Bailin Gongfu Black Tea

Thank you, Teavivre and Angel Chen for these wonderful samples! They just arrived today and I invited Sandy and my youngest daughter to join me sampling them.

We began with this lovely black tea. It is very smooth, lightly honeyed, and naturally sweet. The aroma is a very clean and natural tea aroma. I intended to try it plain, with sugar, and with milk and sugar, but by the time I had my third cup I realized I hadn’t made any additions. It doesn’t need them! But youngest always adds milk and sugar and she liked it that way, too.

I love that this tea is organic, and there is so much information on the pouch. I am looking forward to trying the rest of these! If you like Teavana’s Golden Monkey, you really should try this one as it is just as good or even better but costs less. You will save money without sacrificing quality or taste.

I tried this last night, but ended up going out before I could write a review. So I’m having another cup first thing in the morning afternoon. And laughing a little because out of the corner of my eye, I keep reading it as “Ballin’ Gongfu”. Haha.

I read what other have said about this tea and upon smelling the dark, smaller leaves, I definitely agree with people mentioning cocoa. Cocoa is the strongest flavor I taste, along with a sort of light nuttiness that’s mostly in the scent. My brother said something about it reminded him of coffee, since it’s so strong and bold. I think he was onto something. I definitely feel more alert after drinking it.

Anyway, this is a hearty, delicious tea that I could see myself drinking instead of coffee some mornings. I kinda regret not tasting it before I placed my order last night. When I make my next one, I’m going to get some of this as well. It’s delightful.

I also wanted to mention that I love the little red individual pouches it comes in. That’s a nice touch.

Mmmmmm! This is a great example of a Gong Fu Black tea! Roasty cocoa, sweet and very even-keeled. Maybe even a little fruity on the end of the sip. It is extremely flavorful but does not feel strong – so nice and easy to drink. Not a bit of bitterness or astringency. Smooth as can be! I adore it!

I also love the little packets :)

Thank you Teavivre for this generous sample! It’s FANTASTIC!!

1 rounded tsp for 8 oz

This is a full-bodied, malty black that is smooth as silk with no astringency or bitterness. It’s doesn’t have a particular flavor that jumps out at me, but it is just a really good strong tea that I could actually drink first thing in the morning without milk and sugar.

Thanks to Angel and Teavivre for this sample!

I have mixed feelings about this one. I really love the flavor spectrum, and this is a lovely desert tea: nice and chocolaty, touches of caramel, a good helping of spices, and hints of honey and malt. Butttt, I’ve tried this tea three separate times gong fu style, using different steeping times, amounts of leaves, and temperatures of water. Every time I get an unpleasant sour and salty texture and taste, especially in the first steeps. After about the fourth, this dies down a great deal, but I can still detect it. It’s not terrible enough for me to discard a steep, but it’s noticeable enough to distract from the yumminess this tea possesses. I will say, however, that my first issues were treating it as a traditional black tea and using near-boiling water. The third time I tasted this one, I treated it more like a dark oolong with much better results. Still, this coppery taste lingered. However, I’ve added milk and sugar to some of the later steeps the last time I brewed it and it came out very chai-like and was quite pleasant. I think I’ll switch over to brewing this one Western style now.

Outside of the flavor world, the dry leaves are a delight to smell. The aroma is like sticking your face into a container of Hershey’s cocoa powder, along with hints of hazelnut and spices. The wet leaves gave off scents of mocha, roasted nuts, honey, and coffee grounds. It was very rich and dark, but didn’t knock your head back—it was smooth and unaggressive.

The mouthfeel felt a bit chalky to me during some steeps. However, for the most part it was soft and smooth, especially when the water used is cooler. The aroma of the liquor doesn’t have much to it. It gets caramely some steeps, others it just smells like average black tea.

Flavor-wise, it is really quite similar to Verdant’s Zhu Rong from August of this year as far as flavors go. This one has a bit more chocolate and the addition of caramel, the Zhu Rong had a lot more spices. During mid-steeps of both teas (around 6 and 7) I would have to depend on mouthfeel (Zhu Rong was smoother) and aroma (Zhu Rong’s liquor’s aroma was more pronounced) to differentiate between the two if drunk side-by-side. I may consider this in the future… Actually, looking back at the raw notes I took while drinking both of these, steeps 6 and 7 look nearly identical, while the rest quite different. Hmmm, something to investigate further…

I think it’s interesting that my tea cravings change as the weather gets cooler. Well, the summer isn’t over just yet and I think we still have some hot days on the way.. but I like to think that things are changing. These days I am craving darker, richer teas – Yes, at all times of the day and night!

