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Hmm…really wasn’t feeling this tea. It seemed like it was lacking all the bright/vibrant flavors that make green tea good. The wet leaves had a salty vegetal or seaweed aroma. The first couple steeps were alright, with some light corn sweetness and a bit of astringency. As the little balls started to open up, the tea got quite bitter, to the point where I had to lower my steep times back down. I got some vegetal notes and a brief citric note at one point. I will try this again with lower temp or cold brew.

I don’t know if this tea is just a little old for green tea or what, but it was pretty flat, bitter, and just meh overall.

Drank a random Japanese green tea I got as part of a swap with a redditor from Germany – the baggies came unlabeled, so it’s an adventure! I was a little worried he might have just sent me random odds and ends from the back of his cupboard, but this tea at least seemed decently fresh.

The wet leaves had an unusually vegetal aroma (for a sencha in my experience anyways), but this aroma didn’t translate to the flavor. The taste was sweet, grassy, buttery and nutty. I also got an aftertaste of fruit, which I don’t often get in sencha but do appreciate when it’s present. Successive steeps at 160F made a nice but lighter brew. I did one steep at 180F afterwards, which was decently bitter, but did yield a nice grassy flavor sounding the death knell of this tea.

Some of the leaves seemed to be decently intact, or at least in larger fragments than I usually see with sencha. That and the fact I got pretty clear liquid leads me to believe this was pretty lightly steamed. I think. Don’t know much about it though! :)

Another 2016 Yunomi sample! I think this is the first time I’ve disagreed with Yunomi’s recommended brewing parameters. They recommended doing a 30s steep with 160F, followed by steeps of 10s and 40s at 175F. Doing it this way, the first steep was a bit light, while the next two steeps were very bitter! I found it better keeping the water temp low, and doing steeps of 1m, 30s, 1m, 2m all with 160F water.

The first steep was sweet and grassy, a bit buttery, with a very slight underlying bitterness. The aftertaste was a juicy sweet grassiness to me.

The second steep was much the same, with a slightly increased bitterness. The liquid from this steep was an amazingly vibrant green color.

The bitterness did not increase in the third or fourth steeps. The nice grassy flavors did get a little lighter, and I think on the third steep I encountered a bit of a vegetal spinach flavor as well.

Good tea, but I didn’t like it the way Yunomi recommended I brew it this time!

So after trying this gongfu yesterday and finding the flavors rather light, I decided I’d try it western style using some longer steep times. I used 5.2g in an 8oz teapot with steep times of 2m, 4m, 10m. If anything, all three steeps were even weaker than my gongfu session! So, I must conclude that this is just a very light tea. Nothing wrong with that – it’s also smooth and quite easy to drink. It never got bitter, even when steeped for ten minutes. Just a little light and a touch boring to my palate. Glad I got to try it though :)

I got this as part of the Morita Tea sampler. This was a pretty good one. The aroma wasn’t quite as nutty/buttery as it would be for a sencha. I used 160F water and got steeps of 1m, 30s, 1m before upping temp to 180F and pulling one more 1m steep from the leaves.

The first steep had a robust grassy sweetness with some astringency underneath. Halfway through the first steep I started tasting some kind of pine-y flavors, along with some sweetness that kind of reminded me of honey, but I’m calling it more pine sap.

Next steep was creamy grassiness without the astringency. I didn’t get any of the pine or pine-sap flavors this time.

The last couple were just smooth grassy sweetness, with the final steep being pretty weak.

I think between group buys and swaps, I have three different Georgia Black teas to try. This is the first I’ve gotten to – acquired in a swap with JK7Ray I believe.

The dry leaves had a sour plum aroma, a little lesser after the first steep, surprisingly. This tea was light in flavor and body and quite simple as well, but I wouldn’t consider those negatives. Just different. I got 11 steeps with this black tea, starting with a couple at 12s, then 20s and increasing by 10s at a time until the last few where started increasing steep times faster. As I said, the flavor was consistent through most of the session – Malty plums, with an occasional sour note, not quite citrus fruit, more like an herbal lemongrass flavor. Only got it on like two steeps, and not consecutively. May try it Western style next time, as I’ve heard these Georgian teas can do better that way. So annoying to get out my big teapot and stuff though ;)

I tried this one out today and was not a huge fan. Used 7g in a 120mL gaiwan with boiled water. The compression was quite tight. After two rinses, I tried to start with a 15s steep, and the compressed chunks just laughed at me in the gaiwan. So from then, I altered my strategy, steeping 1m+ and bludgeoning the stubborn chunks with my gaiwan lid. It barely worked, so after three steeps like that, I started spearing the still-chuckling pieces with my puer pick, getting them to mostly come apart. I’m pretty sure even then, they were still flinging tiny middle-fingers at me.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was unable to get any strong flavor from this S.O.B. The aroma of the wet leaves was pretty reminiscent of a dank basement, usually not a good sign for me. I did get a decent bit of the wetness in the flavor of this tea. I also tasted some wet wood and something kind of fungal, maybe mushroomy. It did taste decently aged. Also got some kind of tangy sourness which I didn’t find particularly appealing.

So I think it’s safe to say I don’t like this tea gongfu. I still have the rest of my sample, so I’ll let it air out some and then play around with it. I will probably try to boil it instead, maybe that will allow me to actually draw out the flavor of this crotchety old brick. Now if I could just track down a yak….

Got this in a puerh starter-package from LP quite a while ago. Used the whole 4.5g in a 100mL gaiwan. Aroma was kind of bitter vegetal with a hint of smoke – not enough to worry me or anything though.

