Tea of the morning…..
Ohhh. This one is good. I don’t taste near the amount of astringency at the end of the sip like I did yesterday on the Keemun Grade 2. To be fair, I do think I used a little less leaf today, and I steeped for a minute less, too. I will probably give the Grade 2 another go after this cup and tweak my steeping parameters. I am tasting cocoa notes, a slight roasty-maltiness, and then just a little nudge at the end. The leaves are just a little longer and finer (narrower) than the Grade 2.
There are times when I am doing a tasting like this and wonder if I should not have my scale out, rather than eyeballing the level on the spoon….you know, for the sake of science. I am also thinking of getting another white mug set (ForLife 15 oz with an infuser) in order to do some side by side tastings with more exact parameters. I have been over and over thoughts of a gaiwan or a yixing, but I tend to drink tea in larger amounts and such varying types that ceramic teaware seems to fit best. I also have only so much storage space (and honestly, I would rather fill it with tea!) I am not apologizing, but there is nothing petite and refined about my tea drinking. I have also been considering a cast iron pot. Two things stand out for me here…first, while I see the practicality in the even and longer heating (you will not ever be able to separate me from my cast iron cookware!), I drink tea much faster than it would go cold…remember, nothing petite or refined about how I drink it…think far away from sipping for sure! Plus, the more research I do, the less traditional a cast iron pot actually seems. I am not at all posing this as a judgement on anyone else’s teaware, because quite frankly, the gear needs to fit how you drink it.
Back to the tea. This is very good. Like I said before. Need to play around with my steeping parameters on the other two levels of Keemun from Teavivre. Eventually, I will get into comparisons with my Hao Ya A and my sample of Hao Ya B. The parade of Keemuns continues, even though I would probably be very happy to settle on this one for quite a while! And thank you to Teavivre for sending this sample with my order!
Usual mug method with a 3 minute steep.
