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This one is from Sips by. I tweeted about it a day or two ago and a couple people said really nice things about it.

First of all, I love the art on the cake. It depicts a lovely woman in 1920’s fashion, with a cute bobbed hairstyle and one of those elegant cigarettes on a stick. Very Alphonse Mucha, but with fewer details.

The instructions on Sips by said that I needed half a cake for 8 ounces of water. That seemed like a lot to me, but I went with it. I crunched it up a bit and smelled it, thankful for no musty, iodine-like puerh notes. No, this just smells like the kind of dian hong black teas I crave.

Since I used so much of the cake, the tea comes out alarmingly dark. But it smells sweet, like fruit and malt. The flavor is so amazingly smooth. I’m getting notes of honeyed apricot. Faint oats or wheat. The honey note really lingers on the exhale. This tastes so much fresher than I expected. Even with the tea coming out this dark, it’s hardly bitter at all. This is a real treat. I will definitely be attempting a re-steep if the caffeine isn’t too much.

EDIT: The caffeine was a lot. I should have gone with a shorter steep time. Oh boy.
EDIT 2: Ok, I’m more than a little inexperienced with tea cakes. I see from other reviewers that I probably shouldn’t have broken the cake up. Oops. Now I know.

Sipdowns in 2019: 16