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This was the second tea from A Quarter to Tea that I drank. It was my favorite :)
The brandy taste came trough like someone split some alcohol in my third steeping of some DHP. However, I’m not sure if I wanted that low note of silk cream that comes out for the cheesecake. The apple brandy was enough for me with the oolong in the background.
I’ll probably get some more of this and infuse some apple cider with it during January because I do crazy things.

I had to try this again because Daylon ‘s review sold me a cup of my own tea… that’s kind of cool to think about.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_LFmFbxYDh/
In all honesty, that Pear Oolong by TeaLeaves is the best smelling fruit tea on the market which makes you wonder if Stacy is giving cheat codes out to someone…

Anyways, I measured one of the stems on these guys and it was 3 inches which is kind of crazy because that’s longer than my small fingers. If I wasn’t drinking three different things at the same time I could probably enjoy them all :/
That Mexican Hot Chocolate tasted like baby food got stuck in Barbie’s hair and the two fruit oolong teas tasted like sugar spilled on the floor of a wet surface that just had some cookies rolled on it. Yeah… all of that, I’m a bit crazy… It’s the weekend :)

Wild Monk Showdown!
https://www.instagram.com/p/-9L0yzRYOU/

The 2012 offering of Wild Monk was one of my first shengs that I have ever tried. That being said, I was spoiled earlier. Since then the taste has lingered around in my memory as an amazing experience so I wanted to compare the three together.

This time I started with newest to oldest.

2015 has the largest leaf and lightest pressing. The taste resembles a lightly fermented fruit; I will add the remark that it is quite interesting to taste something that isn’t fully fermented, the gentle sweetness in the background is hard to notice if you don’t allow a second to let the taste sit. The leaf takes a great beating and keeps its slight bitterness which is to no surprise as a 2015 offering.

2014 makes me question the claim of this being Wild Monk cake. The entirety of the steeps, which I lowered to 4 seconds, were all quite bitter. The taste was hard for me to detect because of the bitterness from the leaf which is pressed more firm than the 2015 with smaller leaf within it; though such things don’t change the taste as far as I know. The liquid was quite dark with this one which was something I noticed and linked to the bitterness (which isn’t a real thing)

2012., this highly compressed dark ugly leaf looks like the trash monster from Sesame Street had his hair wrapped in lettuce and left in the bottom of the can for awhile. Ultimately this is a beautiful tea that steeps and steeps a cup of wild comfort. The liquid is smoother than most sheng, with some bitterness left in there, and brews a medium thickness tea broth that has brought an experience to many.

My concluding remarks come to think that the 2014 material is not the same as the 2015 nor the 2012. I’m not entirely sure how to justify comparing them as a the same product if they taste so different. Of course there are storing techniques, processing differences each year, climate changes, and maybe a whole bunch of butterflies decided to fornicate on the tea plants in 2014 while the farmers thought it was pretty so they did nothing. Shoot, I don;t know… I just miss my 2012 Wild Monk.
No worries though, I have found some wild variation sheng that are close in taste with leads on others that are said to get me tea drunk in a way that makes the Marvel and DC universe merge inside my conscious.

This is somewhat close to the type of dianhong teas that I drink… but it has somewhat ofa boldness to it that I would refer to as ‘the coffee people’ taste. A bit stronger than I would prefer for my leaf to be. With all that being said, these little leaves dance and brew a nicely flavored tea :)

100% honest review:
Sipping this three times to make sure of the taste was the closest I have ever came to tearing because of a tea. This is utterly terrible.
Here’s how I imagine this being created: tencha is sprayed with apricot flavoring, dried, grounded…

Resulting in a lingering chemical funk.

Dried drinking through this one… only got trough sips of each steep because it just wasn’t appealing. It might be a 2015 sheng, but for me the year doesn’t matter as much as how I feel from it and the taste it puts out. This one right now just makes me wish I brewed something else.

Drank this at work in the morning :)
Potent. Lasting. Taste of fermentation.
I would say that this has less chocolates than BuLang that I’ve had from ’10 / ’08, but the fermentation is quite strong in this. With that being said, this one is up to personal preference not only of taste but time of drinking.

This was a very beautiful looking twisted black and gold leaf :)
I brewed it at 100c first and decided it was too bold for me so I switched to 80c (skipping the 90c) and found that it made a almost malted caramel tea. The malt came through while the robustness of the tea was subdued. This is how the slight sweetness creeped in.
I feel like a boss making this tea @ 80c for 30 to 45 seconds. May end up trying the same with other dian hong type of teas to see if a sweetness comes out from the tea when brewed at a lower temperature.

Brewed this one at work… oh my does it smell strong! This is one of those interesting combination of gentle mint and citrus tones which comes off as a ’I’m sick and need a cup of tea’ type of tea, yet it’s not. While I enjoyed this, it would be better if it had some green tea in it :)

2007 Menghai Feet of Crab
A fun looking tea with a wild taste to it. While it may not be the most gentle or preferred taste, This was a tea for someone to try for sure, hopefully I run cross more odd looking pu’erh teas :)