173 Tasting Notes
7.12g for this mini – Wow, this tea is smooth in more ways than one. First of all, the lighter notes of the white tea serve to smooth out the stronger raw pu-erh tea. But on another level, the bitter notes of the raw pu-erh are smoothed out by the sour Meyer lemon notes and the sweet and creamy caramel notes. This tea finds an interesting balance between the bitter, sweet, and sour elements. Yum.
Preparation
6.46 grams – The floral element of this tea struck me most on the initial steep – strong grassy florals. As I drink further on, I notice some apricot but this tea also leans in a grapey direction, and I get some caramel sweetness. The bite is pretty strong on this one and I notice some “aspirin” taste in the bitter element of this tea, reminiscent of the “Gas” mini I recently tried, but thankfully accompanied by a fuller range of other raw pu-erh elements.
Preparation
I’m drinking the mini version of this, which registers at 6.14 grams on my kitchen scale. Steeped in 16 oz water at 200° for 1.5 minutes 1st steep, 195° for 2 minutes 2nd steep, 195° for 3 minutes 3rd steep, and 195° for 4 minutes 4th steep.
Really reminds me a lot of a light-to-medium-oxidized oolong with strong apricot notes and a touch of green apple tartness. But it also has some of that signature raw pu-erh bite to it, and some lingering flavor with hay-like “zings”, which is great.
Doesn’t seem as complex as the 941 blend I tried a few days ago, though, and that one wasn’t a particularly complex tea. I might be giving in to confirmation bias, because going into this I know that this is huang pian, a bi-product, and thus a “lesser than” tea. But I think I’m being fair.
I think I could pick this up again because it is a good value for a raw pu-erh and I do enjoy this type of flavor profile.
Preparation
A sheng with apricot notes and zippiness sounds pretty tasty! The 941 must have been really good!
Yes, 941 was a solid sheng, I think. I have limited experience and haven’t ever tried any super high-end shengs, so your mileage may vary. It also struck me as perhaps “cleaner” brewing than most of the other stuff I’ve tried. Clear amber liquor.
6.16 gram per my kitchen scale. Tomato, honey, and malt/caramel is what I’m tasting here (in agreement with Cube’s prior review). Learning slowly from my past mistakes with these minis, I stretched the time on my first steep to 1.5 minutes at 205° in 16 oz of water. This seemed to result in a better flavor on the first steep, but the ball had was still not anywhere near having completely opened. A nice black tea with no bite at all. Seems closer to an oolong, as suggested by the vendor. I’m on my third “Dave-Fu” steep and I’m enjoying this one, just doesn’t really have any twist to it to draw me in or make this a definite repurchase.
Preparation
I wonder if it would benefit from mrmopar’s method of doing a quick rinse and then letting the leaves/ball/tuo sit in the steamy pot with the lid on to saturate and open up. I haven’t done any gong fu steeping in a while so perhaps I should give it a try with some of my little minis from Floating Leaves.
Nice peachy notes with just a touch of some tangy pineapple. Some hay. A nice white tea. This mini weighed in at 6.88g per my kitchen scale.
Preparation
Bumped up my rating five points, because as I am finishing the tea, I find it has some interesting texture to it and a nice lingering finish.
These notes are tempting me to place my first W2T order…
If you have the budget and the patience for aging, I suspect this tea will probably develop into something really fantastic when gets around the 7-year mark.
The 2018 Turtle Dove didn’t seem to have any rave reviews in prior years, but I would swear is is an absolute knockout at the moment.
Ooo, good to know! Thank you! I haven’t seen the prices, so I don’t know if I have the budget or not, ha ha!
I unscientifically weighed this in my uncontrolled kitchen environment on my small digital scale, and I found this ball to be 8.33 grams, compared to vendor’s promise of 7 grams. So I have some extra gas here!
Excited to try this, as I have recently enjoyed experimenting with the bitter Campari liquer in various cocktails, and found this to be a rewarding experience, so let’s bring on the bitter!
1st steep – 205° in 16 oz water for 1 minute – nothing much going on here. No real bitterness, not any sweetness, no aroma, no florals, etc. Just some barebones vague “teaness” here. Maybe I should have done a rinse or had a longer first steep. Will adjust next time, as I have four of these minis to play with.
