ESGREEN

ESGREEN delivers again!

This slightly broken, generic looking Dian Hong is very smooth and sweet with subtle blooming notes and distinctive peppery coating over the tongue.

I enjoyed three steeps (3 gr, 250 ml 95C, 3m-4m-5m) and all I can say that this is by far the most cost-effective Dian Hong I stumbled upon. It’s very smooth and gentle, lacking any harsh body notes that can be sometimes found with this tea. In first steep you get medium-full body with nice potato sweetness and blooming undertones of gardenia and trademark of Yunannese black tea – peppery coating on the tongue. In following steeps this tea develops lighter but still smooth and even sweeter body. It reminds me of ESGREEN’s broken grade Keemun, humble looking but very rich and appeasing.

Will backlog later with gaiwan.

No notes yet.

After the disappointment with the Huangshan Maofeng, I made sure to wait a while before tasting this for the first time. The first session took place a week or so ago and the pu’er aromatics were mostly absent at that point. Today I re-tasted this Dian hong and could not detect pu’er tainting, but still came to the same general conclusion: I am not a fan.

It is completely possible that I’m being a spoiled brat after tasting the two top grades of Dian hong first (specifically Verdant Tea’s “Golden Fleece” and Teavivire’s “Golden Tip”) before drinking the lower quality stuff. But indeed, this is low quality stuff. Just from the dry leaves I can see all kinds of random treasures that shouldn’t necessarily be there and provide inconsistency: tons of twigs and off-color leaves/stems. The wet leaves provide more insight: to one extreme, a green-colored stem-bud combination that seemed to have escaped processing all together, and overly processed broken leaves to the next extreme. They smell somewhat artificial and highly pungent, masking the yam-like qualities Dian hongs are known for. Subtle aromas of chocolate and malt are present, but I am left grasping for them when it comes to the liquor.

The liquor is ruddy and cloudy in all but the first steep, which has decent clarity. The flavor is aggressive and potent, which by itself is not terrible, but it’s much too metallic for me and leaves a drying aftertaste. There are some nice peppery notes available that are enjoyable on their own, but I can’t really find a base for all the rough flavors floating around, making the brew seem unstable. I can imagine this might be decent to use as a blend as ESGREEN suggests in their description, perhaps to add depth and roughness, but I find it unpleasant on its own. Given a current price of less than four dollars per two ounces, I suppose I shouldn’t complain.

Ummm, I hate to say this, but this tea was really tainted on its way here. The ESGREEN samples this time around consisted of pu’er, a black tea, and this maofeng. I’m sure you can guess what occurred. Into the fourth steep one of the main flavors is still like young sheng and the wet leaves smell like spent sheng leaves. It certainly fades from the first steep which just tasted like diluted, vegetal sheng pu’er, but the heavy aromas of aged tea really seeped into these leaves during the months of travel and nothing but a single layer of plastic to shield them.

I used half the sample for this review, so I’ll let the rest air out for a while before I taste this tea again, but I believe the damage is already done. However, there are some things I can speak of that were not affected. While the dry leaves are somewhat faded in coloration, they seem to have been made from decent quality material. Downy hairs are clearly noticeable on many and once wet, the appearance is brought back to life with bright greens and delicate small leaves. Few mottled leaves or odd colors present. While many are broken, they are generally broken in half or quarters, so most of it is probably due to crumbling during shipping. This is opposed to chunks missing from sides of leaves or holes in the middle of them. The serrated edges are very much intact as well.

Addendum:
The above I wrote about a month ago. After this much time of airing out and also tasting another lovely Huangshan Maofeng from Teavivre, I went back to this tea and gave it another shot. Thankfully, it wasn’t like I was drinking shengpu-flavored green tea, but unfortunately, there was nothing else left. The scents of smoke and young shengpu are still caught up in the wet leaves and aroma of the liquor in the first two steeps, but the flavor is practically absent. Long two-minute steeps in the gaiwan provided no remedy, only bitter water. It’s impossible to taste any of the sweet, vegetal, and nutty qualities that I now love about this type of green tea. ESGREEN should definitely reevaluate either their shipping methods or their tea choices when sending samples. The all heicha/pu’ercha sample packs in the past worked well, but this past round was just a good way to ruin what probably could have been a decent green tea.

No notes yet.

