AprTea

Very nice. Burnt sugar and caramel flavors predominantly, with hints of peach, walnut, and maybe a touch of saltiness. This tea is pretty mellow, but the slight touch of campfire/smoke lends it a bit of excitement. I did not find much astringency after a 3 minute steep, and no bitterness. In fact, if I had some more, I would give it a shot at 4 or 5 minutes. The campfire is mostly in the aroma, and it doesn’t really translate strongly into the cup. It is not anything like a smoky lapsang souchong.

Tea was received as a free sample from AprTea Mall, in exchange for my writing a review. It was nice to find 8 different tea samples, about 50 grams total, in my mail yesterday. This is the first one I have sampled, and my first ever Dahongpao-style tea.

https://www.aprtea.com/chinese-wuyi-dahongpao-rock-tea-middle-fire-grade-one-250g/

I got a box from a teafriend last night, hooty hooo. Thanks Togo!

Really nice looking leaf. Unfortunately, for me this wasn’t a prelude of things to come.

I prepared this western with 3.5g, 8oz water, 175F and 2 steeps of 1m15 and 2m.

In the wet leaf after the first steep, I could smell mostly umami broth with some anise and sugar cookie or maybe it’s just an anise cookie :P The aroma of the liquor was identical which was pleasing. In the mouth, it was medium-bodied but terribly astringent and lacked much flavor. Some zucchini and nuttiness with a very faint aftertaste of buttery nuts, like macadamia. There was also a persistent tartness emanating from the throat. The second steep was nearly the same, albeit with a little more flavor including anise and some vague fruitiness. I’m not sure if it was more astringent or if the first steep totally dried my mouth out. If it had just a hint of sweetness, I’d be inclined to rate it higher. Might make a good cold brew or do well grandpa but I won’t be seeking out more in order to try.

After having some really high quality oolongs this one just didn’t stand out. It is only a “grade one” , so for that, it’s a fairly decent oolong. There were floral notes in the first few infusions but did not last through multiple. It was light & crisp.

This tea needed a good amount of leaf to water ratio to coax out the fruitiness but was a decent cup. Fruity & nutty.

This was a decent long jing tea but not among the best I’ve had. It was buttery , nutty & mellow.

I did not find this yellow tea as fruity as the Anhui Huoshan Huangya but it was still a pleasant yellow tea. More hay notes and slightly nutty.

Apr Tea sent me free samples and I was so thankful for that. Thank you Apr Tea! I have been awhile getting around to writing up my reviews and trying all the teas since I was on a special diet and caffeine was reduced for awhile.
Brewed this gongfu. It’s got a predominate fruity honey sweetness that is very tasty. It was also a bit creamy with a slight nuttiness to it. Either this tea doesn’t brew up too strong or the leaves were not quite as fresh because I needed a good amount of leaves to water. I drink a lot of green teas so a fruity tea is quite a pleasant change for me. I really enjoyed this tea.

This sample from AprTea was marked as Zhang Ping Shui Xian, which it clearly isn’t. Like the previous one, I am fairly confident I could identify it from the selection they offer. When I opened it, it had a distinctive charcoal roast aroma that has dissipated after the few weeks that I gave the tea to air out. Now the dry leaf smell is a kind of generic greenish oolong scent. However, the rinse does smell like a lightly charcoal roasted oolong again. The wet leaves have an enticing smell that is indeed somewhat floral and cooling, but also fairly heavy and earthy at the same time. It reminds me of clay bricks a little bit.

The taste is balanced – sweet, grassy and floral with the characteristic TGY sourness. Overall, it’s a little flat and somewhat boring though. The body is medium to light and the mouthfeel is slightly milky. I get some astringency in the finish, but only in the mouth.

To sum up, this is a balanced and easy to drink light to medium roasted TGY that’s anything but exciting.

One of the last samples from AprTea that I have to review. This one came marked as “Tieguanyin Deep Charcoal baking Caramel aroma Grade one”, but clearly it’s not that – the leaves are green. Comparing to the offerings on the website, I figured it should be the Zhengchao Tie Guan Yin, but it’s not 100% certain of course, I could only go by the description and photos on the website.

