Bai Mu Dan

You know what’s weird? How I generally enjoy a cup brewed Western style more than several cup brewed Gong Fu, and yet with certain sorts of tea, I have taken to thinking in terms of Gong Fu when it comes to writing about them on Steepster. It’s a weird situation where it’s more fun to brew this way, but I prefer the result of the other way. As Dr Right was interested in having some too and I didn’t really want to skip every other steep when writing about it, I ended up in an even weirder situation where I made the same tea in two different pots in two different ways at the same time.

This one was shared with me a while ago by Ssajami. The last time I had a tea of this type I felt it was like drinking a liquid courgette, so I was curious to see if that was something unique to that one or if I could reproduce something similar in others of the same type. Up until very recently I associated this type of tea primarily with walnuts, so I don’t know where all these gourds has suddenly come from.

1. The aroma is very floral and there something almost syrup-y sweet lurking underneath the surface of it too. That floralness, though, that’s almost too much for me. It’s like a flower shop. Too much. Too strong. Almost sickening. It reminds me of a bouquet of flowers I got once where I had to air out the living room really well because they were so strong that they were stinking up the place.

It develops really really quickly though, and before I’ve even got so far as to take a sip it has already turned away from the extreme floralness and into something which reminds me most of all of gherkins. It’s even slightly dill-y. Now, I really enjoy gherkins, but tea is not something I particularly wish to find the association to them in.

It does, however, solve the mystery of how someone got the thought of flavouring tea with cucumber. I have actually tried a cucumber flavoured white tea once. It was vile.

The flavour is still quite floral, really, but the floralness mainly shows up in the aftertaste. The first bit of the sip is something smooth and slippery and very wet. You know how something which has an astringent note can taste dry? Well, this is definitely not astringent, but it’s not really the normal smoothness of non-astringency either. It just feels wetter than usual. It’s really the only way I can describe it. I know it sounds ridiculous. It’s not giving me anything in way of an actual flavour though, not until the floral bits set in. It’s just warm water, which is wet and then it’s floral.

2. The aroma this time is still very floral but less intensely so. There doesn’t seem to be any gherkins or anything of that family around this time. There is a fair bit of dill after it has developed a bit, but it doesn’t have those other details that makes me think of pickled cucurbitaceae of any sort.

The flavour is all floralness all the way. Rather too much so for me, and I feel like I’m drinking perfume. With a touch of dill in it.

Dill perfume… I… erm, no. I find myself bizarrely wanting the gherkins back. Let’s just skip straight ahead here.

3. Still floral on the aroma and still dill-y. I’m getting rather tired of these as none of them are smells that I particularly enjoy.

The flavour is exactly the same as the second round, so I’m just going to skip it.

4. No it’s still the same as before. I’m officially throwing in the (tea)towel.

For comparison, I snuck into Dr. Right’s room and sipped a bit of his western style brewed cup. He laughed heartily at how that too reminded me of gherkins in the aroma. The flavour wasn’t much though. It was somehow less intense than I had expected and impossible for me to really decipher. It had the same ‘wetness’ to it though.

For all his laughing he eventually admitted that he could kind of see where I was coming from with those gherkins.

ETA: Oh and additionally, I made myself a teatra.de account yesterday, so feel free to look me up if you like. I’m Angrboda there also and use the same icon, so I shouldn’t be difficult to find. I have no idea what to do with it though; it was a whim.

Gentle, sweet white.
Careful with the water temp. and steep time because it can get a bit off.
But if done right, it’s a good white.

Preparation:

- Temperature: 167°F / 75°C
- Time: 8 min, 20 sec
- Tea Amount: 7.5 g
- Water Volume: 15 oz / 450 ml

This tea is part of the list of the teas I got this month. (https://skoomaden.me/posts/teas-arriving-in-may/).

Would you believe me if I told you I tried this tea 4 times in 4 different ways before writing this review?
I simply couldn’t believe it was as bad as I thought it was, so I tried it again and again, and again, and again.

