The Tea Kings

I have been trying to hunt down the ID for this tea all week hahaha. This tea is in a tin labeled Doke Black Fusion, and I know that I finished that tea so so long ago. However, from all the pics of that tea i can find, the actual tea in the tin looks and tastes nothing like it. Wracking my brain, I came to the final conclusion that it must be this cask aged dian hong that I rehomed. I have a vague memory of putting it in a tin after receiving it eons ago. Not sure if that was the move, any sense of the barrel aging has drifted out of this tea. What’s left is a very generic black tea. I’m not even getting anything interesting from the dian hong either. bummer. Into the Everything Jar it goes!

Dry leaf – light to dark brown rolled leaves, wonderful chocolate aroma with hints of bourbon.

Wet leaf – Very fragrant dark cherry, chocolate

Liquor – Crystal clear light orange

Mouthfeel – Nothing too exciting

Taste – The roast is not overpowering yet it’s a high roast tea. The time between the actual roasting and now has probably helped. Very well balanced and a huge improvement over some others I have had that were too roast-heavy. This allows some nice fruit notes like black cherry and raisin to come through. Very sweet fruit notes, but balanced with a coffee-like roastiness.

Aftertaste – starts out chocolaty, then becomes coffee-like, and then finally a wonderful leafy tea perfume comes through— amazing that the tea perfume wasn’t lost in the roasting. The aftertaste in the third infusion is the nice apple peel flavor that I find in good roasted oolongs. Perhaps the aftertaste is the real highlight of this great tea.

Pu’erh TTB 2015 Tea #5

I took this tea out because I have enjoyed one younger De Ye that was somewhat sweet awhile back. My thoughts were along the lines of: “this should be more smoothed as it has aged a good 3 years more than the last I drank”
Those thoughts didn’t take into consideration of tea factory, storage, and my exposure to sheng in the last few months. With all pu’erh I steep at least 8 times and by the fifth steep I knew this wasn’t going to magically become a liquid sweettart. The liquid is dark and has a nice taste, but as far as comparing it to others it would land in that realm of average. It also doesn’t have any strong enough notes to make a flavor claim on either.

noms. THIS is a really interesting tea. Indigobloom let me have a sample of this one and it’s tasty. I am totally getting the rum/aged tea sort of vibe from this one. You for sure get that sense of aged alcohol from this one. it’s got a rum sort of oak feeling that i have eben really enjoying this morning. thanks IB!

Brewed this the easy way. Dumped the rest of the half tsp in a cup and the poured hot water on it. A bit dry which is weird to say for a liquid but somehow we all get it. As it settles it tastes better. Honestly, I prefer the deluxe oolong from rlt that tastes like oolong over this

Matcha/Green TTB #8

Super excited about this tea! A ground oolong is a must try.
The taste is pure, the aroma weak, and ending remarks are dry…
Drinking this is nice, though it is very hard to get it to mix into the water, its just that this tea seems to be punching my throat violently as it goes down and my throat doesn’t like that. My mouth also has a dry sensation from this tea as well. In regards to taste, I really like it. Maybe it’s because they ground the oolong it becomes dry because of the concentration.

This was not all that special. The dry leaf is heavily compressed maocha. It consists of a variety of dark greens with small brass and tarnished silver strands. The brick carries the scent of sharp plums. I placed a small but heavy chunk in my warmed yixing and gave it a shake. This scent heightened to raisins and tobacco. I brewed up a cup, or rather, I tried to brew up a cup. This maocha is so compressed it took about four long hot washings for it to open up and yield anything more than slightly flavored water. The maocha finally opened up, and the initial sip was very basic. This had no complex tones or aromas. It was a very singular flavored tea. This tasted of wood. It would sometimes give a slight smoky flavor, but otherwise very unattractive. This wasn’t terribly tasting. It was just a very basic tea. The qi was calm and came in spikes. It faded after a few minutes. I was not impressed by this, and I’m glad I only have a small amount. Lastly, the dry leaf consisted of only 2 whole leaves and the rest BOP out of a 7g portion.

https://instagram.com/p/3MY3IPTGVo/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

As a pu noob, this may not be a fair assessment.. I think I steeped it properly after completely botching this last night. I used 7g of tea in 16oz of 200 degree water for 40 seconds (adding 10 seconds for additional steeps). The tea color is a light gold. The taste is woody and smoky, dissolving into a subtle sweetness on the back end. I didn’t really taste a change in flavor over subsequent steeps, so it tasted very one-note throughout the entire process. I will try again with a gaiwan, when it comes in, and update accordingly.

I brewed this in the morning and it’s very… old tasting? I mean, yeah, it’s aged, but it has a weird aftertaste.. I’ll reserve judgment until I try this again in a gaiwan per the recommended steeping instructions