The dry leaf aroma is fairly strong with a little bit of a roast to it. This persist even after the rinse, it reminds me of a fresh Dong Ding smell. It’s quite thick and sweet, but not really complex. Underneath the roast, I can pick up some floral scents, but very subdued.

The infusions present a medium bodied, coating and smooth liquor. It tastes very light and balanced overall. The roast is definitely present in the taste too, although slightly less so. I noted almost no bitterness or astringency, although the aftertaste is slightly drying. Again, the taste is floral and a bit sour, but quite flat. It lacks the complexity. It could be that the roast is hiding some of it and a bit of aging would help, but I doubt it. The roast is actually really weak, it’s just that the tea characteristics are even weaker. The aftertaste has very little of roastiness in fact and it’s good and lasting. It has mostly floral and overripe fruit (something like papaya) qualities.

In the end, definitely not an unpleasant tea to drink, it has decent mouthfeel and if you like light floral tea with some roast on it, you may like it. However, don’t expect anything too sophisticated.

AprTea sent a couple mini tuochas in their awesome sample package, problem is they weren’t labeled. So I had to ask them what they were. Luckily they knew the two tuochas I was describing and gave me the links to them (they were switching the wrapping on the tuochas). This one is lotus, which isn’t the ideal tea for me to be tasting – I’m not sure what it should taste like. The ripe tuocha has little lotus leaf pieces within it. I couldn’t really detect a different fragrance or taste to distinguish lotus, but again, I had no idea what I was looking for. Even if I knew that I was drinking lotus leaf at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to taste it. The pu-erh itself was great, if anything lighter than I would prefer, but the biggest flavor note I could mention is earthy. Definitely none of those offensive pu-erh flavors. I like this enough, but lotus wouldn’t be my go-to flavor for a mini tuocha – mostly because the lotus included probably made the flavor of the pu-erh itself weaker when there was less pu-erh leaves in the tuocha because of the lotus.
Steep #1 // 1 tuocha// 15 minutes after boiling // rinse 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 minute steep
Steep#3 // just boiled // 8 minute steep

The first thing I can smell from the dry leaves is somewhat ‘sour’ aroma of matcha and lime leaves. After the rinse it is still a little green, but much less so. The dominant smells are those of nuts (walnuts in particular) and burnt sugar with some cream and grape vine in the background. In the empty cup I mostly smell caramel.

The mouthfeel is not great unfortunately. I tried to do both smaller (~4g per 100ml) and bigger (~7.5g per 100ml) leaf to water ratios to test it out and in both cases it was fairly thin. I would characterize it as bubbly and astringent, obviously the infusions with a lot of leaf were much more pronounced on both accounts. After swallowing, I get a strong cooling sensation in the throat as well

Taste-wise I like it, but I wouldn’t say it’s spectacular in any regard. It has a caramel sweetness, ash/fire bitterness, and finishes on a slightly sour note. The astringency takes the center stage most of the time though. The aftertaste is neither strong nor long. It starts off a bit sour and bitter and then turns into and a mix of sweet notes with dry grass.

I found the tea to last really long overall. The 7.5g sample yielded about 1.5 litres in the end, and that’s with me trying to push several infusions beyond what I would normally do, in order to see how the tea reacts. The price is not too high, so if you don’t mind an astringent tea, it might be a good choice.

In a free sample graciously sent to me by AprTea there was a pouch simply called Cooked Puerh that contained two mini-tuochas with the explanation that they represent two random tuochas out of the four that they offered. So, I decided to figure out what the heck am I drinking and reviewing. The rappers looked different (good!) but when I unwrapped them both tuochas looked really similar (bad!). And they smelled identical too (awful! am I that bad at telling puerhs apart? – apparently I am).

Nevertheless, after trying it I am pretty sure I am drinking the sticky rice puerh. As bad as I am I think I would be able not to confuse it with the pure puerh and jasmine and rose puerhs: those are three other possibilities. As a side not it seems that the company uses the same exact kind of puerh for all of their tuochas and only the additives differ.

Now, tuochas in my opinion are typically made for a casual drinking, so I skipped the gaiwan and prepared this tea Western style, 300 ml and about 2 minutes for the first steep. It came out quite decent. The sticky rice part is not overdone, the tea smells strongly of rice, mushrooms and dark damp soil. The taste is cheerful, energetic and simple, with Chanterelle mushrooms, dark honey, apricot and rice. Unfortunately it does not hold that well and the subsequent steeps were way less dynamic and even simpler, with sticky rice and languid decay notes dominating.

