In my last tasting note for this, I noted that I absent-mindedly used less than half the recommended amount of dry tea. This time I used the correct amount, about two and a half times what I used last time. I brewed it for two minutes, again – boiling water.
It made a dark brown, very slightly yellowish infusion, intense enough in colour to be pretty much opaque.
This is seriously weird. I’m not getting anything much in the way of aroma and little more in the way of variety of flavour: in the mouth there’s the basic tea element, which is now very slightly bitter – I think I’ve brewed it too strong – and just the tiniest hint of chocolate. And that’s it – a real disappointment after last time’s absolutely heavenly brew of this stuff.
I’m just baffled by this – I’ve even gone to the length of going outside to breath fresh air deeply through the nose for a minute or so, to make sure my head is quite clear, but it makes no difference.
I’m making a second infusion, two minutes again.
It’s a little less intense in colour and I get a faint metallic hint and touch of the pizza dough in the nose.
In the mouth there’s now possibly a little grass and a little butter, and that bitterness is no longer noticeable. As the tea is cooling, there may be the tiniest hint of vanilla coming in. It’s pleasant enough, but nothing special, still.
I’m quite bemused about this – how can 1g of tea taste so much better than 2.5g? The dry tea is so distinctive in appearance that it’s quite impossible for me to have got the wrong tea today or last time – they’re definitely both the same tea.
Well, I’m even less ready to rate this. I now, of course, have to make another brew with the lesser amount; to be sure that it’s the tea and not, somehow, me. I shall do that later – I’m tea-full at the moment.
