Norbu Tea

I was amazed by my first taste of the spring 2009 Ya Bao I received as a sample in a tea swap, but they were sold out. So I bought some of the summer harvest version, and at the time, they just weren’t as rewarding as the spring harvest.

So they sat in the cabinet, while other, more immediately impressive teas came and went.

Tonight I picked them up, packed a gaiwan with them—filled to the lid-line—and then added water at 160 degrees. This really made a lovely tea—sweet, floral, delicate, and I’ve had six tasty infusions already. I’d forgotten how nice these can be.

Quite Floral and Vegetal. Very smooth finishing palatal.

Trying a different temperature: 145 degrees, and it is quite entirely lovely. This is the sweet spot. 30", 10", 30". Upped temp to 155 for the 4th infusion. Sweet and nutty and lovely. Upping the rating for this new temperature.

Thinking about it a little more, the nuttiness is very reminscent of Long Jing. Quite interesting.

This is a sweet, nutty, vegetal sencha without the strong briny umami that I so often find offputting in more heavily steamed senchas and gyokuro.

The leaf is deep rich green, medium long fragments—not quite as long as the Sayamakaori from Yuuki-cha, but longer than my average Asamushi sencha, very sweet smelling, even a bit nutty.

2.5 grams of leaf in a small gaiwan, about 2.5 oz or 75 mL of tap water per infusion

1st infusion, 30 seconds
sweet, vegetal, nutty, very nice

2nd infusion, 10 seconds
vegetal, sweet, nutty—the nutty is a hint of astringency, I think, but not bitterness, and a hint of toasted/roasted flavor

3rd infusion, 45 seconds
again, the toasty, vegetal nuttiness, astringency, but light

a 4th infusion, 1 minute
still nutty, vegetal, now fairly astringent

The finished leaves are bright green, and moderately broken up, although I did fine one or two small whole leaves

I think part of the astringency is the brewing, here, because just for accuracy’s sake, not really for comparison, I’m brewing up some of the Yuuki-Cha Sayamakaori sencha at the same time, and finding some of the same elements in it—not the roastedness, but more astringency than I’m used to. I think my leaf-to-water ratio is really not quite the same as in the kyusu. But I’ve got a pretty good idea that this is going to be a very nice sencha, and am looking forward to first proper session with the Tokoname kyusu.

Both with this and with another new green tea I tried this weekend, it’s quite clear that despite attempts to control conditions, changes in brewing conditions for the purpose of doing these comparisons—brewing sencha in my gaiwans instead of my kyusu—sometimes distorts the results, because I’m moving outside my usual comfort zone.

A 2nd set of infusions, in the 5 oz kyusu with 4 grams of leaf, tap water 160 degrees at first, infusions 30", 15", 30"; raised temp to 170 degrees for 45 seconds and 1 minute infusions, worked out better, still some astringency but not as much, more to my taste.

This is a nice, vegetal nutty sencha.

I got a sample like teaddict did. Very full bodied tea with a smooth palatal feel. Reminds me of raspberries and cocoa by taste and smell. Overall quite good I might get into black teas now.

Today I expanded the range of this versatile tea by brewing a small handful of it overnight in my thermos. It held nicely for a long morning’s drive, not quite as wonderful as it can be hot, but still, tasty stuff.

Adding to the versatility displayed by this tea, I accidentally started a session with the Pino kettle set to 205 degrees. Realized my mistake 30 seconds in, and the tea was still drinkable (although it did improve on diluting a bit). That’s a very fine quality in a ‘green’ tea.

I can’t really recommend that high a temp (I did prefer it diluted when brewed so hot), but it wasn’t a tossout, so props to you, Xue Dian Mei Lan!

Today, started with this one hotter, 170 degrees, and very short infusions: it was more aromatic, fruitier, floral, fantastic through the first three infusions of 20-30 seconds apiece. Getting bolder, set for 185 degrees for the fourth: still mmmmmm. Not even a hint of bitter. Starting cooler seems like a good idea, but the heat kept it going nicely for several more infusions, before sweet water was reached about the 7th or 8th infusion.

First time I’ve brewed this one in a while, and it’s so nice to come back to. So many teas, so little time. It has the fruity delicate flavor I associate with Yunnan greens, and in the first couple of infusions it does indeed do a good oolong impersonation, with hints of caramel and fresh summer hay. It definitely has a bit of a bitter edge if I am careless and let it go too long, especially in the later infusions. I think I’m going to try a bit of it brewed hotter next time, to see what happens when I treat it more ‘oolong-ish’.

