This is the first pu-erh tea I’ve tasted, though this has so may extra ingredients added I’m sure any purists out there will cringe. Steeped for just over 4 minutes in boiling water.
Dry the smell of this tea is of nutmeg like whoa! When I added the water the nutmeg scent was still there faintly, but I could also smell cocoa. Neither of which were quite able to disguise a rotting, fermented sort of scent, which is what I’m told straight pu-erh tea generally smells like. It wasn’t too obnoxious and it doesn’t seem to translate to the flavour of the tea.
The brew is slightly cloudy and it’s about the colour of black coffee. I’m rather hoping the similarity ends there and this doesn’t make me violently sick like coffee does.
It tastes slightly bitter but it’s a rich, smoothly-pleasent sort of bitter. The tea tastes ‘dark’ if that makes any sense. At this point I don’t know enough to tell if what I’m tasting is the pu-ehr or the chocolate, spices, etc that were added to it.
This is not a tea for all occaisions but I’m still leaning towards liking it.
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Eep. I hope you don’t get sick, too. The grounding taste of most pu-erhs I’ve had is only something I can describe as earthy.
This is one I’ve had on the list to check out for a while now – I haven’t had many flavored pu-erhs. It still sounds interesting; I’ll need to get around to it soon.
I would say that a flavoured pu-ehr is probably not the best place to start. I find that pu-ehr in itself has a sort of flavour that doesn’t need additives. I am kind of intrigued by this though.
It’s the chocolate that’s making it black. A plain pu-ehr is very red, like a chestnut.
I agree with Takgoti that the flavour can best be described as earthy. The first time I tried pu-ehr I got associations to a pine forest in autumn, just after it has rained so everything has this heavy sort of damp smell.
I told a colleague at work, where everyone in my department seems to drink tea, that I was going to try pu-ehr and she said that when she tried some years ago, it had made her gag.
I dismissed her comment as an exaggeration. After all, I love Yunnan tea and what is pu-ehr after all, but aged Yunnan tea. Well, I did try some and, yeah, it made me gag, too.
It didn’t taste bad, per se, but it was as if my Western tongue interpreted that earthy taste as, literally, dirt, as something I shouldn’t be putting into my mouth. I had no context for associating that taste with something you’d eat. It’s kinda how I imagine someone from rural China might react if they smelled pizza for the first time. To us, it smells (and tastes good), to them it might smell completely revolting.
Yep, nutmeg=whoa! in this one:)
Eep. I hope you don’t get sick, too. The grounding taste of most pu-erhs I’ve had is only something I can describe as earthy.
This is one I’ve had on the list to check out for a while now – I haven’t had many flavored pu-erhs. It still sounds interesting; I’ll need to get around to it soon.
I would say that a flavoured pu-ehr is probably not the best place to start. I find that pu-ehr in itself has a sort of flavour that doesn’t need additives. I am kind of intrigued by this though.
It’s the chocolate that’s making it black. A plain pu-ehr is very red, like a chestnut.
I agree with Takgoti that the flavour can best be described as earthy. The first time I tried pu-ehr I got associations to a pine forest in autumn, just after it has rained so everything has this heavy sort of damp smell.
I told a colleague at work, where everyone in my department seems to drink tea, that I was going to try pu-ehr and she said that when she tried some years ago, it had made her gag.
I dismissed her comment as an exaggeration. After all, I love Yunnan tea and what is pu-ehr after all, but aged Yunnan tea. Well, I did try some and, yeah, it made me gag, too.
It didn’t taste bad, per se, but it was as if my Western tongue interpreted that earthy taste as, literally, dirt, as something I shouldn’t be putting into my mouth. I had no context for associating that taste with something you’d eat. It’s kinda how I imagine someone from rural China might react if they smelled pizza for the first time. To us, it smells (and tastes good), to them it might smell completely revolting.
Yep, nutmeg=whoa! in this one:)