yyz Send Message

This teas was part of a sample set of Dancongs I got on aliexpress after really enjoying my first one (an Osmanthus Dancong). I was hoping it might help me get an idea of what Dancings I prefer. So far I have the Osmanthus I love and a honey orchid which is OK but that I prefer to brew western style.

The name of this one is a little off putting , but there is an explanation of it here https://www.peonyts.com/what-is-phoenix-dancong-xing-ren-xiang/ and no, it does not smell or taste like its name. For English speaking markets it is often called Black Leaf Dancong. I’m glad I got this sample because the first few steeps are quite good and interesting and afterwords it tastes very similar to a Tieguanyin with slightly different spice notes.

I followed a sellers recommended temperature and brewing times of >95°C for 20s and probably used about 3-3.5 g of leaves so that they loosely covered the bottom of my 150ml Gaiwan.

The dry leaves of this tea are large bars of forest green to dark almost black green. The scent is a very clean, green floral with a hint f orange. It is very fresh, clean scent.

The broth is a hay toned yellow,

The scent is of a soft fruit and floral like some rolled green Oolong’s. There is magnolia, a hint of cinnamon, peach and a touch of orange juice. A soft floral is the dominant sent.
20s after rinse.
Magnolia, light mineral tone, orange juice, hint of cream, fairly dense mouthfeel, sweet underneath like it has a tinge of cane sugar.. Aftertaste of magnolia and oranges. becomes sweeter as it cools the orange also gets this orangina like tang that seems tinged with ginger.
15s. Magnolia with spice, hint of honey cream and orange.
Slightly sweeter than last steep, honeyed orange with a tint of peach meld into magnolia flavour which is less distinct. Very creamy. hint of woodiness, mixed with cooked spinach. The sweet orangey, floral scent is dominant and finishes in fresh ginger.
Gradually develops a warming feeling at the top and back of the mouth.

20s. Cream magnolia spice,orange
Creamy texture and taste orange tone to the forefront, with ginger, fading magnolia, honey, with spinach woody tone underneath very faintly. Flavour still quite rich at short steep.

30 s cream , strong orange, mineral notes, spinach, finishing with ginger.

40s very much like tgy soft gardenia/magnolia, cream spicy tones from fading orange ginger, light spinach, mineral notes and a touch of form. Still ginger in the aftertaste

60s cream honey magnolia, ginger spice and faint tinge of fresh orange rind. The tea still has a nice body.

90s more gardenia than magnolia, floral spice with a bit of nutmeg, cream, hint o sweetness, mineral tones and spinach.

140s. Similar

240 fading remnants of spice and floral, and vegetal notes.

I really liked the first few steeps of this tea, enough that I would like to try more of it and would even consider purchasing this one. I’m glad I picked up the sampler or I would have never tried it.

I had this tea yesterday and it seemed a little bit uninspiring , so I decided to try it again brewed at a higher temperature. Darjeeling’s often seem to have different characters depending how you brew them. This one was no exception, although it did not go through as extreme a transformation as some I have had. I prefer this one brewed at boiling.

After 3 min @92 °C, I had a tea smelling of bright muscatel notes, cocoa, grainy malt and honey with a maple coloured broth.

The first note was a muscatel note that was quickly overtaken by grainy malt with a hint of honeyed cocoa and an underlying bitterness. It seemed a little more rrobust, substantial and warming than some Darjeeling’s I’ve had. Brewed this way this is not really a morning or afternoon tea for me I can picture having it when I want something soothing on a crisp night.

Brewed with boiling water for 3 minutes, the sharp fruity notes of muscatel were much stronger, the tea tasted lighter and a little bit sweeter with a touch of sharpness and a milder but slightly more bitter maltiness underneath. There is a bit of a slightly spicy and bitter floral note underneath the muscatel. At this temperature there is a more interesting blend of fruity muscatel, grainy and slightly buttery grain notes, honey and malt. It’s more of an afternoon tea now, and certainly more refreshing.

This tea doesn’t resteep exceptionally well.

Thanks Sil for the chance to try this one!

