Sun Moon Lake T-18

Tonight I’m brewing SML in a gaiwan, because I’ve yet to short steep it until now. Anyway,

First steep starts off tasting very mild and friendly, then after a few seconds a rush of flavour comes out. I’m getting a hint of the unique SML flavours here, malt, zesty tomato, vanilla, grains, cinnamon

Second steep it obviously much stronger, with the typical powerful SML flavours showing up.

Sniffing gaiwan lid, the scents made me think of soy sauce and tomato.

Moving onto the third steep, it keeps getting more and more intense. Now there is a minty/menthol flavour coming out. It mixes really well with the existing flavours into something that makes me think of licorice.

At the fourth steep the tea leaves have completely unfurled. Tasting the liquor, the mint is more powerful, along with the existing flavours. I think this fourth cup really tests your tolerance for STRONG flavours.

The fifth steep tasted like the tea flavour was weakening, but it’s otherwise pretty strong.

Sixth to twelfth steeps continued to get progressively weaker, but otherwise I enjoyed the typical SML flavours.

I go into more depth with my earlier tasting note, but in summary: I love SML because it is such a unique tea.

This short steeping experiment worked out nicely, I think I prefer it to the traditional one steep western style. For one thing, I think the menthol/mint comes out better here. As a bonus, the long, twisted dark leaves are a delight to watch in a gaiwan, and the large open mouth of this tea vessel makes it great to sniff the wet leaves.

100ml gaiwan, 2 tsp, 12 steeps (30s, +15s resteeps)

Deleted this from my cupboard as I finished it, but then realized I have no tasting notes for it! I bought this as a comparison to Song Tea’s Eighteen. This one’s heavy on the honey (I love that), and I got maybe, six steeps or so out of it, which is great, IMO. Super enjoyable, but it doesn’t have quite the depth that Song’s does. Still, an excellent tea. I didn’t put it through all its paces, since I ordered a 25g bag, so I only gaiwan’d it.

2021 sipdown no. 52

This tea is tasty, but I seem to go back and forth on it. Today there’s malty sweetness with a hint of perhaps spearmint in the background.

Putting a reminder here because I do think I at least need to pick up another sample pack in the next order.

Made a fancy pumpkin spice latte on the stove top and decided I just wanted to go with a plain black tea so the other flavours could stand out. So the pumpkin and spices did the heavy lifting but this provided the perfect smooth base for those other flavours. Check out the pic here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjWRvXhuaBD/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Gong Fu session from last Sunday!

I enjoyed this one immensely, but what made it even better was brewing out the whole session over some great conversation with a whole bunch of the Slack tea chat people on Hangouts! It made for really casual, fun tea drinking where I felt like I was enjoying the tea with friends even though I was drinking solo and they didn’t actually get to experience the tea I was drinking.

It doesn’t hurt that in general Sun Moon Lake teas tend to be something that hits all of my sweet spots when it comes to black tea. This one wasn’t an exception, after the first two or three steeps I really got that lovely sweet spot where the profile was smooth, and full bodied with sweet notes of freshly baked bread, honey, malt, cocoa, sweet potato, and raisins. It’s a lovely pairing, and coats the mouth in a way that leaves you so thirty for more.

I didn’t actually track the amount of infusions I did, but it was easily over a dozen – possibly closer to twenty. I pushed this one right up until the liquor was just coming out colourless and there was NO flavour left. I mean, I really made those leaves give me all that they possibly could. It was a delicious tea, and one I’m eager to revisit!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdqNHN7FtZk/?taken-by=ros_strange