1.5 tsp for 300mL water @95C, Western style, steeped four minutes, drunk bare.
Happy sigh.
Dry leaves are tiny, curled, and very smooth, alms silly, to the touch. I know about the smoothness because I had way too much on my spoon and pinched some tea back into the bag.
Dry leaves give a strong cocoa scent, with some sweet malt.
Wet leaves are long, and some are still twisted, mostly brown with some dark green. Wet leaves smell of cocoa, malt, and, i the distance, vanilla. (This is not, of course, a flavoured dessert tea.)
Liquor is dark copper. Liquor smells of — you guessed it — cocoa and malt, also soybeans and deciduous trees.
Taste: cocoa and malt, of course, and a bit of soybean, with sweetness and some vanilla notes in the finish. I haven’t tried this year’s batch labelled just ‘Laoshan Black,’ so I can’t comment on any differences between that and this, the Spring Harvest Laoshan Black. I can say this tea gives everything I remember falling for in Laoshan Black.
The finish is very soft.
This makes me excited….
It’s delightful.
I miss my original lb. here’s hoping this is closer to that, than last year.