Lapsang Souchong

My general opinion of any lapsang souchong is that it’s like drinking bacon rinds. After disliking my small sample, I passed it to a friend, who did the same to another friend, and I’m afraid it ended up fertilizing somebody’s houseplants.

Mum recommends boiling water, and big pinch is enough. Taste and nose evoked memories of slithering into my sleeping bag with a nice, comforting coating of warm campfire smoke.

Complete campfire on nose. And not elegantly so. Palate is more delicate… Fun but weird.

I really, really want to like this tea, but I’m not sure how I feel about the smell.

Lapsang souchong was my intro to loose-leaf tea, so there’s some sentimental value to a good lapsang. But this one kind of left me scratching my head.

As far as the taste, it’s very lightly sweet and smoky and has a delicate flavor. You can’t really add anything to it without overpowering the flavor, so it’s best taken straight. I’ve had several cups over the past couple weeks and I keep revisiting it, but it’s just weird. The best cup I had was brewed at about 5 minutes with water freshly boiled. Lower temperatures or steeping it for a shorter amount of time left it tasting really weak.

The smell is overpoweringly smoky. Almost like someone took a bunch of pine needles and liquid smoke (not a good one) and dumped it over tea leaves. The taste is fine if you can get past the smell, but the smell is too strong for lapsang. It smells like a campfire, but there’s something artificial about it. The more time I spend around it, the more I think there’s something chemical-y about it.

I’m not sure I would recommend it to someone wanting a good lapsang. I would probably recommend it as an ingredient for a good steak rub or to make a bourbon infusion with. Not sure I’d recommend it to any of my tea-drinking friends though.

Like the taste, but just can’t get behind the way it smells. It just makes me want steak.

Oh wow. This was a free sample from Adagio Teas. They basically said if I like golden monkey I would like this.

Boy were they wrong.

It’s a very complex cup, I’ll give them that. Woodsy, Smokey, Mushrooms, Earthy… But that smoked flavor and I are not getting along. Between that and the heavy mushroom flavor it’s like drinking burnt portabella mushrooms. This is getting dumped. Sorry Adagio.

To paraphrase Faulkner — there’s no such thing as bad lapsang souchong, but some lapsang souchongs are better than others. This one’s dry leaf gives pine, menthol, and camphor, and virtually no smoke. In the cup, the base tea is inoffensive, but the effect of the smoke is weird, to the point where I don’t know how to describe it. It definitely isn’t smoky, though, which kind of defeats the purpose for me. Glad I only got a sample.

I absolutely love this flavor. Brings me right back to the days of when I used to be at bonfires and having a blast enjoying watching them. Used to be a really nostalgic thing for me to come home loving being drenched in the woodsy scent and having it in my nose/mouth from the exposure.

Well- I absolutely am in heaven with the flavor. I only wish it wasn’t so caffeinated- I only got a half cup down before I wound up with a headache (I’m caffeine-sensitive, but black teas don’t bother me thankfully). So unfortunately I have to pass. My fiance absolutely loves the flavor of this tea.

It’s excellent for blending, though! :)

I was first introduced to lapsang souchong when a friend let me taste a Twining’s tea bag some years ago. I haven’t really had it much since then, but I always liked the smoky taste.

Now that I’ve been researching more about tea, I’ve learned about Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong, but have yet to have a chance to try it and in either case, I enjoy a strong smoky flavor.

I’ve had this particular tea from Adagio once or twice made western style, this is my first time having it gongfu style.

90C, 4.5 g, 100ml, first infusion about 10 seconds.

Well, it smells like smoke. Straight up. The first infusion of this is smoky and sweet. It’s like drinking sweet smoke. Or barbecue aftertaste.

In the second infusion, more of the taste of the actual tea shines through. Barely there bitterness, a bit of sourness. Not really getting much sweetness in this steep, but a bit of a sweet scent is clinging to the cup. I also let this steep go a bit longer than I intended.

Forgot about my third infusion as well. Today is not my day. Smoky smell and taste remain. I feel like pine is more pronounced in this steep. I can probably get some more out of it, but it’s about lunchtime so I’ll finish up!

I have been so busy this week. Even though I have been drinking a ton of tea, I have yet to post any new reviews until now. A lot of that can be chalked up to laziness. When I have had free time, I always seemed to find an excuse to do anything other than get on Steepster. Now I have a backlog of reviews piled up (again) and need to post them. This is one of my most recent sipdowns, and I wanted to start with it, so here goes.

I prepared this tea using a one step Western infusion. I steeped 1 teaspoon of this tea in 8 ounces of 212 F water for 5 minutes. I did not attempt additional infusions. I also tried shorter infusions around the 3 minute mark and will briefly comment on those. This review, however, primarily concerns the 5 minute infusion because I felt that one was the best.

After infusion, the liquor showed a dark amber in the cup. Pronounced aromas of pine, smoke, cedar, juniper, and toast were present on the nose. In the mouth, I noted more complexity and depth than expected. I easily detected notes of pine, smoke, tar, spruce, cedar, and juniper balanced by toast, caramel, malt, vanilla bean, and subtle spice. The finish was simultaneously rich and smoky, offering a pleasant blend of lingering wood, smoke, caramel, and toast notes. The shorter infusions were much milder, offering softer aromas of wood, smoke, caramel, malt, and toast. In the mouth, there were soft notes of pine, smoke, cedar, juniper, caramel, toast, and malt.

All in all, I did not find this to be a bad lapsang souchong. Granted it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it was still very solid. I did not notice any metallic, resinous, or otherwise off flavors in this tea. I kind of suspect that many of the overwhelmingly negative reviews for this tea came from people who either already did not like lapsang souchong or who were more or less entirely unfamiliar with it. Whatever the case, I really do not think this is a bad tea. If you have yet to try it and are looking for a basic, affordable lapsang, I would encourage you to give it a chance.

It has a very smokey, campfire taste. Maybe a bit too strong for me. No bitterness There was a strange metallic taste to it as well. I’ll try to mix it 50/50 with an Assam, maybe that will mask the metallic and mellow out the smoke. I don’t think it was due to the water because none of the other teas taste metallic to me.