2nd steep – 195° in 16 oz water for 2 minutes – Okay, here it is – pretty much a one-note chewing-on-crushed-aspirin type of bitterness. The brew is a noticeably cloudy looking amber color. Not too appealing, with maybe kind of a chalky texture. The bitterness is strong, but I wouldn’t consider it “mind-bending.” Might have been disappointing or annoying if I wasn’t expecting it. So far, I don’t notice any “returning sweetness” or really anything else but the aspirin.
3rd steep – 195°in 16 oz water for 3 minutes – More aspirin. The liquor is clearer now, with a better texture. Nothing else seems to be going on still apart from the aspirin flavor. I’m hoping to find a reward somewhere for hanging in there.
4th steep – 195° in 16 oz water for 5 minutes – Still got that aspirin thing going on, but it does seem to be fading in power and liquor color is still clearer and even better texture. But I don’t really notice any rewards for hanging in here.
5th steep – 195° in 16 oz of water for 5 minutes – I went ahead and gave this a 5th brew, because it seems to have some more “gas.” It’s a lazy Saturday at home, so why not? Fun to experiment with a new tea for most of the day. The aspirin has now very much faded and there is kind of the lingering elements of a basic raw pu-erh here, maybe something more akin to the 941 blend I tried a couple of days ago. I don’t really find this one too rewarding so far. I’m thinking perhaps I should try “flash steeps” as recommended by the vendor or change it up in other ways with the remaining minis, and I suspect maybe there is more here to discover.
Difficult tea to rate – If you are looking for a bitter, aspirin-like tea, then hell yes, I recommend this one to you. Otherwise, I would say no at this point. I guess I could maybe rate it a 75, as it clearly does what is promised. This tea is about the bitterness. I would rate it higher if I could find some other things going on, like some nice florals or some sweet elements.
Preparation
LOL
I know the taste of aspirin very well. When I was a child, my mother would cut an aspirin in half, put it in a great big spoon, drip hot water on it to make it start dissolving (no enteric coating back then) and then fill the spoon with pancake syrup. That was how she gave me aspirin! And I loved it. She didn’t have to fight me to take it! So I wonder if a dollop of syrup would be nice in this tea?
“A spoonful of syrup
helps the medicine go down…
Helps the medicine go down…
Helps the medicine go down…
In the most delightful way!”
White2Tea experience #2:
First of all – This is advertised as being 7g per mini. I weighed this, and I only have 6.40 grams here. That is a very large variance. I think it would be reasonable to expect a range of 6.95 – 7.05 grams or maybe 6.90 – 7.10 grams at the most, but a full .6? That’s a big deal. You are my drug dealer and you are under-filling my baggies. I am going to have to come over and open up a can of “Florida Man” on you or something.
I’ve bought small quantities of more than 20 of these minis from White2Tea, so lots of reviews on the way! Despite being a little pricey for me, I do like the pricing model in that you can buy very small quantities of teas to sample and you usually don’t get punished very much on the pricing if you compare price per gram to that of buying a whole cake. But if there is such a variance on the weight of the minis, not sure that type of analysis will hold up.
Steep #1 (16oz water at 205° for 1 minute) – Similar to previous reviewers, I get honey, some walnuts maybe, some autumn leaves, not a whole lot else. Kind of boring, maybe, but enjoyable enough.
Steep #2 (16 oz of water at 195° for 2 minutes) – Holy moly, this tea has really come alive on second steep. Now I get a really rich, kind of oily mouthfeel. Strong dark and woody notes – maybe rosewood? Kind of a pistachio-like flavor as well. This is really nice. Maybe the additional years of aging have been good to this tea?
Steep #3 (16 oz of water at 195° for 3 minutes) – More rosewood, more pistachios, still very nice. This is a great tea experience, my best one in a little while!
Preparation
Kind of perfumy, too – Some rose florals, which I am a sucker for.
Steep #4 (16oz of water at 195° for 5 minutes) – Pushed it probably as far as it will go, but still a worthwhile steep. More of the same notes.
