Silver Buds Yabao

Everytime I drink this, the flavor automatically just seems SO familiar. It’s a cooked breakfast cereal: Cream of wheat, or maybe steel cut oats, cooked overnight in the crockpot. There is a pool of butter, a drizzle of honey, a puddle of soymilk, & a sprinkle of cinnamon. It’s a winter morning’s bowl of soothing porridge, bland but warming.

Someone else described it as a Snickerdoodle cookie, & I can agree with that as well. It’s very pleasant, & there’s a hint of pine. Where the Moonlight white cake was roasted winter squash, with roasted green beans being added in later steepings, this is like the bed of grains you might have underneath it.

I have a terrible track record for this tea. I think I am under-leafing and under-steeping it because it’s mostly just water. It’s such a pretty tea to waste.

I steeped it a second time for 10 minutes!, and now I’m getting that familiar peppery marshmallow blend that I expected. Phew. At least I salvaged this one.

Cold steeped over night in the French press (to keep the buds in the water) in the fridge.

The result is much more profound than the hot steepings have been. There is a long, mouth sticking sweetness here that lingers long past swallow.

I’m not necessarily convinced that this isn’t an awfully long way to go for a cup of tea, especially one that isn’t hot. But the result is very tasty.

So I got some of this in a swap from Cavovorax a while ago (I’m pretty positive it was Cavo), and I just sent it along to my friend. Once she tried it, she couldn’t stop raving about it.

My Verdant order arrived today, so this was the first tea I wanted to try. It kind of smells like the forest. The taste matches up well with the scent. Like pine trees. Pine tree tea.

I think I need to fiddle around with the steeping times and temperatures, because this one is tasty, but I don’t think it’s keep-around-in-my-cupboard tasty. Any suggestions on steeping parameters?

I also need to find space in my cupboard for the five other orders on the way.

Thank you so much Jason for sending me a sample of this special tea!

Finally, my spirit was calm enough to drink this tea and appreciate it fully. The time had to be right. So much chaos lately, with little rest.

I didn’t want to rush a rare tea that I couldn’t gather up for myself again. This Yabao is gone. No longer available. ( Psych Joke is on me! I thought this tea was gone,but it’s NOT! So I’m dancing in place (tap, tap, tap! Love happy endings!)

The dry leaves looked like large daggers of wheat and when wet turned bright green, cream and toast.
Smelling like newly sheared grass on a warm Spring evening. Sweet floating scent carried easily on the wind.
The liquor through these 15 second steepings in my Gaiwan, were very clear. Pristine.

1. My first taste was a gentle mist of honeydew melon, light and airy. The juice sparkled then thickened at the very back of the throat. This startled me. How could this be a Pu’er? My mind was stunned not knowing how to process what I was tasting.

2. This cup became a vision of pine trees around a pool of water with light reflecting off the surface. Glistening, sugary bursts heady and intoxicating. Looking down from a point above the pines, gliding on silk…the taste so smooth, fluid and lasting.

3. I didn’t want to admit to it. No! But, I did smell snickerdoodle in the leaves. Ah, yes. Spice and rock sugar, sweet and juicy with some of the pine trees hiding in the background like a trip to a fabled Fairytale House filled with much craved treats.
The best was indeed yet to come.

4. There was an odd smell in the leaves that made me crazy! I wanted to know what it was?! I loved the smell!
This steeping took me on a journey back to the Sierra foothill town of Paradise. One way I heated my home was by woodstove. Being a woman alone with 5 teenaged girls (only 1 was mine…the rest were “throw away kids” that nobody wanted) we had to cut wood and stoke the stove to keep warm in Winter. I remembered the smell of cutting down trees…the smell of the center of the wood and fresh sap. Even though we used cedar and oak, Christmas meant Pine tree cutting.
This Silver Bud Yabao on infusion #4 was smelling like fresh cut pine wood, and sweet like rock sugar, juicy and silky at the finish.

Magnificient! Stunning!

Thank you Jason!

Well, this has certainly grown on me a bit. Enough that I would almost say I like it… I’m not tasting as much juniper as I did last time, just a thick, gentle, soft brew with a tweak of sweetness at the end. I’m terrible at describing flavours (it tastes like yabao! Yeah… useful, eh?) but the texture is the utmost in silky teas.

