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Got two of these in an envelope from my friend with a T. Rex postage stamp on it. He said he was sending me a “moolong”. Well, these looked highly suspicious, but they’re surprisingly good—probably because they don’t actually taste like milk! Just a light, creamy, fruity floral. Really unique. Wouldn’t buy an entire box, but these are worth a try if someone offers you a bag.

My brother went to Jungle Jim’s earlier this week and asked if I wanted anything. I told him to grab an assortment of loose leaf black tea from Vietnam, China, or Japan if he could find them and said I’d pay him back for whatever he bought, so he had permission to go wild. He came back with 3 one pound bags of thai tea powder, a 12 ounce tin of “high mountain oolong,” 40 sachets of non-descript black tea from China, and 3.5 ounces of wild Vietnamese tea. Everything else aside from the Thai tea powder sounded great! Mainly because I have never had Thai tea in my life and now I own 900 servings of the stuff, according to the package labels.

This particular bag is of “vanilla type” tea, and artificially flavored, so I started with it since it seemed the scariest. Didn’t follow any of the Thai tea recipes online because those also seemed scary. (I hate, hate, hate sweetened condensed milk and anise. Stay away from me, vile creatures.) So we’re going with a 1/2 tablespoon of turbinado sugar dissolved into a 1/2 cup of boiling water, poured into a 14 ounce thermos, with 6 grams of the suspicious powder added into a tea bag inside there and allowed to steep for a good hour. It turned opaque black, which is nifty.

So, if you fill the thermos up to the top with ice and then pour in half n half until you’re almost at the rim, wow, it’s amazing. And also the color of salmon eyeshadow. This is faaaar more tasty than it should be for ground-up oversteeped tea with artificial vanilla flavoring. These 900 servings are gonna go by quicker than I expected.

How is everyone else doing during this worldwide pandemic? We’ve got a shelter-in-place order going in Ohio, and while my line of work is deemed essential, I’m still going crazy on the weekends because of all of the closures and the lack of social interaction. This has somehow driven me to buy a bunch of fancy isopods and store them in little isopod houses made from sterilite bins and tupperware under my bed. If this goes on for much longer, I’m going to need to buy a shelf to hold all of them. Instead of riding my horse on the weekends, I’ve been taking her on walks into the forest like a 1500 pound dog so I can lift up rocks and logs to find nifty ‘pods. It’s becoming a problem.

About this tea, though. It’s lovely! And I’m not even a green tea person. The notes on this were “smoky, mineral, marine” if I remember correctly, and all of those are spot on. It’s sweet on the way down your throat with a pleasant hint of astringency when you first take a sip. Vegetal umami notes generally scare me away, but whatever the “marine” is here isn’t that bad. You mainly get it from the aroma. Smells like a fresh ocean and nothing of it is present in the actual taste. Love the peat moss smokiness, too. This is quickly becoming a favorite. All of the Vietnamese teas I’ve tried from Hatvala are, actually! The descriptions are spot on and the prices are very reasonable. Thank you, incredibly short supply chain that leaves you one step away from the original producers.

Haven’t drank much tea lately on account of getting bumped to a different position at work due to a torn medial meniscus. Tried dismounting my horse onto a fence after an after-work ride to save my legs from the jarring shock of slamming onto firm ground after a 5 foot drop, annnd I managed to screw up my ability to walk for the next 8+ weeks in the process. Can’t do my usual daily routine of drinking cold brews in a Komatsu HM400 when I’m unable to climb the ladder up to the cab! A stuffy office job just makes you crave highly caffeinated hot coffee instead.

On their own, these taste like stale potpourri. Very pretty to look at—not so great to drink. Added some lemon gunpowder to that in an attempt to make it palatable and it worked rather well. These are great for mixing into other teas and tisanes, but I wouldn’t recommend drinking them straight! (Or eating them, for that matter. Resist the urge to bite directly into a dry one. They taste like bitter powdery misery.)

