I made a brew with all that was left in the tin – probably a well-heaped teaspoon, perhaps a fraction more. I brewed for three minutes with water several minutes off the boil.
It made a very densely-coloured, dark-brown infusion, slightly tinged with yellow.
There’s a faint and very difficult-to-place aroma – possibly a combination of grass and liquorice and basic tea or possibly a combination of grass and beef gravy and basic tea – I really can’t make up my mind.
In the mouth, there’s a hard, firm edge to this; something I think I’ve described in some other tea as what liquorice would be like if you could imagine it without any trace of sweetness. I think I’m getting a hint of cut grass – again as it would be without any hint of sweetness. I may be getting a tiny hint of an undefinable ‘fruitiness’ – or it may be just the comination of the previous two notes. There’s another note that I can’t quite pin down that is somewhere between butter and chocolate, giving a bit of smoothness and body to it.
It occurrs to me that this is probably quite a good tea; but just happens to be one that is not to my taste. Having said that, I still get a strong impression that I’m actually steeping a black tea at too low a temperature.
I made a second infusion (I went a little bit over on the time – about forty of fifty seconds or so – absentmindedness).
I thought this a better cup of tea. The colour was less intense, and so was the hard, firm edge, and I think this gave the tea a better balance – the other elements not seeming to have decreased with it.
I made a third infusion. With this one, it’s possible I brewed it a bit hotter than instructions – 90˚, say – because when I took the first sip it was too hot to take a sizeable one.
I wasn’t getting much in the nose, but this one had better flavours, I think, which, had they only been a bit stronger, would have made it more enjoyable than the first two infusions. I was getting hints of mixed dried fruit and butter; the grass was a little less noticeable. Unfortunately, it was also a little ‘watery’ – if that makes sense (it sounds a bit daft to say that I could taste the water, especially as I use a filter jug, but it was ‘watery’).
Oh well, that’s the last of it and I don’t think it’s interesting enough to buy any more.
I keep reading this one as ‘oolong saliva’ which… is not a pretty mental image.
Ha-ha! … and … Yuk!