I was down to the last 5 grams of this sample pack and I hadn’t brewed this with short steeps yet, so I did that. This one turned out to be a super resteeper, so I’ll try and keep the tasting notes simple.
Steeps 1-4: I was a bit surprised at how consistent these initial steeps were. The leaves give up a lot of flavour even within the first 30 seconds. It builds up to some very bold flavours at the 4th steep. The flavour was familiar black tea, with bold peppery caramel, and a touch of floral notes.
Steeps 5-8: As pretty typical of this steeping method, starting at the 5 steep I start to lose a bit of flavour. But if it didn’t taste so good I would stop. Anyway, it wasn’t until the 8th steep that I started to even notice the original flavour of my water, but the tea liquor is still a darker orange colour.
Steeps 9-14: I felt that so long as the tea liquor colour was dark enough, and the flavour enticing that I would keep resteeping. With each steep, I began to notice the original water flavour more and more. However the tea flavour was prevalent up until the 12th steep, with the 13th and 14th having a nice hint of flavour. The last cup was still a light orange, and still more flavourful than some other black teas I’ve resteeped just 4 times. ;)
Currently my cupboard is crowded with tea, but still I am very tempted to buy more Ying De Hong Cha. I bought this in a black tea sample pack to further my experience with these sort of teas. When I buy samples, I usually like to try a lot of teas and then only select a few to buy in larger quantities. This particular tea has definitely charmed me and I will buy more when my tea cupboard shrinks a bit.
100ml gaiwan, 2 generous tsps, 14 steeps! (rinse, 30s, +15s resteeps)
