Silver Buds Yabao

Received in a swap with BrewTEAlly Sweet forever ago!

Oh my goodness, this tea was unexpectedly delicious. I’ve never had a yabao and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I used pre-boil water and steeped for just under 2 1/2 minutes. The tea liquor is very, very pale—almost clear. The aroma is like spice and wood. A sharp smell, but very woodsy. I’m sipping right now…it’s cedar and wood on the front end with a spicy undertone. It’s fresh and clean, like air in the forest, or on a mountainside. There’s a hint of fruitiness that’s like peach or honeydew. At the end of each sip it develops a very sweet, marshmallow flavor. It coats your mouth with syrupy sweetness and it’s SO refreshing. It really packs a wallop for such a pale, modest-looking tea. It looks like it will be going strong for a while, too…if what everyone says is correct! I’m excited. I’ll definitely be sipping on this one for the rest of the day. It’s great. (:

Sipdown!

Did a cold steep of this last night, and OMG YUCK! I tried to drink it but ultimately tossed it out. I think this was better hot. I think it was too mushroomy for me cold steeped.

Another excuse to use the gaiwan!

So, I’m still fairly new to aged/pu’er teas, and haven’t had a lot of success with white teas in the past. The fact that this is a white tea aged like a pu’er seemed like an interesting challenge.

And oh man, this tea was weird. A good weird, but it was unlike anything I’ve tried before.

Steeping parameters: about 2 tablespoons of leaf (which was composed of big fluffy buds, almost like wheat kernels). A 4-5-oz gaiwan. 24 oz of water brought freshly off the boil and kept in a hot teapot. 6 steeps total, starting at 30s and ranging to 1 minute.

The dry leaf smelled sweet, and I could definitely get a piny, resinous smell. After I rinsed out the leaves, that fresh forest smell was even more apparent.

The first steep (30s) tasted of pine and earth, and even kind of fishy or mushroom-like. It was a nice pale yellow.

The second and subsequent steeps all took on a pale green colour, like pastel or young shoots. The last steep even took on a blue tinge, so it was almost mint or celadon in colour!

All throughout, I tasted pine and the forest – it made me think I was back in my uncle’s cottage up on the Bay of Quinte, with the leaves falling and the damp air (even though there are mostly deciduous trees, rather than coniferous). The liquor made my tongue feel fuzzy over time – it wasn’t quite astringent, but I could sense a sort of velvet fuzziness. The fourth and fifth steeps also brought in an oolong note.

Near the end of the sip, and in the drained leaves left in the gaiwan, there was a floral sweetness that I have a hard time describing. Lily, perhaps? Chrysanthemum? Not sure.

All in all, this was definitely a distinctive blend. I’m not sure if this will be a restock, but I’m happy to send samples to others who are interested. Thanks to De for giving me a generous bag of this, still sealed from Verdant.

I was looking through my tea stash this afternoon thinking I wanted something low in caffeine and also mild, easy on the stomach. This caught my eye and I can’t believe I’ve never logged a note for it on Steepster but here goes. :)

Tea liquor brews up to be almost clear. In flavor I guess this is most like a white tea, but it has such interesting flavors. There is a definite sweetness with flavors of hay mixed with a pine aroma and flavor. I imagine if you boiled up a stalk of dried wheat it might taste like this (but of course I don’t really know). Somehow it manages to be gentle yet invigorating a bit at the same time.

I admit I’m a bit on the fence about this stuff but it definitely suited the mood I was in. I just have no idea how to assign it a numerical rating because it’s quite unlike any other tea I’ve tried.

I don’t get this one. I couldn’t get it to taste like anything. There is subtle and then there is hot water. I got hot water. No cereal, no white tea, no pu’erh. The tea was clear – just the strangest thing.
Dunno what I did, but this was a colossal miss for me.

This was taken out of the Here’s Hoping teabox a while back. At first, I thought these leaves were old since they have a brown tinge to the mostly white color, but looking at Verdant’s picture, that is what the picture looks like. The scent of the just opened package wasn’t that appealing though.

Steep #1 // a few minutes after boiling // 4 min steep after rinse
The flavor is a bit odd. It DOES taste like linen like the Verdant description mentions…but the odd flavors… not snickerdoodle for me! Not the best of flavors. I thought I had something like this before and it tasted much better. Maybe I used too many leaves or oversteeped? If anything, it has the flavor profile of a raw pu-erh which are one of my least favorite types of tea.

Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 min
I really don’t love the flavor of this, but I’m pretty sure I had a yabao blend from Verdant before that was fine. Maybe it is old. I’ll try the yabao snickerdoodle sample that BrewTEAlly Sweet sent over soon and I’ll be able to tell. This just has a cottony, tangy taste I don’t like. Could be overleafing though..