First steep I got some vegetal bitterness and spiciness with apricot and slight wisp of smoke in the aftertaste. Next steep, the vegetal flavor reminded me more specifically of asparagus and the apricot afteraste got a little sweeter – same otherwise. Over the next couple steeps, the bitterness mostly left, and the fruitiness came to the fore with a light smoky aftertaste. The next 5 steeps or so were pretty consistent, with a distinct peach flavor followed by the same smoky aftertaste. The tea had pretty decent body to it. For these steeps it seriously tasted almost exactly like that Arizona Peach tea you can get in a can, but without the crazy sugar levels.

I got about a dozen good steeps off of this tea, and I did go decently light on the leaf. Not sure if it’s the same as the Wild Monk cakes currently available on Mandala’s site, but when I finally get around to making an order with them, I’ll be sure to at least get some more to try. This was pretty good.

I didn’t get much body feeling from this tea. The early steeps gave a slight buzzing feeling on the tongue, but other than that, no noticeable qi or anything for me. Possibly due to lighter leaf, but this one might just not possess those qualities.

Since trying a smoky Lapsang Souchong, and even a Golden Monkey which had some smoke to it and finding them quite off-putting, seeing smoke in a tea’s description worries me a tad bit. More and more, I’m finding that there’s a type or level of smoke that I can tolerate, and one which I cannot. There’s the horror that is BBQ-Tea and the more subdued kind of smoke flavor, which usually meshes pretty well with the rest of what a tea has going on. I’m glad to report this tea is one of the latter.

I actually didn’t pick up any smoke in the first couple steeps, just a sweet vegetal flavor. A couple steeps in, the smoke started to manifest as a light and wispy aftertaste. As it went on, it became one of the two main flavors I was getting – smokiness with a nutty sweetness. I tried, but I wasn’t feeling any fruitiness as the description claims there is. The smoke along with the nutty flavor made for a savory-sweet tea to drink. Throughout the session, the tea left my mouth decently dry, though there was little to no bitterness in the flavor. On my first session, I treated this tea a little too harshly and did get some pretty off-putting bitterness. This is a pretty good tea, if a little simple. Just glad it wasn’t meaty BBQ tea – blech.

I believe this is the last one I had kicking around from the Discover Vietnam collection on What-cha. I definitely encourage people to try some of the Vietnamese teas on What-cha. Along with the Red Buffalo oolong of some internet fame, the Wild Boar black and Fish Hook green tea were of particular note to me. Not really sure which of those are currently in stock, as I think they all ran out at the end of last year, but get ’em if you can. Worth a try at the very least!

Tyler! The first of the W2T 2016 Puerh I have the pleasure of being introduced to…besides Fade I guess. In both sessions I’ve done, I found this tea got around 12-13 steeps, so decent longevity.

Dry leaf had a pretty light aroma, the sweet hay I get from the dry leaf of a lot of raw puerh. Didn’t smell remarkable. After a brief rinse, the leaves had a touch of sourness to their aroma, kind of vegetal and sweet.

Both sessions, I kept the steeps 10s or below for the first 4-5 infusions before slowly starting to increase the time.

The only time I would call this tea “airy” as the description claims it to be, would be the first steep, as the body didn’t quite thicken up the first steep. For the first couple steeps, the aftertaste is stronger than the initial flavor. The front of the sip is a sweet, wet hay taste, followed (sometimes) by just a touch of bitterness, after which the huigan and qi come quickly. After swallowing, I could feel a bit of tightness in my throat, and got a rush of sweet honey flavor in my mouth accompanied by a rising buzzy feeling. These first couple steeps also made my tongue feel numb on some sips.

Steeps 3-5ish the bitterness picks up a tad, but if brewed correctly, it is quite balanced with the sweetness. The flavor is nicely layered – sweet hay, bit of a bitter note, very sweet huigan – honey with occasional wisps of a more sugary sweetness. In these steeps, and every once in a while afterwards, I noticed a little bit of a buzzy feeling in my stomach, but not as quick or as rising as the first couple steeps.

Around the halfway point, the hay flavor begins to transition into a sort of sweet vegetal flavor, to me like peas. The bitterness picks up just a bit more, and the huigan is sliiightly less honey-like, with a bit of a dry fruit flavor entering the mix. It was kind of apricot-y, but dry. Apricot rind? Do apricots have different tasting rind…? It’s been a while since I had an apricot. This vegetal, pea-tasting stage doesn’t last too long. I only really got it for one steep.

Steeps 7-10 or 11 are more fruity overall. Not an acidic fruitiness in any way, only smooth and sweet. Good flavor, but more subdued now. Mostly apricot notes, though at one point “grape” popped into my head, making me question whether the dry fruitiness might be kind of like grape skin. Describing fruity flavors in puerh can be odd to me, because while I call it apricot, it doesn’t really taste exactly like an apricot. It only reminds me of apricot. This is a weird thing to try to explain to people. Do you guys know what I’m saying? Like – if I ate an apricot, and then drank the most apricot-y sheng I’ve ever had, they’d still clearly be different things. Maybe because so much of how we perceive flavor is based on texture as well. Excuse my tangent – this tea was apricoty, only really in the later steeps though ;)

After this, my last couple steeps were multi-minute steep that yielded pretty weak brews with echoes of fruity flavor.

So…this tea’s description, laconic though it may be, claims the tea leans towards the “light, airy, and sweet.” It also says that it is a good tea for experiencing depth in a not-too-heavy tea. Regarding the first point: Sweet – definitely! Light and airy – I…guess…if you could call any of W2T’s productions “airy,” characteristically thick and oily as they are, perhaps it would be this one. Yes, it was thick, but the thickness wasn’t as in your face as a lot of W2T pu is – more creamy than oily I suppose. Soft in texture if that makes sense. The tea definitely had good depth, between its layered and changing flavors, and it wasn’t too heavy. So the description is accurate enough. Airy/light relative to other W2T puer maybe, but not without thickness. Good stuff!