First, I tried Gong Fu Style in two different combinations of time and temperature, then I tried it in a temperature-controlled tea maker, and finally, I tried it in a regular teapot.
The first time, I thought that perhaps Gong Fu Style wasn’t made for this tea, the second time, I thought perhaps I had too much concentration, then, I thought that perhaps the temperature dropping during the infusion (since the infusion time is 8-10 min) was the cause, and finally, as I am writing this review, the tea is in a teapot, and I am waiting for it to cool down to see if it’s better cold.

Now let’s see how Palais Des Thés describes this tea:

From Palais des Thés:

“White peony” is a very fine tea, made up of all sorts of leaves in their natural state: silvery buds, Souchong leaves, first and second leaves and stems.
Its woody taste is like the autumn fruits: hazelnuts and chestnuts.

Alright, pretty self-explanatory, onto the tasting notes.

I’m going to break down every single tasting experience I had with this tea, and then I’ll give you my final thoughts.

“What the hell am I drinking?” must’ve been my first thought. It wasn’t the bitterness that struck me, but the toughness of the tea. It was like drinking a very old, very dry, very woody piece of wood. The taste was so strong, so overpowering, that I couldn’t even taste the bitterness. I thought perhaps I had too much tea in the gaiwan, so I tried again.

Okay, less tea, less time, maybe that’s the trick. But no, the tea was still as strong, as overpowering, as woody. I couldn’t even taste the bitterness. I thought perhaps the method itself was wrong.

Ark! Strong as hell this one, overpowering, woody, dry, old, and strong, and most importantly, not anything like a Bai Mu Dan.

Huh, is this it?
Is this the tea I’ve been trying to taste for the past 2 hours?
It’s so incredibly light, so incredibly tasteless, so incredibly… boring.

But still woody, still like what a minecraft birch plank would taste like, still not a Bai Mu Dan.

But I cannot say it’s bad, because it isn’t. “Truly I was the one to blame by trying to taste it in a way it wasn’t meant to be tasted.”
But why would this Bai Mu Dan not be meant to be tasted in Gong Fu Style? Why would it be so strong, so overpowering, so woody?

Not every white tea can be tasted Gong Fu Style, and this one is a perfect example of that. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just… there. It’s a tea that you can drink without thinking about it, without tasting it, without enjoying it. It’s a tea that you can drink while doing something else, while talking, while working, while reading, while watching TV.
It’s a non-tea, it’s not light yet with character as I wished it would’ve been, and after trying a stable method, and under these very specific and controlled conditions, I can say that it’s an overpriced tea that does what it’s supposed to.

I would feel it to be unfair to judge it badly, my apprehensions disappeared after the last tasting, but I cannot say it’s good either.

- Flavor Complexity: 10/30 – The tea lacked depth and distinctive flavors.
- Brewing Forgiveness: 10/20 – Difficult to get right, with inconsistent results across methods.
- Consistency Across Infusions: 8/20 – Varied widely, mostly disappointing.
- Overall Enjoyment: 10/30 – Despite its shortcomings, it’s drinkable and fair.

- yaro

Definitely more flavorful than some of the white teas I’ve tried. I don’t find it super floral like another reviewer noted, at all… I wonder if maybe they changed the supplier or something? It’s perfect for when you want a stronger tasting white tea, and I accidently oversteeped it a little on the second steeping but it still tasted delicious. Very happy with it! If you want it to be a bit sweeter you can lower the temperature. 5 minutes at 70-72 C makes for a very lovely cup I think.

When I first tried this tea, I was amazed. But the next few cups weren’t that good. I realized you’ve got to be careful with the amount of leaves you take and with the steep time (water temperature should be around 80°C) or else the flavour can be too intense and this will ruin the gentleness of the white tea.

An excellent tea, among the best I have ever had. It has become my staple allround tea.

Reasonnable price.
The brew in a zhong at 95°C was far better than in a big teapot.