Hawkhurst Tea

Ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge | January 2023 | A tea for joyful solitude and meditation

I love this prompt so much! I haven’t wanted to rush it, though, and was waiting till the moment felt right. Today is a cold yet sunny Sunday afternoon during a three-day weekend, and I’m currently home alone with the animals. I was feeling very mellow and decided to make a pot of something similarly mellow and relaxed. This oolong called my name!

I enjoyed it alongside a mini snack plate of mostly sweet treats: a Sumo orange (SO bougie but so good!), pistachios, dark chocolate-covered figs (!), and a few squares of a dark chocolate bar with puffed black rice and quinoa. I also pulled out my copy of “Comfortable with Uncertainty,” which a colleague very thoughtfully gifted me when I was diagnosed with cancer. I read a few passages and then digested them while drinking tea and nibbling goodies. Such a lovely way to spend free time before my second semester of grad school kicks off this week. :)

Oh, right, the tea itself! It’s very light and softly floral, with notes of jasmine and a bit of minerality. A good choice for quiet contemplation!

2023 sipdown count: 9/75

Day 26 – last and final – of Kelmishka’s advent calendar! I appreciate that this calendar started and ended on a Taiwanese oolong, one of my favorite tea styles. Including a Day 26 was also a very nice touch, as I’m finding this a great tea to unwind with post-holiday chaos. I brewed this up gong fu style. It’s nicely floral, creamy, and smooth. 

There is a gyokuro from Day 7 that I need to circle back to sooner rather than later while it’s still fresh – I kept saving it for a special day when I could give it proper attention, but I can only have a few cups of caffeine per day and somehow the stars never aligned for a day when that could be my caffeine for the day and I could give it the focus it deserves. So this is not quite the last of this calendar.

Thank you Kelmishka for a lovely first advent calendar swap experience! I got to try a bunch of new-to-me teas that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and discovered a few new faves along the way, notably 52teas which I hadn’t revisited properly in a long time. Perennial Tea Room’s Orange Grapefruit was also a particular delight, from a company I had never heard of before! And it was really helpful to be able to compare a few different ginger teas, as we’re coincidentally revisiting the question of which one should be our household sick tea.

Yay for the Steepster homemade advent calendar swap! Thank you Kelmishka! Since Christmas isn’t my holiday and we never adopted any Christmas traditions growing up, I’ve never felt the need to do so as an adult. Everyone please enjoy Santa, Christmas trees, etc., but I’m good with my menorah, latkes, and sufganiyot. There are exactly two exceptions to this: gingerbread cookies, which are objectively delicious, and, more recently, advent calendars. I only got into advent calendars in the past couple of years, but it turns out they function as a really great way to try out a bunch of different teas in manageably small quantities, which is really appealing when my tea stash is otherwise out of control. I probably got too many this year, thanks in no small part to the temptation of this thread: https://steepster.com/discuss/44363-advent-calendars-2022 

I’m vaguely trying to use these as a countdown to Hannukah, which is already only 22 days away, eep! I won’t post about any of the other calendars until Dec. 1 because I don’t want to spoil them for anyone, but since the homemade advent calendar is unique it can’t be spoiled. Day 1 is this high mountain oolong. 

I brewed this up western style, getting 3 steeps out of it at 190f and a final grandpa style steep at 190f. Even with a solid leaf-to-water ratio, it tended to come out a bit thin/light even for an alishan. A longer steep (3 min) helped with that, but that brought out a little dryness that wasn’t there on the 1-2 min steeps. Making this gong fu style might fix for that. Other than that, this had a buttery, floral aroma and flavor with a round, smooth mouthfeel in earlier steeps and dryer mouthfeel in later, longer steeps. Looking forward to the rest of this calendar!

So light and delicate! I’m getting a floral, almost fruity sweetness, with a soft, smooth mouthfeel. Very satisfying for a lazy afternoon sipping session.

I’m enjoying my second steep of this oolong as the snow starts accumulating outside on this bitterly cold day. This is so nice — soft and just slightly drying, with heaps of floral notes that almost remind me of jasmine, and just the slightest bit of woody roastiness. I also get a nice little grapefruit note at the back. I’m detecting a bit of soapiness on the second steep that I don’t love, but it’s still quite enjoyable.