It’s not bad by any means and the first steep is rather enjoyable, especially in comparison with typical puerh tuochas and not judged against puerh cakes. I would rate it even higher if this tea could retain its vitality beyond the first steep.

Thank you so much for the samples, Aprtea.com! This is intriguing… it’s a cube of oolong which I have never seen before. Look at that picture! Oolong shaped into a cube, kind of like pu-erh but even most pu-erh isn’t shaped into a small cube and then wrapped in paper (and then foil for the sample). The closest thing would be a pu-erh tuocha. The leaves in the cube are shades of the usual oolong green and even bits of red. I was also intrigued with this being called ‘orchid’ because my preferred oolongs are the floral type. I used half the cube for a full mug. The first steep is delicious. Very smooth and sweet and full. No astringency at all. I wouldn’t say it is the most floral tasting tea I’ve tried, it’s more buttery and sweet. The second steep was probably over steeped by me a tad bit but only made the flavor a bit more astringent, not overly so. The third steep was even fuller with the buttery sweetness. I wouldn’t say I ever really noticed orchid or any other type of flower, but this is certainly an oolong I wouldn’t mind drinking. I think maybe I should have used less than half the cube and maybe didn’t steep at temperatures this high to tastes more to my liking. I also think I could have steeped these leaves much more than three times. But a cube of oolong is certainly a novelty!
Steep #1 // half of a the cube for a full mug// rinse // 18 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #3 // 15 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep

This is quite a delicate tea. It has the characteristics of other teas of similar kind, but less robust and upfront. Overall it’s not as sweet, which I like. The taste is more tangy with some coffee bitterness. Mouthfeel is light and not very coating, with a noticeable astringency that comes after swallowing – another slightly unusual thing about this tea. I actually like the astringency there, it’s not overpowering at all. It is complemented by the more nutty and spicy aspects in the protracted and very nice aftertaste. The aroma of the tea has the expected dark chocolate and malt notes, but there is also a coffee smell that’s at least as pronounced.

This seems like a very good choice when you want a Yunnan black tea that’s more subtle and delicate and don’t mind a lighter body.

My favourite thing about this tea must be the aftertaste. It is really long and evolving. It has some notes of bread, sweet potatoes, chilli, ale, citrus zest and cold brew coffee, but not really all at the same time.

using my standard sampling setup, the glass teapot, standard brewing for blacks, 30 second initial brew, +10 per additional.

first off, smelling the dry leaves is simply amazing. the leaves smell sweet, fruity, possibly of dried apricots, not sure. but its amazing, and makes me hungry.

the wet leaves smell of raisins, and the tea has a bit of the sweet fruity smell from the dried leaves. the flavor is very light while still hot, lightly sweet. has a bit of a leathery taste, a bit of bread. very light taste. its odd though, while it has a subtle flavor, it also seems to be full bodied and filling. it could just be me though. it has a nice sweet aftertaste that comes to you after a bit.

the second steeping introduces a bit of fruityness. quite pleasant. nothing els really changed overall.

on the third infusion, the tea is becoming noticeably darker, with a dark reddish hue appearing. the tea is giving off a sweet potato aroma, but still has a sweet smell under that. there is definitely a sweet potato taste present this time, which i find a bit surprising. being as its on its third steep, and with a total of 50 seconds, there is no trace of bitterness, which is nice. the flavors are actually a bit more pronounced than its first steep.

this tea is still going fairly strong at 6 brews, with the flavor tapering off slightly. definitely a workhorse. overall, its a good tea, but a bit….. confusing…. to me. it seems to be a full bodied tea, and “filling” if you will, yet it has mild flavors…. good for mornings or a calm day, but if paired with strong foods, the tea will be entirely lost.

this tea is processed into bricks, and the end of one of the bricks composed my sample. they sent a generous 10 grams, which came out to 9.7 when weighed, which is close enough for me, being a sample. there was really no smell from the leaves, and there were only a small amount of loose flakes, no dust. there are noticeable golden flowers in the tea.
one thing to note, i did not break up the small brick they sent, opting to let the leaves unfurl slowly to produce a much more stable and slowly changing taste profile. if this was a mistake, please let me know, as im still new to compressed teas.