I have enjoyed this sample. I think this is the fourth session and the last. It is not as full bodied as the TeaVivre versions but the browned cocoa notes that drive this are quite nice. I didn’t get up with the intention of having this. It was setting beside my kettle and just kind of pushed itself on me. Glad it did. It went well with the cinnamon crumb cake (breakfast of champions).

Just curious – anyone ever seen a Cheapster Steepster Dian Hong in a bag for lazy or gotta run days?

I tried this sample from Esgreen twice: once on my own with notes and once with a close friend who enjoys pu’ercha during our weekly weiqi session.

I have mixed opinions on this tea. The flavor is interesting, and although the profile is strange for sheng, it’s pleasant enough. The smoky Lapsang-esque aromatics are very apparent, and seem far too potent to suggest natural nuances from the leaves themselves. It may hint at “yan wei,” or smokiness resulting from wood stove drying as opposed to sun drying. This is usually caused when the leaves are dried during the summer months, when the rainy skies prevent the leaves to be dried outside by sunlight, and these summer shengs are generally considered to be lower quality. I won’t pretend to know whether or not that is true for this sheng, but the unbalance of the smoke seems to come from the exterior of the leaf rather than the interior (cf. the Esgreen 2008 sheng zhuan sample from this round, which is also smoky, but does not taste as “smoked”).

The sweetness brought on by the buds is apparent. Besides woody flavors that are more noticeable in the beginning of the session, fruity and sweet floral flavors abound. However, there is a serious lack of power in the leaves. The amount of small leaves and buds may account for both of these features. Considering an age of only about two years for these cakes, the serious lack of texture and absence of throaty kuwei is concerning. The liquor is mild and presents an almost indiscernible cha qi, sitting somewhat unpleasantly in the stomach. The aftertaste is sweet, and there is a very slight bitterness present. I would not say that this is one of the strong points, however.

With sweetness and smokiness being the most noteworthy aspects of this very young sheng, I would not consider storing this for aging. Besides flavor, which begins wearing off after five steeps, this sheng provides a pretty boring session and doesn’t have much else to it.

No notes yet.

My wife used to make scratch coffee cake until we discovered Krusteaz cinnamon crumb cake mix at the Wal-mart. She mixed one up this evening and I slathered mine with butter. Wow! In combination with this tea I may have reached Nirvana.

I know I tend to like just about everything I try, but I have yet to meet a Dian Hong I didn’t love. Yunnan tea just makes for a beautiful cup.

call me weird but of all the teas i tried in chinatown, i liked this one the best :)

unlike other herbs, this has an unexpected sweet aftertaste. like green tea, it can turn bitter when left to steep too long.

my aunt also likes this tea a lot and offered to buy it off me for twice the price, haha. im not sure if she meant it.

so i checked this out and it should not be taken by pregnant/breastfeeding women or if you are taking immunodepressant or blood clotting drugs or are scheduled for surgery in the next couple weeks.

Day two with the same leaf. When I put the chunk in the press yesterday it sure looked like whole leaves. Today I see almost entirely small broken pieces. I steeped cup 4 for a minute and a half. The brew is darker than the first cup but no where near as dark as the 2nd and 3rd. This tastes very bland today. I have to work way to hard to catch much of anything. I have only had three hours sleep. This is not going to do. I am done with it. The rating stands from yesterday’s tasting. On to the next.

So, going off of KS’s steeping parameters, I tried this one again. I used boiling water, the other half of my sample, filled my 16oz cast iron pot to about 12oz capacity with no rinse, a bit more than one minute duration. The liquor was an extremely clear dark brown-amber color. It felt like more of an embodiment of the first two steeps I had done when I tasted this gong fu style. But it was still really weak in flavor, and it just seemed to dissipate and left me grasping for the rest of it. Western style, the mouthfeel felt more “chalky” to me, but there was an added cooling effect that went unnoticed previously.

Yet, as I’m sipping through the pot, I keep getting a thick musty/fishy kind of taste at the bottom of each cup. This is noticeable to me in the aroma of the empty cup and the taste once the liquor has cooled. It’s not really sitting in the stomach right, either. I noticed this the first time, but didn’t comment in case it was some combination of something I ate and the tea, but it occurred this time as well. I generally have a pretty weak stomach, especially with heavy creams or chocolate and such, but teas are usually okay with me. This one not so much.