First try of this one again for a while. Delicious, floral, sweet, slightly vegetal, wonderful.

Using a little under 1 gram per ounce of water, in a small gaiwan, with water about 160 degrees and first infusion about 45 seconds or 1 minutes. Good reintroduction. I will keep treating this one as a green tea.

First try with this was from a free sample a included with a recent order. I can’t remember much about it except that I liked it enough to keep it in mind for the next order. Tried this again semi-western style: 2.5 grams of leaf to 5 oz of water, with longer infusions than usual, but it was too dilute and the personality of the leaf was lost. Guess I need to stick to the brewing parameters I’m more comfortable with.

Another round with 6 grams of leaf to those 5 grams of water, and now it’s starting to sing out brighter: sweet, fresh peas, caramel, sun-warmed hay. Mellow. First infusion was about 30 seconds at 160 degrees; 2nd 1 minute, same temp; third was 2 minutes, water 170, and it was a bit overdone—bitterness creeping in. Backed down a little by diluting and it was better, but I’ll be a little more circumspect with the next one. 1 minute and the sweet mellowness is back, rich and caramel and floral. Very nice tea. But I’m running out of room to drink more; will have to set the leaves aside for a while and continue later.

Got a little sample of this free with my latest Norbu order, and because I want to get to sleep early tonight, I figured a low-caffeine tea was just the ticket for my first taste of the new stuff. I very much enjoy a roasted toasted flavor in my teas, but the first genmaicha I tried was overwhelmingly toasty and not at all to my taste. I think this tea must be what genmaicha wishes it could be: warm toasty but also sweet and surprisingly, fruity!

I started with 2.4 grams of tea in my small gaiwans (about 75mL or 2.5 oz water per infusion), with water at 150 degrees. I used shorter infusion times than Greg recommends just because I’m a tea wimp and like most of my teas a little more dilute than average, and for the same reason I started on the lower end of his suggested temp range.

I started 30 seconds, then 15, 30, 45, 45. All infusions were warmly toasty, but not so toasted as to be bitter (in this very different than that genmaicha that I couldn’t really enjoy at all). They were also sweet, and where I was expecting some vegetal flavors from the green leaf, something alchemical happened with the toasted stems transmuting it into fruitiness. Wonderful, odd, but wonderful. Very very nice. The sweet n’ fruity faded with later infusions, but even at my fifth it was delicious (probably lasting so long because of my short infusion times).

This is a very nice tea.

I’ve been drinking two different “oriental beauties”: Hou De’s Taiwan Bai Hao and Norbu’s Bai Yun (which is also Yunnan Sourcing’s “Wild Arbor Oriental Beauty”).
The idea is that the Taiwanese tea masters who settled in Yunnan brought their Bai Hao skills, which in Taiwan are used on the teas that grow in the humid, foggy, northern part of Taiwan, to the higher-altitude Wu Liang mountain variety.
The dry leaves of this Yunnan variety are a beautiful, autumnal mixture of dark mahogany, golden brown, and the “white hairs” of the name. Overall they are slightly darker than the Hou De.
A half full pot of dry leaves produces a pot brimming with wet ones. I brewed at 200+ degrees for 2+ minutes. Dark amber cup. For me, honey was the pronounced aroma and taste. Berries quickly get your tongue’s attention: let’s see, cranberries, maybe? white grapes? Definitely some spice notes, but I can’t really pin point them. Not earthy; a little wood, but rather more bright. A very pleasant thickness and dryness balances the sweet honey.
The wet leaves show the quality of the processing, with little bundles of stems and leaves intact. The wet leaves are more green, less golden-red than the Hou De Taiwan variety. But while Norbu describes this variety as having large leaves, I don’t see them as any larger than the Taiwan variety.
This tea is quite oxidized, low roast, no smoke, rather bright. I’m not sure about the correlation of fermentation to caffeine, but I got jacked on a couple of pots of this, whereas I can drink yan cha all day and still fall asleep easily. This tea is quite durableand it’s really pleasant to drink later infusions, even after the complexity wanes. It stores a long time (like black tea) . It’s also kind of amazing for the price, like most of Norbu’s teas. I think this would be a good tea to recommend for friends new to oolongs.

