Premium Golden Monkey Black Tea

I’ve always been primarily a flavored-tea girl, but the more quality straight black teas I try, the more I find myself craving them. This one is divine! The dry leaf is gorgeous: super thin, twisty leaves in variegated black and gold. The scent is rich and malty. Brewed, it’s a gorgeous reddish brown with a silky smooth mouth feel and so much flavor! I’m definitely tasting sweet potato and honey, but there’s also a bit of a caramel note to the aftertaste. And – just to make a good thing even better – this is one of those teas you can keep re-steeping all day long and still get amazing flavor in each cup. This one is right up there with Whispering Pines’ Golden Snail as the best black tea I’ve ever tasted!

Sample sipdown! Brewed the rest of the sample (3.5g) in 10oz of what turned out to be 80C water (I overcooled it, oops) for 2min. Malty, smooth, and weirdly I was getting some smoky notes from it earlier (seems to have disappeared as the tea cooled). Not rating because I wasn’t really paying enough attention as I drank it.

I tried this tea a long time ago, earlier in my tea journey, and I couldn’t decide what I thought of it then. I don’t think I had a very educated palate at the time. Angel at TeaVivre offered to send me a sample, so I took her up on it. Thank you!

This time, I opted to brew it gong fu-style. It’s very creamy, and I detect notes of bread, malt, and cocoa, but they are subtle. It’s kind of like milk chocolate! I have other chocolate black teas I like more (I’m looking at you, Zhen Qu!) but it’s pretty good and would be a good one to pick up once I’m out of my beloved Butiki tea. ;)

This is lovely – I’ve been drinking so much darjeeling and assam from my Golden Tips subscription I’ve forgotten that other blacks exist. This is sweet and smooth and bready. As it cools down I get more of a chocolatey note. Still chocolate bread, and not strong enough to give me that “omg imposter chocolate” sense, but enough to be flavorful. I am so glad I got a sample of this on BF.

Plus, two steeps tastes great. I love when I have the option to resteep.

I have been drinking this tea for a while but never found the time to review it. So here I am! The golden monkey it’s a really good black tea, with hints of caramel and cocoa. Easy and pleasant to drink. Also the smell is very good and strong as I first opened the bag.

After my disastrous cup of Aloha Pu’erh, I decided to try something I was certain to like. Chinese blacks! Golden tips! How could you go wrong?

And I was right – this was AMAZING!

I’ve been steeping my Chinese blacks Western style lately, which has yielded pretty good results, but often a cup that’s slightly lighter than I would like. So I decided to go with lots of leaf and a short steep for this. I used two good teaspoons for an 8oz cup, first steep for 1min and the second steep for 1:45.

So delicious. Bold and full mouth flavour, with bread, malt, caramel and sweet potato, with the faintest hint of smoke. I can see myself drinking this often, and I will have to pick up more than just a sample when I’ve got through all my untrieds.

I enjoyed the first steep a bit more than the second. It was sweeter and more malty. Still, I enjoyed my second cup a whole lot, too.

Sadly, I suck, and dumped out most of the rest of my open sample packet onto the carpet when I was trying to transfer it to a better bag. I picked up what I could, and I still have another sample packet, but still, boo. What a waste.

rinse, 8s, 10s

Goodness gracious! The tea is soooo above my level right now. I’m not ready. I’m clearly not ready for this. Is it called Golden Monkey because it’s supposed to smell like a monkey? woo! O.O Thank goodness it doesn’t taste like how it smells. There’s so much going on with this tea that I really don’t know how to describe the taste at all. Looking at the flavors highlighted at the top I think the malt, leather, and molasses are standing out to me the most right now. That’s such a crazy combo of flavors! Which must mean I’m close because my taste buds were just too confused!

Thanks to Ost for this sample!

When I checked out the brewing instructions on Teavivre’s website, I was really surprised: 2 tablespoons for 2 cups of liquid? That’s about 3 times as much as I normally use when brewing that amount of tea.

I used up all of Ost’s sample when brewing it, and even after 1.5 minutes in hot water, this tea was DARK. It was rich, strong, smelled of malt and sweet potato and bread, and a pretty decent cup. I got at least 3 steeps out of that single batch of leaf, and the 3rd steep in particular smelled citrusy. However, I really do wonder if the western-style steeping instructions on the site are correct.

The dry leaf is a mix of malt, molasses, smoke, sweet potato, and dried fruit. The leaf is a beautiful mix of twisty dark brown and golden tips. Looks like there might even be more gold than dark brown. And there’s golden dust inside the packet, usually a good sign.

1.5 teaspoons, 8oz water, boiling, 2,2,2,3 minute steeps. Sweetened with stevia.

The first two steeps I had while taking my quiz, and didn’t quite pay as much mind to the cup as I should have. I did notice that it was malty, sweet potato, raisin, and sort of caramel. I also noticed that the two cups were gone much too quick.

Third steep, so much caramel and honey. There’s also sweet potato or yam, malty and almost yeasty. Reminds me of sweet potato casserole during the holidays. I always saw it as dessert, but I think it’s supposed to be a side dish. Similarly this tea, when lightly sweetened, is almost dessert like. Perfect cuppa to keep me out of the ice cream in the freezer.

Forth steep is similar to the third, but overall a little darker and more muted. I’m getting some chocolate as this cools. Yum!

This is so good. I’m hoping Teavivre has some good Black Friday sales because if the rest of my samples are as good as this, I’m going to be needing to place a pretty big order!

This is an intensely deep flavored black tea. After an initial Gongfu style infusion, the leaves smell of figs, nuts, and dark molasses. The first infusion was a bit hard on the palate, only steeped for about 15 seconds. It has a nice bitterness to it like a dark chocolate. Coming back for a second infusion it is less bitter and more well-rounded. There are hints of cinnamon, oak, and perfume in the aroma, while the taste is a bit hard to describe to me. Dark tobacco and fig flavors might be an appropriate way to describe it, if anything. It has it’s own flavor, like most teas, and is tricky to describe in other terms. The feeling it leaves in my mouth is very dry. I’m not diggin’ that.

By the third infusion, it’s a little more mellow overall, but there’s a definite astringency and bite in the finish. I’m tempted to call it here, as I’m not finding it suited to my tastes much at all, but Gongfu always pushes me to try another steeping.

The fourth infusion is even more dry (eeeek, this is like red alert dryness levels), the flavor has sort of flattened out and it tastes like … underbrewed coffee.

So, there you have it. This tea is not for me. Not feelin it. If you like your tea to give you (and your palate) quite a jolt, this may be right up your alley, but you might want to bring a bottle of Gatorade to rehydrate afterward. It’s so drying.

Judging by some of the other reviews, I half anticipate this could be the first moment for me on Steepster where a fanwagon crashes into the comments section of my review and passively-aggressively berates me for not sharing the euphoria of their experience, or tells me I brewed it wrong. I hope not.

I brewed 3 grams in 100ml of water for 15 seconds, adding 15 each time (this is more than a gram of tea less than Teavivre recommends for Gongfu style). This is how I typically brew red and black teas and usually it works out pretty well. The color of the liquor was a nice medium orange barely leaning toward red, so it didn’t look or seem overbrewed.

But like I said, some people LOVE these kinds of intense teas, so give it a chance if you’re interested. The flavor was not as complex as the aroma and was very dark. It didn’t really have any sweetness, which for me is an almost necessary component for a red or black tea to keep it from falling off the deep end into bitterness.