The tea itself is pretty thick in the mouth. It’s not creamy, but just heavy. I like this quality.. it’s almost like a comforting, chunky sweater! I am enjoying a lot of the sweetness that lingers on my tongue. The taste is leathery and a bit like wet hay. I taste a tinge of pepper as well. There is also an interesting salty note that certainly doesn’t overwhelm the cup, but makes it more interesting instead. I wish I could detect something that resembled caramel.. but it’s not to be found.

This isn’t my favorite black tea, but it definitely satisfies my craving for the moment. I see this as something that would be perfect to drink this winter when the thick snow is falling from the sky. It’s bold, dark and rich!

I am starting to write this note as I’m waiting for tea to cool down a bit.

The smell of dry leaves is great, some earthy, roasted and really warm elements blend together in a rich and strong aroma. It is very tempting to take a sip now, but I know I will just burn my tongue if I do it.

I made this tea for my family at my birthday dinner 2 days ago, but unfortunately I only took a little bit with me, so I actually didn’t get any :( Ohh, just a couple more minutes and I will be able to enjoy this one!

• a little bit of impatient waiting later *

Delicious! Truly great. At first I thought it was just a very usual black tea, but then a wave of yumminess blasted my taste buds :) Really nice rich aftertaste leaves me trying to concentrate on my mouth after every sip. This is one of the best black teas I’ve tried. Will definitely look forward to buying more.

This was delicious! Just a beginning to my review. It actually reminded me of the Da Hong Pao I recently tried from my brother, but this was sweeter and a bit more resonant with maltiness.

The liquor is a gorgeous amber shade with a sweetish, caramel-based aroma. The tea itself isn’t exactly sweet, but evokes sweetness in it. Like cinnamon. It is spicy and fun and a good cup overall!

I think this would be an ideal tea to start my day off before work. Help me wake up and perk up for the hours in the office!

hmmm… I don’t think I like this one… it does leave a nice feeling in the mouth afterwards though. Oh well I have many more teas to try :D

“Bai Lin Gong Fu – other than sounding like the name of a cheesy 70s martial arts flick – is a black tea hailing from Fujian province, China. Smelling it an experience, for I found it hard to pinpoint what to call the scent; I settled on “caramel musk” – even though that sounds like a male aftershave. This was different from the other two Bai Lins I’ve tried – which both exhibited more earthy, Yunnan-like tendencies – but I still favored its robust roundhouse kick of a taste.”

Full Review: http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/

Since today I had the time and patience, I finally decided to play with the gaiwan I got a few weeks ago. I’ve never tried one before so rather than attempt with a green or oolong I went with a black, knowing it’d be harder to mess it up.

This tea was a great way to introduce myself into using the gaiwan. I used one of the sealed packages that Teavivre so generously sent me many of, and then added my boiling spring water and let it steep!

First steep was 2.5 minutes. The tea was very strong and dark, and as it cooled changed between multiple flavours. First sips were definitely almost too strong for me and I barely resisted adding sugar. I’m glad I did though because soon a really nice malt flavour came in, one that I really enjoyed. The last few sips were almost sweet, which really made me curious what my second steeps would bring me.

Second steep was again boiling, this time for 3 minutes. The tea was much lighter this time, and I really really enjoyed this steep. The malt and sweet blended for me to be delightful and I can see why so many of you love this tea!

Third steep was again boiling for another 3 minutes. This was like a slightly lighter version of steep two. I again loved it. I didn’t try a fourth steep though because I was pretty sure the leaves weren’t going to love me through another shot.

Overall a lovely strong sweet tea that I look forward to trying again, next time in western style!

SO I HAVE A LOT OF GREAT NEWS TO DISCLOSE IN THIS POST

The first is that my first post on my TeaTrade blog is up. The blog can be found here http://serendipitea.teatra.de/. I explain more in depth there what I aim to do. Please take a click and tell me what you think!

