1113 Tasting Notes
This came with one of the three (or four) shipments from the Kickstarter. This is from round one and it’s an absolutely wonderful tea. Talk about vibrant colors and the taste of spring grass with fresh vegetables.
Really good tea, pretty curious on the pricing to compare to Japanese tea as I continue to search for daily drinking greens. Wish I could share some, but I drank all of it quick :)
All the Muzha that I have had until now were roasted to a dark color with quite strong depth to each sip. This is somewhat light compared to the others, but it is also much cheaper. My favorite Muzha is about $9/oz and this is $17 for 75g… solid deal if you let it age for another year really; needs to get a little of that salted funk out of it and the roast will dissipate to more of a toasted caramel note (if the small amount of bitterness from the later steeps goes away)
The leaf is on the smaller scale, but that is just aesthetics. I’ll have to play with some more low roasted Muzha teas it seems so I can begin to assess quality in the lower roasted ones; this might be the first time I prefer something more bold.
It’s not quite the bargain you think it is! $17 for 25g, not 75g.
Oh wtf? Yeah, this is overpriced for me then in regards to taste/experience to cost per session. I’ll stick to the other things; I mean, goodness, this cost more than many aged oolongs.
Yes, I thought the same. I wanted to try it, and it was good, but it seemed overpriced.
Reblend.
Okay… So I hate cherries. I hate pig bellies. I hate wet socks.
This is one of those thres, but my mom likes cherries so…
We are only the 6th gallon at my place. This stuff brews a lighter colored liquid with some nice smells and a smooth taste. A little silk like texture from cold brewing as well. My brother thinks it’s one of the best things.
I grew up on cherry medicine, I can’t overcome the hatred
Solid iced tea for my family though :) they all really like it
I drank a 2013 Misty Peaks ball today… Was hoping it would be as smooth as the 15, but this literally was the quality of mass produced stuff off of Aliexpress. Now I’m curious about their 1998 stuff… The 2015 was so basic that anyone could get into it, but nothing separates it to make it unique. I like my balls to have depth, this didn’t even change over 10 steeps :/
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.
Oh the joys of getting people to buy random tea with you so you do some blind tastings.This time I used Dragon Tea House because it’s cheap and not many review a large selection of what they have. Teahong or King Tea will be next…
This time we were looking for some cheap ass tea that is good
1: Premium Da Yu Ling
DTH says: fruity n’ creamy
What I say: $8 for 50g, you get Aliexpress quality here and the price is accurate for ‘you get what you pay for’. This is not as tender and delicate as a dayuling should be.
2: 3rd Price Shanlinxi
All shanlinxi is worth trying and at $7.50 per ounce, I’m okay with this : )
3: Premium Organic Jinxuan Milk Oolong
Flavored ‘milk oolongs’ can suck it
4: Single Bush Peach Dancong
Smells like an interesting pizza and taste kind of like that too… when a single bush is sold 5x cheaper than it should be, figure there’s a reason : )
5:Compeition Tontin Jin Xuan
$12 for 50g, it’s decent buy… but I want more of the #7’s THC effect first :P
6: Spring Bush Dancong
DTH says: fruity with honey
What LP says: Let’s approach this at $12 for 50g… I wish, just doesn’t provide the smoothness a quality leaf has; this tea isn’t very good. HOWEVER, when it cools down it’s quite good.
7: Surpreme Tie Luo Han
This tea might have THC in it, I’ll be buying more.
8: This is a 2012 Dong Ding that I purchased for LPT and am currently selling as a filler for the bamboo containers; I really like it.
9: This is a curve ball… I threw in What Cha’s Thailand Bai Yai for the laughs.
The remaining amount is up for purchase via donation so I can begin the selection of LaoEMan variations from KingTea and then more oolongs, but this time from Tea Hong; both will be blind tastings : )
interesting! the no:3 is sooooooo milky I thought it must be flavoured
and the no:2, ‘3rd price’ is actually ‘3rd prize’ i.e. an award winner, right?
Teahong? I’d love a piece of that action!
Just bought me some #7.
Will the second round be similar in the type of varieties?
lets keep it to oolong. all the time. :)
LaoEMan oolong, that’d be interesting. I want to do a blind shanlinxi tasting eventually.
ahem., the no3 is flavoured as I thought. I was confused by your wording
The taste of fading camphor and dissipating smoke becomes a pretty smooth semi spiced tobacco taste and I’m really liking it. The aftertaste may be dry, but the hue of the liquid to the taste is wonderful for the price; in fact, it’s much better than other teas at the price range it is in.
