I’m highly disappointed with this tea. I’ve steeped this as many ways as I could think of with varying times and temperatures, but this tea never shows anything interesting. In fact, it produces more bad than good in the cup. It tastes like burnt wood, smoke, and roasted nuts, and has no balance to it. The flavor is pretty one-dimensional and only gets less intense throughout subsequent steeps. It’s overly bitter, and this never goes away no matter how many steeps its been through. The liquor’s texture is heavy and leaves a thick aftertaste. It has nearly no sweetness to it, and if it comes out at all, it’s not until at least the seventh steep gong fu style. While the taste can become overly potent even with the shortest steep, the aroma of the wet leaves is even more so. They’re extremely pungent, piney, and smell as though the leaves were roasted and fired for far too long. Finally, I can’t help but notice the careless misinformation in Narien’s description: “ferment.” Unless I’m mistaken, I’m pretty sure they mean “oxidize.”