The second (okay so there were really only two things) is that I’ve made the decision to stop rating teas. I know of only one other user who does this (JacquelineM) but I’m doing it for a slightly different reason than she does it (though her reason does come in to play a little). The main reason is that rating a tea means that all of the work I put in to making a review culminates to me making a rating that says if I like it or dislike it. Compared to many here, I’m very new to the premium and loose leaf tea scene. The goal of me having an account here on Steepster is for me to me able to explore new teas and learn as well as review the new things that I’ve tried. I feel like if I spend a whole review listing what I taste only to culminate it in me rating it on if I like it or not, I’m not really growing. I want to review every tea I try purely by how it tastes, and not by if I like it or not. I want to go into my review unbiased and focus simply on the liquid in my mouth from a standpoint that is as unbiased as possible. I feel like that will help me grow in my knowledge of teas more than rating a tea on a like-based scale. Once I feel like I’ve tried enough teas and taken my palette to a place that I feel comfortable that I’m at the peak of my journey, I will perhaps start rating teas again. But until then, I’m going to go without rating teas.

So, now that all of this has been said, onto the tea! This is a backlog from yesterday. Another sample that Teavivre sent me!

I was so excited to try this tea. I mean like. REALLY. Excited. I mean come on, it’s the highest rated tea on the site, how could I not be?!

So, trying to keep my excitement to a low, I opened this one up. The dry leaf smells a lot like bread. In a really yummy, toasty way.

The wet leaf and tea itself smell a lot like fresh baked bread. In a way that really entices you. The tea itself is wonderful. It’s very strong and certainly not light, even with only being steeped for 2 and a half minutes! It too tastes like toasty, warm, fresh baked bread. It practically screams bakery! It’s so wonderful. Even as it cooled it retains its boldness, as a certain caramel-y note (not too sweet) comes out. It’s almost like a savory caramel-like a salted one that has a little too much salt, but in a good way. It tastes…… toasty. This, again, is hard for me to put into words, but the best I can say is bread! A wonderful tea, and I can see why it’s the top! This is definitely going into my repurchase list!

Yep, no disagreement with all the glowing reviews of this tea! What a great Fujian. I find this type so calming for a black tea.

I needed to quickly snatch up a tea on my way to work to brew in the bottom of my infuser glass. Black is never really an option for that, but I had a susupicion that this one would hold up well. Indeed it does. It’s been hanging out at the bottom of my glass for two infusions over 45 minutes, and it has been consistently honey-sweet and delicious. No bitterness! just a nice, slightly roasty depth. I find it quite cocoa-y, which is really complementing the coconut flour brownies I made last night. Delicious! The lovely little packets are also perfect for work-brewing, but I’m hoping to try this one in my gaiwan soon. Thanks again to Teavivre for the samples.

This was another generous sample from Teavivre!

Preparation notes: I used 4 tsp. of this (about 1.5 of the enclosed red packages) to 500 ml. water and steeped at the below parameters in my Breville.

The smell of the dry leaf is malty and rich – it smells kind of bready, too. It’s a characteristic black tea smell for me and I love it! The scent carries over into the steeped leaves, with the addition of a slightly smoky note. The steeped liquor turned a mahogany brown.

At first the taste is mildly smoky – not my favorite. But there’s a lot of complexity to it as well – a cocoa kind of smoky. Once it cools down a bit more the smoky taste goes away and just the malty, cocoa taste remains. The mouthfeel is quite thick and chewy in this, too, an added bonus and a quality I love in black teas. I’m enjoying this without sweetener, but I think this would lend itself well to honey over sugar if you must add something – I think because there’s a light honey accent in the steeped tea.

This is a very good complex tea with alot of layers, and despite the smoke I will have no problem polishing off the 2 cups. I think it is the more tolerable of smoky teas I’ve tried, and it is definitely worth drinking through til it cools to get some of the chewy cocoa flavors.

This tea was amazing! Right after my first sip, my brain said, “This is some good black tea”. The first thing that occurred to me were some citrus notes – perhaps like a sweet lemon or tangerine. As I sipped on, I detected a sort of muscatel flavor that you would expect from a good Darjeeling. Finally, after several cups, the incredible smoothness of this tea is what really won me over. It has a little bit of that muscatel flavor without being abrasive.

This is another excellent tea from Tea Vivre. They’re batting 1000 with me right now, so I’d say any tea in their store is probably a safe bet. Their packaging is great too! I don’t know about their larger quantites, but the little samples they sent me could not have been done better! Four little pre-measured paper sacks with Chinese on them sealed inside of a larger ziplock bag with steeping instructions and info about the tea printed on it! Each paper sack contained about 4.5 grams, so two sacks were just enough to fill my Chatsford 4-cup! All bags are clearly labeled and completely opaque to guard from sunlight. Nice work!

