I’m glad Yunomi recommended trying this tea with “warm” (140F) and hotter water. I tried it first with 160F water and steep times of 1m, 30s, 1m. It was grassy, with pretty decent astringency in the finish. There was a honey sweetness in there somewhere as well. Next steep was a little less astringent in flavor, but more drying in the mouth, and it sort of just fell flat on the final steep.
The tea really shone when I started with cooler water. For this second session, I used 140F water for steeps of 1m, then 30s. After that, I did 1m steeps of 160F, 180F, and 200F. The first two steeps were noticeably more balanced in astringency vs. sweetness. It certainly still had an astringent note to it, but was much more mellow with a stronger grassy sweetness. I think I also detected a bit of fruit on the aftertaste, maybe melon. The next three steeps, using progressively hotter water each time, were nice and smoothly sweet with grassy and vegetal spinach flavors. The last steep acquired a noticeable bitterness, but still wasn’t overpowering. The body was strong in all but the final steep using this method, as opposed to the other method, when the main thing I got was that astringency, without a very good body to the liquid.
Flavors: Astringent, Grass, Smooth, Spinach, Sweet
