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THIRD STEEPING:

As feared, this steeping looks great and smells great, but is quite weak. Not the tea’s fault, of course, not all teas are meant to last this long. There’s nothing wrong with what I can taste here, I can just barely taste it.

SECOND STEEPING:

Today has been insane. So it took several hours to get to my second steeping.

I am putting 2:30 for time, but that’s a guess. I set the timer for 2 minutes but it took time to set up the pour and make the pour. So it’s a bit longer than 2, but not 3.

The brew is again that deep amber honey color. The leaves still have the same aroma, amazingly enough. So does the cup.

Wow. Completely different cup from the first steep. All the astringency is gone. This is a soft, subtle, open, earthy cup with just only the most lingering hint of anything living (call that green, floral, fruity, sweet, whatever it might be, as opposed to dead things which are earthy, nutty, roasted, &c).

This is a really delightful cup of tea, but it leaves me apprehensive that a third steep will be weak and insipid or bitter and harsh. Worse, both.

Given that this tea almost looks like gun powder green when dry, I was extremely dubious about the two minute steep that TG recommends.

The color of this dry leaf is the kind of thing that makes you “get” why people become obsessed with amber jewelry. You know, the real stuff, the gnarly old stuff with four million year old mosquitoes fossilized in it. The stuff that looks like you live in a world of frozen honey.

The nose of the dry leaf evokes a similar sense of a slowly oozing, encompassing world of honey, and yet, not sweet.

Despite my concerns, the two minute steep produced a deep, dark brew. The color is like amber buckwheat honey (seeing a trend here?)

The nose on the brew also immediately makes me think of buckwheat honey. Also the tiff, sourdough flat bread you get in Ethiopian restaurants.

And yet, the notes on the tongue are not sweet at all! Astringent without being bitter, again, that tiff sourdough tang, not malty, almost hoppy, like an IPA or hefeweizen.

Given the short steep, I expect later steeps to open up some more subtle notes. I just hope I got all the water out of the pot into my cup so the leaves aren’t sitting there oozing bitter tannins on me.

For being a “mere” GOP, this tea has a lot going on.

Btw: The batch I got is clearly nothing like the batch that “teatimetuesday” got. Even the dry leaf looks nothing like what is in his photos. In fact, his photos don’t match the website photo, either, which makes me wonder if he got an off batch.

SECOND STEEPING:

This steeping is a bit weaker (duh) and much less dusty/dry. All those images I mentioned before are there, but they have been softened by an emerging dried fruit, I want to say papaya. You know, that kind of chewy, dense fruity sweetness that seems like it should get totally overwhelming, but never quite does? And it isn’t all wet and sloppy like fresh fruit is.

Wow, I’m turning into a total nut ball trying to talk tea.

This was one of my “go to” teas when we were fortunate enough to live in Chicago and frequently be in the neighborhood of the TeaG retail shop on State St.

Unlike most white teas, this is not a sweet, floral tea. This tea makes me think of very dry, brittle autumn leaves, the inside of a barn that has soaked up an entire summer’s worth of sun (old hay, dust, they way hot, dry boards smell), and the pie judging tent at the 4H fair.

This is actually a tea better suited for an unexpectedly cold, blustery day than for the explosions of spring, but I liked it so much in Chicago I had to include it in my order.

One thing to be aware of, the leaves are not rolled. At all. So this tea takes up a LOT of room, while dry. I bought 100grams and it doesn’t fit in the tin I can usually get 250grams of tea into.

SECOND STEEPING:

I used only 8oz of water this time, to the same leaves. Still 70c temperature but bumped to 3 minutes instead of 2.

The result is much more what one would expect, so I think I just flooded the first batch. 2 minutes 30 seconds might have been better, though.

The notes I gave before still apply, they are just much more present in the cup this time. There is a creeping bitterness here that is not unexpected in a second steeping.

I received a small sample of this tea with my recent order.

Even though I used a fairly small pot (600ml, roughly 2 and a third cups) I think this sample wasn’t enough leaf for that much water. The steep is a bit weak, and I’m blaming the water to leaf ratio, not the short steep time or water temperature. I can taste that the notes are correct, just not as present as they should be.

This is one of those bright, Chinese greens that hews more towards fresh hay than grassy. I want to use trite words like floral or sweet, but they’re wrong. I just want to use words like that to emphasize how completely unlike a Japanese green this is (which is what I usually drink) and also how much unlike a roasted Chinese green this is, despite being pan fired. It is really more like a peony white tea with a bit of a fresh hay rather than dry hay flavor to it (that greenness vs. whiteness thing).

I learned yesterday that there is such a thing as “yellow” tea, which attempts to catch the health benefits of green tea but with the flavors of white teas. Apparently a vanishing art due to limited market and expensive processing ~ much tea is now sold as “yellow” that is actually green but is very yellow-esque. I think a less reputable seller could sell this Mao Feng as a “yellow” tea. It really is straddling that fence between white and green.

I wish I had more so I could steep it correctly. Maybe I will pick some up in my summer order.

Sigh… my big shipment from TG arrived this evening, and I’m trying to avoid much if any caffeine this week. Oh well.

This, to me, tastes pretty much like all herbal teas taste. Call me a snob, but to me they all taste the same, and this is how they taste.

But I am fighting off a cold, so here I am.

I used the pyrex technique again.

The leaves open up completely. It looks like you could reconstruct a tea bush from all the pieces.

This comes out much softer this way. The resulting cup is not weak or boring, but the tea tastes less like an oolong and more like a white tea; albeit a very forceful white, if it were one.

I really like it this way.