White Tangerine

I followed the time/temp parameters to the letter, but it tastes bitter and oversteeped :-(
I guess I’ll put it in the fridge and see if chilling will save this cuppa…

So I was in a fancy grocery store earlier today and for some reason started looking at the teas. I know that I don’t need to buy any more tea, and I know that if I did need to buy tea, there are better places to get it than a grocery store, even (especially?) a fancy one.

But despite this, I walked out with a box of Revolution White Tangerine tea.

The box suggests 3-5 minutes at “just under boiling,” which seems a bit aggressive for white tea. So I compromised and did 80°C for 3 minutes. I think this is about right: there is just the tiniest hint of bitterness which would probably get to be a problem if I’d left it steeping much longer.

It’s a decent white tea. I can barely taste the tangerine, though. I wonder if adding some sugar would bring the tangerine out? I will try doing so next time.

This brewed really dark for a white tea- as dark as a black tea, actually. Not promising. I’m also discovering that it really doesn’t taste like tangerines, or like much of anything. (I swear, my palette is fine this weekend!) I was kinda unimpressed by this tea in the bag too, as it looked a bit sawdusty. I do smell the tangerine in the form of a kind of bitter orange rind, but it just doesn’t come through in the flavor… or, if it does it’s doing too close of an impersonation of plain black tea for me to be that thrilled.

I can’t believe I didn’t have this listed in my cupboard, mostly because this is the special large sachet that is specially made for PF Changs and I called their wholesale division and offered to buy a case if they would sell it to me even though they don’t list it as available to the public. They sold me the case and I divided it among friends and family.

The instructions say to pour boiling water over and leave the bag in, encouraging customers to go ahead and fill their cups when you get it to the table, and then you resteep. Whatever they did at the restaurant worked, but those parameters did not do well at home.

Today I gave it three minutes in 180F water. It was beautiful. So very citrus-y. I agree that the white tea looks quite dark for a white tea. I only did two steeps because it just didn’t seem like it could handle more.

I noticed that the sachet was big and crunchy, so I cut it open to pour in the compost and the leaves were a very nice size! It was pretty much whole leaf tea in a sachet, with good sized bits of something – probably peel – but I didn’t have time to investigate much.

I am really enjoying this. Had three pots total today of just this one.

It’s steeping right now. It smells like mulch. I took it out of the silken bag and put it in my infuser instead, since their lavender tea opens up so much, but this looks mostly like tea sweepings. Will add more when I taste it.

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