Wonderful black from Song Tea. I had no reservations about the quality as I had been lucky enough to sit for a tea tasting at the shop that went on for about 2 hours – a really lovely experience. These people are serious about tea.
Unfortunately, yet another tea that I should have been brewing way earlier. This is why I don’t want to buy any more tea for now – I have so much that some really excellent teas end up languishing in my cupboard for way too long.Brewed this up according to vendor instructions, using my small gaiwan (~100 ml, ~3 g), 1.5 minutes for first and second infusions, then 2 minutes for the third. Keeping in mind this tea is probably way past it’s prime, there was no bitterness at the 1.5 min brew time, but started to get a bit too tannic at 2 min.
According to the vendor notes, there should be cinnamon, cherry and mint notes. I’m getting cherry for sure, and a tiny bit of mint, but no cinnamon, which is fine with me. Getting warm caramel sweetness instead, which is heavenly. Again, this tea is already over 3 yrs old (!), so no telling what it would have been like had I opened it much sooner, and since I didn’t taste this one at the shop, I’ll guess I will never know! Still, very happy with it, it’s warm and comforting, which is exactly what I need right now.
Flavors: Caramel, Cherry, Mint
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Update: After brewing this western style (I know, I know), for just one infusion, I decided to take the brewed leaves and cold brew them for some iced tea. First of all, Eighteen is great even without brewing it gongfu. And more importantly, those leftover leaves made a heavenly iced tea! I mean, the sweetness and honey was awesome. So enjoyable and I can feel pretty good about using up those leaves differently. I don’t think cold brewing from the start is a good idea – you need to kind of get the leaves going with a hot infusion first – but what an amazing iced tea it makes doing it this way.
Update: After brewing this western style (I know, I know), for just one infusion, I decided to take the brewed leaves and cold brew them for some iced tea. First of all, Eighteen is great even without brewing it gongfu. And more importantly, those leftover leaves made a heavenly iced tea! I mean, the sweetness and honey was awesome. So enjoyable and I can feel pretty good about using up those leaves differently. I don’t think cold brewing from the start is a good idea – you need to kind of get the leaves going with a hot infusion first – but what an amazing iced tea it makes doing it this way.