based on what ive seen and read about the tea, im deciding to treat this like a puh in brewing methods, and using my glass brewing vessel. intial brew was at 20 seconds before starting the pour, no rinse. each additional brew will add 10 seconds.

the tea is a light golden brown. it has a light aroma, and is much like the pu that i have tried. the wet leaves have a smell that is alot like roasted hay. the flavor is really light, making me think that i may have to treat this more like a black than a pu. there is some of the earthiness as is in a pu, but none of the unpleasantness or “swampiness” i tend to associate with pu. light notes of sweet hay, which composes the aftertaste, which lasts for quite a while. even after the taste fades, inhaling through the mouth revives it some. quite impressive.

second brewing, the leaves still smell a bit of hay, but also picked up a nice roasted apple aroma. quite pleasant. the tea is much darker this time, nearing more to light brown. the taste is not much changed, there is still a very light earthy “bitterness” like in a pu. this longer brewing caused it to lose most of the hay notes, so i might try again at 25 seconds next brew. it still has its nice sweet hay aftertaste.

lowering the steep time successfully brought back the hay. really nothing other than that seems to be changing in this tea, so i will make my closing thoughts, and edit if something does happen with the tea.

All in all, the tea is quite modest with its flavors, which are fairly light, and not really noteworthy. i think this tea would be an excellent introduction to puerh, since it has some of the earthy qualities but none of the more harsh “swampy” taste that ive found to be in the pu’s ive tried. This tea will be a workhorse, with many, MANY steeps in it, especially since i left the brick whole when placing it in my teapot. the tea seems to have a medium to high caffeine content, but seems gentle on my stomach so far. i wont be ordering any more of this tea, its just too one note for me, despite having a nice aftertaste. once again, please let me know if you believe i brewed this tea incorrectly.

Sipdown (629)!

Thank you again to Apr Tea for providing me with the free sample to try this tea. I decided to brew this sample as a large Western style pot of tea, to fit in with my new routine of having a large pot of tea in the evenings following work. Plus, I just recently acquired a new glass tea pot and I thought this would like especially aesthetically pleasing in the pot…

Flavour wise, this was quite pleasant. I found it to be very smooth and soft, with a nice creaminess to the flavour that not all silver needle teas have. In addition to the delicate cream component, the flavour was still majority straw and hay notes with very mild indications of lemon curd, honeysuckle, and cucumber skin. One of the better examples of a bai hao yin zhen I’ve experienced in recent memory, but on the whole I relatively average offering – not ‘go out of your way to stock up on this’ degrees of yummy but the sort of thing that, were you already placing an order, you might toss into the cart if you wanted to restock this tea type because you were out/running low.

Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug// 18 minutes after boiling // rinse // 1 minute steep
Steep #2 // 7 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #3 // 10 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
https://www.aprtea.com/chinese-anxi-tieguanyin-oolong-tea-faint-scent-type-xiaozheng-grade-one-250g/
Harvest: 2018

Sipdown (643)!

This is another one of the samples that Apr Tea sent for me to review; and it was an exciting one for me to see given how much I thoroughly enjoy rice scented teas just in general. I could have steeped this one Gong Fu, but that’s not how I typically consume my rice scented teas so I went with a Western style of steeping to stay true to my normal consumption patterns.

Since I was playing D&D today, I went for a really large pot of Western steeped tea that used the whole sample. It was delicious; just a little bit sweet but mostly a very true to actual dish sticky rice flavour accented by soft notes of earth. More medium bodied overall, and just wicked smooth. I resteeped the life half way through the session when we took a short break, and second infusion was really great too. Definitely a little bit less sweet with a more mild presence of sticky rice but still REALLY close to tasting like the first infusion. An extra minute or two of steeping and they may have been indistinguishable. Possibly.

This doesn’t win any awards for being “the best” rice scented tea I’ve ever had because it’s not really unique tasting in any way but it’s a really solid offering that, in my opinion, highlights all of the standard tastes that a good daily drinker type of rice scented shou should have.

