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I overdid it with the puerh yesterday. After I steeped my chenpi to extinction, I moved on to another shou, which was extremely delicious right up until I discovered from first-hand experience that ‘tea-drunk’ skips right over the pleasant intoxication of, say, ‘merlot-drunk’ and goes straight to the hangover.

I’m not even going to review yesterday’s second shou experience, but it did make me go to the corner shop and get a load of digestive biscuits and croissants to fill the snack-cupboard with, lest I encounter puerh on an empty stomach ever again.

This morning I tried to seek comfort and solace in my favourite, gentle, softly-murmuring Oolong, but yesterday’s dizzying memory still haunts me, so I’m settling myself with PG Tips decaf, with a big splash of milk to cool it down and temper any lingering and vicious shards of caffeine, tannins, polyphenols and whatnot.

It’s quite nice, though to get any tea-taste at all, it has to be brewed for a good couple of minutes in a mug of boiling water, whilst poking at the teabag then squeezing it against the side of the mug with a teaspoon.

I’m rating this highly for a mass-market decaf with a watery taste. 65 I think, because although I once opened up a teabag of it and tried to brew the ‘leaves’ in a jug, like loose-leaf, and watched the tiny particles turn to an unhealthy-looking brownish sludge, sometimes it’s exactly what I need.

It’s like the fizzy-fizzy-make-feel-nice of Alka-Seltzer for merlot-lovers, but for intemperate tea drinkers.

I’m loving the mulled and mellow taste of this. I got it as a free sample with my last order, used half the sample last night, and I’ve been steeping the other half this morning. It’s deliciously woody with a muted tang of orange in the aftertaste – there are pieces of dried orange rind in the sample, which I put in along with the leaves when I steeped, and as the rind softened, more orange taste came through so later steeps were more ‘mulled’ tasting.

It’s very warming and soothing; I drank this right up until bedtime last night and felt very cosy. I think I’ll be buying more of this before winter comes, and then hoping for snow so I can sit by the fire sipping it snugly.

Not so much a review as a ‘note to self’ about the date (15th August) I put some of this in a little clay bowl with some kitchen towel taped over the top on the advice of other steepsters, to air out some of the more … pungent aromas.

This is a 2013 sample I got last year, but it’s been stored in its original unopened pouch inside a tightly-lidded tea-tin, so I don’t think it’ll have lost very much flavour and aroma, though both might be more muted than if it were very fresh.

I steeped about 5g of this in 200ml of 95C water or a bit cooler, for 30-45s per steep, and got 4 good steeps from it; I steeped the first time using on-the-boil water (because UK children are taught in primary school that tea is brewed in boiling water and it’s anathema to brew it in anything less) and this made it very astringent, but using cooler water took all the bitterness away.

The scent is like a subdued summer flower-garden, and the taste is mildly sweet with a smoky hint, and lightly oily.

Pleasant and easy-going as a light and uplifting morning drink. I’d rate this in the mid-80s – I like it a lot but it’s not quite as more-ish as my favourite black teas.

I’ve heard tell that Oolong is an ancient Chinese remedy for hangovers, so, in the interest of science, today I’m looking for empirical evidence in my teacup.

It was movie-and-harissa-chicken night in my house last night, which is an excuse to break out the beer, because harissa is made almost entirely of chilis, so something is needed to put out the fire, or at least numb the inflamed senses.

I got a couple of hundred grams of this Ali Shan in the TeaVivre anniversary sale (along with too many Puerhs to count, or to fit in my tea-tins, or, probably, ever manage to drink). I was introduced to Oolong by TeaVivre when Angel sent me some free samples last year, and this one was the best tea, hands-down, I’ve ever had.

On my 3rd steep of this, I’m only halfway through my research. It’s a double-blind placebo-controlled study but for the control-group results I’ll have to wait for my housemate to get home from work and ask him how he feels.

But so far, I feel no better than I did a couple of hours ago, though the tea tastes as delicious as ever, and its warm butteriness and autumn-leaves smell is making me care less about my fuzzy head.

Interestingly, Wikipedia cites some research that claims alcohol ‘has been found outside the solar system, in stars and planetary-forming regions of space.’ By a staggering coincidence, the movie we watched last night was War of the Worlds.

I’ve uploaded a photo of my box of this tea because the British packaging for it is different from the US version (and maybe the ingredients are too, looking at others’ tasting notes for this).

I bought it because it was cheap and cheerful, and sometimes I fancy a spicy tea in the morning; I had a small stash of a chai a couple of years ago that was utterly stunning, but I didn’t keep track of my teas back then, so I have no idea what it was, or even who sold it.

In the UK version of this, the only ingredients listed on the box are tea, cinnamon, ginger, and ‘flavourings’, so most of the spices that should be there are missing. I can taste a hint of cloves, but no cardamom or black pepper. It tastes mostly of cinnamon, and doesn’t have the warmth of a good chai, or the nice little sting on the tongue that the black peppercorns should give it.

