I think I might love this tea.
Every time I make this I discover something new about it. It’s almost as if I were drinking a different tea every time. I will definitely be exploring the world of dark oolongs more because of this tea, in fact I have now dedicated my first yixing to dark oolongs and have a second dark oolong on it’s way.
But anyway, on to this tea.
I must admit that I have absolutely no idea what the water temperature was. It was warm enough to be steaming but certainly not boiling or even simmering. To be quite honest I had intended the water to be warmer but…um…ran out of propane to run the stove. Heh. Oops.
Knowing I’d only manage one steeping, since there was no propane left to heat the water again, I did a 15-20 second rinse to open the leaves a bit and warm the pot. Oh yes, did I mention I was using the yixing for this? Anyway, after a 10 minute steep I poured the liquor out into my cup, this one was a bit deeper than the cup I had been using before, and what do you know…the color was a deep red-brown. I could definitely see how someone could call that purple. The flavor was lighter than my previous experience with this tea, likely because of the lower water temp. It was sweet, mellow, a bit malty, earthy, and a tiny bit nutty.
I have saved the leaves so once get some way to heat water again I’ll update this with subsequent infusions.
