Dachi Tea

So I just brewed this and looked into my pot about four times… this has a roasted taste that is 95% the exact same as a roasted green tea in Japan.
Such an odd experience I’m having as I drink through a few ounces of this. While that was happening I decided to try it again because there is just no way… same exact conclusion, same taste, and I am just baffled…

So confused right now…

I’m not sure if it’s just my headache I am trying to chase away with this oolong… but I find the taste of this one a bit nauseating. I do feel honeysuckle is apt, but its almost sickly sweet and paired with an oolong so roasty it seems like a black tea. It’s not BAD it just isn’t impressing me. It doesn’t have the complexity I’d expect an oolong too… it’s pretty much a straight forward roasty honeysuckle.

I love being able to call drinking tea ‘research’ :)

This tea has the smell of honeysuckle before it is even brewed! The taste of both the oolong and the honeysuckle is present. Unfortunately this is somewhat dry and really rough to drink as one sips more. I really wish this was a little smoother because it has a nice complex taste between the dark oolong and honeysuckle.
This is one that I’ll send to someone else to verify the dryness.

This tea has a nice low key floral smell, but the taste just doesn’t do much for the drinker (being me).
I brewed this using water at 187f and didn’t seem to get much out of it overall which was unfortunate because I see pretty leaf in my teapot expanding but not doing much in regards to releasing great taste into the water. The taste is nice, but I wouldn’t call it great or strong enough to make anyone pick anything specific out about it.

This is one of the most interesting and delicious oolongs I’ve ever had.

The dry leaf fragrance is roasty with a hint of cannabis.

Again I steeped 2g in my 50ml gaiwan in 96C water for 1min.

The flavour of the first steep is complex – coconut, roasty, honey, granola, brazil nuts and dates. This is amazing, I love it. The finish is fairly long and carries the sweet notes through.

Second steep, 1min again, is quite smokey, almost like cigarettes except not unpleasant. The second steep lacks the complexity of the first.

Third, the complexity comes back with a layer of orchid.

I got I think five or six steeps out of this, but the first was by far the best and most interesting. I wish more of the granola qualities shone in the latter steeps – if I could get multiple steeps that were the same as the first, I’d be drinking this all the time.

I will need to try steeping western style to see what kind of results I get. Even with the less impressive subsequent steeps, I think I will need to pick up more of this.

Finally sitting down for a gongfu session with my Kickstarter rewards. We had another power outage today (second one in the last month, and third this year for this area apparently. Grump.) so I was really craving a cup of tea by the time the power came back on.

The dry leaf is tightly rolled green nuggets that smell sweet, floral very creamy.

Steeped 2g in my 50ml gaiwan with 96C water. The package directions recommend 3g for 150ml, but 1g just seemed like such a tiny amount of tea for this. I think 2g was a good choice.

Steeped leaf has a surprising smell of brown sugar and kale, but the tea soup is pale yellow and both tastes and smells like the dry leaf.

First steep for 1 min is floral, fruity and creamy, with a slight tang on the finish. It has a medium body.

Second steep for a minute again has a slightly tart note on top of the orchid and creaminess, though is otherwise very similar to the first steep.

Reading the tasting notes in the description, I definitely see how this tea evokes fresh air. It’s got this sort of quality that’s both light and substantial – hard to describe, but quite lovely.

This was pretty consistent through four steeps. For my fifth I reheated my water (I’d just been pouring from my kettle as it cools) and ended up with a nice caramel note and a not so nice melted plastic note. I was hoping a sixth steep would be good but now there’s a weird cardboard taste coming through.

I’m not sure what happened here. The first four steeps were lovely and definitely worth drinking, but I think I’m done now.

I made a pot of this last night, but I think I under leafed, because it was pretty light on the flavour, particularly for a highly oxidized, dark roasted oolong. I’ll try again soon, following their steeping directions.

I western brewed this a couple of days ago at work and wasn’t too impressed but decided it was probably human error and that I wasnt giving the tea a fair go brewing it this style.

This afternoon I pulled out my new teaware and decided to give this another go in the Gaiwan. Now we’re talking! Steeped for 1 minute at 204F the tea gave out some cocoa notes which became more pronounced as the tea cooled from the steeping temperature. Second steeping for 2 minutes and the cocoa notes became very apparent, a hint of honey started to creep in and there was a little more of a buttery mouthfeel at the end of the sip. Third steeping for 3 minutes and the liquor was much darker than previously and the cocoa notes started to fade into the background and I started to taste stone fruit and honey. Fourth steeping for 4 minutes and the tea tastes more vegetal and a little herbaceous. Would have liked to try a fifth steep but I had some errands to run and had to get moving…

This is the 2nd of the teas I received from Dachi Tea, and I think I like it better than the Sky High Oolong. This tea is also rolled into pellets which unfurl into broad greenish-brown leaves as it steeps. This one is roasted, and I think it adds depth to the flavor. At first I felt like it has an almost sweet, vegetal taste, but as the cup cooled, it tasted almost nutty. Anyway, of the two I’ve had so far, I prefer this one.

A while back I supported a Kickstarter campaign for Dachi Tea. I kind of forgot about it to be honest. I’m not an Oolong lover. But I figure I want to support new tea ventures, because TEA, right? Well, today i received a package of four 10 gram samples from Dachi, sent all the way from Taipei City in Taiwan to Fargo in North Dakota. I received this one, Iron Goddess, Frozen Summit, and Honeysuckle, and this one won.

My description might be awkward and amateur-ish, because 1) I have no sense of smell and thus don’t taste much and 2) I am still pretty new at drinking high quality teas. So, please bear with me as I try to tell you what this tea is like:

The dry tea is greenish, black, and golden brown leaves rolled into irregularly shaped pellets. I think these are called pearls? I put 6 pellets into a T-Sac and steeped in almost boiling water for 2 minutes. The resulting tea is very pale and delicate in color. The tea tastes (and again, please remember I can’t taste much because of no sense of smell) smooth. There is no sourness or bitterness in this tea. It is not cloying or sweet. It seems to have light body to me and a pleasant mouthfeel. I really can’t bear bitterness, sourness or astringency, so this tea passes my personal test for a good tea. I am really interested in hearing what a smelling person thinks of this tea.

Backlog:

I had this tea the other day. Dachi sent me their package ahead of time so that hopefully I’ll be able to get them some last minute investors in their Kickstarter! Check it out here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/highmountaintea/dachi-tea-the-high-mountain-experience

The package they sent is wonderful – all decked out in a beautiful metallic, coppery gift bag with their logo on it. It was like a little gift. Fun!

The tea is good too. This Dong Ding is sweet and nutty. The earliest infusions offered warm, toasty notes of nutty granola and notes of honey. Later infusions, I tasted butterscotch! Yum! I also picked up on a malt like note which was very enjoyable. A very smooth and pleasant Dong Ding!

You can read my full-length review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/12/31/frozen-summit-oolong-tea-from-dachi-tea/