I have never bothered to weigh my samples and tuo cha and such. I wonder if a big difference in the humidity could account for the weight discrepancy? It the air very dry where you are? Could it have been weighed in a very humid environment? I am not sure how much variance that would create, either.
Also, I plan to weigh my little bits and see how they compare!
About as dry as can be, where I am located – Las Vegas, NV. So yes, that could be it.
That being said, the 941 mini I drank the day before weighed in at 6.99 grams, which was in my expected range.
I think you may want to manage your expectations somewhat. Firstly, you reported only two data points, one of which was virtually spot-on, so a valid statistical treatment is difficult. With a greater number of measurements, made on multiple days with NIST-calibrated equipment that is verified daily, we might begin to consider the statistics. (I have worked as a scientist doing exactly this kind of thing in a quality-managed, audited, and ISO 17025 accredited environment, so I know what I’m talking about.)
Humidity aside, moisture content can be a factor, and if manufactured and portioned when the leaf was at 7% moisture, after which the tea spent time in a dry environment, it could easily have dropped to 2% moisture, a difference of 5 percentage points in weight. That is reasonable, and means a +/– of 0.35g for these minis, which is many times more than your expectation. Furthermore, statistical variance increases as numbers decrease, and 7g is not very much, given the heterogeneity of agricultural products and their tendency to stratify in handling (leaves, stems, and buds may all differ in weight density per unit volume, even when milled to a fine texture, owing to biological differences in oil, moisture, protein and starch partitioning along with wood density). Furthermore, in a production environment, weighing of product takes considerable labor time, so while high precision might be achievable in a laboratory situation on a given balance, achieving that same precision can be more challenging in a production line, with small weight targets. An overall +/– 10% error would not be unreasonable.
So by the time the material variably dries and reaches you, the variance could be as much as 15%, or +/– 1.05g, which is a full gram greater than your expectation. As you continue to measure your minis from w2t, you should find that the average weight begins to match the manufacturer’s claim, assuming your balance is calibrated and verified daily, and that your tea is stored stably so that it neither absorbs nor loses moisture over time. You would also need to analyze the progression of your measurements for evidence of drift and bias, and control the work environment for drafts, temperature and humidity vibration stability, static electricity, levelness of the balance, and cleanliness of your pan and tools. If those conditions are met and you are still dissatisfied with the observed variance after 20 or more measurements, then you might contact the vendor and enquire what tolerance their QMS permits, and what recourse you could have. But believe me, customers love to sue over this sort of thing, so vendors are pretty careful to document everything. You should, too.
TeaEarlGreyHot – Naw, I’m not filing a lawsuit, and I’m definitely not doing all that stuff you are talking about, LOL! Good point about the 15% up there, not that I have the knowledge to understand all of that, but I’ll take your word for it. I am going to continue measuring in my imperfect way out of curiousity, though.
@Kee: yeah, I understand! It really IS a lot of work to analyze and document this sort of thing to stand up to careful examination, which is why food manufacturers routinely send production line samples out to expensive labs where people like me are trained and prepared to make the careful analyses!
I mean, I know my scale must be fairly accurate considering that other things I have tested have measured more or less what they should.
That sounds like a pretty cool job, TeaEarlGreyHot!
TeaEarleGreyHot said it in a MUCH more thorough and well explained way than I would have, but I also immediately that the thought reading your note that approx. a half gram of moisture loss for a tea pressed in 2018 seemed normal to me. Now, if it was pressed in the last year or so I would definitely raise an eyebrow though lol
We love to experiment in this house! Before I knew we were going to have a thorough scientific explanation from TeaEarleGreyHot, I decided to weigh some of my tuos.
I started with my Oxo kitchen scale – far from lab quality equipment but fairly accurate, I thought. My tuo cha were not marked with any promised weight, but I thought it was reasonable to assume that they would be about the same weight as each other. Using the Oxo scale, there was so much variation even weighing the SAME TUO multiple times, that I gave up and got out my Upton Tea scale which is intended for much lighter weight.