This is a lovely anise-sweet young sheng that I got as a free sample with a recent order. I did a parallel tasting with another very nice young sheng, and the link below is to a version of this with photos on my tea page.

Long twisted intact-appearing leaves and a fair bit of stem. The dry leaves smell sweet and earthy.

I put 2 grams of my tiniest gaiwan, with 1.5 ounces near boiling water. After a flash rinse, they smell even stronger and more delicious.

First infusion, 205°F/96°C, 10": sweet anise

Second infusion, 205°F/96°C, 15": sweet anise, woody/earthy starting up

Third infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": sweet anise, woody/earthy

Fourth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": sweet anise, woody/earthy, still the anise is very strong, bit of bitter aftertaste

Fifth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 35": sweet anise, earthy has retreated now, bitter/sweet aftertaste

Sixth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 60" (stopped to take a picture of the leaves): sweet anise and earthy, rich and strong

Seventh infusion, 205°F/96°C, 1’: a little dilute, should have let it go longer, more sweet water with hints of anise

Eighth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 3’: oh, this is much better, my earthy flavors are back. Still delicious, yum. Young sheng star.

Losing count—10? 11? still wonderful, both of them. Troubling fact: I want to shoot the spent leaves, lay them out to show the size and pluck, but they’re just not quitting, now 15, 16 infusions in. It will be a long night.

1.5 liter later (the kettle was filled completely when I started), they’re not as rich, but still, a little better than just sweet water.

Wet leaves are are mix of light brown and green, large leaves with some more than two inches long, mostly intact.

Full review with photos:
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/LaoBanPen&YongDe11.10.html

In the middle of another very nice session with this tea—sweet, herbaceous, a hint of umami and mushroom, and hints of bitterness with longer infusions.

It definitely rewards close attention and very short infusions.

Edited to note that I quite at about 20 infusions, little more than sweet water, but still hints of the more complex flavors at the start.

This is a lovely smoky-earthy young sheng that I got as a free sample with a recent order. I did a parallel tasting with another very nice young sheng, and the link below is to a version of this with photos on my tea page.

This tea has long intact-appearing leaves and a fair bit of stem. The leaves smell sweet and earthy, with a bit of mushroom odor to the Lao Ban Pen.

I put 2 grams into my tiniest gaiwans, with 1.5 ounces near boiling water. After a flash rinse, the leaves smell even stronger and more delicious.

First infusion, 205°F/96°C, 10": smoky, earthy, sweet

Second infusion, 205°F/96°C, 15": sweet and earthy, woody, bit of anise and smokiness lighter already

Third infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": sweet and earthy, woody, bit of anise, smokiness almost gone

Fourth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": earthy, sweet, smoky

Fifth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 35": sweet and earthy, bit of herbaceous flavor

Sixth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 60" (stopped to take a picture of the leaves): sweet and earthy, deep, warm, rich

Seventh infusion, 205°F/96°C, 1’: both a little dilute, should have let them go longer, more sweet water with hints of earthy

Eighth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 3’: oh, this is much better, my anise and earthy flavors are back. Still delicious, yum. Young sheng star.

Losing count—10? 11? still wonderful. Troubling fact: I want to shoot the spent leaves, lay them out to show the size and pluck, but they’re just not quitting, now 15, 16 infusions in. It will be a long night.

1.5 liter later (the kettle was filled completely when I started), not as rich, but still, better than just sweet water. Based on the kettle volume and the gaiwan size, both of the young shengs gave me about 20 infusions. Nice teas.

Wet leaves are are mix of light brown and green, quite intact, and small to medium sized, about an inch to an inch and half long.

Full review with photos:
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/LaoBanPen&YongDe11.10.html

1.9 grams of tea (was aiming for 2.0, but got tired of adding & subtracting little bits) in small gaiwans, about 60-75mL water

And I took photos this time, watching the unfurling infusion by infusion: see my flickr set here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/sets/72157625151330461

The flash rinse barely started to unfurl anything

Started timidly, 30" at 160 degrees: warm, vegetal, sweet but the infusion is a little too short/dilute

1 minutes at same temp: vegetal flavors of peas, grass, lightly floral background, no hint of bitterness, much better match of infusion time and tea. Used the aroma cup set for this, and it was fun, sweet fresh mown grass odors.

