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The rating I give this tea is entirely on effect. Taste wise it rates about a 10 out of 100. It is perhaps the worst tasting tea I have ever drank. That being said if you go on the Simpson and Vail website they have obviously fake reviews of this tea on it. They both describe how great the tea tastes. I reviewed this tea for svtea.com and gave it it an overall good review that said it didn’t taste very good. They did not publish that review. They apparently only publish completely favorable reviews.

This tea is sour and somewhat bitter, more sour than bitter. What it does have is a nice effect. It relaxes me a lot. This is why I bought this tea twice. I recommend this tea if you have need to relax I don’t recommend it for taste. It is a very relaxing brew in a way we wish that normal tea was. Valerian Root has a very nice effect on the system even though it does not taste good.

I am drinking decaf tonight as it is another week of frightfully early days. I bought this one from The Pleasures of Tea the other day. Compared to other decaf it is pretty good. Compared to regular tea it is decent but not great. I will attempt to compare it to other decaf. It is fairly sweet tasting although I added sugar and am unsure how much sweetness is behind the sugar in the tea. The flavor of the pomegranate is nice and fruity. The background tea has a slight bitterness but not much, not enough to make this an unenjoyable tea.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 3 tsp leaf and boiling water for 3 min. I would recommend this but only in comparison to other decafs, when compared to a non decaf it is one step down.

I tried this one again today to see if I still got a burnt taste. Not as much but still a little. I used a little less tea this time. It is still really good tea. It is sweet with raspberries and notes of chocolate.

I steeped this once in an 18oz teapot with 2 tsp leaf and boiling water for 4 min.

This is excellent sweet puerh with a fair amount of fermentation flavor left. It is thick with notes of cocoa and dates. The fact that it has dates notes is interesting to me as these usually develop in aged ripe puerh but this seems to have them. Perhaps my adding a small amount of sugar brought them out but I think they were there none the less. I think I want to pick up 4 more ounces of this so I have some to age. I don’t know how long this will be in stock.

I brewed this three times in a 12 oz teapot with 9.2g leaf and boiling water. I gave each infusion 30 seconds. I do not use long steeps when I brew this way, I use more of a hybrid method with puerh, using short steeps and a larger, non gongfu, teapot. I find the brewing puerh for 3 minutes is unnecessary unless you are using a much smaller amount of tea when you brew.

This is an excellent puerh with a fair amount of fermentation flavor left. The first few steeps were thick with earthy goodness. This began to dissipate by the fourth steep and was gone by the fifth steep. Around the fifth steep I began noticing a sweet dates note or two. I didn’t really detect much in the way of chocolate notes but I may not have been paying close enough attention. There were a lot of sweet notes throughout all eight steeps. Earthy sweet notes first, thick and sweet, and the later cleared sweet notes. The one thing I will say about this brick is that it had more fermentation flavor than a 2005 brick should have. The 2010 Hong Yun Brick from Menghai Tea Factory had much less fermentation flavor than this brick.

I steeped this eight times in a 207ml Taiwan Clay Teapot with 9.1g leaf and boiling water. I brewed it for 10 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, and 2 min. I would say there were about four steeps left to this tea had I wanted to save the leaves.

Bought a one ounce sample of this with my order. It is fairly sweet and fairly zesty and just a little sour but not in a bad sort of way. Overall it is reasonably good.

I brewed this once in an 18 oz teapot with 2 tsp leaf and boiling water for 3 min.

There were strong cocoa and raspberry notes to this tea with the raspberry being in the forefront. I enjoyed this tea despite the left over flavor from the last tea I brewed in the same pot, a heavily roasted oolong. It was a glazed pot and I must not have rinsed it completely out. I got a slight burnt taste in this tea that I blame on the oolong. I will know for sure the next time I make this tea. In any case it was good.

I brewed this once in a 12 oz teapot with boiling water and 2.5 tsp leaf for 4 min.

I agree with the idea of burnt sugar notes and roasted notes to this tea. The roasted notes are foremost with this tea. They are somewhat too strong. I brewed this western style according to the directions. I will have to try it Gongfu style and see if they are mitigated. I still enjoyed the tea. It was still somewhat good.

I brewed this once in a 12 oz teapot with 3 tsp leaf and 175 degree water for 4 min.

This tea is sweet, followed by sweet notes, and backed up by even more sweet notes. Did I say it was sweet? Normally, I would follow this up by saying it is too sweet, but not in this case. The sweet flavors blend perfectly into the background white tea. The background tea has no noticeable astringency or bitterness. This is a tasty tea. I am usually more of a ripe puerh fan, but this hits the spot. This is really good. If I could taste more tea behind the watermelon, it would rate a 100%.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 2.5 tsp leaf and 185 degree water for 4.5 minutes.