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feb 16/18

i probably need to be doing this more. i like these zomba pearls quite a lot. a decent thickness to the tea, and im getting bassier notes than i usually get from white tea, more hay, and vegetal than the bai hao yin zen my wife, son and i shared last night while my oldest son was at kickboxing. this is the second time ive had this one since buying it a month or so ago. im 2 steeps in, and from what i remember the rolled leaves give it a good longevity. zomba pearls is my 3rd gongfu of the day after having a white2tea raw flapjack for breakfast, and finishing off my 2017 spring wu yi rou gui, seriously just rambling now waiting on my water. steep 3 and 4 are giving me some good mouth watering and something like a honey mustard note that is really quite nice. also a bit of that tongue numbing thing going on. im going to hammer this for a couple more steeps. i went probably 2 minutes of so for steep 5. the flavour has pretty much left, but still a decent body (im still not prepared to say “mouthfeel” yet), and doubleing down on the tongue numbing. a bit of astringency. if i didnt have steep 6 in the gaiwan already i wouldnt bother at this point, but since its there i might as well. i steeped it about 6 minutes or so on the killshot, and a tiny bit of flavour came back, but i will probably go 4 good steeps here as a rule. after all this the pearls were still more or less intact.

september 5/17 been loving the yerba lately. good mix of leaf, powder, and stem. 25g in a 1 litre french press. quite a bit of bitterness, alot of cloves, ginger, and molasses that give this a ginger snap cookie flavor.

september 1/17 this tastes like i was drinking this in a barn, or a petting zoo, and i mean this in the greatest of ways. got this in a sample run of ys golden flowers teas. relaxing qi with this one, and with the kids not going back to school until next week this is no small feat. got 10 steeps here, but honestly the last 2 were kind of wishful thinking. it would not suprise me one bit if i bought a brick of this.

august 24/17 the peaches and cream taste is actually pretty good, but this isnt really what im going for with a milk oolong. what i like best is something a bit toastier, this is a bit too clean and light to be my go to, but i wont have any problems drinking the 100g i got.

august 21/17 im sure this is good for what it is, but im just not a big green oolong guy. this is so floral.

im suprised by how much i like this. i found 50g of this tucked in a corner of my tea cupboard (as opposed to my tea drawer, or tea bin) that i hadnt opened yet. alot of cinnamon flavour, and moderate sweetness that at times gives it a taste kind of like what those mini donuts get dusted in. on hindsight maybe not a good idea to type that when im so hungry. also got a bit of a tomato vine background a couple times as well in the second steeping. this is probably one that i will buy some more of when this mystery bag of it is gone. looking forward to putting some of this in the gaiwan.

on steep 7 now. this is a very nice tea, smoke, tobacco. steep 4 had a bit of bitterness, so i dialed it back to flash steeps, and its still doing fine at that. steep 5 had a bit of warm apple cider sweetness. if someone lit a cuban cigar, took one puff and put it out, then if you were to puff on it unlt is how the smokiness is now. rich, sweet, slightly smoky cigar tobacco. flavour like a crisp apple in the later steeps. well worth the money to get one of these.

june 22/17 this is the last tea of a marathon tea day that included an oolong, 2 shengs, a shou, and this. this one kind of grinds my gears a bit because i can see what it could be, but i feel like i have to be gandalf to brew this thing properly. the main flavour here for me is peach, but i am still not able to make this so the bitterness goes away.

june 22/17 after a rinse i smelled tobacco, and menthol, and thats what i got in the first couple steepings. in the mid steeps a bit of a flavour like wet cement came in. just a bit of bitterness. if not for that it would be in the same ballpark as my favourite tea. i will for sure be getting a cake of this.

june 22/17 this tea was all about the apricot, at some points it almost made me feel like i was actually eating the dried fruit. very astringent, but only a very slight bitterness until i went in for the 10+ minute kill shot, which suited me very well as im not the hugest fan of bitterness. qi left me feeling calm, and a bit detatched. this is my favourite of the w2t samples i got so far, but now im going to be going in on repave.