When I was trying to find out more about the Lopchu white tea I bought, I happened upon this article while searching Lopchu Chai http://www.indianfoodfreak.com/2013/04/making-perfect-cup-tea/
Non of the chai recipes are the spicy mandala chais we think of here, but rather they are simply the participants favourite tea or tea blend recipe, preparation and additives. Someone suggested a blend of Lopchu Darjeeling and a CTC black and seeing as I have a ton of both. I thought I’d try it. I did a half and half combination and you know what it’s pretty nice.

The CTC I have has chocolate malt biscuit and dark cherry notes and Lopchu is quite sweet with brown sugar and cocoa notes among others and when steeped around 95°C you get the sugary sweetness of Lopchu black very a maltier thicker base. The flavours all compliment each other and it seems some what fruitier. Not that I need an additive for Lopchu, but at least I have away to use up some of my aging CTC.

This is quite a visually appealing tea appearing assilvery corkscrews of downy white tea that has occasional sneak previews of the spruce green blades thee leaves would of been if they had been allowed to fully open. The tea is beautiful to look at while brewing especially during the first few steeps while the tea is unwinding and the leaves appear to be dancing in the liquid while shimmering as though reflecting light.

The dry leaf smells of light roasted/ smoke insence note from processing, cucumber, something sweet and honey like, perhaps a white peach tone, and clover.

The first steep yielded a pale green tinged broth that had a strong floral scent of gardenia mixed with rose, and a light green scent llike sweet pea sprouts, a soft fruity plum like sweetness lay underneath.

It tasted of a green floral, over sweet plum with hint of roasted notes and a reference to sprouted sweet greens.aftertaste is a lingering sweet honey note. The flavour is light but pleasant. As it cools the green cool floral note mixes with a bit of cucumber with the more rounded sweetness remaining muted underneath.

The next two steeps were brighter and more intense with the plum tone more intense and the floral scent heading to freesia, the green sprout note and honey were still present.

The flavour was of freesia, clover, light pea sprout, cucumber, light plum, and had a more delicate sweetness. They were very floral, and slightly spicy on the tongue. There was a slightly thicker broth that developed more creaminess. Once again sweetness intensified in the aftertaste.

At 100s. the broth took on more of a yellow tone. The scent reminded me a little of a sunscreen I’ve had with freesia and a cooler green orchid, over plum, and a cream note. It was soft and floral with a touch of sweetness.

The flavour was of green sprouts, cucumber a faint hint of freesia and sweet plum.

The following steeps consisted of a blend of fading cool floral notes, cucumber and plum, with the introduction and then rapid loss of an artichoke note. By the last steep the flavour was quite faint and was more of an impression.

The finished leaves are thickened straightened buds.

This is a tea that may be appreciated by lovers of green floral Oolong’s, as it has a similar bite in the mouth and a lasting lingering floral taste.

Thanks boychik this tea is certainly beautiful to look at and I quite enjoyed it.

To be quite honest I didn’t find myself reaching for this very much as a hot tea, I think it was because of how the orange interacted with the base in such as way that it took away from the raspberry and made the tea a little bitter in such away that it demanded sugar to contract it.

As a cold brew it is a different story. I brewed this tea for just short of 7 hours. The brewed tea actually smells the same as the hiot tea with a sweet raspberry tone above a biting dried orange rind tone, but the taste is much different. The raspberry is the main event, it being sweet and tangy and very ripe tasting with the rose and orange blending together underneath it to give the tea a bit of a bite and a bit more of a complex nature. I quite like this cold and it does not need sugar! This will probably be the way I will finish up this tea.

When I first got this tea In was a little dissappointed as I quite like their English Breakfast and I love their Chai, but this tea when I brewed it my normal Assam way at about 92/3 min was relatively weak and dissapointing. Before I gave it away, I decided to give it another chance and brewed it at a slightly higher temperature for around 5 minute, like Ahmad’s Halmari Assam and it redeemed itself.

