2987 Tasting Notes
oooh this is very good! I can taste a very sturdy black tea base. Lots of tannins and flavour, but not bitter. There are a bunch of spices, most notable cardamom, vanilla, mace, and maybe nutmeg? I like the spice combination but wish there was a bit more vanilla and nutmeg to make it more eggnog flavoured. There is a tny bit of tasted flavour, which I’m very fond of. I will have to try this as a latte someday because it is lightly creamy already and would pair very well.
Flavors: Cardamom, Creamy, Milk, Nutty, Spices, Spicy, Tannin, Tea, Toasty, Vanilla
Preparation
The dry leaves smell like compost to me. I also smell wood chips, mushrooms, minerals, frozen soil, and dried manure. Hopefully the brewed leaves are better.
Steeped 5 minutes and it tasted like slightly salty stale water. Decided to dump this and consider it a rinse.
Steep 1: ~5 minutes (tasted at 3 minutes and it wasn’t very flavourful), boiling water
The liquid smells like compost, moldy fruit, and soil. It reminds me a lot of a brown paper bag that has been left too damp for a few days and starts to grow mold. The brew is a medium orange colour and the leaves have expanded to more than twice their original size. Had to dump this out because I couldn’t drink it. The mold taste was too gross for me.
Steep 2: 3 minutes in boiling water
Tastes like composting fruit peels and mold. WHY? I’m guessing this tea was heavily fermented but has not been allowed to air out enough.
Steep 3: 4 minutes luke warm water as a last-ditch effort to see if I could drink this at all. Nope, I’ve had to dumpout all four cups.
I will not be trying this again as a western brew, but will allow it to air out for a few weeks and will then try it gongfu style with shorter steeps. Hopefully that tastes better, because this has been the worst tea I’ve ever tried thus far. I’m thinking it is my batch rather than the tea itself, but it tastes like it is made out of mold and decaying compost.
Flavors: Broth, Compost, Decayed Wood, Dirt, Mineral, Mushrooms, Musty, Wet wood
Preparation
Woaaaaa…. Why are you not doing 30 second steeps? This is a solid tea. I hope you don’t brew your other oolongs for that long
It is super weak when steeped for less time (I tried it at 15 seconds, 1 minute, and 3 minutes), but in the future I will do less water + shorter steeps. Most of my oolongs are brewed for much shorter times (never more than 2 minutes, usually 1 minute for an average sized mug). I also get lots of steeps out of them that way. This tea was just not working as a short steep, but I think it is my sample rather than the this tea.
Update: Just tried it again using 75 mL water with 30 second steeps and it tasted more minerally and like mold or mushrooms, but I wouldn’t say it is better. I think this is just not the tea for me. I really like forest floor kind of earthy, but I don’t like mushrooms so the fungus flavour isn’t working for me. I still have a portion of it left though. I will probably let it air out in a larger airy bag in my tea cabinet and try it again in a few months to see if that gets rid of some of the flavour. Maybe by then I will have acquired a taste for aged teas more.
First steep: 10 oz disposable coffee cup (because I forgot my travel mug) + boiling water that makes tea undrinkable for like an hour because it is so hot
The pearls unraveled very fast and now fill up the entire teabag (they have expanded about 3x their previous size)
The tea was extremely flavourful and typical of a good quality black tea. I love how it is as strong and bold as a tea that would normally be bitter, but there is no hint of bitterness or astringency from this tea. I also taste oats and tannins.
Second steep: same deal
It only steeps medium gold this time and it a little bit weaker. It taste mostly spaghetti noodles with no sauce, like wheat and wet straw.
Overall, this is a very strong tea the first steep but then is not quite as strong in the next cup. I might experiment with the water temperature to try to get 2-3 cups out of my next leaves.
Flavors: Fruity, Grass, Oats, Tannic, Tannin, Tea