Now when a tuo was measured multiple times the weight varied not at all or by very small amounts. HOWEVER, the range of weights for the different tuo cha were quite variable! These were made together, packaged together, and stored together. They varied from 4.6 grams to 6.4 grams, with most of them weighing between 5.6 -5.8 grams. I never even considered that there would be much variation! Those were from Floating Leaves Tea.
I repeated the test weighing foil wrapped rice ripened puerh minis from Upton and they were far more likely to be within .1 to .2 grams of each other. Very little variation.
I don’t think it will change my method as far as preparing the tea for my little home sessions, but it was interesting! Thank you, Keemunlover, for bringing this to light and giving me a chance to experiment and learn! I never even considered weighing the tuos, but then I also never weigh or measure my puerh. I generally just eyeball and adjust as needed as I go.
I’ve weighed my loose teas for a long time now, because I noticed it was very difficult to eyeball the correct amounts. Especially if you brew a lot of different varieties of tea.5 grams of black tea might fill a tablespoon, but 5 grams of a large leaf white tea could fill maybe 1/2 a cup. So to make my brewing more consistent, and to avoid wasting tea, I decided to start weighing it out. And do it was kind of natural for me to check up on the weight of these tea minis when I started experimenting with them.
@ashmanra, well done, in your explorations! Sometimes it can be a deflating experience to find that reality doesn’t match our assumptions or expectations. But what really matters is that we are able to reliably prepare acceptable infusions, which can also include the variables of water quality and temperature. This is why cooking can be largely an art. With pu-erh tea cakes, the makers try to make a pretty-appearing product, and may put large intact leaves and bud sets on the surface, with smaller chop and bits inside, and so taking a small portion from the cake can lead to great variation in tea properties, as smaller bits can age faster, while large bud sets can have entirely different flavors and aromas. Counterproductively, the more care one takes in selecting pieces and flakes of a tea cake, the greater the variation can be. I am sure industry insiders like @Roswell Strange could spend hours explaining the ins and outs of tea blending, but must also take care that they don’t give impressions that discourage tea drinkers or negatively impact sales, since every company faces the same challenges. Again my favorite example is the humble Lipton black tea bag, which has remained remarkably consistent over many decades — and it is no accident! Ditto Bigelow’s Constant Comment, which I have been drinking for some 50 years.
@Keemunlover, raised a great point that not every tea measures the same, spoonful by spoonful. Heck, not even every household cook knows or cares about the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, and may assume their dining utensils are actually calibrated, which just ain’t so. Again, it’s art vs. science, and what matters is the palatable (and nutritious) end product. I think all these variations can overwhelm folks, and is one reason the labeled directions remain vague. It can be cruel to imply that exacting proportions are needed when the end user has no exacting measuring devices, timers, and water quality. And yet it can seem cavalier to direct using “enough leaf, water, heat and time to create a good-tasting cup”. And yet, that is precisely the best instruction!
The TeaHouse Ghost said in a video “the tea will tell you” when he was steeping gong fu. Those are daunting words for a newbie! The tea speaks? How will I know what it is saying? But after a number of sessions your nose is trained to pick up high notes that warn of astringency if mishandled and other messages. And just when you think you really know how to steep your tea, one comes along and surprises you.
I do occasionally measure by weight. Whole leaf teas, white teas like shou mei, a long tai ping or a dragonwell…these required me to weigh at first but then I felt that I could eyeball it and get approximately the right amount of leaf for the vessel in use. Teas that were new to me also would get a weigh in for the first session or two.
Perhaps I should get my scale out more often.
CTC or smaller broken leaf tea I just measure by the teaspoon.
It is interesting how different drinkers measure their tea. My dad insists on using a scale. I decide how sleepy I am in the morning and brew accordingly, sometimes I get too strong of a brew, but I am awake.
Michelle – that is a oerfectly good way to measure your tea! :D
Okay, jumping on the White2Tea bandwagon here – A little late to the party, I guess. The company with the flashy and gimmicky packaging, often amusing but also frequently in bad taste. And a really horrible brand name. Not sure what it means, but doesn’t sound all that cool to celebrate whiteness. Especially in times of Trump and the resurgence of fascism worldwide. I was really worried I’d be wasting my time and wouldn’t like this brand, but I went ahead and took the gamble.
