China Yunnan Jingmai 'Moonlight' White Tea

Here’s yet another tea from What-Cha, whose catalogue I seem to be slowly and methodically going through. Thanks, Derk, for sending these dragon balls for my further white tea education! I steeped one 6 g ball in a 120 ml teapot at 195F for 10, 12, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 180, 240, and then 5, 7, and 10 minutes.

The dry aroma is of jammy raspberries and other red fruits, apricots, honey, and autumn leaves. The first couple steeps have strong apricot and red fruit notes, plus honey, hay, autumn leaves, oats, malt, pine, and wood. The next couple steeps put the apricot at the forefront, with more honey, oats, and sweetness. I can see where Derk is getting marshmallows! By steep five, the oats, autumn leaves, and malt are starting to become more pronounced. By the one-minute mark, this tea has lost most of its fruity sweetness and has notes of malt, honey, oats, wood, autumn leaves, and tannins. The session ends with metal, wood, and tannins, though with some berry fruitiness returning in the long final steeps.

I was delighted by how sweet and fruity this aged white tea is. It also goes forever—perhaps too long. I tend to wring every scrap of flavour I can out of my leaves, so this session lasted from yesterday afternoon into this morning. However, this is hardly a complaint. I can see this being a better-than-average tea that can take oversteeping well.

Decided to gongfu my last ball I have received; thank you derk and White Antlers. SIPDOWN 62

Longer rinse; around 10 seconds, and first steep being 20 seconds long.

I have hoped the ball would dissolve; but it is still a chunk of tea — I guess I will need to make several long steeps and then make short ones.
First steep, with parameters above, is very sweet with apricot fruit line, autumn leaf pile… and overall quite weak. That makes sense as the ball is still compact.
Second steep, 30 seconds, spilling the water on the ball directly to dissolve it: worked well! Stronger apricots; kind of punchy or something. Quite sweet, surprising considering the age, easydrinking cup.
Another steep with same parameters, but flavours more prominent, mostly the woodsy and “autumn leaf pile”.
4th steep, 45 seconds
Tends to be more woody, with sweet aftertaste, but the apricot notes are gone.
5th steep, 60 seconds
Nectar sweetness; that’s interesting twist from the woody notes in previous one.
6th steep, 60 seconds
Another sweet notes, but much less prominent.
7th steep, 90 seconds
Goodbye steep. Nonprominent tastes, sweet notes, but without anything else.

Well, this was a fun gongfu session with tasty steeps. Honestly I liked it more grandpa brewed, probably for more robust and bolder flavour, but brewing it this way worked well as well. Certainly I like Jingmai whites, especially if they are a bit aged. I wrote a note for myself for future reference.

Sipdown (287)

The September Sipdown challenge today is to drink a tea you forgot about. I tried to pre-plan the Sororitea Sister posts for the challenge and so for this day, I used the randomizer I have on my tea spreadsheet and picked teas at random until one popped up that I forgot. This was the tea set to be enjoyed today.

I also picked a second tea for today’s post by sorting my steepster cupboard by recently added, going to the last page, and flipping backwards through them until a tea jumped out at me as forgotten. That was Watchmaker’s Brunch and for some reason I posted that on the Sororitea Sisters instagram and this one wound up on my personal one.

As for the tea itself, it is nice. Standard white tea profile of corn/hay. This one had an almost caramel/honey quality as well though not distinctly so. It’s good for this cup but I don’t think I will be seeking out more of this.

Autumn 2016 harvest

Age is doing these dragon balls well. The white tea delicacy is transforming into a more robust, tonal character. Red fruits, wood and a hint of malt fill out the deeper tones, supporting an otherwise bright, almost tangy-sweet taste with a mix of apricot-melon-honey-straw-oats, minerals and a little floofs of vanilla marshmallow and caramel. Very mild bitterness adds some depth. Good strength to the aroma, decent aftertaste and even some returning sweetness. This tea makes me long for autumn.

I’ve brewed a few of these dragon balls by stewing them in my work thermos with 200F water. A few others I’ve brewed western with water off boil and three flavorful steeps. Robust and woodier when stewed, sweeter with western. Both methods satisfying and caffeinating.

Sipdown – backlog

Depending on the ball brewed, this tea gave a range of flavors – some good and bad. I had a little bit of a hard time with the tea, but it ended on a good note when I landed on the correct brewing parameters. I did like the easy serving size ;)

At 212F, for 3 min: honey, sweet. It wanted to go for more steeps than I wanted to.
At 212F, using gaiwan: hay sweet, thick, floral aftertaste, woody & drier with longer steeps. I still had some dry leaf after 6 steeps. I needed to break the ball up more or give it a longer rest. This ball had a lot to give.

A decent tea thats a nice smooth combo of fruity and floral. Nothing really changed throughout the steeps then the usual astringency after a while.

Here’s yet another sample sipdown. I way overloaded on caffeine the last couple of days, but could not go without my daily sipping session, so I did something I don’t do often-I broke out a white tea. It totally hit the spot too.

I brewed this tea gongfu. After a 10 second rinse, I steeped the entire 6 gram dragon ball in 4 ounces of 194 F water for 10 seconds. This infusion was chased by 15 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions was as follows: 12 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, and 10 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dragon ball emitted aromas of hay, honey, eucalyptus, and apricot. After the rinse, I began to pick up on grass, nectar, wood, toast, and camphor. The first infusion introduced hints of butter, pine, cucumber, and malt. In the mouth, I mostly picked up on notes of butter, malt, cucumber, damp grass, hay, pine, eucalyptus, wood, and honey underscored by touches of apricot, camphor, and nectar. Subsequent infusions saw the camphor, apricot, and nectar intensify in the mouth. I also began to detect impressions of almond, wheat toast, puff pastry, cedar, dates, oats, cream, minerals, golden raisin, cinnamon, vanilla, and clove. The later infusions were smooth, displaying pronounced buttery, creamy qualities with hints of minerals, hay, pine, eucalyptus, spices, toast, and apricot in places.

I normally don’t go for white teas, but I have had a soft spot for Yue Guang Bai for a little over a year now. This one was excellent. It was deep, complex, mellow, long-lasting, and well-balanced.