80

It’s Monday, and I’ve got a cupboard bursting with untasted teas! I’m going to try comparing some milk oolongs later this week, but for now, this seemed like a nice way to start.

I got this as a sample from Tao Tea Leaf when I met up with Indigobloom last week – just a little paper pouch.

Dry leaf: Long, dark, and quite spindly. It smelled faintly sweet, but I couldn’t quite compare it to anything. They were a bit hard to measure, but I tried to get 3 tsp of leaf as closely as I could. There should be at least as much leaf left in the sample.

Steeping parameters: The sample didn’t come with any instructions, so I fell back on the default green steeping parameters that I’ve seen others use: 1 tsp for 8 oz of water, 80°C for 3 minutes.

Liquor: The wet leaves smelled very heavily of salt, butter, and vegetables. After steeping, they were a nice olive/jade green, and I hope to get at least one more steep out of them. The liquor is a pale golden colour that shades down to a deeper amber as it sits in the pot. The taste is similar to the wet leaf aroma: buttered vegetables (I’m getting asparagus) with a slight taste of honey at the beginning of the sip. There’s also a bit of astringency as the sip progresses, leading to a bit of dry throat.

Verdict: I quite like this! It’s smooth and slightly sweet, while still retaining a lot of the crisp flavours I associate with green tea. I hope that this tea turns out to be characteristic of Bi Luo Chuns in general. I’ll edit the note once I get a second steep out of the pot.

Flavors: Asparagus, Butter

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 3 min, 0 sec 3 tsp 24 OZ / 709 ML
Indigobloom

Yum! Glad you enjoyed it :D

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Indigobloom

Yum! Glad you enjoyed it :D

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Bio

Updated March 2016:

I’m a writer and editor who’s fallen in love with loose-leaf tea. I’ve also set up a site for tea reviews at http://www.booksandtea.ca – an excellent excuse to keep on buying and trying new blends. There will always be more to discover!

In the meantime, since joining Steepster in January 2014, I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on my likes and dislikes

Likes: Raw/Sheng pu’erh, sobacha, fruit flavours, masala chais, jasmine, mint, citrus, ginger, Ceylons, Chinese blacks, rooibos.

Dislikes (or at least generally disinclined towards): Hibiscus, rosehip, chamomile, licorice, lavender, really vegetal green teas, shu/ripe pu’erh.

Things I generally decide on a case-by-case basis: Oolong, white teas.

Still need to do my research on: matcha

I rarely score teas anymore, but if I do, here’s the system I follow:

100-85: A winner!
84-70: Pretty good. This is a nice, everyday kind of tea.
69-60: Decent, but not up to snuff.
59-50: Not great. Better treated as an experiment.
49-0: I didn’t like this, and I’m going to avoid it in the future. Blech.

Location

Toronto, ON, Canada

Website

http://www.booksandtea.ca

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