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I’ve now tried this with 80c /90c / and 100c water and I come out with roughly the same experience at 30 to 45 second brews in a gaiwan.

For those who are unsure of what Cypress Dong Ding is: I decided to release a cypress (wood) infused 2013 dong ding oolong when my 20% sale went active.

Drinking this as if it isn’t my own creation and I find some positive and some negative aspects to it. The first steep comes off the strongest with the woodsy notes that are hard for me to explain, but as it goes on I believe it turns into an acorn taste as the nutty/wood/lowroast all come together. This dong ding seems to brew out a bit weak around the sixth steep, but I’ve been staying at 45 second steeps, but for the price of it I can’t complain; $8/oz. If there wasn’t a dryness to the liquid after it goes down it would be much better, but I’m kind of in a touch spot as I find myself associating wood/nut/roast as a dry’like taste anyways, however I prefer a nice sweet taste at the end. This would probably be better when the weather is more cooler than these summer days outside, but maybe I made a poor choice there by trying it while it was really hot out.

Overall it’s an interesting tea and I’m glad that the wood notes actually transferred over because it makes me want to experiment with other woods in the fashion I did here before I start buying the equipment to make my own home smoking machine/contraption for tea.

Drank some of the Black Buddha that W2T. Quite bitter throughout like an Assam is for me. Not my thing, but I suppose it woke me up. Wish it wasn’t bitter because then maybe I could have found notes to remark on in regards to taste.

Tickles my taste buds.

I believe each one of these are different…

Anyways, this smelled good even before the brew which made me happy. The result came in as a nice semi sweet brew over and over. Not as delicate as CLT or even W2T Smooch (which surprised me), but it’s a solid material that has depth that comes through in the later steeps. These seems to be good as young as they are with those sweet notes and vibrancy of the raw pu’erh in there.

This is either a good wake up morning sheng or a store away for awhile. Some upfront astringent notes with a moderate color alluding to it’s stronger taste profile; in this case young bitter ball :)

I just took a sip of some 14 to 16 week kombucha that I had thought was dead… WHEW, THAT STUFF IS STRONG!!!

Anyways, I thought my scoby died weeks back and I was like ‘this is too much work, I’ll just see what happens’. I actually forgot all about it and then today I was doing some cleaning… https://www.instagram.com/p/BGh25mqxYBI/

That scoby is still alive, but I advise to never leave it in that long…

Drinking this iced… finally, I’ve done it. For the first time I have captured that Butiki taste and feel through the cold steeping of this!
The wonderful vegetable, semi sweet, with summertime grassy notes coming through with a mild buttery texture from the baozhong (Beautiful Taiwan Tea) works so well cold. Throw in some notes of wet watermelon in there… YES!

I served this hot awhile back and I was iffy about it, but now that I am drinking it cold I have no doubts that I could drink the rest of the batch if I needed to :)

Today’s afternoon tea comes from Chayo Tea who I’ve been observing through Facebook. I finally placed an order last months for some oolongs since I was running low, but I knew this would be a hard thing to review. For me, oolong is the best variation of tea and it is also one that many places are selling great quality of if you know where and how to look.

This dong ding shows no signs of anything special when you look at it and smell it; this can be said for the brewed liquid as well.

The texture is in the middle which is awesome because that low key walnut that was overly roasted over wood isn’t just a thin dry spell throughout your mouth. The taste has no machine processing notes that I can find which is nice because it tells me through taste that it was roasted either with skills or a lot of observance.

The end notes are dry which kind of sucks, but it happens a lot with roasted oolongs. What is nice about this tea is the mild warmth and the moderate level of qi that comes through after a few steeps.
If there was no texture to it this wouldn’t be all that well, but with the texture and the feels it is a pleasant drink.
p.s. the mouth coating of this is fantastic

The Trails of LBZ, Case 11 of 6
(Liquid Proust search for his favorite laser beam zensheng)

First time I ever saw Yunnan Sourcing doing a 10g sample was when I bought this. I ended up only using 5 grams for this session which means I can do another with someone.
This is very smooth and clean tasting, but it knocked me out. I ended up becoming very restless and four hours just passed by. I’m not sure if it was the tea or if there is an invisible tick on me, but I can barley recall drinking this earlier this morning which is odd.

I guess I’ll try the other 5g another week and see if this happens again.

Got this one out of the pu’ box.

At first I thought it was the yellow tea pu’erh stuff that I drank almost a year ago: https://www.instagram.com/p/3AIuZMRYBb/

Has a very distinctive mushroom like taste with some more funk going on. Brews pretty light and isn’t so harsh. Has a tian jian vibe to it, like that sour’ish sheng taste.

Not really my thing because I believe…. I believe, my taste in sheng always has to have some sweetness I can identify. While this is a great leaf, easy to brew and consistent, it just isn’t for me.