I made a mug of this with a heaped teaspoon brewed for three minutes – boiling water. This one was not on the instruction sheet and I made it first thing in the morning before I had the computer up and running, so I hadn’t realised that the tasting notes on the website give a steeping time of six minutes. However, there were still a few strands of tea not sunk when I removed the filter.
This brew was not very noteworthy. There was basic tea flavour, not very strong, and a slight hint of something giving a very little smooth richness, difficult to describe, not chocolate – if one could imagine a flavour somewhere between chocolate and a good beef or lamb gravy, but definitely one flavour, not two elements. There was also the tiniest ‘bite’, again difficult to describe, perhaps the ghost of a hint of white pepper.
It was a very attractive colour, though: an intense, clear red-brown leaning very much to the red side.
So I made the next mug of this brewed for six minutes, but this turned out to be slightly stale-tasting – steeped too long.
Then I tried four and a half minutes and this was okay but not really much of an improvement on three minutes.
So I’d describe this as an ‘okay’ sort of tea but nothing really special.
