46 Tasting Notes

79

I was expecting this to be fruitier, but I don’t get much fruit from either the taste or the smell. It is sweet, but more like the sweetness of barley. There’s definitely the taste of some kind of grain in there, though I can’t say for sure that it’s barley. It’s also pretty earthy, slightly vegetal. I steeped it 5 times and then stopped because it was already over 80 degrees outside, but the taste stays strong with every infusion.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 1 min, 30 sec

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79
drank Dan Cong by thepuriTea
46 tasting notes

I got a chance to revisit this with purified water and a higher leaf to water ratio with a shorter steep time. Yay!

It was definitely sweeter. I got more of the woodiness and less of the fruit, but the flavors were consistent through the entire taste, whereas before I was mostly getting an aftertaste. I thought I tasted some citrus as well, but more like the aftertaste of a lime than the lime itself. Then again, I’ve been thinking everything tastes like citrus recently.

Definitely a yummy tea! Mild and smooth and lovely in the afternoon.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 0 min, 15 sec

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82
drank White Monkey by thepuriTea
46 tasting notes

I love the color of this tea. Love it. From the side it just looks like a light yellow, but from the top it’s pale green. Think of the lightest shade of seafoam ever. I hardly even want to drink it because it just looks so pretty in my glass teacup.

The taste is mellow and honey-sweet. There’s just a bit of the vegetal taste I associate with green tea. This is the tea I normally offer to friends who flinch at even the smell of strong green tea (which is still shocking to me — who doesn’t like good, strong sencha?).

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 1 min, 0 sec

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80

Mmm. I was starting to think that I just didn’t like white tea, but this is lovely.

The dry leaf smells a bit like raisins. It brews to a very, very light yellow (definitely not canary yellow, which is too bad, because that would have been exciting!). The aroma of the tea is similar to the dry leaf, but a bit sweeter. Two things stand out to me in the taste — honey and chestnuts. The honey is pretty hard to miss. It comes out most in the aftertaste, a sort of mild sweetness. I probably would have called the main taste walnut rather than chestnut, but that may be because I eat more walnuts than chestnuts, so that’s what comes to mind first. Either way, it’s nutty-sweet and yummy. It’s not a tea I would ever drink during the day, but it’s nice to have just before bed, when I’m reading and just want something warm to sip.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 1 min, 0 sec

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83

Recently I have been making an effort to try more black teas that aren’t blends so that I can distinguish better between them. So, this is my first Ceylon.

The dry leaf smells like dried berries. Almost like craisins, actually. It has that kind of sweetness in the smell. Small, pretty black leaves that curl a bit.

The taste is very mellow. Definite chocolate notes, which is lovely, as well as a sweetness that reminds me of raisins. I thought the berry taste would be stronger because of the aroma, but it’s pretty mild. I think what I like most about this tea is that I can definitely taste several different flavors, even though I don’t have enough knowledge to identify which each one is. It’s not just one taste, and then me searching to see if I can find anything else in it.

What I don’t like is that it leaves my mouth pretty dry. Ugh. Definitely not a morning tea for me. Such an unpleasant feeling.

Preparation
Boiling 3 min, 0 sec

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46

I had this in the store a couple nights ago, so I’m not exactly sure how long I let it steep. Probably around 4 min or so at who knows what temperature. So keeping in mind that this tea may not have been brewed correctly… meh. I didn’t like it very much. I was expecting something like a Dan Cong Oolong, but peachier. What I got was a pretty earthy oolong base with some vaguely peach notes, although nothing like the natural fruitiness of some oolongs. I think I might have enjoyed the oolong without the peach, actually, since I do like that earthy taste, but overall it just tasted kinda weird.

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78

Nice, strong black tea. If I use more than 2 pearls, it gets a little astringent, but other than that the taste is nicely bittersweet. Malty, too. One thing I like in particular (and this applies to most of the teas I’ve had from thepuriTea, actually) is that it doesn’t leave my mouth feeling dry. As much as I love tea, I really, really hate how dry some kinds make my mouth. That’s just not a nice way to start the morning. Not so with this tea. =)

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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78

I really enjoy this tea! It’s the first Golden Yuunan I’ve ever had, which just makes me want to look for more kinds to try. It’s very smooth. I have yet to decide exactly what it smells like, but I like the slight sweetness in the taste. I quite like it for a late afternoon tea.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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74

I happened to pass their store today and stopped in to check it out. They were giving away little samples of this tea (like, 5 sips or so) as their tea of the month. Lucky!

Definitely sweet and light with a fruity aroma. It cooled pretty quickly since I had so little, which made it really refreshing on a rather hot day.

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79
drank Dan Cong by thepuriTea
46 tasting notes

The smell of these dry leaves is truly amazing. I make almost everyone who comes into my apartment smell them. It carries through to the brewed tea, which I can smell the moment I start pouring it out of my teapot!

I definitely get peach and apricot right away with this tea. I think I taste the nutty/cocoa taste the description mentions as it cools down, but I’m not sure. Mostly it’s just the fruit, which is lovely, but not as complex as I expected. I think I’m going to blame my water, though, because even run through a Brita filter it has a strong taste that tends to mess with my tea.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Thomas Smith

Sad about your water. Seems Dan Congs are affected as much or more than many greens by hardness and acidity of water.
As a rule, I approach this category with a mind to use about 1g per ounce of water (and often even more) with really short infusions.

mostlymexican

I’ll keep that in mind! I recently acquired 35 bottles of purified water (leftovers from someone else’s party), so I’ll get to try the Dan Cong again and see if it makes a difference.

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A friend once asked me, if I could have anything in the world, what would I want? I immediately answered, “Superpowers, specifically superspeed like the Flash.” He said that didn’t count because it wasn’t real, so my second choice was a cupboard full of every flavor of tea in existence. He promptly told me that that was a waste of a wish and said he would ask for the world’s biggest yacht.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that I made the better choice. Slowly saving up money for higher quality teas is helping to convince me. Off I go to taste as many teas as I possibly can (and maybe dream about superpowers along the way).

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