Yunnan Sourcing
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I think it’s kind of obvious I wrote this entire review completely pu’er party time tea drunk.
http://oolongowl.com/2012-dragon-jing-mai-puer-yunnan-sourcing-oolong-owl-tea-review/
This tea hits the pu’er tea drunk at the end and whoa, it hits hard! At the time of drinking, there’s some fermentation flavor in early steepings. Quite abrasive campy flavors with clay, dark wood, dirt, and tree sap. With each steeping the tea becomes sweeter amber and sap notes. Gorgeous red tea!
I’d love to try this with some aging on it, so into my dresser it goes. My husband is supposed to build me a better pu’er aging thing sometime.
Either way, $6 for a 100g cake is a steal!
Preparation
Free sample. Used a 180 yixing pot with 7g tea. My better half joined as well.
Rinsed quickly twice, then first steep 5 seconds, aroma of balsa wood and malt is what I smelled, with a smoky crisp creme brulee, buttery flavor. A bit of bitter that almost dropped my hubby out of the tasting, but he’s getting better with it since I’ve cook him bitter gourd.
Second steep 5 seconds had flavors of dried cherries, less bitter and a classic red tea profile. Slightly smokey. Smooth.
Third steep 10 seconds, just ripe banana came out as the fruit note with a noticeable dryness of a good Merlot.
Fourth steep 15 seconds and the sweetness is making a push through, the fruitiness is dissipating and the aftertaste is both dry and bitter on the tongue.
Fifth steep and we took a break with a few plain hot water sips to realign the buds. 20 seconds and the sweetness is forefront with a caramel hint. There is a noticeable chi starting to clear the throws of last nights slumber.
Sixth steep 25 seconds and the sugar is replaced by a slight sweet/sour you get from an unripe blueberry. The smokiness is also waning. Now it reminds me of standard red steeped teas. The color is still quite pronounced a clear burnt sienna.
Got a total of 10 steeps which made my day very pleasant, took hubby to the airport then off to flushing for more tea adventures.
Preparation
Finished this winter stash yesterday and I will have fond memories of this tea. It was my every day to get me through the snow and now spring beckons. Today I’m having a tea given to me by a shop owner in Flushing. All I know is its a black Formosa but doesn’t rival my Mojiang.
Preparation
Ok, so I have no idea what I was gibbering about in my first tasting notes. This tea is great. I paid a little more attention to the amount of tea this time instead of eyeballing and used 7gm in 200ml pot as TerryHL. The soup is a nice rich red brick color and the flavors of malt and chocolate are insane. Steeped it 10 times till I could pee no more and the last one was still flavorful. Has a nice energy boost to it as well. As I have finished off all my green teas this will be my buddy for the rest of the winter.
Preparation
That’s the great thing about giving tea several chances! I had the same thing happen to me with a Guizhou Black, it wasn’t happening for me. Then as I learned how it reacted to temperatures and times it came to crave it.
Yes, I so agree to giving tea a couple of trials before deciding if you truly dislike it…so many times I’ve changed my mind.
I’ll have to agree with you all! Sometimes if I drink a tea western style it will seem ‘ok’, but then if I go with gongfu steepings, it will be amazing! This is one of those teas.
What an interesting tea. So beautiful to look at in its dry state, golden locks, light and fluffy, like a childs unkept hair. I get a nice whiff of choclate as I sniff the leaves. Into the pot, a new ru kiln 200ml, I eyeballed about 1/4 full with leaves. I kept the temp @ 200 fearing to scorch the pretty little things and did a quick rinse. The wash liquor wash so the typical color of most red teas that I knew to keep the first steep time short.
When I poured for that 1st steep I saw the color build right away and had a brief 5 seconds in the pot. The wet leaves have malt chocolate and a slight plummy smell. The taste is equal with the aromas, with the malt being predominate. By the time I finished the first tasting I got a pleasant nudge of energy, greatly needed. First impressions are best.
Second steep for 15 seconds and I took time to appreciate the beautiful apperance of the tea in its pot. The aromas are still strong and the flavor now has a bit of a bite to it. The malt is present but the chocolate and plummy flavors have quieted.
Third steep 25 seconds and I’m wondering if they use this in pu erh? It reminds me a little of a sample pu erh I tried made from an unspecified red leaf. The liquor now coats the toungue and the flavors are pretty muted, I am thinking of sweetening to help keep it together, but alas no sugar to be found. As I finish it off I felt a bit of sadness that the beauty this tea holds in its appearance and aromas in the first two brews didnt hold up in later steeps.
Preparation
Trying to get through at least tasting the last round of teas from our BBBBox before the next round gets here. I brewed this western style because i can’t manage two gonfu at once haha. This is a really juicy tea..there’s a hint of a taste that i’m not familiar with coming through…sort of yunnan ish but not quite. Over all this is really tasty, though i for sure need to try this gong fu style next!
Ah just my kind of oolong. It needs a lot of leaves and very hot water to express itself.
6g/110ml teapot. 35"/30"/45"/1’00/1’30/2’00/3’00
Awesome smell, awesome taste : flowery with a hint of lemon or acid fruit at the end. The taste lingers in the throat after drinking.
Definitely one of my favourite, a great Gao Shan Cha.
Preparation
This tea is one of Terri’s contributions to the BBBB. I had no expectations, good or bad for this as it’s a totally new kind of tea. I brewed it up gongfu style as Terri mentioned in her note that she wanted to try it that way. This is a great gongfu tea. Each steeping is decidedly different than the previous. The first was very sweet with a hint of the basic Yunnan flavors. The second was savory, almost like herb chicken (I know, wacky). The third so far is very strong honey and Yunnan again. This is a fun tea! Kind of like tea roulette! Never know what the next flavor is going to be! I’m curious how this brews up western style. I’ll try that next time, but I think this is probably best as gongfu. Thanks Terri!
