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5.7g, 140mL tokoname teapot, poland spring water.

160f, 30s: toasty, sweet pea, corn
176s, 15s, then 30s: honey, light floral, sharper green tea taste
185f, 1 min: stewed taste

Who drinks green tea 2 years after harvest and expects anything from it? Oops. I opened this to try with a friend at the time two summers ago, and forgot about it until I was looking through old boxes last night. I can see wisps of what this might have been at the time, but it’s definitely not living up to what I paid for it at the time any more and justifiably so, lol. I didn’t have the self control to not participate in tea buy korea this year, but this might be the first in several years since I’ve been drinking tea that I will not buy any greens given multiple bags of pricey green teas from years past haunting me…

6.3/90/212 zzz teapot.

dry: bread, raisins, roast

1st (prob 30s or so… much too long for this tea): bitter, stewed leaf

2nd (5s): mineral in upper throat, bland otherwise

3, 4, 5 (all ~10s): stewed bitter taste

cold: something plastic-like, not particularly pleasant. bitterness, and then some chocolate hovering in background.

bought this a few years ago and didn’t get around to trying until today. I need to branch out with my drinking more since lately indecision paralysis of sorts has been hitting with too many teas to try on my backlog. overall quite disappointing. Have heard this one is better at higher ratio. Will also need to be more mindful of steep times, since even though it’s not as green as some of the OWT ones, still not roasted enough to handle overly long steeps.

5/90/212. late night spin with the zhaozhuang zhuni teapot from TWL since it came in last weekend but I didn’t have a chance to use it then. smelled great, basically some candy, maybe peachy in a way. Taste is the candied peach and bitter edged minty note. Aftertaste/mouth coat is very fleeting. lasted maybe 2 flash steeps and another 2 brief steeps max before turning into stew water. Enough to scratch an itch, but not interesting. At .13c/g, it’s fine, not particularly interesting.

This is one of those things I’m very glad I didn’t buy large amounts of several years down the line (though I paid more than my fair share of tuition because I’m stupid). Looking at old notes, I have no idea why I was thermosing everything 2 years ago, no wonder my stomach rotted for a good year or so before I was able to come back…

5.5/90/212

wet: berries, smoke, sweet

2 flash rinses, since the small chunks were very compressed.

1st: barnyard and musk in aroma. minty bitter taste upfront, but something floral about it. Quite smoky and strong, and a BBQ note, as well as a sour note. Calming, but not overwhelming… yet.

2nd: BBQ, sour in taste, floral aftertaste

3rd: similar

4th: smoky, woody, meaty

mugged after since I was distracted. Overall not super comfortable to drink yet, imo. energy is activating rather than downing, and some age will help smoothen out the edges. bought a sample from Hou De since I wasn’t sure I wanted to cake blind at $550 a pop (450g). The 2001 8653 at TWL is $385 for a 357g cake, and the 2001 iron Zhongcha (not official XG, 310g) is $290. I’ve heard good things about the iron zhongcha, and at ~30% premium for this cake compared to that I couldn’t really spring.

5/90/212.

suspect that my sample is dried out a bit, as this session fell a little short of expectations taste-wise, but feeling seemed present and more or less intact? Overall dominant taste was of oversteeped hongcha. Strangely subtle in terms of slowing. Usually teas that are slowing feel sedative, but this one I didn’t realize time was slipping until I looked at the clock and suddenly it was almost two hours later.

Was very compressed, so after the first rinse I let it steam in the gaiwan and then picked apart the leaves and rinsed again. Wet leaf had notes of incense, smoke, and sour berries.

1st: malt and honey. some feeling in face.
2nd: bitter and smoky. concentrated fruit on tip of tongue. Softly pausing and slowing. cooling in breath, extending to throat.
3rd: taste is similar. numbing on palate like mala peppercorns. deep breathing.
4th: fruit in throat.
5th: floral aspect to taste and something bright on the tongue reminiscent of some cabs I’ve had recently.

Capped the session here. Maybe will steep it out tomorrow, or just thermos the rest depending on how I feel.

