2017 'Floating Point' Black Tea

Sipdown

Second session of the night…I really liked this one…I had 5 grams remaining, so I brought forth my ‘special pot’ (made by Inge Nielsen) for black teas. It’s about 80-90 ml, so I figured it’d be the best piece to use for the remaining leaf.

The tea really started out strong—malt, cocoa, caramel, and sweet notes—however, after the sixth steep, the notes backed off, a lot. I tried raising the water to boiling point and over steeping the leaf, but it didn’t do much. I remember this brewing much stronger in the past, but I also used A LOT more leaf per water volume, then. Heh.

Gongfu!

Thanks Shredsofmetal for giving me an excuse to try this sample out; you didn’t really have to twist my arm all that much for me to test it out and give you a summary of the flavour notes, but when you get to having 600+ teas sometimes it is hard to decide which ones to prioritize…

This wasn’t my thing – I gave it as much of a fighting chance as I could and tried to be open minded throughout the session but the flavour notes aren’t ones I particularly look for in a black tea, and I found that overall the whole tea lacked body/sweetness which just made for an ultimately very flat/dull tasting cup. The plus side, I suppose, is that it was very smooth and forgiving to steep – it was impossible to make it come out either bitter or astringent; and that’s a HUGE win for some people. I personally just needed some bitterness or astringency to give it any sort of life…

Here’s my instagram summary:

This was an inoffensive black tea with a mix of malt, plum, and black peppercorn notes – with the latter being the most consistently present throughout the session. Those peppery elements lingered LONG after each sip. Throughout the session the plum, notes went from “plum-ish” to becoming much more distinct, and a more raisin-y note was introduced as well. Some infusions had a note of pennies, as well.

Also – I brewed 7/5g in a 130ml gaiwan, for six steeps before I just couldn’t do it anymore.

I have one other black tea sample from Kuura to try, but so far I’ve enjoyed the Go Juice coins (but not this one), and I liked both Honey Jar and Ghost (the white teas). Honey Jar is by far my favourite thing I’ve tried from Kuura thus far, though.

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/ByXn1ClAtTi/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOYj7WfJQD8

As many of my followers may know, I generally hate black tea and avoid it at all costs. I’ve never bought any for my own consumption, and usually get grossed out at the idea of it.

However, I got a care package from Kuura and they included a mini coin-size version of this tea and I tought to myself, “ew”. However, I didn’t want it to go to waste, and it did smell decent. So I thought “why not” and gave it a go. Below is a photo for reference…

https://instagram.com/p/Bg4_lPCnsTN/

After taking advice from Char from Oolong Owl and James (@shredsofmetal), I dropped this 7g coin into my 100ml pot and gave it a go. For my first steep, it tasted watery (since the leaves were still compressed very tightly). But as the infusion times went on, the tea kept opening up to this sweet, malt-like spice infusion that continued to expand in the mouth. After a few more infusions, the flavors began to settle down and became smooth and velvety. Along with lovely tasting notes and a beautiful texture, this tea also had amazing energy — which seemed to wake me up!

Thanks to this tea, I will no longer be apprehensive to trying black tea again in the future. I now feel confident.