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First cake purchase, haha.

200f, 100mL gaiwan, 5.3g

dry leaves like rest of PS order: dried fruit smell

1×5s rinse

wet leaves: strong smoke
5s: slight sweet
10s: astringent and sharp with a cooling aftertaste.

I can’t remember why I stopped on the second infusion with this one either, but I have the rest of the cake still, so I’ll update this if I feel the urge to pick it up in the near future. Not sure how PS stores their cakes, but if I had to hazard a guess, this one didn’t age much at all however they’re storing it.

2013 MGH 1312 MengKu Ancient Tree Green Pu-erh Tea #1503

5.2g, 100mL gaiwan, Brita filtered water, 200f

1x 5s rinse

dry leaves smell like rest of PS order: dried fruit

wet leaves smell of tart dried fruit, w/ hint of smoke.

5s: light w slight sweet aftertaste

10s: astringent and sharp notes. Stopped here to put the rest to cold brew overnight.

Cold brew turned out nice and fruity. Generally speaking though, likely wouldn’t repurchase. Can’t remember from my notes why I stopped after 2nd infusion, but this was probably one of the days where I was trying to focus on too many things at once and lost interest in this one.

2011 Dayi 7542 Green Sheng Puerh #1324
5.2g, 100mL gaiwan, Brita filtered water, 200f

This is one of the advised first stops in the puer journey, so I’m making a roundabout of sorts here in my own tea history.

Dry leaves, like rest of PS order, smell fruity and sweet

The wet leaves smell of light smoke and unexpectedly very sweet.

1x 5s rinse smells of shou: damp, mushroom, earthy

2s: slight sweet, slightly thick. Light, clear yellow broth.

5s: leaves smell a touch more smoky. Bitterness hits. Sharp and a touch medicinal. Broth thinned out.

10s: brew darkens to a light golden color. Bit drying in the mouth, unpleasantly so.

15s: feels slightly thicker again. Sweetness more pronounced.

30s: color returns to a light yellow, thin and sort of lifeless. Decided to kick temp to boiling for next steep.

1 min, boiling: not much to note. Put in a cold brew, which tasted pretty alright, but not much else to note.

Not terrible, but unlikely to purchase again.

2006 CNNP 7542 Green Pu-erh Tea #1602

5.4g, 100 mL gaiwan, Brita filtered water, 200-212f, increased for later steepings

1x 5s rinse

dry: woody and slight medicinal.

wet leaves smell very smoky.

5s: a shou-like smell: grainy, mushroomy, dank. tastes lightly sweet and medicinal.

continued steepings of various times brought little progression. This tea was rather linear. The lightly sweet notes become more noticeable at the end as the medicinal woody notes fade. I’ve never had a sheng older than a couple years, so this was a sample I bought to see how it evolves, so to speak, and it tasted like a light shou, which I didn’t like before, but am growing to appreciate more (not enough to buy a cake, but I don’t dislike them in the same way I used to). Not much in common with shengs I’ve tried so far. Wouldn’t purchase a cake, but this was okay. Will probably drink through the rest of mine on lazy days where I just toss things in a mug to steep. Also perhaps of note is that I’ve never tried a CNNP tea before, so maybe this is expected?

One thing I didn’t expect was how thin the mouthfeel was. I read Jay’s review from his HK stored one, so I went in expecting a thickness to the brew, and that never happened. I know storage makes a difference through what I’ve read, but it’s not something I’ve experienced yet. We’ll see how the rest of the samples I bought turn out! Cautiously excited. Maybe some gems, or perhaps just tuition. :)

3/5 stars

Got a free sample of this with my first PS order.

Little anecdote: I called the shop the other day, and asked the guy for any recommendations since I’m fairly new to puer (more like I actively try to avoid expensive hobbies as a broke student and yet the siren call still drew me in eventually). The guy told me they don’t give recommendations since if I didn’t like the tea based on their recommendation, they’d have a problem on their hands. Seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of recommendations (do we all share the same tastes?), but whatever goes. Must’ve dealt with some rough customers in the past LOL.

Anyway, review time.

7.9 g (whole sample), 100 mL Brita in a 200F, gaiwan

Rinsed 2x 5s w/ 212F

dry leaves have a medicinal date smell, but so does the rest of my PS order so I don’t know if it’s storage or what.

wet leaves smell smoky and fruity.