Well, so far so good. This is my first brew of White2Tea’s offerings, and this tea was kind of a make-or-break tea in my evaluation of the overall brand, as young raw pu-erh is my primary interest. Being their lowest-priced non-huang pian production of raw pu-erh, this one really needed to be a winner for me to be happy. White2Tea’s prices overall seem to run roughly 2X what I typically would pay for tea, so I’m expecting I should be able to enjoy these teas about 2X more than usual, or else forget it. I’m already really happy with Yunnan Sourcing and I’ll stick mainly with them if that is the case. But would be nice to have an alternative brand to change things up ocassionally.
This tea being their “budget” offering of raw pu-erh, it is still kind of pricey in my book, as it is running roughly $65/lb which is expensive by my standards. I’ve bought teas at $40 or $50/pound which I’ve thought were pretty darn fancy.
I am pleased to be pleasantly surprised so far, as this 2023 941 mini is a winner, in my book.
At $1 per 7-gram pearl, I can afford to drink this every day and it has a flavor profile which delivers the kind of things I want from a raw pu-erh. It also works well brewing with my hybrid “Dave-Fu” method. Brewed at 205° in 16 oz glass mug for 1 minute on first steep, and 195°at 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes on subsequent steeps. The fourth steep was maybe a little bit closer to dirty dishwater than I would like, but maybe I can play with the parameters a bit and see if I can smooth that out. If I can get three good steeps using my method, I’m a happy camper, and a fourth one would be icing on the cake. Don’t need more than that.
“Sweet grass” as described by vendor is an apt description, and I would add that I get some of those cotton candy notes that I enjoy plus hints of apricots, and some light and fuzzy florals, perhaps dandelions to go along with the grassy theme. The tea has a good amount of astringency with some light bitterness which don’t detract, but help to keep the tea interesting throughout your brews. I would consider this good everyday pu-erh for sure.
Preparation
For whatever it’s worth; Paul (the owner of w2t) has been pretty publicly anti-fascism, anti-Trump, and anti-capitalist. Before he started w2t he was studying visual art and he designs all the cake wraps himself. So even though some of the tea names/wrappers are fairly brazen and outlandish, there’s actually quite a few that are really thinly veiled tongue-in-cheek reflections of his views too.
This is one of my favourites: https://white2tea.com/products/2016-we-go-high?pos=1&psq=we+go+high&ss=e&v=1.0
As well as this one: https://white2tea.com/products/2020-good-man-in-a-storm?pos=2&_sid=0644af02f&ss=r
Supposedly the name of the company comes from a conversation he had where someone in China was teasing him for being a white guy so passionate about tea. Something like “too white to drink tea” which eventually because “white2tea”.
He’s not the main focus of this older article, but there is some interesting stuff in it about his background and philosophy towards how he sells his products: https://www.saveur.com/pu-erh-chinese-tea/
Sorry for the info dump – I just feel like it’s easy to miss some of those details about the company if you’re not looking for them or on the same social platforms he’s active on.
Thank you for sharing that, Ros! I have never ordered from them, but I will soon! I am late to the party, too.
@Roswell Strange, Thanks, I just knew there had to be more to the story! Can’t say as I’ve ever tried any w2t products, tho’ I may explore some samplers in time. But I need to focus on appreciating the puers that I’ve already got on hand.
**eventually became
Because of Ros’ reply, I did a bit more reading and found Paul’s blog, which has a lot of useful information that I’ve only begun to explore. Including this backstory post ( https://white2tea.com/blogs/blog/15-years-in-china ) and a preceding one on his charitable giving, relevant to the OP by Keemunlover. Very interesting and informative!
Thanks for the replies, Ros, Ashmanra, and TeaEarlGreyHot. I didn’t mean to beat up on Paul too much! I haven’t researched him very much, but I am sure he must be a pretty awesome guy if he is so obsessed about Chinese teas. Just giving the initial impressions I have of the brand and explaining my trepidation in giving it a shot. And my concerns as far as my personal “value proposition” relationship to the brand.