90" third infusion, sweet, vegetal, delicate, love it love it, the best yet

2’ a little hotter, 170 degrees, slight astringency but still mostly vegetal

3’ 180 degrees, and better than the previous, sweet, vegetal, such a nice tea

5’ 190 degrees, and the tea is done: barely more flavor than hot water.

Large lovely leaves are now mostly unfurled, but I couldn’t get them to completely flatten long enough to shoot the picture

Next time, 1 min, 90", 2 min, 3 min, 8 min?

I was lucky enough to get some of the spring version of this tea, and quite sad when I went to reorder it and found it was sold out. This is an entirely worthy successor.

Meaty, metallic sheng with a nice buttery mouthfeel and smokey-sweet, citrus hui gan. There is a slightly wild bite at the end and an underlying asparagus flavor that gives depth. Subsequent steepages bring the bite to the forefront and develop a nice, mild sweetness all the way through. A perfect progression from the Dan Cong appetizer I started with today.

So today has been interesting. I had a slow day at work, but with a full tip jar! (bought How To Cook Your Life by Dogen, a very interesting read, and a mini Munny to color with Sam [the girlfriend] when she gets back from CT….just from tips!). Anywho, I came home to discover 1….2….3! Three boxes on my doorstep! I knew one was my Moroccan Mint tea from Davidson’s (review up later!), but what were the others? Oh wait, it’s this tea from Norbu and my new gaiwan from JAS eTea!

Norbu was kind enough not only to send me my order very neatly packaged, but also included a free sample of 2009 Norbu Lao Mansa! I was excited to try both, but for now let’s stick to the Yi Wu.

The leaves in this are really nice dry, they look just ready for the brewing. Rinse, dispose, pour in more water. 30 seconds-ish……omg.

This is amazing. I love this, it’s sweet and delicate but has that blunt woody finish that I know from the other Pu I’ve tried. Kind of like someone hitting your tongue with a hammer made of marshmallow.

Second infusion: Just as much amazing. This one added a lot of astringency at the end of the taste, at first I didn’t care for it, but it quickly grew on me.

Third Infusion: A liiitttlllee less flavor here, but not much. The astringency dropped back down to only a little.

Fourth Infusion: I had to answer the phone during this infusion, so I goofed it. Woops!

Fifth infusion: very light crisp earth taste, like wet sweet leaves. Started to get that kinda hay-ish taste. I wanted to try the mint, so I tossed the leaves after this infusion.

Overall, this was an amazing experience. Highly recommended! Now to go write on the mint :p

I find myself getting excited about puerh more so than any other tea now. It’s that same inner excitement I used to get as a kid when I would unwrap some new video game (the ones that rule your life) or like now when I get some new machine to make sounds with. Yay. The excitement is easier to hide with age but the inner working is still the same.

I have been particularly looking forward to trying this type of tea for a while and finally grabbed some while ordering a new gaiwan. I opened the package and smelled it when it came in but I didn’t cup it right away. The inner excitement built without me really noticing and proves further that good tea is a very simple, healthy pleasure. Simpler and much, much healthier than video games. Cheaper than music equipment. Amen to that.

The initial wet leaf smells like apricot fruit-leather and piss; bright, sweet and yeasty. Bear with me now. The color of the liquor is a deep, translucent goldenrod. An aroma of collard greens comes up in subsequent infusions and also provides depth to the taste of the liquor. This is by no means a bottom heavy tea, however, as there is much more going on in the mid to high range of flavor. Dandelion, butterscotch, canned green beans. Turkish kebab. Bergamot, cocktail bitters. What’s funny is that I am not doing this tea justice right now. I absolutely love it and just said it smells like piss. Cupped eccentricity. Do not let my descriptive deficiency fool you, this tea is delicious, easy to drink and more than the sum of the parts that I have given you to work with.

Let me also say that it is very energetically invigorating. Qi or no qi, call it what you will, there is a tangible effect that’s nice and admittedly a little off-putting. Electric floatyheadedness, tingling hands and slight perspiration go along with a vigorous heart-rate.

So, to recap: it smells like pee and gets you high. Book it.

Haven’t slept all night had a cup for breakfast… still wonderful

Love. Love. Love It! Smokey Sweet with hints of Coconut and Honey that warms the Tongue.

Made it the powdered way as I have begun to enjoy shu puerh in this manner. Briney with a dry wine-like palatal. Very interesting the way grinding brings forward these tastes.

Very deep, dark amber liquor smells of wet hay and ocean breeze nothing on taste yet I made it weak.