It’s not a terrible tea; I don’t take sugar so maybe adding a bit would bring out some of the flavours more, but to me this tastes a bit insipid. I’m going to rate it at about 65, because it’s convenient when I’m stumbling around first thing in the morning and can’t get myself together enough to throw some spices and black tea in a pan and boil them up, and also because it’s a pleasant enough drink, even with it’s shortcomings.

I’ve been on a tea-buying spree lately, and today a dozen sample-sizes that I ordered from TeaVivre arrived (as always, they have the fastest shipping time, no idea how they do it), and this was the first one I decided to try.

I used about half of one of the packs – I think that’s about 3-4g, and brewed it in about 200ml boiling water for short 30 second-1 minute steeps.

I was surprised at how light the flavour is in this; all the cooked puerhs I’ve had so far have been much stronger, with very defined scents and tastes, but this one was very delicate. It still has the leather smell I’ve come to associate with cooked puerh, but it was more of a hint of old, faded leather.

The taste is sweet, and a bit floral, and the tea had a nice calming, drifting effect on me.

This is the first cooked puerh loose-leaf (not compressed) I’ve had, so I wonder if its lightness is because of that?

I’ve put this in the ‘maybe’ box for when I come to choose my faves of all the sample-size puerhs I’m trying; it was wonderful to drink, and more refreshing than the heavier shou puerhs I’ve tried.

I’ve had this for about a week, and I’ve made quite a few cups of it now, but I’m still having difficulty getting the steep time and amount right.

It has a very strong aroma – of new leather, which fills the house when I brew this. It’s pleasant, but a little overpowering.

I steep about 3-5g in 250ml for about 30s a little longer in later steeps, but not by much; the taste and smell really are strong enough, and maybe a bit too strong, for me – even at short steeping times, and even in later steeps.

For the first two or three steeps, the smell is overwhelmingly of new leather, and it overpowers any other scent or flavour. After these first few steeps, it mellows, and becomes sweeter, with some forest-like hints and woody flavours. I’ve re-steeped the leaves many, many times in one sitting – probably as many as 10, and I could have kept going, I think.

Overall, I think this is a very good puerh, but the strength of its brew is an acquired taste that takes quite a few cups to get used to.

I’ve uploaded some pictures of the cake; the leaves are in good shape, and there’s no muddiness – and, yes, I’d already started to break bits off before I got around to taking a pic, so the edges are raggedy – It was perfectly round and perfectly wrapped when I got it!

I was thrilled and disappointed to find an unopened foil package of this in one of the tins on my tea shelf – thrilled because I occasionally treat myself to this (very expensive) tea and it’s one of my favourite Dragon Wells, and disappointed because my pack had a harvest date of 2012.

I’m not sure how I forgot I had this for a year and a half – the perils of having dozens of tins and ziplock bags of teas.

It’s a very delicate tea even when it’s at its freshest, so I brewed, in a glass jug, about 5g in 300ml near-boiling water for about 4-minute steeps to try to compensate for any diminished taste. With the fresh leaves, I’d usually use about 2-3g.

The leaves are very small and light green, the liquor a nice clear pale yellow, and the taste and smell are softly grassy. I got a lovely oily mouthfeel, and the aroma and flavours were the same as with fresh leaves, but much fainter as I expected.

I’m rating this highly based on experiences with fresh leaves, and how well it has stood up over time – its characteristics were faint, but it had no staleness, and the flavour and scent, though not as vibrant as when I buy and drink this around harvest time, still tasted beautiful and fresh.

Overall this stood up very well; I only managed to get 2 infusions from the leaves before the taste and aroma vanished, whereas with recently harvested I can get 3 or even 4, but I’m still as impressed with this tea as ever, and will be searching my tea tins for any more forgotten treasures.

I tried brewing this two different ways today, in a porcelain gaiwan and a terracotta clay teapot; I’ve always found a bitter taste to (most) oolongs, and a friend suggested I try brewing them in clay to reduce that, which I think works, but I’ve not tested side-by-side with the same tea ’til now.

Gaiwan-Brewed
3g-4g in a gaiwan using 95C water at about 30 seconds per steep. I re-infused the leaves about five times, and both my housemate and I tasted the liquor of each infusion. He found it pleasant, mild and sweetly vegetal; I found it mouth-puckeringly, nose-wrinkling bitter, and getting worse with each infusion until I couldn’t drink any more of it.

Clay Teapot-Brewed
7g in 500ml of 95C water in a terracotta clay teapot, 5-minute steeps for 3 infusions. Again, my housemate and I shared the liquor. This time we both found it mildly grassy with a pleasant sweetness, a faint earthy undertone, and a slightly spicy aftertaste. The final infusion was brighter and milder than earlier steeps, and it had lost the earthy undertone entirely.

I’m rating this tea on my clay-brewed experience of it because the extreme bitterness is something I seem to get with a lot of porcelain/glass brewed oolongs, and which most people don’t seem to find (or at least not to the same extent).

Brewed to my own peculiar tastes, this is an oolong I’d drink day-to-day; it’s not astonishingly captivating, but it’s nicely refreshing with mild flavours.