_{Tea sample provided by Teavivre for review}

Down to my last sample from Teavivre to try. For now I’ll prepare it with one long steep, and then later on in the day with at least 8 short steeps.

I was pleasantly surprised with this in my morning’s cup. I’m picking up on lots of flavours; something floral, pepper, lychee, chocolate, honey, spice (makes me think of pumpkin spice to some extent), and of course a good black tea body.

200ml glass teapot, 1 packet (2tsp? 5g?), 1 steep

By the way, I went on their website to check out some info on this tea and I saw that they had some new stuff in stock. When I spotted the Oriental Beauty @ about $15 USD for 100g my eyeballs nearly popped out! I have no idea how good it is, but usually their tea is at an already excellent price to flavour ratio. I’m seriously very tempted to put in an order. There is also some DongDing and Jin Xuan Milk Oolong. I hope they keep stocking more tea from Taiwan. :D MmmmMMMM yeah!

I’ve been down with some cold/flu hybrid all week. So I asked my husband to pick something (when he asked if he could make me tea). If I had known he was going to pick on of these from Teavivre I would have stopped him right away. As a result I won’t rate it just yet. But I will say this even with my nose stuffed up I can smell the caramel in this tea. I can almost taste it too. It’s very good and that with a stuffy nose. Which means it should be even better when I can smell again!

I put off trying this one because I tend to think that I don’t like black teas. I try to avoid the caffeine, and I tend to be put off by their astringency. But I made this one today out of guilt at having avoided it, and am really surprised.

I like this a lot. Really, a lot. It’s delicious. I added a little bit of soymilk to it, and the richness of the tea still comes through. It’s bold, almost like a good oolong, with no astringency whatsoever. It’s kind of smokey and creamy and smooooth at the same time. I am realizing in trying this that I haven’t had a good black tea in forever. When I drink good tea, as opposed to most of the flavory-gimmicky stuff I enjoy, it’s usually green or oolong.

What a surprise! Try this if you don’t think you like black tea.

Hmm, the tasting notes say there is a hint of caramel there. A hint? I opened the packet and stuck my nose in. The smell was muted at first. Then it hit me as I took a breath and tried again. That was not a hint, it was a whopping great big dose of caramel, like sticking my nose into the middle of a Cadbury’s Caramel bar. Then the floral aroma developed and the two smells worked together to entice me into going further.

I brewed the tea per the instructions and tasted carefully. Floral notes on the front of my tongue and then suddenly a caramel hit as the tea reached the back of my mouth. Crikey, that was sweet and quite a shock. The flavour toned down a bit in the aftertaste but it lingered nicely for a while. Now that I knew what to expect from this tea, I relaxed into the tea and enjoyed the rest of the pot.

This tea is very sweet, perhaps a little too much so for my tastes, but there is no denying that it is a quality tea. I might only wish to drink it when the need for sweet is on me, but it will be going on the shopping list, just for those occasions.

This tea was sent to me for review by Teavivre. Thank you!

I woke up this morning with a cold. I’ve had a lingering cough for a while and figured I got sick from the kids during my month of pediatrics. But now I woke up all clogged up! Ugh! Perhaps this isn’t a good time to try a new tea, but I really wanted to! So I chose this black tea this morning. I don’t think I’ve tried this tea before. When I opened this up, I took a big whiff. It smells so fresh and reminds me of autumn. The dry leaves were dark brown to black and were delicate, long, and thin with some twisting.

I made this with a larger 8oz tetsubin and drank it in my white mug. After infusion, it smelled a little savory. The color of the liquor was a medium red-brown. I have been trying to cut down on sugar so I wanted to infuse this for a shorter time. I was also a bit worried this might be bitter, but I decided, “what the heck!” I took a sip, and the taste was lovely! My sinuses and everything completely cleared up, which I was happy about. It is bold, but was not bitter or astringent at all! It went down so smooth. I was surprised and happy about it too. There was a mild hint of sweetness but I tasted dark chocolate and some savory tones. It was also toasty with a slight touch of earthiness to it. I can’t wait to try this again later.

Overall this is a very good black tea. I might consider having this in my cupboard as a staple. I want to find black teas that I don’t need any additives. I’m not a big fan of astringency or bitterness…