I tried this one yesterday as it seemed like the lightest tea in the BBBB and it was after 5pm. I enjoyed it. Didn’t love it. Most Yunnans are kind of just ok for me. It didn’t have the deepness that some of them (zhu rong) have, but it was still ok. I’ll try it gongfu next time and see if I can wrangle up some more complexity out of it. Thanks Terri Harplady!
Pretty yummy green oolong, very light and super floral, pretty similar to a green tieguanyin though missing good TGY’s great butteryness (instead it’s got a bit of a fuzzyish texture). It’s a LOT closer to the modern green end of the oolong spectrum than I was expecting from the pictures, I do enjoy the super green floral ones, but they’re not my favorite. It’s also impressively tightly rolled, the tiny little balls each unroll into whole intact bud systems with several large leaves and stems.
Preparation
Most people have never tasted Yak Butter Tea made with REAL Yak milk, myself included. So I was very interested when my Steepster friend ‘Roughage’ (who lives in England) sent me a notice that Yunnan Sourcing had just added a salty and sweet versions of real Yak Butter Tea! We had discussed the real taste before, because he had some on a visit to China.
One problem for me is that Yunnan Sourcing has huge shipping costs.
There is however, a Yunnan Sourcing US website that’s way less expensive to order from, so I checked to see if the new tea was available there.
No
I emailed a note…and received a prompt reply from Scott Wilson:
OK… I will eventually offer it on the US site. Thanks for your feedback!
- Scott
Hooray!!
No review of Yak Butter tea on Steepster yet, but an encouraging note that a vendor is willing to supply customers with the tea they want to drink because we ask. This is good to remember.
If you’re in Europe, these two varieties are available now, sweet and salty, for $6.50 a box U.S. Let us know if you try it!
I’ll be waiting for a note from Yunnan U.S. when it’s available!
an awesome effort on the part of the vendor….. though i would sniff it alot before actually tri it. yak butter. hmmm.
I like the cow’s milk version and my friends who have had it in China say Yak milk is a little bitter but not much. (A lady friend was in a yurt about a year ago and drank several large bowls so it must be ok).
I have wanted to try this too. I need to get Scott’s email as a few things on the Chinese site I would love if they carried it on the US site.
All I did was send a regular contact note on the Yunnan Sourcing US site and he responded. Let him know you talked to me so that he knows the Steepsters are communicating with each other about the vendors!
Thanks Bonnie, I will email him!
Wow, never thought I’d see yak butter tea here on Steepster! I had it about eight years ago when I went to Tibet with my uncle and cousins and really enjoyed it. I remember it was very rich and almost reminded me of goat’s milk (it’s been a while since I’ve had either, so my memory might be off). The last time I heard about it was three years ago, when my intro to cultural anthropology professor talked about his research in Tibet. I’m definitely going to have to try some of this if it becomes available on the US site!
You can get this on EBAY but I’ll wait for Yunnan Sourcing US to carry both kinds.
Wanted to update this tea. I bought 250g and have been drinking this at work every day having a break on the weekend to taste my samples. I have refined my setup a bit by using the Hamilton Beach Kettle and using less water to steep the tea, just barely covering the leaves as they unfurl in the Teavana Perfect II. This is a a super buttery vegetal TGY that will be missed when gone.
Preparation
Received this mid week with the Xue Ju Shu Pu and the Imperial Mojiang Golden Bud both 2013. Two yixing pots also came with my order and pictures will follow once I’ve broken them in. I’ve never tried an autumn TGY before but I’ve read that they are not as delicate as the spring but then again neither am I.
Being midweek I could not wait till the weekend to enjoy this gongfu style, it had to be done at work. I used my Teavana Perfect TeaMaker. This device has served me well in the past, but I was hesitant to use it because it is usually red teas that I drink at work and I was afraid of lingering aromas and tastes. I cleaned it out as best as I could and hoped for the best.
The tea comes in individual 7gm foil packets, so into the TeaMaker it went and had a quick first rinse. I waited 2 minutes before I did my 1ststp to let the leave open a little.
1ststp was with 300ml @ 185 degrees for 30 seconds. The aroma when I opened the lid was amazing, the usual tea smells but this one has a pronounced boiled artichoke bloom. The taste is again just as described not as light as the spring tea but more structured with the gardenia and honeysuckle.
2ndstp was for 20 seconds and the mother load was delivered. Just as an artichoke gives you that faint sweetness as an after taste this tea too has the same effect on me. The florals are more pronounced and it borders on a near perfect tea (perfect I’m sure in my new yixing, oh I can’t wait).
3rd through 6thstp were same in comparison just a slight bit less nuanced. Adding 5 seconds to each steep.
7th through 10th, yes 10, were just as pleasing. I stopped there for lunch and I’m sure I could get even more out of these leaves.
The leaves themselves are still bright green all uniform in size unfurled in there splendor, not a ragged one in the bunch or any stem or broken pieces. Hats of to Yunnan Sourcing for this beautiful tea.
Preparation
Rainy day today. Sipping on some pu erh in the morning somehow makes it all better. Its quite smooth, light and crisp, dark amber liquor but lacks in flavor and aroma. I taste some creamy notes there but still I was expecting a bit more.
I think your review will have me finding this in a order soon. I have “eyed” this one a time or two.