Kamwo Pharmacy

Hmm – somehow I wasn’t thinking when I brewed this up. I treated it like an oolong! In my defense, I did brew it a little cool for that, ~188 so just take this with an extra pinch of tea leaves in case I botched it, right?

More tea that I have had freaking forever. And yet it still smells good. The dry leaves had a great deep caramel flavor, with brown sugar elements. The leaves were rolled up tight in little balls – there was a slight amount of dust and broken leaves.
When I brewed it up, they unfolded into these incredibly long spindly skinny leaves – really interesting looking, like something out of an Edward Gorey drawing or a Lovecraftian opium vision (what, too fanciful? Come on, it’s almost Halloween! … and they really look that strange).

The liquor smells great – almost a caramel or tobacco flavor. I still get some of the notes of oolong butteriness, but it is more like a smokey sweet kind of scent. It smells like it would taste like butter spice cookies. (This is really not sounding like a green tea, is it? …)

This tastes suspiciously like chestnuts. I definitely brewed this too hot – I taste bitterness but that might be an illusion exacerbated by the astringency of this tea. It is very nutty in a great walnut/chestnut kind of way.
I definitely have to try this tea again and make sure not to mess it up because I can see the potential here.

It takes forever for me to describe the tea here, so Teaser! I am calling this my Baclava Tea. I also tormented this poor tea and broke several tea laws. I noted my rule violations at the bottom of my post

My fiance got this for me… like last year. Or maybe even longer ago. So I suck. And now, so might this tea! Time to find out :)
No brewing instructions because this came from a little pharmacy on Canal St. I guessed 195 because it’s an oolong and decided to start with 3 minutes.
This thing is so cool – I haven’t had a blooming tea in years. Right now it’s deployed its oolong tentacles and is floating and spinning at the top of the pot like an anemone space ship.
And… then it descends, still spinning and lands, all of a sudden.
Awesome.

The liquor is still really light. And, confession, I totally forgot how long I have been steeping it for, distracted by the Space Tea. So I’m guessing on the time. I poured my first cup at around 3 minutes.

First cup: I let my mother have the first sip because I do not have a mouth of steel. She couldn’t taste anything, said it was too hot. My sister agreed but added “comforting” though.
Okay, my thoughts (geeze, BlueKitty, get on with it!!). It smells like honey. And it actually tastes really good! It has a nice nutty flavor without astringency. I feel like I just ate baclava actually… mmm. It has that oolong quality where it lingers in your mouth and throat.
You know what, enough said. This rocks. I am so pleasantly surprised! Tea lasts freaking forever, I guess.

… want to hear how I stored this? You will cringe I swear.

I got it 2 Christmases ago, I think. I stored it in a cabinet. Then I moved to nyc. It came with me. It lived above the stove there. Then I moved back. It went into a temporary greenhouse outside where many of my possessions got absolutely destroyed. This somehow was spared. Then I moved the bag to the cabinet opposite the stove over my sink for a year. Then I found it, squeed, and added it to my tea cabinet in a little sealed container.
So, all the tea violations here: ~2 years old. Kept over stove. Kept in hot humid conditions. And yet, freaking incredible.
And now I miss nyc again :(