Cui Ming Premium Yunnan Green Tea 2017

This is an interesting Chinese green tea. I haven’t had this style before. Dry leaves are twisted and curled, taking up a lot of volume for their weight (so don’t be afraid to use a lot when you brew). They have a nice range of colors from a pine needle green to frosted and slightly fuzzy tips.

I used 4.5 g in a 100 mL gaiwan. I heated my water to 180 F.

First steep—15 sec.
The liquor was pale yellow with light green tint.
Taste is complex without overwhelming you. A nice middle ground between subtle and intense. One of the first things you notice is the texture, which has a creamy, brothy body that reminds me of something like Tom Yum soup. The flavor has many components, overall is mild, sweet, and comforting. Not grassy at all. I get summer squash sauteed in butter, especially as it cools down a bit. A hint of a bitter note like dark chocolate. A slight minty coolness. Somewhere in there, fruity sweetness.
Second steep—about 30 seconds
Less sweetness and overall less flavor, and this steep brought out some tannins and more of that minty cooling/numbing sensation. I’m wondering if 180 was too hot for this.
Later steeps with cooler water dialed down the astringency, but a lot of the flavor had been squeezed out by that point. Will try cooler, shorter steeps next time to see if I can get more rounds out of it. Still, that first steep was good! And at this price, it’s a bargain!

Brewed this Chinese green tea in a Japanese Mini Shudei Tokoname teapot.

I enjoyed the light oxidization, finding it sweet and refreshing with a hint of chestnuts.

Before I finished the bag I placed another order to take benefit of the freshness of spring greens.

One of the new 2017 greens I got from Yunnan Sourcing. This tea was posted really early and so I assume the picking had to be earlier than usual. The leaves look very much like a white tea, long and spindly. However it’s a dark green and white on the leaves. Very pretty!

I used a good amount of this tea (didn’t exactly measure – just put some in my palm) to brew in my cup. Brewed for 2 min at 80C. The smell of the dry leaves has a really nutty smell so I pretty excited to try this tea brewed up. However, when brewed the nuttiness is really diminished. It’s a very light tea. I sometimes like a light tea but this one is just doesn’t seem to have that much flavour to carry it through. I just keep wanted MORE nutty flavour than what’s there.

I think I’ll give the grandpa brewing method a try on this one next time. The caffeine is pretty low so it might be well suited to that type of brewing. I am going to hold off rating this tea until I try a few different brewing methods on it.