Menghai Tea Factory (Taobao MX Tea)

This is a strong and smoky tea. It is not an apricoty sheng at all. It is kick your ass strong. The smoky nature of this tea was apparent for the first six steeps or so and then it turned into a sweeter note, although still not an apricot note or stonefruit. I’m not entirely sure how to describe the note. This did check out as real. It glowed green under the black light. It does seem that MX Tea on Taobao is a seller of real tea in my experience so far. I have not drank enough of their tea to say this with absolute certainty though. This one was enjoyable if smoky. I am now beginning to feel some qi from this as well. I only seem to get that from raw most of the time. Not a major qi but some.

I steeped this twelve times in a 100ml teapot with 7.5g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min. The leaves were not done. If I wanted more caffeine I’m sure I could have gotten a few more steeps out of the leaves.