Man, I don’t know if I did something wrong with this tea, or if it is really THAT different tasting than the Wild Monk cake I’ve got at home… I brewed it up and treated it just like I would my cake, and I’m getting hardly any smoke or sweetness or delicous shengy tang. Mostly I’m getting a weird bitterness…I’m on steep #2 and I’m going to keep going for a couple more steeps and see what kind of flavors I can pull from it. Any suggestions are welcome!
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Hmm, I think the issue might be since the leaves are LOOSE it is steeping up a lot QUICKER than I’m used to! I think I’ll be able to tweak this one and figure it out at some point…
Stephanie, when I got it in the note Garrett wrote to treat it like green, so my temp was like 175 and very short steeps like 5 and 10 sec . No bitterness detected
Yeah, I’m used to having to steep the cake up quite a bit to get it loose enough to brew…I think I just WAY oversteeped this.
Hello, everyone!! So good to see you here!! This crop of wild monk mao cha is now autumn 2013. The wild monk cake is spring 2012. That explains some of the differences as the newest mao cha will be less oxidized than the 2012 pu’er which has undergone more oxidation and “fermentation”. We do have a lot of customers brewing up the mao cha at temps less than boiling (175 or so) and enjoy it very much that way. In China, mao cha is typically brewed with boiling water, bringing out alot of the tongue watering sort of effects and stronger flavors. The first time I tasted it like that, I was blown away and wasn’t sure if I liked mao cha brewed like that. Now, I really like it. But still, I brew this up as a green tea at times, as well.
Have fun with it. The Wild Monk has a been a great tea for us. The autumn 2013 tea was just pressed into 100gram cakes, too!! It’ll be a while before we see it, though.
I’m definitely going to have to pick up another 2012 cake before they’re gone :) I just tried steeping these leaves a 3rd time and they’re spent, so I guess I did way over do it on those first 2 steeps. I’ll adjust next time and see if I can get some different flavors out of it!
Hmm, I think the issue might be since the leaves are LOOSE it is steeping up a lot QUICKER than I’m used to! I think I’ll be able to tweak this one and figure it out at some point…
Stephanie, when I got it in the note Garrett wrote to treat it like green, so my temp was like 175 and very short steeps like 5 and 10 sec . No bitterness detected
Yeah, I’m used to having to steep the cake up quite a bit to get it loose enough to brew…I think I just WAY oversteeped this.
Hello, everyone!! So good to see you here!! This crop of wild monk mao cha is now autumn 2013. The wild monk cake is spring 2012. That explains some of the differences as the newest mao cha will be less oxidized than the 2012 pu’er which has undergone more oxidation and “fermentation”. We do have a lot of customers brewing up the mao cha at temps less than boiling (175 or so) and enjoy it very much that way. In China, mao cha is typically brewed with boiling water, bringing out alot of the tongue watering sort of effects and stronger flavors. The first time I tasted it like that, I was blown away and wasn’t sure if I liked mao cha brewed like that. Now, I really like it. But still, I brew this up as a green tea at times, as well.
Have fun with it. The Wild Monk has a been a great tea for us. The autumn 2013 tea was just pressed into 100gram cakes, too!! It’ll be a while before we see it, though.
I’m definitely going to have to pick up another 2012 cake before they’re gone :) I just tried steeping these leaves a 3rd time and they’re spent, so I guess I did way over do it on those first 2 steeps. I’ll adjust next time and see if I can get some different flavors out of it!