Sad gongfu sipdown (208)
I finally decided to sit down for another gong fu session. I had intended to use a different tea but I only had about 3 grams of that one so I ended up using the whole of my sample of this instead, which was 7 grams of tea in my 100 mL gong fu.
I prepped my gaiwan and then got ready to steep. Then I quickly realized I had no idea how long to steep the tea. So I turned to google and found a site that suggested to start with 10 seconds and then to add another 5 seconds per steep until you hit 40 seconds, so I {sorta} followed that method.
I got through 5 infusions before I gave up on the tea. Thankfully throughout the 5 infusions, I only spilled a little and did not burn my hand at all. So those aspects of my gong fu experimentation has much improved.
As for the tea, I was really disappointed. The steeped tea had an awesome milk chocolate aroma. One that reminded me of Teabento’s Jiri Horse. It just smelled delectably like chocolate deliciousness so it was upsetting when the tea, which was steeped for about 10 seconds, tasted sort of how I remember Red Rose. That plain black tea flavor that we all experienced before getting into tea and in my case the flavor that made me think I disliked tea. It was drying and astringent, but not bitter and was rather thin. The second steep was steeped for 20 seconds because I forgot why I was counting and tastewise it was the same as the first cup, but more and bitter. The second steep got dumped. Then the third steep was 10 seconds and more of the same. At the fourth steep, I grabbed a new cup, hoping that would make a difference in taste and it did not. Then the fifth steep was just 5 seconds to try and curb the astringency/dryness and ended up tasting like nothing. I gave up after this.
So, all in all, the gong fu session was a fail but also an improvement technique wise so there is that.
