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Good evening, Steepsterites.

Here’s another one I got from Doulton’s gift. I’m a little unsure about this one. I couldn’t immediately find it in the system so I entered it myself, but I was unsure if it might have been identical to one of the others in the system. There’s a fair chance that I might have made a doppelganger.

Anyway, this lapsang definitely seems to be on the smokier end of the scale judging from the aroma. Just opening the little envelope sent a good whiff of smoke up in my face and when I smelled it after brewing it’s like someone just put out a fire. Lovely! It’s not just smoke and ashes, though. There’s more substance behind it than that. I’m tempted to say coal here just because it would go so well with the ashes, but that is of course not it. It’s something more forest-y. Like big trees and campsites and such. Maybe even a mountain.

Right. Before I decend entirely into mental ramblings about the exact location of aforementioned campsite and what it looks like and the people who lived there (yeah, it’s one of those teas), let’s just move on to the taste. With this one I used a little more leaf and a little shorter steep, and the resulting flavour isn’t actually nearly as smoky as the aroma would have made me think. It doesn’t really have the sweetness that Golden Moon’s Lapsang Souchong tends to have and that I can sometimes find in AC Perch’s ditto. This one is a bit more ash-y and a little bit more wood-y.

I do really like the sweetness of the others I mentioned because I think it goes surprisingly well with the smoke. Without the sweetness the smoke so easily becomes a water-y flavour. As a colleague of mine described it, ‘like standing in a smoke-filled room with a mouthful of water’. The sweet undertone gives it body and substance. This particular one doesn’t have the same kind of sweetness, but it does have some body. It’s just stronger and darker, and with a bit of astringency on the swallow.

I expect it probably has something to do with the way I brewed it. I still have some of Golden Moon’s LS left, so I’ll make a similar cup with that one and see if it changes characteristics this way too.

I like this one a lot. But I prefer the sweeter ones, I think.