Glutinous Rice Scent Tea Fossil Pu-erh Cooked Tea Broken silver

Sipdown (643)!

This is another one of the samples that Apr Tea sent for me to review; and it was an exciting one for me to see given how much I thoroughly enjoy rice scented teas just in general. I could have steeped this one Gong Fu, but that’s not how I typically consume my rice scented teas so I went with a Western style of steeping to stay true to my normal consumption patterns.

Since I was playing D&D today, I went for a really large pot of Western steeped tea that used the whole sample. It was delicious; just a little bit sweet but mostly a very true to actual dish sticky rice flavour accented by soft notes of earth. More medium bodied overall, and just wicked smooth. I resteeped the life half way through the session when we took a short break, and second infusion was really great too. Definitely a little bit less sweet with a more mild presence of sticky rice but still REALLY close to tasting like the first infusion. An extra minute or two of steeping and they may have been indistinguishable. Possibly.

This doesn’t win any awards for being “the best” rice scented tea I’ve ever had because it’s not really unique tasting in any way but it’s a really solid offering that, in my opinion, highlights all of the standard tastes that a good daily drinker type of rice scented shou should have.

Thanks Apr Tea for the sample!

Thanks so much for sending samples, AprTea.com! I really appreciate it! AprTea.com is a new tea company selling lovely teas. This one looks quite different than any other pu-erh I’ve had before. It looks like little shards or pebbles of a ripe pu-erh flavored with sticky rice. I used two heaping of teaspoons of these pebbles for a mug (the entire 10gram sample) and I’m glad I did use two teaspoons as they don’t really unravel like the usual pu-erh leaves. And I like my pu-erh extra dark. A dark pu-erh to me is like having a cup of coffee. But coffee is less to my tastes than ripe pu-erh. While steeping, these pieces remain in their pebble shape. The flavor is delicious though — smooth and sweet with no offensive pu-erh flavors, and the sweetness is not even counting that delicious sticky rice flavor that is consistent through all these steeps. The last steep I forgot about and left an hour and a half – extra dark, delicious and still had that rice flavor. I like these! AprTea also has another sticky rice mini tuocha that is even lower in price than these.
Steep #1 // 2 teaspoons for a full mug// 17 minutes after boiling // rinse // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 10 minute steep
Steep #4 // just boiled // 1 1/2 hour steep