Green with Rose mini brick

GCTTB

I think I messed up when brewing this. I steeped this for 6 minutes at 80C and it basically just tastes like grass. Maybe a little floral but nothing to write home about. It was pretty though and certainly fun to try. Thank you Roswell Strange for sharing this one.

Purchased these ones from Cuppa’T because I was looking for one, more interesting thing to take home and these “bricks” were pretty unique and inexpensive, plus I recalled Lala writing a review on them at one point a while back…

I ended up trying them out for the first time Gong Fu, but in a split session because I started it on Christmas Eve in the evening but then we went out to eat supper at a really fancy restaurant for my mom’s birthday before I could finish the session. I ended up finishing it when we got home, though.

The first half of the session was really lovely, and interesting. The rose in the tea is actually way more strong and well defined than I would have imagined it to be – in fact for the first three infusions it was pretty well all I could taste. Honestly, I didn’t mind though because it was fresh and realistic tasting – no gross chemical/artificial quality to indicate it was someone trying to imitate the fragranced sweetness of an actual rose. After the initial wave of rose it gradually mellowed out and I could taste fresh, crisp vegetal notes from the green tea – snow peas in particular.

After that we went to supper – which was wonderful. I got a baked brie dish with the most amazing red pepper jelly and basil pesto toppings. It literally felt like it was dissolving in your mouth as you ate it, and it was just incredibly satisfying. After that, I moved on to a salad that was… interesting. The only ingredients in it were iceburg lettuce, diced tomatoes, and a very nice herb and buttermilk dressing. What made it really unique, though, was that they literally served it as a third of a head of lettuce. So, still intact. Then they dressed that third of the head with the diced tomato and buttermilk dressing. So, I had to cut pieces off my head of lettuce. It was really unique, presentation wise, and actually I kind of liked having control of the bite size thanks to cutting it…

When I got home, I finished the session. It wasn’t nearly as good; possibly because it was later infusions but also maybe because the leaf had been sitting a while. I try to avoid splitting up sessions, when I can. More vegetal than anything else though; less sweet/fragranced and more of a semi bitter grassy character? That is, until it started becoming watered down enough to not taste like much at all.

EDIT: For the record, I also used two bricks for this session because it was a larger gaiwan and also the bricks are relatively small/tiny so two seemed a lot more appropriate than one.

I picked these ones up on my last visit. It was a bit of a surprise, I had never seen them here before. I am always a sucker for packaging. The store had these bricks packed 5 into a cute little box. I didn’t necessarily want 5, but that is how they came and it was better than having to purchase 50 or 100g.

They are really small mini bricks. About a half inch by half inch. I tried to confirm with the owner of the tea shop what kind of tea it was. All I got was it is real green tea leaves. So I am not sure what kind of green tea, but it is green tea. There are also what appear to be small rose petals in there.

The first time I tried this yesterday, it didn’t quite turn out. I did a quick rinse. I then planned to steep for about 30 seconds as that is how I prefer my green tea. But after about 30 seconds it wasn’t quite the right colour. So I wanted to leave it for a few seconds longer. Then my phone rang and it was an unexpected but important call… And it steeped for about 10 minutes. The brick was completely turned into just free floating large green tea leaves and fair sized pink rose buds. The tea was really bitter and had quite a strong roasted flavour. I steeped the leaves again, for about a minute and it wasn’t too bad. Still roasty, but there was quite a creamy flavour. It reminded me of sencha. There was not much rose flavour.

Today I thought I would try again. I did a quick rinse. I then steeped for 45 seconds, standing over the pot while it steeped. The brick expanded but stayed intact. The liquor was light straw colour. It was a nice, light, fresh green tea. There were light hints of creaminess. There was a very, very light rose, florarl flavour. The rose blended well with the green tea.

The second steep I did about 30 seconds. The brick was starting to break apart but still remained intact, and it brewed up really quick. There are starting to be metallic mineral notes to the green tea. It is also starting to get a little bit astringent. The rose floral is becoming a bit stronger but it is still pleasant.

More steeping to come…. I am not much of a re-steeper but I am interested to see how long this brick lasts for.

Update: I ended up getting 6 – 30 seconds steeps. That is how long it took for the brick to completely break up anyway. I am sure there were more steeps available. It did start to get quite astringent in the last steep and that is why I stopped.