This certainly serves its purpose as a pick-me-up had in between classes. I stopped by the cafe and they filled my crappy 16oz thermos with an unknown temperature water they use for their own teas. The cut leaf makes this good for a teaball, but mine doesn’t fit through the opening of this particular crappy thermos. So I dumped in a heaping teaspoon of leaf and drank it over the course of 30 minutes. Not recommended as it gets a little bitter.
The very fragrant dry leaf, dark brown and cut with gold tips, smells of sweet dark cocoa powder. The liquor tastes like a thinned, good quality, sweet dark chocolate syrup with a little bit of red fruit jam mixed in. Some woodiness and maltiness. It was really tasty, especially when accompanied by yogurt pretzels and one of those tiny bananas (the only banana worth a damn) as a snack.
I brewed it western over the weekend, which was much better than this afternoon’s approach. 2tsp/8oz/205F/3 solid steeps. Very dark the first and second steep.
I’ll come back to this one soon with a little more detail.
Those little leaves are powerful.