eastkyteaguy Send Message

I have been so busy this week. Even though I have been drinking a ton of tea, I have yet to post any new reviews until now. A lot of that can be chalked up to laziness. When I have had free time, I always seemed to find an excuse to do anything other than get on Steepster. Now I have a backlog of reviews piled up (again) and need to post them. This is one of my most recent sipdowns, and I wanted to start with it, so here goes.

I prepared this tea using a one step Western infusion. I steeped 1 teaspoon of this tea in 8 ounces of 212 F water for 5 minutes. I did not attempt additional infusions. I also tried shorter infusions around the 3 minute mark and will briefly comment on those. This review, however, primarily concerns the 5 minute infusion because I felt that one was the best.

After infusion, the liquor showed a dark amber in the cup. Pronounced aromas of pine, smoke, cedar, juniper, and toast were present on the nose. In the mouth, I noted more complexity and depth than expected. I easily detected notes of pine, smoke, tar, spruce, cedar, and juniper balanced by toast, caramel, malt, vanilla bean, and subtle spice. The finish was simultaneously rich and smoky, offering a pleasant blend of lingering wood, smoke, caramel, and toast notes. The shorter infusions were much milder, offering softer aromas of wood, smoke, caramel, malt, and toast. In the mouth, there were soft notes of pine, smoke, cedar, juniper, caramel, toast, and malt.

All in all, I did not find this to be a bad lapsang souchong. Granted it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it was still very solid. I did not notice any metallic, resinous, or otherwise off flavors in this tea. I kind of suspect that many of the overwhelmingly negative reviews for this tea came from people who either already did not like lapsang souchong or who were more or less entirely unfamiliar with it. Whatever the case, I really do not think this is a bad tea. If you have yet to try it and are looking for a basic, affordable lapsang, I would encourage you to give it a chance.