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This was actually a last minute addition to my last order that Stacy was awesome enough to let me add. It just sounded too tempting and the sale didn’t hurt either. Lol.
Even though I have plenty of other teas that have been waiting longer for me to try, I grabbed this one out of the bin to have tonight. Let me say that trying to measure this tea is worse than measuring the Caramel Vanilla Assam. Stupid huge wiry leaves and all. I finally got it measured, and weighed it so that I don’t have to fuss with the spoon again, dropped it in my steeper and got to brewing.
The wet leaf has a malty, kinda sweet/fruity, kinda almost a green bean (?) smell to it. It’s very hard to describe for me because my brain apparently decided to short out on descriptive words tonight. But difficulty aside, it’s not an unpleasant smell. Very nice actually. Lol.
The brew itself is kinda roasty and malty, and very standard black tea smell, but enough to make my mouth water a bit. I almost didn’t want to wait until it cooled enough for me to drink it without burning my mouth.
The taste has an excellent strong black tea taste to it, malty and fruity and wonderful. It’s also got a sweetness to it that surprised me. And no astringency! If there’s one reason I needed to reorder this, it would be because this tea has no astringency for me at all. Combined with the taste and I’m pretty sure I’d be ordering this again. Halfway through the cup I did end up adding a bit of cane sugar (different from my normal Truvia because the cane sugar was closer), but I found that nothing really came out more to me with the addition and that I’d probly be fine without it the next time I brew it, this tea has so much going on with it already.
I did try a second brew because that’d be over the top if it was multi-brew. But unfortuantely it was a dissapointment. Brewed 5:30 min at the same temp as above (210*) and I got rather weak black tea with none of the amazing tastes of the first brew. So this is a one steep wonder for me, sad, but most black teas are like that I’m finding. No big loss since that first steep is amazing. I’m tempted to try this with a gaiwan when I start actually using my gaiwan, just to see how the flavors come out.
Overall very very nice tea. I’d definitely consider reordering this in the future.