This one is a fruity, spicy, malty Assam. And has a deep almost rosewood red liqueur.
The scent is of cherries, sour plum, and citrus notes, malt , biscuit and spice.

The taste is relatively smooth with all of the above flavours, a touch of molasses for sweetness a very faint hint of floral, and only a very faint bitterness from the malt. This one is mostly red fruit, spice, biscuit and malt. It’s not an amazing Assam but it is a decent budget option. I’m glad I gave it a second chance!.

Otherwise they sell some of their teas at Whole Foods, Starskey’s, and Highland Farms that I know of.

I wanted so much to like this tea because the dry tea smells awesome like fresh juicy pineapple stored next to a sharp dried fruit, but in the end it is ruined by its base tea. I’ve tried this tea hot brewed at low temperatures and short steeps and cold brewed for just over 4 hours and the result is the same; the tea is ruined by its bitter base.

Ignoring that the cold brew scent is of a nice and juicy and a little bit floral pineapple. The better way to enjoy this tea is cold brewed, in this way the bitter notes of the base are tempered a bit by the sweetness and green notes drawn out of the tea, but even at 4 hours, the bitterness is there.otherwise the pineapple taste is actually quite authentic and nice. Oh well this is telling me that I should stick to the big active , bastek and perhaps Lloyd greens at the Polish store though I haven’t tried biofx’s greens.

I’ll stick to cold brewing this tea for the time being.

This tea is kind of interesting in the brewed leaf I smell the apple, and grape with a touch of strawberry, while I taste apple, grape, hibiscus, elderberry and strawberry, with the liquorice underneath making it slightly spicy and sweet. I was craving something tart, and while this is it isn’t overly so, it does deliver. It has three of the vilians of the tea justice league, hibiscus, rosehip, and liquorice, but here they are well used especially since I steeped it more than three minutes. I love how the ingredients work together to create a purple grape colour as well!

The dry tea scent reminds me of sweet tarts, tart and sugary with that tone that separates them from rockets. Brewed on the other hand this smells like my grapefruit puerh that I got from big-active ( a polish company). It has dry tangy scent from dried orange rind, something that’s a little bit earthy and gamey and a spicy sharp citrus tone underneath. The base tea smells fruity, with malt and biscuit. The fact that I can usually discern the base tea underneath the flavouring is one thing I’ve always appreciated about Nina’s teas.

After a three minute brew, there is a nice balance between the base and the flavouring and the tea is a deep orangey red.

I taste dried grapefruit rind over top a warmer sweeter fruitier tone that ranges towards the red grapefruit flavour mixed with a plum note from the base. A biscuit note from the base binds the fruit note to the malt lying underneath. Despite the citrus tones the tea remains smooth and mellow when steeped around 92°C, with only a mild astringent note. Altogether a pleasant tea that was warmer and richer than I was expecting. Thanks ’Laurent and Nina’s for the sample!

This tea was a pleasant confection of fruit beginning with longan dominating over a plum note and than switching dominance during the later steeps, consistent cocoa notes, butter caramel, that morphed to honey in the middle steeps, and ended in cane sugar, a roasted grain note, cashew butter, and malt that really only became strongly apparent in the later steeps and blended well with the plum cocoa notes. The early steeps were really buttery in texture and the flavours blended well together creating the impression of a sweet nutty, caramel cocoa confection with a bit of tartness. The broth does become thinner and slightly astringent in later steeps. Although this is a light tea it really does have a nice intensity flavours with my favourite steeps being perhaps the second and third one.

I steeped one heaping TSP of this tea at 92*C in 225 ml of water. The leaves are long, dark roughly wound, wiry strips that smell of cocoa and longan. My steeping times were 60,60,80,120,180,240s and 5 min. Onced brewed I had a golden broth touched by brown which became redder in later steeps. The tea smelled of longan, butter caramel and cocoa. Altogether a nice light tea. I especially like the nutty tones and the way the tea blends the cocoa, longan and caramel tones so that neither becomes dominant over each other. Thanks boychik for sending me the fall 2013 harvest for me to try. I am happy I have some of the spring tea heading my way!