Really glad about this particular tea as I can tell by the look of the leaf that I can bring a little life to it. I may even be able to overcome that dry ending note which would give this only one negative; the time and cost of shipping.
Beautiful leaf. Solid taste. Feels like LBZ.
You should be looking at buying the 2016 version before it sells out if you want a tea that will hit hard and taste solid each and everytime. Th leaf is larger than your average quality stuff, taste wise it is semi complex and easy going, but the reason it’s so dang good is the strong feels it provides.
I bought a sample of the 2015 version. Had one session and thought “no way is this worth $0.70/g to me.” But I’ve been drinking a lot of really cheap tea lately, so maybe its charms would be more obvious if I gave it a retry.
It’s clearly worth three quarters a gram. Solid tea.
Well, really I was thinking that I have better uses for $140 than 200g of this tea. Not regretting having sprung for the sample. Of which I still have 2 sessions worth.
I am on a quest to drink Often and MC&A err day until they’re gone: maybe after putting down 450g of $0.10/g tea the tuhao will hit me harder. After which I will give the 72 Hrs a shot.
Those teas are too astrigent and dry for me to enjoy. I like this and Repave most because they have clarity and a smooth aspect to them that allows 20 steeps of enjoyment rather than ‘I am thirsty’. I pick up astringent notes really easily so blacks and Puerh are hard for me drink; thus… High taste :/
Here comes a passionate and longer than normal review.
Recently I was gifted 5 grams of some Temomi Shincha which was picked in April from Wazuka Kyoto. All these words means nothing to most because Japanese tea isn’t as drank or studied in the western community as Chinese and Indian teas. So what makes this so special? Well, first of all it is a first flush green tea from Japan; something that the western world had no access to for quite a while because it doesn’t stay fresh for long. Shincha and Sencha/gyokuro/tencha…. Have all become available to the market place due to the internet, but this is a little different: This particular tea is produced fully by hand and takes hours until it is finished; now that doesn’t mean it is better, but it does say something about the processing of the leaf. When it went to auction it hit $1400usd per kg! Due to that price and the supply/demand, World Tea Podcast only obtained 25g which means I was gifted 1/5th of what was there!!!
What a treat, the most expensive tea I’ll have drank to date and I look forward to it.
At first, I noticed the leaf was broken and that was to be expected with shipping and all that; I won’t let that stop me from brewing this up right though! Since my Yunomi purchase came in only 2 days later, I was able to use this unique kyusu which makes it even more enjoyable because I was able to get over 7 infusions out of the 5g; this is a lot for a Japanese green tea. Here’s an ‘eh’ video of the beginning of the session which I ended up taking outside after a few steeps: https://www.instagram.com/p/BHQNcmmguTD/
Now the first steep was like straight tea clipping… imagine a lawn mower just ran over the tea plants and shot everything into your mouth. Fresh leaf and incredibly vibrant. After that, things changed a bit because I started to introduce my new way of drinking Japanese tea. Let me explain because I hope I can help others find a new way to drink green tea.
Step 1, put your tongue at the roof of your mouth
Step 2, pour the liquid toward the bottom of your mouth and let the liquid hit your inner cheeks before your tongue
Step 3, compare to drinking directly to tongue at first
What I find this method to do is avoiding the upfront astringency that can eliminate any undertone sweetness. With high quality Japanese tea I have found a freshly picked honeysuckle taste to come out from the grass while the buttery texture is created; try it for yourself, something about the liquid being at the bottom of your mouth than the top makes the liquid seem to have more of a viscosity.
Now this tea was very gentle and subtle with fresh grass taste while keeping the vegetable notes in the background, but with the way I drank it…. There was a texture to the liquid and a mild sweetness that popped out towards the end. Towards the end of my session, I began to find the more seaweed and cucumber notes. This tends to occur when I am brewing leaf that is about to die. Something about little to no flavor ends up resulting in a small amount of cucumber as if the tea is fading and light cooling notes are left.
In the end, would I pay almost $5 a gram for this? Heck no. However, I can say that this was quite a nice experience. It’s like Whit2Tea Last Thoughts in the sense that you’re tasting purely what is meant to be tasted, there’s no deviation of taste coming from the production. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can find it with really high end Darjeeling teas but you have to go through quite a few until you find them. This was a great experience and I was surprised that I was able to get a good 7 steeps out of it. Tasty leaf that gave me all the right vibes that this was carefully produced.