5s: medicinal, sweet dates. Aftertaste is sweet and smoky. Slight thickness.

10s: stronger sharpness. Something reminds me of cherry.

20s: bitter and sharp. Drying.

Bubbles throughout, but not /as/ scum-like as the last Beantown tea I tried.

Later infusions brought up a light fishy smell. I couldn’t continue drinking, but continued infusing to see what happened. Nothing exciting. Continual sharpness with a bite, but sweetness fades almost immediately after the first few steepings where sweetness was noted. I would be sad if I had to drink through a brick of this.

TL;DR: I’m glad I didn’t pay for this one.

5g, 200f brita filtered water, 130 mL gaiwan

I ordered this as a sample from Beantown. I guess you could say “malty and full-bodied with a rich peppery finish”, or you could just be more direct and say bitter and tastes like a tea bag earl grey (and for the price of looseleaf I would recommend going for bagged instead). A weird aftertaste that’s drying and almost sweet but not quite. Disappointed, considering I used lower temps than suggested and brewed for less time than suggested by Beantown. Didn’t finish the tea, and used the rest of my sample to de-odorize my mini-fridge from the time I accidentally left turkey in there.

One more thing to note, though I don’t know whether this is of legitimate concern or not (maybe someone more experienced with teas can chime in here):
I stumbled upon Hobbes’ (Half-Dipper) blog post on pesticides in tea a few months back (https://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2013/09/pesticide-its-whats-for-dinner.html). While I have seen plenty of saponin froth from brewing yanchas, like Hobbes notes, the froth doesn’t stick and the tea is clear usually after the first infusion or two. This tea was the first time I’ve seen froth that sticks to the edge of my gaiwan’s lid, even after several infusions (which I did not drink), and does stick to my strainer when poured through. Granted that Beantown makes no claims as to organic farm sourcing for the great majority of their offerings, this being one of them, this is still somewhat concerning. I’m not a health nut and drink mostly not organic-certified teas (though I do like supporting smaller farming co-ops and families sourcing organic teas), since it’s not like I’m consuming the leaves directly (ignoring matcha, for which I would pay a premium for JAS certified organic standards).

I don’t doubt that farmers do use plenty of pesticides on a good deal of exported tea, and I know some locals don’t even drink tea from certain growing regions since they can see firsthand how dirty some areas can be, but I suppose this is just a reflection me being uncomfortable with being confronted with the reality directly.

As a side note on Beantown, the customer service is good and plenty of people love their offerings but my experience with my order just served to remind me why I avoid places that focus on flavored teas and blends (of course, this is coming from my personal preferences). I was not particularly impressed with any of the teas I ordered from them, save for the Chai (though chai tea is straightforward enough to make at home).

2020 Osmanthus Black
One River Tea
5.1g, 200-205f brita filtered water, 130mL gaiwan

I can’t find any descriptions on their site about this, but it was included as a free 7g sample with the other teas I ordered. A loose leaf black tea with dried osmanthus leaves. The smell is very sweet and familiar, something almost citrus like, though I’m not sure why since I don’t remember ever smelling osmanthus before. The only thoughts I can discern after reading about the smell of osmanthus described is it smells of peaches and dish soap, like an Hermes perfume from the Jardin line (most of which are quite expensive soapy kind of smell).

5s: very floral. Slightly sweet with a slight sweet aftertaste. Leaves smell like a very floral black tea.

10s: hints of smoke. Other than that, similar to before.

Stopped taking detailed notes since this one was fairly linear. A very floral tea (in an almost chokingly floral sense smell wise), slightly sweet, but simultaneously falling flat for me. Wouldn’t purchase. Both of my friends who tried it liked it though.

This is one of those local Asian supermarket teas that people tend to fall for. Someone gifted this to my mom, who didn’t like it and so stuffed it in my luggage when I left for college because options here are limited and you make do with what you’ve got. I don’t know how old this stuff is, and it’s not like there’s any indication anywhere on the box (I attached pictures of the box to the listing), but this is weak tasting to begin with and lasts no more than 2 infusions regardless of leaf:water ratio to boot. Being sort of whole leaf, psychologically it tastes better than tea dust and fannings from bagged tea I guess. I drink this when I’m desperate for caffeine (the nasty usual coffee supply machines were removed for COVID safety concerns) and as a digestif of sorts I guess. I’m glad to be almost done with it, and grateful to live in an era of mass online access and globalization that allows me to purchase tea from a variety of vendors and not just the local supermarket.

