Unknown from China

Meh

First chip off the bing. 11 infusion yield! So far, delicate and floral sweet with a little nuttiness. You must search for the flavors in each sip but they are rewarding. A little drying sensation and mellow Qi. I’m enjoying this and looking forward to rating it in the future.

I didn’t like this enough (bland, gritty) that I actually threw it out after two infusions for better leaves.

Chilled at the end of a session, quite smooth, viscous, refreshing and mild. I’m going to bump this up by a few points as it tastes better than my first few steepings for sure.

The cake looks a mess, and it’s not easy to break without some fannings coming out. I did the best I could to separate stems from leaves (stems showing how low quality this is) and hucked about 6g into my gaiwan fearing the worst.

Its, surprisingly passable. Mild and earthy with a smooth malty body and finish. It reminds me of the Numi Pu-erh, but probably lower quality given the form factor.

This is run of the mill shou, it was very inexpensive, and offers a pleasant but one-dimensional experience. Unless it makes me sick, I think the rating is fair and generous.

IIRC, this whole bing was under $20 shipped from Yunnan to the US. That’s <6 cents-per-gram or about 35-cents for the whole session. Not bad!

I went 9 steeps but got a bit tired of the flavor.

OH MY GOD STEEPSTER ARE YOU DOING OKAY BABE?

This review is of Lemon Pound Cake by DavidsTea, which Steepster won’t let me review — because of reasons, apparently.

Anyway, this is one of my all-time favorite oolongs. It has a mix of lemon and… umber? That’s the word that occurs to me. Like a smooth, almost breadlike quality. “Umber.” I’m doubling down on it.

There’s also something about this tea that tastes like it never came from a leaf at all. It’s some kind of liquified lemon danish that’s been run through a vise and dribbled into my mug. The tea itself isn’t even in play. I mean, I steeped it. I saw tea. I put the leaves into water. I know that they’re real. But it doesn’t taste like that. Which is sort of weird, honestly. The tea is just the skateboard that the flavor rode in on.

Anyway, it’s a fave. Thanks for reading this review. Have a happy day.

2022 Sipdown 153/365!

Tasty, but not too smokey.

Couldn’t find another entry for this; this is for the tea that Sil brought back from China all those years ago! ;)

Anyhow, I expected to be adding milk + maple syrup here, but I sampled it before adding them and was pleasantly surprised at the smoothness and flavour, as well as the balanced level of smoke. Tastes like a Chinese black (duh), with maltiness and chocolate, and light smoke. No astringency, acridity, just a great, flavourful cup of tea. Thanks Sil!

Sipdown! 111/365!

Alrighty, working on the backlog now. I finished this one off the other night; it was mediocre at best. I think it was either overleafed or oversteeped, which is too bad. Just had that metallic, astringent flavour.

Really old tea from when Sil went to China! Surprisingly still pretty tasty – kind of on the vegetal/spinachy side for a green, but I enjoy that, so it was a good cup. Not going to rate since it’s so old, but likely would have been mid 80s.

ashmanra’s monthly sipdown challenge
January 2023 → a tea I truly love

I haven’t finished my December sipdown prompts from Mastress Alita yet, but I didn’t want to miss out on today’s brand new prompt for the new year. This is a comforting old favorite. I don’t know much about it, not the company or even the type of tea, but someone told me it looks like Jin Jun Mei so I’m going with that. It’s later in the afternoon than I would normally like to have caffeine, but I’d already planned to make a cup so I didn’t change it.

I can tell that it’s finally starting to lose some of its flavor (this one is a little over six years old, time flies!), but it’s still really enjoyable. A bit of astringency, some malt, and a minerality I hadn’t noticed before. For those who enjoy Jin Jun Mei, do you have any recommendations I could check into once I run out of this one?

Mastress Alita’s Monthly Sipdown Challenge
February 2022 → A tea gifted to you

This tea was a gift from one of James’ friends who took a trip home to China and brought back this amazing tea. It’s a sizeable container and I’ve nearly finished it. It’s definitely one I’ll be sad to see go. The leaves are long and twisty, in colors of gold and black. The scent is dark chocolate, that Hershey’s chocolate syrup flavor I love so much. I have other teas that are similar, but this one’s certainly one of the special ones.

This must be the “mystery moon light white tea cake” sample I received from Christina. :)

So far, it seems pretty good. I’m steeping at 204F, which is what my fancy kettle thing holds at. It’s a little more green tasting than sweet deliciousness at this first steep, but I probably didn’t steep it quite long enough at 15 seconds.

The second steep is indeed stronger and sweeter. I think I still prefer the one I got locally, but it’s always fun to try other versions of a tea you like!

Thanks so much, Christina. :)

another awesome tea from my friend Amanda Vermillion​, (this time a tie guan yin oolong)

when i smell the leaves dry, they have a light floral smell to them.

when i smell the leaves wet, they smell like strong flowers.

when i smell the brewed tea, i smell light fruityness, strong sweetness and strong flowers.

when i taste the brewed tea, i taste strong flowers, strong sweetness and light fruityness.

the color of the brewed tea is a medium to light gold.

i rate this a 100 because its so tasty!

may thanks my dear friend!

so, i was drinking this a few days back, its still awesome!

good deal for $1.50 on Ali express

https://instagram.com/p/5-ERg5J4_R/?taken-by=kirkoneill1988

new score: 75 —> 100

a great tea!

when i smell the leaves dry, i smell a roasted smell.

when i smell the leaves wet, they smell roasted with coffee/espresso notes.

when i smell the brewed tea i smell roasted, coffee and espresso notes.

when i taste the brewed tea, i taste roasted, coffee and espresso tastes.

i rate this a 75 because it was quite cheap and is not the best

Woo, 700th note!

I bought this from the Toronto Tea Festival about 5 months ago and haven’t added it to the database until now.

A few nights ago I steeped it in a gaiwan at 80C. Didn’t keep track of the steep length, but the tea was fairly neutral tasting, though as I went on it became more astringent and drying. I’d love to try steeping this with hotter water to see if develops the sweet, syrupy nature that made me buy this tea when I sampled it at the festival.

little glass pitcher (grandpa style)

when i smell the leaves dry, they smells toasty and roasted

when i smell the leaves wet, they smell a lot like a Chinese version of gokujo hojicha

when i smell the brewed tea, it does smell like gokujo hojicha but with oolong smell

when i taste the brewed tea, it tastes toasty and roasted and similar to gokujo hojicha

many thanks to toad thomas for this amazing tea :D

When I did my little blind taste of this tea, I only used around half of the packet and kept the rest to use another time. I started back at work full time, last week, so have been working through teas that work well either prepared Western style or grandpa style.

This one seemed like it might hold up Western style, but my infuser is currently away. I improvised a little and used a tumblr and a glass – I dumped the remaining leaves into the bottom of the pre-warmed tumblr, filled it 2/3 with boiling water and let it infuse. After a minute (maybe two – it wasn’t exactly a scientific affair), I poured the tea out into my glass.

Amazingly, I think I preferred this tea when prepared in this way! It was sweet, creamy (like when made in the Gaiwan), but it also had some cake-like notes. It was really good :O

I got two really delicious infusions like this and a fairly good third one. I think I may stick to making this Western in future – it was really good :O