Pure Gold Jin Jun Mei Black Tea of Tong Mu Guan Village Spring 2016

About half the people at work are sick. There is a nasty cold/flu going around and so far I’ve been able to avoid it…. until I got up this morning. Snuffly, phlegmy, scratchy throat, heavy chest. Ugggg – I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick. Spent the day on the couch with the cat watching season 6 of Game of Thrones. (Part of me thinks I should have been watching season 2 of Colony on Netflix, but that’s another story).
This was the tea that randomly came out of the sample box. Not what I normally think of as a Jin Jun Mei. I didn’t get any malt, or chocolate. Others are saying smokey – I didn’t get any of that until it really cooled and then only a hint. This is fine, nice enough black tea. I drank it Western – lots of leaf, cool water, long steep (and even longer 2nd steep). I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t anything really special. Thanks Evol for the share.

Smoky, meaty and thick. Not really my thing and surprising to me for a jin jun mei – not what I’ve had before. Happy to have tried it! Thanks for sharing, Sil!

This cup disappointed me. Whereas I enjoyed the slightly smokey element, I found the tea to be somewhat drying in the mouth. I will refrain from rating until I have a few more cups under my belt, so to speak.

It’s not a bad tea, but not memorable either. It’s simple, not complex, and has a semi sweet/honey mid taste with subtle mineral notes. It’s a bold but not very flavorful tea. For a gold tea it’s just not sweet or complex enough for me. I find it pretty bland in taste. The price tag on it isn’t justified . Someone else might find it ‘amazing’ but this just sat on my shelf until all my favorite teas were gone (and reviewed). Even now I barely had the desire to give it a review. It is not a horrible tea but if someone secretly stole this from my cupboard I probably wouldn’t notice. I had no desire to experiment at all with this. It isn’t a picky tea though…and is smooth.

I’m stumped. I cannot even explain this tea…..

Meaty smell, but like the beef jerky in a can kinda meaty….(https://dustysbeefjerky.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/dustys-jerky-chew2.jpeg)

And then the tea itself is just…..great! It’s like sweetly roasted meat. That’s the only way I can put it….Just sweet brown sugared beef….

On a good note: I cleaned out the old laptop. I also start my new job on Monday….

Fin

Runs away….Maniacal laughter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6MlHxAzLXA

It’s the end of October…basically. Managed to achieve both my weight and sipdown goal for this month…though technically i’m stupidly ahead with my weight goal…which is good because i expect there will be a few purchases in Nov. October: 65 teas 3945g

This tea has a smoky note…still love it but it’s just never what i’m expecting at first sip heh.

The smoke within this tea actually eliminates the malted notes that should occur and leaves the ‘harsh’ sweet notes of a thin molasses. It’s harder to plain than to taste, how the malt is generally the ending taste throughout the mouth ends up with a smoky ending which ends up coating the mouth so the malted notes are like a burnt sugar that isn’t sweet… whatever that is.

I got this tea in a stash sale, and I had to try it today because the smell of it was so incredible. I think that some flavors got muddled in shipping, even with the good packaging, because it smells very different this morning in my little sealed glass jar—still good, just no longer good enough to eat out of the bag.

The smell coming off the brew is overwhelmingly molasses, smoked blackstrap molasses. It reminds me strongly of making molasses “tea” for those days when one needs an iron boost.

Taking a sip, and the scents are represented perfectly in the flavor. It’s a complex, layered sort of flavor, with molasses dominating the mouth, then a caramely sort of sweetness hitting the middle of the tongue. The smoky flavor seems to be carried on the molasses, but doesn’t hit for a couple of seconds. There’s a dry finish at the end I could do without, and it seems to be getting worse as the brew cools. Ah well, I should be drinking more water anyway.

More information on additional steeps later.

Okay, off topic now. Since I don’t have a blog or journal or anything, this review is going to have to act as such.

I’m sort of having a tea identity crisis, and it’s making me see why people start making their own blends. For so long, I thought that the chippy, black, bitter teas that most shops put in blends were good. I enjoyed those teas mixed with peach essence or whatever with calendula leaves to make people think of peaches when they drank it.

Now I’m trying these blacks, and they’re so smooth and complex on their own. And while I will always, always love a good blend, how can I go back to what I was drinking before? Is this the end of my beloved Peachy Black or Coconut Cream? Do I go back for a bit and find a way to rediscover my old favorites, or am I one of those people now that can only get tea from online vendors? I loved going into tea shops and smelling all the teas and collecting everything that smelled good to me, but I’m learning now that smell does not necessarily correspond to taste.

What does everyone else do when they discover stuff like this? How does everyone curate their collection? What thought processes go on behind decisions like “I should keep a couple of ounces of this around” and “meh, I can stand to let this one run out” and “I have to keep a supply of this to keep for the rest of my life”?

The dry leaves are small and wiry with lots of golden fur floating about, I think the furriest tea I’ve ever seen. It has a slight woodsmoke aroma. Malt, sweet potato, peat, lightly fruity and moderately smoky. Very mild with an excellent silky texture