I feel like this would be great in a fruity blend… and wish that I could create more of Autumn Hearth‘s 12 Days of Christmas tea! Or honestly, just mix this with pear chunks. Because that tea was stellar (ok, I could say “is” because I do still have a cup’s worth sitting in my from-Sil swap pile!)

ETA: Third infusion is creamy and pretty tasty, but I really don’t have a high tolerance for this tea still, so even though I’m sure it could keep going, I think I’m done. I have, however, realized that it’s an oolong sort of tea flavour that I’m picking up here as well – I only placed the flavour because I’ve been sipping on two oolongs that are both very oolongy at this point. I’ve picked it up in the aftertaste of whites before as well.

Well, it’s about time I try this tea! I’ve been nervous and excited for it, especially after reading all the reviews. I love the look of this tea, little buds, they look so fresh and spring like to me! I feel like I am taking an adventuresome, yet calming walk in the forest with this tea!

The dry smell is definitely a faint cedar, with some spice. The wet leaves, from what I can decipher, are some kind of grassy scent, but with a forest in there as well, and I also detect something spicy again and something..hmm…a sweet fruit? Almost like a nectarine to me, I could be way off though! It’s a very interesting smell to say the least, I like it so far. I steeped for 4 mins in boiling water, after a rinse, as recommended by David on Verdant’s site.

Now for taste! Wowzers, this tea is really unique! It’s really quite light, but there’s a definite cedar, woodsy note, and I get some sugar sweetness at the end. It’s so strange that it tastes this way, so foresty, given that the tea itself is nearly clear! However, it does remind me of white tea, so the light color isn’t entirely off. It has a fresh taste, and a warming note to it as well. It’s times like this that I do wish I had a gaiwan though, to try lovely teas like this, I think even more flavors would become pronounced! I’m picturing myself walking through a serene forest, with spring buds poking out in the spring, brown leaves on the ground, and a nice little waterfall into a stream. Haha, I love how poetic tea makes me feel sometimes :)

Overall, I like this. I’m anxious to try steeping it a few times to see how the flavors change. Once again, a hit from Verdant!

this elegant tea has been driving me bananas all day. multiple cups, multiple steepings and the same disconcerting echo: i know this taste, i’ve had it before, what on earth is it??? i have spent my sips narrowing it down.

the sweet fresh taste from pea shoots, the hollow starchy taste from corn milk when you’re husking it, the woody husks you sometimes find on ripe blackberries. to my palate no part of this is connected to a green, black or puerh tea. i have never had a tea remotely like this. there are no floral notes, only fresh, sweet light tones that echo around and around ‘you know me, what’s my name?’

this excellent tea has had me doing circles today! i even gave up one of my precious sample buds to chew on so i could whittle down the taste contributers.

beautiful clear, lovely with cream…. drat i’ve run out…. must look into buying more….

First off THANK YOU Bonnie for the opportunity to taste this tea

Dry smell: The dry smell is a lot different than I expected. It has a very sour, green vegetal smell that reminds me of grass and dandelions in the summer. It has a wet tree bark smell, a slight hint of a green apple. I was expecting a much darker smell so I’m not quite sure what to expect from this tea.

Wet smell: The wet smell is delicious in a really strange way. It is very dark and I can smell the dark aroma of forest. It still has a sour aroma but became a lot deeper and richer than when it was dry.

Taste: This is a strange tea, unlike anything I’ve ever tasted before. It has a really light flavor that I can’t place. It’s a smooth, creamy flavor of spices. I think the strangest part of this tea is that when I start to swallow, there is an extremely sweet flavor on the roof of my mouth. It is like sugar is melting right on top of my throat. It’s a strange flavor.

This is an interesting tea, I’m not sure if I like it or not. I was a good experience anyways

Thick, brothy and extremely savory, with lingering camphor notes. This is a tea that evokes warmth throughout the body and provides excellent clarity of mind and focus. This is one of the best Yabao that I’ve tried anywhere. Its one of my favorites!