Avery F. Send Message

Definitely nicer than full flowers; the taste is stronger, spicier, and more complex. It’s visually striking as well. A great drink for summer.

It’s low in caffeine, but not VERY low! Don’t drink it at night… Compared to other kukichas I’ve had, I think this one is stronger. It’s pleasant, sweetish with a roasted taste, and very drinkable.

A nice tea, with some peppery notes as well as some vegetal, umami/xian flavours reminiscent of gyokuro. While still noticeably a Chinese-style green tea, it’s more like a Japanese tea than most Chinese teas I’ve tried. I initially brewed it in a gaiwan, but later experimented with using a banko kyusu and the same temperature and steep times I use for sencha. It worked really well!

This was pretty decent, but not amazing. A nice, smooth shou, with no taste of fish (though it has a fishy scent); the soup is very dark, and no flavours stand out very distinctly. It was actually better brewed grandpa-style than gongfu; the latter concentrated the flavours a tad too much, and brought out a strangely bitter note I rarely find in shou.

A very fruity, sweet, ‘red’ tisane, with some tartness. Pretty nice. The liquor is very dark and almost more like a juice than a tisane. You can definitely taste the currants in this one.

A standard shou. Would probably be alright as an introduction to pu-erh, but not something I’d get for its own sake. One nice thing about it is that it’s available from Adagio, which is a more popular company for Western customers than many other places which offer pu-erh. As such, it might help introduce a lot of people to pu-erh – as well as possibly to hei cha in general – who might not otherwise have known anything about it.

It’s okay. Sweet-ish, mild, has a very faint seaweed taste. There’s a note with which I’m not enamored, but heck if I know what it is. Not the best sencha I’ve had, but it’s one of the more affordable organic ones available.

This is a very savoury tea. The way the leaves were processed releases taste and caffeine faster than whole leaves do, I think, but it does not lead them to behave like cut leaves. There’s a deep bitterness that lingers on the tongue, but also some autumn leaf and honey taste, and a fair amount of malt.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, honestly. It’s slightly milder steeped Western-style than in gongfu, but that odd bitterness is still present. It isn’t the tannic bitterness one often gets with black tea. At any rate, despite being slightly puzzled by it, I like this tea.

This tea has an interesting appearance and steeps to a very pale liquor. The taste is slightly floral and slightly fruity, a little tart and a little bitter – but the strongest note is resinous pine. It’s quite a good tea, though brewing it longer or hotter than usual is best for a stronger flavour. I initially tried it in a small gaiwan, and I don’t think this retained heat well enough; it seems to take a while for the water to permeate the buds. It was significantly better in a small, non-porous teapot.

It’s kind of mild, but good. Has a fruity, savoury depth that’s also present in other purple teas I’ve tried. Some piney freshness is present, mostly coming out in later steeps.