Anywho, I trust KS’s judgment and taste buds, and hopefully inconsistencies can be explained by me just getting a bad batch or that I have a completely different view of shu pu’er. But we seem to have had pretty similar opinions of past shus, so I dunno! In any case, the leaf quality, lack of depth, and negative cha qi are things I can’t get over regardless of the other odd things I came across with this shu, so I’m sticking with my rating. :/

Interesting. When I had this today I did not realize it was the same one Cody had such a foul experience with. I did notice how easily the chunk separated. I used my usual western method – half the sample and 12oz water. I used 1/2oz to wake up the leaf but decided not to pour off. Added the rest of the water and steeped 1 minute. The brew was Tetley tea colored – basically looked like tea. It smelled like shu poo. The taste reminded me first of grape leaves then an old fallen tree in the woods. Then it was like an old leather jacket – not the horse tack I normally notice. It had rough edges like bark in the throat. I liked it.

The second cup at 30 seconds was darker and smoother. More refined leather and some kind of fruity and spicy notes.

Third at 30 seconds continued on even smoother and very sweet.

That’s all I had time for today. Definitely a different (and better) experience than Cody. I thought this was pretty good.

Sigh. This one isn’t working for me.

I started my session with a close inspection of the dried leaves. The sample was made of one large intact chunk from the tuo, so I was happy to see fully intact leaves and minimal chunks n’ dust at the bottom of the pouch. I was about to take my pu’er pick out and divide the sample in two, but as I took the chunk out of the bag, I realized it was quite flexible. Either the tuo was very loosely compacted or the sample really loosened up on its way over the ocean.

Yet, as I was pulling intact leaves apart, I noticed a very thin, black object. Thinking perhaps it was a stem/vein I gently tugged at it and the leaves around it so as not to break anything. But then I observed it continuing up and over the other leaves and it’s sheen made it apparent it was not leaf/plant derivative. Oh boy… I pulled it out from between the leaves and was left with a two inch long black stringy object tapered in its diameter. Hmmmm, hair or string? While both are generally considered to be “okay” if found in pu’er from what I’ve read, the fact it was in a sample and also present when processing (since it was within the leaves) seems to indicate some poor quality.

Well, in either case, I was going to taste this sample (minus the questionable object) and hopefully I would enjoy it so much that the prize I discovered would be rendered moot. Yeah, that wasn’t the case.

I used half the sample with boiling water in my gaiwan. Wash was around ten seconds, the first steep was fifteen. This is probably the greatest example of incorrect first impressions. The first steep was awesome. There wasn’t much to it, but there was this interesting nuance that I’ve never tasted before in tea, especially not in shu pu’er. It lingered gently on the tongue and roof of the mouth after a sip and passed in and out of taste during a sip. It was some delicate amalgamation of sweet, nutty, woody. There were also notes of coffee and I think cocoa. While it wasn’t incredible and was weak-bodied, it seemed to suggest these flavors would be enhanced or transformed. I excitedly performed my next steep at twenty seconds…

And got nothing. Ughhh it was so disappointing. One dimensional, weak flavor, barely any aftertaste, oily mouthfeel, and a dry feeling in the throat. Worst part was that the interesting flavor completely disappeared. Okay, maybe I didn’t steep for long enough. Upped the time to half a minute for the next steep. Meh. New note of apple and a more metallic aftertaste. Tastes kind of burnt. Still quite weak. There was also a bit of a sparkling mouthfeel, which I liked, but didn’t make the steep much better.

Okay, let’s bring it to one minute. Nada. 5 minutes? Nope, just tastes burnt. I probably would have received better results if I would have used the entire sample, but still…

So what did the leaves have to say? Could they explain this disappointing session? Quite so. The “leaves” were made up of about 20% blackened stem, 75% black halves of leaves that disintegrate with slight rubbing, and 5% greenish brown leaves that practically rip from their own weight. Actually, when I attempted (and easily succeeded) to rip one of these lighter leaves, the topmost membrane of the leaf face separated from the body of the leaf. Ew.

There’s a good chance that I won’t be drinking the rest of the sample. Maybe I just got some really bad fluke, which I’m hoping for the sake of the other Esgreen tasters on here. I’m anxious to see what you all have to say.

I am torn on this one. It is very bright metallic (aluminum) tasting at times to the point sweetener barely calms it down. On the other hand it has a smoky layer underneath and is developing leather horsey notes. At times it smells green then it smells barnyard. I think a while longer in storage and this will be a nice one. Of course I don’t have the experience to know that. No rating. I drank on it all day and couldn’t decide.

my most preferred tea, is wonderful even after the 6th or 7th wash! it also has amazing adaptogenic properties making this tea superior for good health.

