Ken Lee (AliExpress)

This tea reminds me of the corn syrup my mother used to pour on ice cream as a child. It has a rich sweet flavour, mixed with roasted notes, cocoa, a hint of malt and sweet dried fruit. It is really smooth brewed at high temperatures and very short steeps ( boiling and 5-10s to start). In later steeps it mellows to a caramel. The aftertaste is very sweet and lingering. It resteeps really well and I ’ve steeped it past 11 times. When brewed western style the flavour becomes too much for me and heads to an acidic molasses. The liquor is red edged with gold even at short steeps.

The dried leaves are small, very tightly wound and like to interlock with each other. It can make it difficult to get out of the bag. They are shiny black, with reddish copper buds and smell like raisins. It makes a fantastic dessert tea.

I’m not sure if this is the right listing or not, but it’s a jin jun mei from ken lee, so… probably?

So… all fun times must come to end. My husband went to the store to pick up a few things and on reentry to our drive way, somehow hit a big pipe and we sprung a massive outdoor water leak. There is now an ice rink in the street in front of our house. My husband isn’t alway so calm in these situations so it was a bit, how should i put it, um, yeah, it was loud.

I thought at least it was outside not inside, so there’s that! Anyway, it took about 20 minutes of digging in the snow to find the water shut off for that area. The water is no long flowing into the street. I’m now inside, taking some deep breaths, drinking this tea, and playing play doh.

Now back to enjoying the snow. Please. No more craziness!

This was my morning tea at work today.

Thank you yyz for another interesting tea. I feel like I don’t have the knowledge or palate to really understand some of these teas. You’ve pushed me out of my comfort zone, and while I may not have “got” all the lessons – I really appreciate the experience and somehow I’m looking at some teas differently. Thank you!!

LOL this one confuses me. First off – I had a little argument in head about what this actually was. In my limited experience Jin Jun Mei is black, Wuyi Rock is oolong, milk is oolong. The leaves looked like a black tea, smelled like a black tea – the side of me that was voting for black finally won the argument and this got chosen for morning (I’m trying to drink black in the morning – oolong in the arvo).
Once I actually was drinking it (at this point there was no doubt it was a black – yay I got it right!!!), my confusion really set in. This has some of the characteristics of a malty, chocolatey Chinese black – that part of me is really happy – it has a really starchy mouth feel – that part of me not so happy (too starchy) – it has that really “high, acidic, white wine, up your nose” thing that I have no idea how to describe – but I don’t like it(ok this goes away as it cools some – that’s a good thing).
Way too many things going on for my poor newbie brain. I’m not sure that it’s that I don’t like this, I think it’s more I don’t understand this. Maybe if I understood the nuances, I could appreciate how they are playing off each other – but for now it just seems like a bunch of noise in my mouth. I think I would like to try this one again 6 months from now and see if I’ve “grown” into it.

I think there should be a law against making people work at 7AM on a Sunday morning (or any morning for that matter).
I don’t think I should be drinking good samples that yyz generously sent me. Really this morning all I’m doing is pouring in caffeine, not really taking the time to enjoy the tea.
What I do know, is that this is going down nice and easy (working on cup 4 right now) – maybe a bit too “bright” for my tastes, but nice and smooth. All in all a nice cup that is fulfilling my caffeine needs this morning.

This is one of my favourite all day teas. Its initial cups are bright and fruity and almost creamy, it lasts anywhere between 7-11 steeps,and it finishes in caramel honey. I haven’t had it for a while and the fruit is mellowing and is less tart as it ages but it’s still pretty fabulous.

The tea consists of dark tightly wound short leaves with copper gold tips.
1.5 TSP in a 225ml vessel steeped at boiling for 45 seconds yields an amber red liquid tinged green gold at the edge of the cup. This one does require a slightly longer steep than some of my Jinjunmeis and does not brew as deep a red but it has a great bright flavour.

The scent of this tea is warm, sweet and bright with sweet potato, caramel, smoke and longan, hint of chocolate and cinnamon.

The flavour is of fruit and very light smoke/ roast and cinnamon notes on top, with caramel, cocoa and hint of sweet potato with peppery notes underneath. It tastes bright, sweet and smooth and leaves a cooling sensation at top front of my mouth. The tea yields a good dose of caffeine. Longan dominates the aftertaste, with light peppery notes and a lingering caramel sweetness. Through later steeps them long an will fade then it will have a couple of sterps that taste like an orange pekoe Ceylon and then it yields caramel towards the end. A great tea for all day.

I’ve enjoyed all the black teas I’ve got from this aliexpress seller and he has really great sales. However he had problems with his partner and currently reorganising his business. Hopefully he returns to selling teas soon as they seemed to be well received.