Brewed gongfu in a 170ml pot with unglazed interior at boiling.
Rinse (10s, half full): dark orange/amber tone
1st steep (15s): Pot aroma is shou with a maple syrup note. Color is a couple shades darker than the rinse. Flavor is similar – syrup/waffles, with the typical bready shou note in the mid/back. I havent tried the w2t waffles just yet, but if you told me this was it, I’d believe you
2nd steep (20s): Color is similar – dark amber, close to fully dark brown in the center of my glass fair cup, the edges are burnt orange. Flavor is similar but slightly darker – the bread dough note is more dominant than the syrup note now.
3rd steep (20s): Color similar – shade darker, maybe slightly more red note. Flavor is bread dominant, syrup in the background, and maybe something like a dark cherry note in the background.
4th steep (30s): Pot aroma still has the sweet maple syrup note. Color is a shade or two lighter. Same with flavor, although I think its revealing more of the background notes that I cant quite place yet. I think I need to push the tea a bit more
5th steep (45s, less water): Darker color again. ran out of water in my kettle so I only about half filled. Despite this, the flavor is still diminishing – mostly shou notes getting on the light side
6th steep (~75s): lightening again, I think this tea is just about done – back end of shou type notes
7th steep (didn’t count, around 2-3m): Lighter color yet, just normal amber, slightly darker than the rise steep I think.
Overall opinion: I started a bit more excited, but was disappointed that it quickly steeped into typical bready shou territory. To be clear, its a perfectly good (not excessively) bready shou, no bad notes at all. Just nothing spectacular to pull me into buying a cake whenever they reproduce it.
Flavors: Bread Dough, Cherry, Maple Syrup
