2 Tasting Notes
Solid little supermarket tea. I picked this up vacuum sealed for ~11 bucks at my local asian market. It’s labeled as a high mountain oolong but its way more roasted, more like a dong ding. I’ve only tried this once so far, I think I can still get a lot more out of it in terms of flavor by tuning temperature and time. You get pretty clear smokiness, some minor sweetness in later steeps with lots of woody-autumnal-floral fun. Nothing crazy or unexpected for a cheap oolong like this but I enjoyed it a lot. I’ll revisit this review after a couple more sessions.
Listen. It’s 10$/100gram asian market pu’er. Did I expect it to blow my mind? No. It doesn’t really seem to take any brewing method (Western, gongfu with tons of care, grandpa, etc.) and it comes in a jar. Most people know you shouldn’t buy this stuff, but I’m an addict. I tried googling it before purchasing, but nothing came up, so hopefully this gets indexed. Very weak tasting (yes, I know that’s not informative. It has notes of… dust (Yes I rinsed)? general unpleasantness?), basically irrespective of brewing time/temp. I have in my notes ‘Old wood. Maybe fake vanilla in another room?’ The only thing that changed between a 15 second and 30 second brew was the bitterness and astringency. You could maybe use this for kombucha? I wouldn’t. Again, it was very very cheap, available at my local grocer, and in a jar. I’m honestly just happy to see some kind of pu’er (even if its fake, which this might be) in a store near me.
Note: I put 7g/100ml/100c as my stats but I actually put this through several sessions using 5-8 grams, 80-100ml, and 90-100c. This was my main drinker for several days, so I think I can probably conclude it’s bad. It is tea and it isn’t rotten or anything, so I’m not giving it a 0. I put both raw and ripe here because it’s not clear which it is. I’d guess raw but I don’t want to speak for the manufacturer.
Flavors: Artificial, Decayed Wood
