Spring 2014 Jingmai Shengtai

Swap Session

Last night, I was drinking several teas along with this one; however, this was the only one which I made any notes on since this was the only one not being had with people via Google Hangouts. I had the time to make a few notes with this tea since I wasn’t preoccupied. I had grabbed a few samples from the “swap box” for the session online with tea people; however, since there were plenty of those samples leftover to review at a later time; this one wasn’t so fortunate to have had been enough for two sessions. ;)

Tea Notes: This one brewed pretty lightly when I had first started with the ‘basic’ temperature that I often brew my tea (195 F). After attempting to get more than a “light honey sweetness, but nothing else,” I increased the temperature to 200 F per suggestion of another. That did the trick. I had a lot more honey sweetness, a thicker mouthfeel, and a slight note of ‘sheng taste in the aftertaste.’ See, I don’t know what that sheng taste is per se, but I recognize it from time to time…..hahaha. Overall, this was a very nice session. I brewed it out about 10 times from last night to this morning.

A place to release some air: I’ve come to the conclusion that tea is among one of the few comforts that I have (reading & hiking fall closely behind) which give me an absolute sense of ease from the oftentimes unintentionally sought out chaos which befalls us in this world. I am at the point where I must stop purchasing tea and drink what I have (I’m 100% ok with this, though) and to learn to appreciate and feel fortunate that I have what I have (a practice on humility)….Anyway, I could go on, but I feel that this would overshadow the tea review, rather than becoming a place to rant and rave about my own misfortunes and eventual blessings which derive from them….

PS. Thank you to whomever swapped this out with me. My memory isn’t so great, so I forget who I swapped tea with. ;)

Got this among my Farmerleaf samples a couple of months ago now. This tea just failed to impress me. It was not that it was bad, it wasn’t. It is just that it wasn’t spectacular either. It is no longer on the website so they must have sold out. It did have an initial sweet note, but a mild one. About steep six a bitter note crept in and lasted a couple of steeps to again be replaced by a sweet note. Now I would not go as far as to describe these sweet notes as apricots, they were just not that strong. In some ways it was sweet in the absence of bitterness even. It was just so mild a sweet note it is hard to describe. Was there any qi to this tea? Maybe a mild qi. So far the Farmerleaf teas have just not been really impressive. I have drank sheng I would call impressive, this just doesn’t quite qualify. It’s not even me saying it’s not worth a try. IF you want to try any Farmerleaf teas I would suggest samples because so far I have not drank anything to motivate me to buy a cake. I am not that far into the samples. They now also have a shou for sale. Might be interested in trying that. Of course they may have only made a shou with leaves that weren’t good enough for a sheng. In the end I can neither recommend or not recommend Farmerleaf. They are not bad teas. I just had hoped for more from them.

I steeped this twelve times in a 150ml gaiwan with 8.4g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min.