drops are rolled into little balls, and unroll into leaf pieces. Once brewed, the tea smells and tastes like green tea, lol (see? so bad.) Grassy, green, maybe a tiny bit of sharpness but no unpleasant bitterness. I don’t think I could reliably tell them apart. A nice green tea but not particularly interesting to my (obviously uneducated) palate.

Warm, slightly floral, slightly woody flavour and aroma. Very smooth.

The tea leaves are dark and very strange, they remind me very much of chai blends a few longer strands while majority is finely cut. I brewed at 175 °F for three minutes and this produced a grassy tea with a lingering nutty taste. Not too grassy, but it was not light, almost just right.

I might purchase this again. It is neither bad nor good, it does nothing wrong, yet it does not do anything particularly well. To be honest it is a little middle of the class type of tea. While I could find better easily at the same time I could find a lot worse at the same time. I almost want to say it is mediocre, but this was my favorite tea of the sampler if that makes any sense. It doesn’t challenge me, but I don’t feel held back with this tea.

(“Award Winning” Photography at http://rah-tea.blogspot.com/2014/11/what-chas-discover-russia-green-tea.html)