kuanyin Send Message

kuanyin drank Tangerine Blossom by Shang Tea

38 tasting notes

This is a choice for when you want unique and when you want to savor the exceptional. Mildly uplifting, perfect for early evening when you want to recharge from the day and yet still be able to go to sleep later. Red teas are like that for me. This one is even milder than most red teas, but I found it to also have an herbal, almost medicinal quality. Medicinal doesn’t sound appealing, but it starts off in a way that you aren’t sure that you really like, so you keep slurping and slurping and it’s gone before you know it and you want more. The tangerine element balances the herbal, and then you have the underlying red tea body. I want to enjoy this tea just often enough that it remains a special treat.

Preparation

195 °F / 90 °C 2 min, 30 sec

I Like This

2 likes

0 comments

People who liked this

Profile

Bio

I live in Kansas City Mo and am currently obsessed with black tea. I’ve been going through phases. I liked keemun and now I don’t. I’m trying to use them up by adding some golden Yunnan needle to cut the smoke quality. I quit drinking coffee because it affected my blood sugar too much and I’m finding that the really stout teas do too. So Assams and some of the blends are tricky. Right now the Chinese red (black) teas are my current passion. After worrying over the perfect timing for each tea, I have found that I love black tea added generously, brewed at boiling for three minutes for the first infusion and five for the second. Life is so much simpler now and I am enjoying the resulting tea much more than when I was brewing it longer. I do add sweetener, usually Teavana’s German rock crystals, sometimes palm sugar or other experimental alternatives. For my black tea in the morning, I use an infuser basket and an iron teapot. It may not be ideal to basket the leaves, but morning is not the time to be fussy and labor intensive.

Oolong is pretty wonderful too. Especially in the evening. I have some Yixing pots for my evenings, that I really enjoy. One for greener oolongs, one for darker oolongs and one for black teas. Teapots are another obsession, can one have too many? I have a paper porcelain that is perfect for green teas and just got a wabi sabi teapot for flavored teas. I have some larger teapots that I’m finding I just don’t use because I’m the only one in the house that drinks it, so I’m concentrating on smaller ones now. Especially for evening, I like to brew a serving at a time and I prefer a small teapot that with a strainer spot. Then, if I don’t reinfuse, I haven’t wasted as much.

Some of this background helps understand the reviews, I think.

Location

Kansas City MO

Moderator Tools

Mark as Spammer