6g, 600 ml Brita filtered water, cold brew Hario bottle overnight

Sometimes things blow you away due to how outstanding they are in their field. Other times, they’re impressive because of something completely unexpected. This tea goes in the latter category.

I ordered a few teas to try from Open Door Tea a few months ago, breaking my own rule of usually avoiding places that also sell weird or flavored blended teas (historically I have had terrible experiences with places that mainly focus on blends and only seem to dip their toes in to single varietals/cultivars) since I really wanted to try a 白毛猴 (white monkey green tea).

In the same order, I added a sample of the Hairy crab oolong, which they’d run out of, so this was substituted, to my dismay and disappointment. I grumbled about the silly name, about the blend itself (why would you blend 3 teas with disparate brewing temps? no matter what temperature you choose, it’s only going to be optimal for one and not the other 2), about how I wasn’t going to be able to try the Hairy crab oolong. Silly, I know. This is my outlet, let me be. In the end, knowing how bad I am with brewing green teas, I didn’t want to risk a standard brew of this, and gongfu and the time to dial in brews didn’t seem worth it so I tossed it into a Hario cold brew bottle and tried it in the morning. I was shocked at what I was tasting, and made a neighboring dormmate try it to assure that I wasn’t crazy about what I was tasting. This tastes wholly like a well-made (not overly sweet or too artificial) taro bubble/milk tea! Nothing like what I expected. I drink a fair amount of jasmine and oolong, but I’ve only tried tea bags of gunpowder green (some economics professor stocks the Numi kind in the lounge which has since been closed for COVID-related reasons), and they’re about as terrible as you’d expect. My dormmate noted hints of jasmine and oolong, in addition to the taro bubble tea, but I was only able to taste taro bubble tea, with a small hint of smoke, and a slightly sweet aftertaste.

In sum, understatedly delicious. Not something I’d drink on the daily, but I’ll definitely order some for those blazing hot summer days when you just want something cool and sweet. Not sure how this would be warm, but given how good it is cold brewed, probably won’t bother warm-brewing.

Yunomi Kabusecha green tea

Saeakari

2.6g, 100ml Duanni rongtian (yes this is the same one I use for yancha but I didn’t want to bother with filtering out leaves in gaiwan and I haven’t used it in over a month so I will assume this was okay)

This is my first Japanese tea that’s not matcha. Dry leaves have an interesting smell. Extremely seafoody (i suppose the umami?), but also slight matcha-ness. when I first opened my sample, I didn’t expect how strong it would be and inhaled heavily and felt revolted. In the pot, it was fine, but also, lesson learned.

Slightly thick brew that’s a nice light greenish yellow.

140f for 1 min like yunomi suggests on the bag first steep (website says 2 min, but 1 min seems to be more common for Japanese greens in general). Light green color. Very strong seafood, then grass, and then vegetables.

176f for 20s second steep. Maybe a bit more since the spout on my pot got plugged and slowed a bit. Forgot to smell the wet leaves before but they don’t have much smell now, just slightly green and seafood. Astringency that hits, slight seafood, and then grassy vegetables. A bit more sweet on the aftertaste.

Last steep: 200f for 30s. Burnt matcha flavor like when I first started matcha making LOL. Aftertaste is light and grassy.

I tried to push it for one more steep, but nothing interesting to note there. I would say 3 steeps is about what it can handle.

A fun experiment! I can see why people drink Japanese greens on the daily. Pretty unoffensive and refreshing. For now, it’s priced a bit more than what I’m comfortable with given the number of “good” steepings, but if the bookstore decided to pay me more than 5% of what I paid for my textbooks, maybe I’d blow it on some Japanese greens to treat myself.

3/11 update:
Since I’ve heard so much about cold-brewing Japanese greens, I decided to give it a run myself. 5g tea, 500 mL Poland spring bottled water overnight in a Hario cold brew bottle. I saw a 1g:60mL recommended ratio for kabusecha but after trying my standard 1:100 ratio, I wouldn’t make it any stronger. Cold brewing enhanced grassy notes/aftertase (which become much more prominent), as well as umami notes. But it also feels like it’s pulling in way too many directions at once, which didn’t sit as well for my personal preference. I would be unlikely to cold-brew this again.