Golden Moon Sampler Tea #4:
So I’ve been thinking about my teapot lid issue, and I have come up with several possible plans of action.
Plan A: Befriend a potter.
Plan B: Order a billion different lids off ebay and hope one fits
Plan C: Invent time machine, go back in time and grab lid before it gets broken/stop myself from throwing it away like a noob.
Plan D: Recall the existence of thrift stores and the preponderance of random ceramics in them and see if there’s anything there that fits.
I’m currently leaning towards plan C myself.
Back on topic! The gods of fate have decreed that my afternoon tea be pu erh chai. The leaves look very nice with bits of cinnamon bark and a cardamon pod. I am a big fan of cardamon in chai and am always mildly disappointed when it fails to appear in my chai leaves. So bonus points for that, definitely. I have to agree with the other reviewers that the smell when brewed is decidedly funky. I probably would have been freaked out enough by the pungency to add milk (of the rice/almond vanilla variety) had there actually been any in the house. Sadly, I am currently milk-less, so I’m just going with the straight tea.
For me, this came out a very lightly spiced pu erh. I can definitely distinguish the base tea, unlike in the case of the sugar caramel oolong. Now, if a flavored tea is just standard black tea + flavor of some kind, I am generally more forgiving if it doesn’t distinguish itself. If something is specifically a flavored oolong or pu erh or other kind of distinctive tea, I fail to see the point if the flavors completely eclipse the base tea, if that makes any sense. Thus, I approve of this tea, although I think it could stand to be a bit more spice-y. On the other hand, since pu erh brews up so dark all the time, I may have overestimated how much water was needed. Sigh, always with the caveats.
I think I would like to try this with some sweetened milk, I may have to order more just for that.