The honey is front and center here! You can get a whiff of it at any stage of the tea making process, and the liquor is full of a golden sweetness. This is what I’m always looking for when I (foolishly) try another Taiwanese honey black. Just wish there was more flavor. It’s a bit bland aside from the honey and usual fresh wheat bread aroma that seems to be typical of Yunnan spring picks. Still a solid tea for the price, though, it’ll come in handy for mindless drinking next fall.

Feeling a bit too lazy to make a seperate listing for a batch that’s a year apart, so this is a review for the Spring 2019 harvest.

I’ve been dancing around hot gold Yunnan blacks for the past couple weeks. It’s definitely spring now, the days are 50F or a little above with the sun intercepted by some heavy rain. Cold brew teas with fresher notes seem more appealing than homey hot brews. Out with the sweet potato and yeast, in with the crisp fruits and florals.

However, I ordered this and a few packets of other Yunnan golds to try back at the start of February and they just arrived, and I’m not letting that seasonal weariness keep me away from new tea. The leaves are very pleasing to touch: velvety from the little hairs, they feel like the ears of baby goats. Admittedly sat there and stroked them for a few moments before actually brewing them. I made two 5 ounce steeps in a gaiwan and poured those into a mug instead of basket-infusing for once.

This is pretty mild as far as heavy golden blacks go. Starting to realize that they aren’t my favorite because they become hard to drink when the flavor is too intense, but this one is quite light! And terribly smooth. It tastes a bit like wheat bread, in a pleasant way. The last sip in the cup was almost syrupy sweet. A very nice tea to accompany a meal on a chilly day. Probably going to save the rest of the bag for the next cold snap, because I don’t think it’s meant for the warm seasons.

Made this as a cold brew overnight. When my Yunnan Sourcing box arrived yesterday, I glossed over most of the teas and spent a good 5 minutes huffing the aroma coming from this bag like some kind of lunatic. So sweet and gently floral with hints of watermelon. I can’t get enough of that scent.

The tea itself is delightfully delicate. Very pale liquor with a light honey hue, incredibly fragrant when you open the lid to the cup. It’s not unlike sniffing a bouquet. The taste doesn’t disappoint: you get honeydew melon, white florals, and a pleasant sourness with hints of dillweed right off the bat. I know that combo probably sounds horrible, but it really works! And that’s coming from someone avoids weird, savory tea notes like the plague.

I could see myself buying a big bag of the Spring 2020 harvest when that comes out, but honestly, it’s so good that I’d rather savor it by drinking it sparingly. Gotta preserve the magic of a wonderful tea.

Bought this for the blackberry note, but the yam and honey taste was the most prevalent thing in the liquor. It has a lingering sweetness that sticks in your throat after you swallow and that pleasantly funky flavor and aroma that all Taiwan blacks seem to have. Almost like the old paper in an ancient book that aged out of the musty stage. Starting to think that Taiwan blacks aren’t for me because of this note, but that’s alright, this one was a pleasant experience.

I’ve tried this hot and cold brewed and it was fantastic both ways. It’s not a complex tea by any means, there aren’t subtle notes and hints of different flavors that peek out from the body. No, everything is sublimely blended into a perfect black tea. It’s incredibly smooth and easy to sip at any temperature. The flavor is a lovely chameleon that suits any mood and any season. Nothing like the other wild blacks I’ve tried. Really, really enjoy this; especially for $4 an ounce!

This was my cold brew yesterday, since I’ve been alternating between shan tuyet and lemony gunpowder for the last few days. The tea itself is very pretty and I love the tin. Mainly bought this for the tin last year. The smell is definitely fruity, you can detect that blend of pineapple and coconut but can also tell that they’re the flavoring versions of the fruits.

Had to break out the gram scale for this one because of how light and airy the tea is. 3 grams for 16 ounces of water was either too much or too little because it somehow tasted like cinnamon. A hint of pineapple, some coconut if you thought of coconuts while taking a sip, and a definite cinnamon note that overshadowed both of them. That’s a concerning thing to taste in a light tropical fruit green, so it made it hard to finish, but it’s still drinkable. Probably going to be mixing lemon juice and maybe a touch of honey into pitchers of this from now on. Assuming it would be good in the summer like that. In the middle of winter as a plain cold brew, ehhh, not so much.