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Sipdown #4

One of my favorite ultra-sweet teas. I thought it was discontinued but it must be seasonal, should order more sometime.

I have a low bar for these ultra-sweet teas. Basically if it’s not too tart and not too artificial tasting, I’ll probably like it.

Fruitier this time around with an extremely pleasant bitterness and very slight astringency. I’m getting blood orange notes and maybe pomegranate, though I don’t see these flavors mentioned in other reviews. There’s a complexity to this that I’m enjoying. It even reminded me of mimosas at one point!

Sipdown #3

This was better than last time. Did not get the heavy licorice flavor that launched me into an anti-licorice screed in my previous note. More minty instead. Very unusual.

I thought being tea drunk was already a great feeling. Hello, tea high. Or even, dare I say, tea stoned?

I don’t like weed and what it does to me. Either it does nothing or it makes me feel nothing which is an absolutely terrifying experience. I’ve given up on it.

So imagine my surprise as I’m having this tea and I notice my heart rate suddenly dropping, my muscles relaxing, my eye lids closing together, my rate of speech slowing, my senses dulling certain aspects of my environment yet clarifying others, my extremities tingling, and just overall feeling pretty decent. It’s what I always imagined being high was like. Still feeling it residually after seven hours though it was most pronounced during the first three. To be clear, this had a very significant effect on my mental state, and I would not consider myself sober during this time, which is astonishing. It’s tea.

I almost offered my partner some before she had therapy appointments with her clients. Glad I didn’t!

The tea itself was nice and light, not very complex in flavor, good for 8 steepings. Rating is mostly for the feelings it produced. But I will go back to this and, erm, attempt to focus more on the tea and take notes.

Seriously, what the hell?

Earthy, mushroom-y goodness. I’m a fan of the citrus as well. Loved the first two steepings but it just sort of fell flat really quickly. Possibly needed less than boiling water.

It’s a cute novelty, it being in a dried tangerine and all. Huh. It’s a novel-tea.

Kind of puzzled as to why western black tea blends were always so astringent to me. Is it that their brewing instructions say to use boiling water and steep for up to 5 minutes? Is the tea much lower quality? Is black tea just more suited to gong fu-style brewing?

Well, who knows, maybe I’ll experiment with that more now that I’m being turned around on black tea. Or am I just getting all the best black teas and everything else is still a disappointment? Questions, questions.

This one was so nice and creamy sweet. Dried fruit and cherry, wood, honey, some grapes and apricot, really a whole bunch of fruits, some malt, leather and tobacco throughout. Love the complexity from steeping to steeping. I envision this being a good one to start the day with as there’s so much to appreciate.

A childhood favorite. Peppermint and orange (and I guess apple?). I made French onion soup today which took 4 hours. Very hearty, wanted to lie down afterward. Got my 30 oz mug, boiling water, and left two tea bags in. Great lazy tea that helps to cleanse my palate and settle my stomach.

Also, I don’t know how to handle translating tea entries! There doesn’t seem to be a standard way of doing that on here. But for what it’s worth, I put brackets around the translated name and description.

Love this. Thick as hell. Combined with the sweetness, it conjured up the image of honey. Rose, grape, wheat, dry grass throughout. The really interesting part to me was the cooling menthol aftertaste that came out after the third steeping. Wet leaf after brewing smelled immediately of green vegetables but after a few seconds smelled floral, also a nice effect.

Reading about young sheng. I got that grassiness and pleasantly bitter astringency that indicates it’s a good candidate for aging, woo. And I see what someone meant when they said it’s not so much about the taste but the feeling you get during and after drinking—the sweetness and energy really built up through the afternoon. It is my understanding that this may be what is referred to as hui gan.

Was a little worried when I read that young sheng may upset the stomach due to certain enzymes being present but it had the opposite effect on me, even as someone with digestive issues.

Looking forward to seeing this tea evolve. Gonna try this again in a little while to see if lower brewing temperatures bring out more flavor.

I did not expect the sample that came with my tea board to get me this tea drunk. I am buzzing!

Not a very complex pu’erh in taste. I find the aroma far more intriguing. It smells like a shoe box, and I happen to like the smell of shoe boxes. Seriously, I don’t expect I’ll be too picky with pu’erhs as long as it gets me feeling fuzzy.

I’ve put together a small pumidor… Glazed airtight crock, humidity pack, two cakes for now, and a bluetooth-enabled hygrometer. Seems to be working well enough at around 70% humidity.