So this is a backlog from ages and ages ago… I just never got around to logging my notes and the new tea samples kept rolling in soooo yeahhhh. I suppose it’s best to catch up with the old ESGREEN samples before I get around to the new ones. :) Thankfully this was a memorable tea and I wrote extensive notes on it!

Anywho, this was a pretty tasty tea. In line with the name, this tea is quite “dark,” indeed. The wet leaves are pungent, smelling of age, old books, damp moss, and rich fruits. They’re pretty mulch-like, kind of like coffee grounds. The liquor’s aroma is much like the wet leaves’ but with added buttery notes and an apple-like finish. The addition of the bamboo makes it pretty interesting. It’s like some hybrid of a shu pu’er and a medium oxidized oolong.

As far as flavor goes, this tea is well-balanced. And I’m surprised I find myself saying this, because I would think mixing aspects of green flavor spectrum and the darker aspects of the earthy and spicy flavor spectra would not mesh well. Yet, the greener qualities remained subtle enough as undertones to mold the overall flavor, without causing conflict. Overall, this tea is very sweet and rich. Earthy, peaty flavors are very strong and remain that way, more or less, throughout the eight steeps I took this tea to.

For the first half, a strong peppery taste greeted me during the first steep, and then gradually faded with each steep until it became hardly noticeable. Subtle tones of grass and vegetal qualities remained present until the fifth steep where they just seemed to have dropped off. Woody notes became apparent into the second steep in addition to smoky aromatics that snuggled in between the greens and the woods.

The fifth steep really changed it up. There was this mixture of pepper, cornmeal (I wrote “like a tortilla”) and a new, but very slight beefy flavor that churned out a pleasant steep with a sparkling texture. After this, things circled back to the beginning with sweet earthiness most pronounced, buttery pepper flavors underneath, and barky, smoky flavors bringing in the rear. A tingly spiciness was felt on the tongue.

In regards to mouthfeel, I really enjoyed this tea. For most steeps, the texture was milky smooth, but every other steep introduced a slightly different textural element. First it was an evolving bitterness, which transformed into a subtle huigan, then a cooling sensation, then the sparkling, and finally spiciness. Considering the $19/450g price, it’s a pretty great deal. I would definitely stock up if it weren’t for the horrendous shipping prices… Still, very happy I was able to taste it!

I sum this up with a story. A co-worker enters my office and asks, “What’s that smell?”
“Smell? What Smell?”
“It smells like old house in here.”
:)
The smoke really makes and sets this apart from the rest of the shengs I’ve tried.

I love Dian Hong. The leaf smells malty and that is not lost in the cup. The main flavor is browned cocoa. There is a little roastiness in the background that gives it the browned note. The second cup shifts gears. The first cup flavors step back and allow straw and horse tack to come into play! These are not heavy notes like in puerh but they were definitely there. Third cup changes again – very sweet and the taste is milk chocolate with fruit notes. I really liked this one.

Aroma during infusion: Leaves, Wet-Wood, Mushrooms, Moss

Color of Liquor After Infusing: pale yellow/grey/brown

Flavor: Gentle Mossy-Green-Woodsy and Mushrooms but it’s sweet and smooth!

I really REALLY like this! A very nice surprise, indeed!

This has gentle Yunnan Black notes with a cocoa powder type taste to it and a Golden Buds type BANG mixed in. It’s slightly floral and fragrant as well as slightly fruity and even has a spec of sourness in there – almost like sour milk – but not enough to be disturbing. It works! The after taste that lingers contributes an oh-so-slight bit of smoke.

This is different but good!

Infusion #2:
Much darker in color, aroma, and flavor.

This time around the flavor is maltier, woodsier, a bit peppery, more earthy, and I think I like this infusion better than the first.

Infusion Test!
YES!!! I’m a little behind…somehow these ESGreen samples dropped to the bottom of my YET-TO-BE-SAMPLED Box. Oops!

So…I’m trying to make-good on that today!

Here’s the first infusion on this one…
Smells like a woodsy, smoky, slightly fishy pu-erh once infused. It has a nice medium brown/orange color to it.

It has a softer earthiness to it – more of a dirt than a leaves or wood, really, but still it’s softer and more pleasant. It has a wheat-like flavor working side-by-side with it, too. There is a bit of maltiness that I’m diggin’ too! I’m liking this one more than I anticipated!

2nd infusion notes coming soon…