I have had this several times both thermos’d and gongfu. I also mugged it once but the extra heat helps, so I moved it to thermos. It’s simple, but really satisfying and I generally get 3-5 good steeps and then move it to a thermos to drink at work the day after. I can’t recall another tea I’ve ever been drawn to brewing several weekends in a row. It doesn’t command a lot of attention or effort, but is still nice, and I guess that’s what I’ve been after lately. Taste is clean, w/ some woody, medicinal notes, and on one occasion reminding me of mung bean. Warming and calming. If it was cheaper, I’d buy enough to make it last forever…

Purchased from Teapals, for (after factoring in shipping) $116 or roughly 12c/g. With that said, the compression is such that it takes quite a bit of effort to separate. PVC cutters did not work like for a different fu brick I purchased and I had one heck of a time prying it apart. Eventually had to ask someone with a chisel and hammer to help break it into chunks.

Have had this in a variety of formats, from simmering over stove top and thermos (more iffy), to mug and lazy gongfu (big pot). Thermos and simmering bring out medicinal notes that straddle the line for bitter, but not quite. Mug/grandpa and gongfu it tastes like YQH QiXiang, and maybe even outshines the Qixiang (at least mine purchased from YQH two years ago) in complexity. Sometimes a little pepper and herbaceous notes.

Feeling is a little heady, and not particularly caffeinating for me. That said, I found when I drank it too late in the evening, I would have nightmares. So there is probably some level of caffeine. Not enough to be disruptive to falling/staying sleep or to be alerting for work, but enough to impact REM sleep cycles.

5.4/90/boiling

dry: BBQ, sweet
wet: vegetal, mint, smoke, barnyard, shoe polish

1. smoke, bright. pepper-like as well as candy-like sweetness in the aftertaste. settling and sedative
2. bitter, woody, polish. bitterness has a texture to it. Floral note in finish. lingering in breath.
3. something banana like, carrot, and spice.
4. strongly bitter. polish. floral in finish
5. medicinal. tastes like XG Jiaji

I think I stopped here since I had something to go to. It was ok I suppose, ignoring price. It was over a month ago, and I don’t remember anything else about it eliciting strong feelings either way. No idea what the current price is, but I paid $2/g for my sample some years back.

5.4/90/boiling

wet leaf: smoke, floral, honey, berries, carrot
quick rinse.

1. good texture, sour, fruity (grape?), malt
2. deeper honeyed taste, some strawberry-like tartness, faint aftertaste that builds in the throat
3. similar. refreshing cooling quality to finish. had this w a friend before that compared it to something green tea adjacent. maybe goji berry and some bubble gum too.
4. light. something continues to linger in aftertaste, but it’s delicate and maybe citrus like.

I stopped steeping and taking notes bc I was tired but this was interesting. I don’t know if this is normal for dianhong, but the shifting qualities remind me of the XZH Diangu, except not bitter. Someone said Diangu is cursed puer, and if that’s the case, dianhong can be described as cursed hongcha. In any case, trying to grasp at it feels like the over-the-top Ratatouille imagery when Remy eats something.

Anyway, the first time I had this was w a friend right after trying the Lincang bainian ‘22, and I think that made it hard to pick out notes for this after (sensory overload/deadening). The bainian is enjoyable, but not subtle. This tea was harder to pin down, and really benefits from attention and focus. Since I mostly lack that energy lately, when ordering Explorer 3 from the recent DXJD release, I wasn’t inclined to pick up more of this.

6/90/boiling. Brita tap.

dry: spices, roast
1st: thin, bitter. woody and slight sweetness in aftertaste
2nd: similar w some vegetal.

Didn’t write anything else, but I remember being very disappointed by this. Too light of a roast (surprising given that I’m assuming their customer base is mostly SEA-based?) and base material seems weak, but maybe this is to be expected at this price point. Similar in price to baiyun rougui from DXJD, which I found similarly disappointing. I have yet to try the other oolongs I purchased from Kangiiten, but if this is any indicator, I will stick to their incenses in the future.