16 Tasting Notes
This is an interesting tea in that the production mirrors the way a local delicacy is made. Lemang is glutinous rice steamed in a hollow bamboo stick.
On opening the bag, this tea has a nice smell. The rinse especially has a very nice, spicy smell that I oddly associate with the cows I come across in palm oil estates (that smell nothing like farm-kept cattle).
Unfortunately, this scent doesn’t translate to taste or flavour and I found the tea a bit bland. Maybe I should leaf up a bit heavier though I used a fair amount of leaf (didn’t weigh as usual). I can relate to the sweet aftertaste mentioned in another review but it’s a strong and heavy body that I’m after.
An update to my previous review. I left it for about ten weeks and that has really made a difference. Both teas have lost the bacon taste. Brother has retained a bit of pleasant smokiness, especially in the first few steeps. Sister seems to have lost that as well. It is probably a nice enough tea on its own but next to the stronger tasting brother it feels like it’s missing something.
Both teas are somewhat light bodied though, whereas my preference runs more towards strong bodied teas.
It will be interesting to see how they develop further.
The last of my shu samples from W2T. Decided to brew this up last night as I came home from visiting my sister-in-law in the maternity ward.
Despite the advice and the obvious hint in the name, I put the ball in my usual teapot, rinsed and steeped. The first steeps are the usual shu dark, very smooth and quite thick. After a few infusions the thick/smooth/dark recedes and taste comes to the foreground. It’s an enjoyable tea.
Since it’s the last of my samples, I’ll summarise them here. My reference is my Dayi 7692, simply because that’s what I was drinking before. That one is pretty neutral: nothing offensive but also nothing to commend it.
Red shroom: motor oil thick. Nothing against that but a bit of taste would be nice.
Grandpa, only thick in the first few steeps. Smoother than the shroom and tastier in later infusions.
Gold melon, not much thickness, not as smooth as Grandpa but much tastier. My preference out of these three.
Last night I tasted my sample of this daily drinker.
Upon opening the bag I got a fruity smell that reminded me of Hojo’s teas, except that those smell even better. Nevertheless, a promising begin!
Tastewise too, the first infusions are seem to aim for that same fruity spectrum. I like that and I enjoyed the tea. Unfortunately, the endurance is not quite there and the tea lost taste before I was through my thermos of boiling water (I usually take the first steep from the kettle and then fill a thermos with water on a rolling boil. When this is finished some teas are steeped out but the better ones can go for overnight infusion.).
It’s quite a likeable tea but for not a whole lot more money, there is tea that tastes better and lasts longer.
Just a very short note. It’s my first introduction to tea and mandarin.
Due to the small, loose leaves I found it a bit hard to estimate the amount of tea (I don’t use a scale) and I perhaps understeeped a bit. At any rate, the deep darkness was gone after two steeps, leaving a brownish liquor.
The smell, as noted by others, was dominated by paper. When drinking, there was a very pronounced taste which I assume is what’s meant by medicinal. I haven’t tasted that in other shus, so I’m wondering whether this is the contribution of the mandarin or a result of mandarin and tea aging together. I didn’t get any smokiness.
I think it may be tasting better without the paper smell, so I put the remainder, sans wrapper, in a stoneware pot to be forgotten for a while. The wrapper, by the way, smelled incredibly strong of mandarin/orange. If I’d bought it anywhere else I’d have suspected the wrapper had been soaked in ethereal oil before packaging.
Funny how things go. In my previous note I said I can’t differentiate shu tastes and then I tried this and noticed big differences with the red shroom. This tea seems much less ‘strong’. It’s not as thick and black, though I put about half of the melon in a small pot. It’s much tastier though. Keeping in mind I tried both just a single time, I think I prefer this. (edit:typos)
I’m not a shu drinker. So far I haven’t been able to differentiate the tastes of different shu’s. It does seem to have a better endurance than the dayi shu I have and it seems to brew up a bit thicker as well.
I’ll enjoy it on nights when I come home too late to drink with attention but need to rehydrate, which is my usual shu drinking occasion.