Thanks Apr Tea for the sample!

Gong Fu Sipdown (650)!

Apr Tea was kind enough to send me a whole bunch of samples in exchange for reviews, and they showed up yesterday so I’m breaking into the first sample today and steeping that up. I just randomly picked which to start with, and this is the one I selected. It’s a good pick though; I’ve been craving a really good oolong all week.

I’m just going to do this review stream of consciousness style, so jot notes for each infusion. However, since I was specifically asked to review these teas in exchange for the samples I will be tracking how many infusions I do/writing jot notes for each specific infusion. That’s something I’ve been moving away from in more recent Gong Fu sessions/I’ve been following a more casual and laid back approach without heavily taking notes – so my compromise for this is that I’m not going to heavily monitor the steep time for each infusion; for that element of the session I’ll be following my “let my gut direct me” approach since that’s been working so well for me.

So, let’s get started shall we!

Infusion One
- Sweet and slightly roasty overall
- STRONGLY and distinctly tasted like lightly roasted peanuts
- More flavourful than expected from a first infusion

Infusion Two
- Still very nutty/peanut flavour with a bit of general roast/typical roasty oolong flavour
- Floral elements creeping into the background/undertones but in a really light way
- A greener, slightly sour finishing note

Infusion Three
- Decrease in overall nuttiness and increase in floral characterics; more of a 50/50 spread
- Still smelled heavenly in a nutty/peanut way when steeping through
- Feels greener overall with more grassy and chlorine sort of undertones
- Sour aftertaste; but a clean one that doesn’t linger

Infusion Four
- Beautiful peanut qualities have been relegated to only light whispers/undertones
- And a general floral overall profile; kind of a lily and lilac thing
- A mix of fresh/light florals & perfumey/heady ones like jasmine (without being jasmine)

Infusion Five
- Leaves in gaiwan appear about ‘half’ opened up
- Aroma is greener, with nutty undertones still to it
- Peanut notes interact in the same way as the last infusion in terms of flavour
- Finish is more lingering now – tastes almost metallic while also tasting very green

Infusion Six
- Same as above infusion

Infusion Seven
- Let this infusion cool down quite a lot prior to drinking; distracted by Instagram
- Feels like we’re circling back to more of a full bodied and sweet peanut flavour
- With sweet floral undertones, and less green finishing notes

Infusion Eight
- Nope; I think that sudden surge of peanut notes was a fluke ‘cause we’re back to floral
- Noticeably weaker/lighter

Infusion Nine
- Same, but just lighter in flavour
- Ending the session here; I’ve got a lot more teas set aside for the day to move on to

Thanks again Apr Tea for the samples! This is one of the nuttiest Tieguanyins that I think I’ve ever had; I’m sure that means it’ll be a super memorable one. I look forward to trying everything else too, though!

Dry leaf aroma is not very strong and mostly roasty, with some floral and black bean notes in the background. After the wash, the smell becomes a bit sweeter. The aromas I get are maple syrup, green bell pepper, honey, cranberry, must, cookies, freshly cut wood and rosehip. It is not the most pungent smell, but the complexity is there.

Tastewise it reminds me of a mix of cider, rosehip tisane and dark roast coffee. The aftertaste is more floral, I get hints of thyme, lavender and honey. Overall it has a tad too much roast for my liking. One other aspect, where I feel this tea is lacking is the mouthfeel. Even with crushing a bit of the leaves (my standard practice for Dan Congs by now), the infusion is fairly thin.

This is a decent Dan Cong for people on a tighter budget or everyday drinking. If what you are looking for is complex aroma and roasty taste, then you will probably find the price/quality ratio adequate.

This tea is almost all golden buds (Special Grade) and is supposed to be a step above the Aprtea’s Jin Jun Mei First Grade that I liked quite a bit but I was not swept off my feet by any means. And looks and smells great but tastes to subtle if you steep it Western for a minute or two. Almost like a white tea. I had to increase the steeping time to 34 minutes and the flavors emerged but the long steep brought forward strong currents of malt, dark chocolate and sweet potato and they kind a drowned that special Jin Jun Mei subtle sweetness.

It was still a good, enjoyable tea that resteeps quite well but it came off a bit unbalanced and not particularly special.