I just finished watching a Modern Marvels show on tea ( http://bit.ly/11xMMn ). The History Channel is so cool. Anyway, it made me want something more on the green end of the tea spectrum so I rooted around in my samples and pulled out this one.
Okay, this bag? Has like the most minuscule amount of tea ever. One gram. One. For the way I make tea, this isn’t even half a cup. Even using Western style brewing, this isn’t even half a cup. Shame on you, Golden Moon. That’s pathetic.
I went ahead a brewed up a full cup of this but I’m honestly not expecting much. The resulting tea is less pale than I expected but the taste… Initially all I could taste was hot water and Splenda. I did not, however, add Splenda to this. It just tasted like I did (and while they say it doesn’t, Splenda totally has a taste). As it cooled, the Splenda taste became a bit like… well, something a little more flavored than Splenda but I can’t get enough of the taste to figure it out. Maybe honeyed soybean water. Which is probably the chrysanthemum (the honey taste) and the white tea (soybean water). The chrysanthemum dominates but the white tea pokes out more if I slurp but slurping also brings out a weird vegetal bitterness.
The more this cools, the more actual taste I get but I’m underwhelmed. The aftertaste I’m left with once my cup is done is that of Splenda-ed soybean water. So perhaps it is a good thing that I had such a tiny amount of leaf in my sample packet. Because I don’t think I’d like this taste at all if it were more intense. At the same time, maybe if there were more leaf, I’d get more depth to the flavors and not be left with a Splenda-like aftertaste.
I did a second steep of this one (@3mins) to see if I could find anything like what others have found (or anything at all redeeming) and all I got was soybean water with a little Splenda. I decided I didn’t need to experience another whole cup of that and poured it out. My rating is based on the first steep.
