Yu Lu Yan Cha Black

I’m sitting here waiting for my peach raspberry pie to finish baking and drinking this tea in anticiation of the sweet yumminess awaiting me. I also had homemade chicken pot pie for lunch It’s a pie kind of day!

I dumped the rest of my sample packet in the steeper for this cup. It is extra malty and earthy. I want to describe this as roasted chocolate mushrooms with citrus, but I really doubt that sounds appealing to anyone and I wouldn’t want to deter anyone from this yummy tea.

Backlog from yesterday:

You know how you don’t notice a flavor until you taste it strongly in something and you don’t like it much and then you notice it other things and you don’t like them as much either? Stay with me… I purchased a sample of this a while back and loved it so I ordered some more with my last order. Then I tried golden fleece. I didn’t like it as it had a sweet potato/mushroom thing going on. So then I tried this one again yesterday and was quite bummed to taste those same notes in this. I didn’t taste them the first time around as they are very subtle, but now that I can identify those flavors, I taste them and just don’t like this as much. Bummer. Still a decent cup but I’m not as excited by it.

Similar to laoshan black with a dark chocolate, roasty aroma, but there is also a more earthy note and a hint of smokiness to this one.
Flavor is chocolate, malt, sweet potato, honey, some floral and a bit of mushroom earthiness. Second steep becomes stronger in honey aroma and tastes sweeter and creamier.
This is so good!! It is similar to the laoshan black, but in a lighter, less toasty way, and has more of the earthy potato notes with honey that I love. Both are delicious and I’m not sure I could pick a favorite.. but perhaps it would be this one simply because I happen to be drinking it right now. Love it!

Got this as a sample with my Verdant order and I am sooooo happy to have it.

This is an absolutely wonderful tea. Sweet, mildly smoky, thick and malty. Unsweetened cocoa-y, not a hint of bitterness, dryness or astringency. Second steep was a bit harsher and not as smooth with more hay/grass quality and more smoke coming to the fore. Not a particularly good smoke, though.

While I much prefer the first steep, the second grew on me. I definitely prefer this to the Laoshan Black.

I have to tell you sometimes I am more excited about the samples I’m getting from Verdant than the tea I actually ordered. I say this because ever time I’ve ordered the samples have been spot on to my taste in tea even if they were way off base from what I ordered!

This time around this tea was included with my order of Golden Fleece. Is it as good as Golden Fleece? Not in my opinion, but it’s up there on my list of top favorites from Verdant.The dry leaf hints at malt and chocolate for me. I have to tell ya, I am a sucker for a malty tea. Always have, always will be. As it steeps there’s still that malty smell with a slight hint of honey. Mmmm honey.

The taste? Again the malty flavor is right there in my face but I do get some passing tastes of chocolate and honey. This gets an a in my book. A sample size of it MAY have also fallen into my cart too. I like it, but it isn’t a tea I have to have in the house all the time. At least not in large quantities.

Spending the day with this, comforting my dog. He looks like we may have a bit more time after all. I didn’t drink or eat anything yesterday, but with our spirits up, I picked this one to enjoy.

Well, I’m back from my long trip to Japan — where I didn’t drink nearly as much tea as you might think. Meals in Tokyo are pretty Westernized, it turns out, even when having fairly traditional foods. I had to ask for tea almost everywhere we went, and with the exception of one conveyor sushi bar and one soba shop, none of it was at all remarkable. But, I did drink a lot of matcha in Liz’s apartment trying to keep warm.

I was unable to read steepster while I was away, so if something important happened to you I should know about and missed, please get in touch.

So here I am back in Houston where we’ve been having some unusually cold weather (for Houston) and so I have tea in my hand pretty much any time I’m awake.

This experimental option from Verdant has been a lot of fun, so far. I’m on my second day of gongfu steeping sessions and enjoying the leaf very much.

Somewhere between the rich, chocolate extravagance of Laoshan black and the pleasant bite of Wuyi oolong, this tea has a complex flavor profile and a thick, full mouth feel.

Even early steepings don’t come off as dark you expect them to, given the look of the dry and wet leaf (and the enormous aroma they offer), but that is not to say what you find in your cup is either thin or subtle. The chocolate and malt definitely dominate the cup, but there is more to the picture, here. Unsalted cashews. Orange zest. Buckwheat honey.

This is a cold, rainy day tea if ever there was one.

This is a crisp, sunny Winter day tea if ever there was one.

But I also suspect it would be fabulous as an iced tea in the Summer’s heat.

I was really hoping Fjellrev would maybe be wrong, or more sensitive to smoke than I, but alas, I could taste it. This tea is not for me. Sigh.

On the upside though, I see another order may be delivered today!

This post is for science (and Kittenna) comparing some of Verdant’s black teas I felt were similar but knew would be different, this isn’t side by side but one after the other. I had this tea over a month ago but it seems I did not log it. I don’t think I knew what to say then.

As leaves hit the hot mug, the unmistakable smell of chocolate permeates the air. Yet when hot water hit leaves the smell turned savory. There is something much more grainy than yesterday’s Anxi Fo Shou Black or Laoshan Black a prickly bit of linen, no, denser like a wool cloak.

This second steep is so savory and buttery with sweetness only in the finish. It’s sparkle is different than the wuyi sparkle, but still it tingles in a more earthy manner. There is veg here, avocado which is of course a tree fruit but it has a very veg quality.

Thick heavy savory honey in the third steep, almost raw. I keep using all these rough adjectives and yet it is really a very smooth black tea but there is no doubt it is thick, thick and malty.

This tea conjures up hearty starchy things like legumes and potatoes and makes me want chili or stew but with a bit of molé. Wow so different than yesterday’s rum raisin chocolate cake and it sets itself apart from Laoshan Black as well. I stand very corrected.

Edit to add: I continued steeping this on late last night and by around the 9th infusion or so (I lost count) it turned very chocolaty, very very sweet and even fruity, at that point I had lowered my temp to 205-208F and dragged the infusions out to a minute plus. Only by one in the morning was this feeling at all watered down.

Also watched Mirror Mirror on Netflix and preferred it overall to Snow White and the Huntsman (though Charlize was an awesome queen and had gorgeous raven inspired wardrobe and I liked the Irish tree named dwarves, Lily Collins made a much better Snow White and the prince was funny), completely different tone, very amusing if over the top.

Planning to move in and out of places can be so stressful. What do people normally do with their furniture during that one evening of contract limbo? I guess there’s no point in worrying over it today until I’ve heard back from everyone, but it’s hard for me.

It’s a while since I’ve had a black tea from Verdant, and this sample has spent most of its time lying around in a box since February. If there was a number to report tea abuse to..

I find it pays off to drink this stuff when I want calm, whether I’m already relaxed or a bag of nerves, like right now. It’s hard to be uptight when you’re drinking boiled leaves that taste like chocolate honey malt waffles. There’s more honey and cinnamon in this than anything else right now. Yeah, life is good.