Keemun Black Tea

YUM! thank you Little Red Cup for this generous sample! This was the tea to kick off my morning at work and man it did the trick. As with all keemuns, i added a splash of maple syrup and it was so very delicious with this tea. It’s a little smokier than some keemuns that i’ve had but since i’m ok with smokey, i was ok with this tea! YUM!that’s about all i remember from this morning. deliciously smokey and yummy and yay!

This poor tea! This is my third cup and every time I try to review it, something prevents me. This last time I just lost my note because I opened up 8tracks in another tab of my browser and crashed the entire thing. Stupid, stupid me. I know 8 tracks crashes Opera. I just wasn’t thinking.

Anyway, thank you Little Red Cup Tea Company for this generous sample. I have to say that I really like the marketing and packaging for this tea. It’s distinctive but looks great.

As for the tea, I haven’t had a lot of experience with Keemun’s, but I do enjoy this. It’s brisk and smoky but not as smoky as lapsang souchong. (My throat doesn’t feel like it’s being grated). There’s a bit of natural sweetness to this that I enjoy and there’s no sign of astringency. It tastes ok cold too, which is good to know as I let this sit too long!

This tea has exceeded my expectations. There’s a lot going on with this tea that I thought was pretty straight-forward. This time, on the first steep I was picking up on some pepper notes. They kind of came out of nowhere and it can’t be contamination from any other tea because this was my first tea of the morning out of clean cup. After the pepper tones, I got a lot of the fruity flavors that I had the first time I had this tea. On the second steep I got the more vegetal, semi-creamy side of the tea. It was still very fruity though.

For those who might be wondering, no, I have not abandoned my sipdown extravaganza. I just haven’t had a chance to list the last couple of days worth of teas. All the empty packages are sitting on my desk as a reminder to do so, & I will, but not this weekend, since I’m at Tony’s. I brought my tin of LB & the adorable bag of teas Sil left on my front porch last weekend, & this one came from that bag. Thanks, wonderful tea sister, for this generous sharing, as I really enjoyed this one & was disappointed when that company closed.

FINALLY a cup of tea! Had to get up early today and get ready in five minutes flat and out the door NO morning cup! :(
Finally back home and was having major withdraws. Kept making ACK sounds and jerking around making my daughter and husband laugh.
Brewed up some of this tea here.
Its alright – probably a bad time to give it a first try as I would have done better with an LS to punch me in the face but this is a nice mellow morning cup.
No astringency, no bitterness, juicy, slightly smoky, and nice.
Its not my favorite morning cup but it is far better than I was anticipating as I too did not have the best luck with one of their other teas.
Will withhold rating until I have a chance to enjoy this when I am not already having major caffeine withdraws.

I am almost done tasting all my new teas (excluding samples) and the 4 I have left from Little Red Cup have been sitting on my kitchen table taunting me for some time. After a rather awful experience with the first tea of theirs that I tried, I was hesitant to dip into another. But this is about as far as spinachy bitter green as you can get (plus I need the space these are taking up!).

The dry leaves smell like smoke and hay—I actually like both of these in tea if they’re not overpowering. Brewed it’s still smokey but there’s also a hint of fruit—peach or grape maybe? This is a brisk, bold cup, and really exceeded my expectations for sure. It’s also my first experience with a Chinese black straight-up, and it definitely doesn’t need milk. A little astringent but not bitter at all.

Thank you LiberTEAS for this Sample!

I find myself enjoying this one very much, as this being my first Keemun Black Tea. It certainly is a nice change from the traditional Darjeeling, Assam and Ceylon teas.

This leaf produces a pale brownish colored liquid with a nice smokey pine overtones, is coupled with some very nice buttery and faint citricy undertones. There is little to no astringency.

I’m very excited in trying other Keemun Black Teas, for this was a good experience. Thanks again, LiberTEAS for this great suggested sample!

Backlog: I enjoyed a cup of this earlier today. It is pleasantly robust, with a nice fruity character that is somewhat wine-like, ending in a wine-y sweetness and then some dry astringency. Sweet, bold, and full-flavored. I like it, it’s a good Keemun.

This tastes more like I assumed keemun would taste when I first tried it in spring—smoky (though less so than most lapsang souchongs I’ve had), strong, and bittersweet in a way that evokes dark chocolate, a little like an assam mixed with an LS. The ones I tried earlier (from Teavivre and Harney if I recall) were lighter, less smoky, and sweeter, much more chocolate than smoke. This would make a welcome eye opener. I especially like the dry and brewing aroma.

Sipdown! Buuut it’s not in my cupboard, so it doesn’t count. It’s formerly mine, given to my mom, but my teas were stuck in the bedroom with my sleeping son, so I drank it! She’s not a big fan of blacks anyhow. I was actually quite pleased with it today – it was light and sweet, and had another yummy flavour note that is currently escaping me (my post about it was eaten by a phone that died, sigh.) It was better than I expected! Thanks again to LiberTEAS for the sample!