Amber Hwang Cha

Sipdown. Last of the leaf of this was added to another black to use it up. It added some creaminess to the cup.

I got this tea from the LiquidProust group buy but after trying it I really want to purchase some of this tea just for myself. To me this tea tastes a lot like the GABA Oolong from What-cha. Full of cherry/baked cherry notes a beautiful roast and a little bit of a hint of a black tea. This tea is quite complex and really tasty. It doesn’t have a lot of longevity but the steeps that you do get are quite delicious.

Took me a bit to figure this one out. I messed up one gongfu session with it – I think I underleafed. Tried Western style and was unimpressed. Finally, I stuffed as many leaves into my gaiwan as I could, and now its personality is starting to shine. This little guy needs plenty of leaf! A 60ml gaiwan is perfect for such teas, especially when you are frugal (cheap) like me.

Overall, the Cliff’s Notes version of this tea is that it is a nutty black tea. Actually, it sort of smacks you in the face with nuttiness, especially in the first few infusions. I like teas with that kind of power.

Beyond the nuttiness, it has quite a bit of complexity and definitely separates itself from other black teas. it has some interesting fruit notes as well as interesting sweet notes, with hints of caramel, brown sugar, bruleed marshmallow. Every once in a while, it has a very nice tartness to it, but it sort of comes as a surprise – it is not always there and it arrives at random times.

I’m getting to appreciate this tea more and more. It just shows that fiddling around with your brewing parameters will usually pay off with teas that aren’t coming out right.
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Dry leaf: raw walnut; musty, dried dark fruit (raisin, date), some tangy red fruit (red currant); hints of baking spice and milk chocolate. In preheated vessel: some roasted almond nuttiness, tangy fruit more prominent (red currant, mandarin orange)

Smell: roasted almond, cherry wood, bruleed marshmallow

Taste:
Arrival – roasted almond, cherry wood
Development – cherry compote/pie filling, bruleed marshmallow, dark caramel
Finish – all flavors get wiped out
Aftertaste – light red fruit (raspberry, cherry), hint of caramel and brown sugar sweetness, woody notes remain. Some hints of melon (honeydew, cantaloupe).

After a sessions of raw puerh I reached for an oolong to be refreshing and I grabbed this… well, this is more like a black tea with some texture to it. It’s 1am and I’m half asleep, and probably shouldn’t be drinking tea, but this stuff is quite tasty and it gets bonus points for being from South Korea.

I think this will make for some awesome cold brew as well! Maybe that’s what I will do tomorrow… cold brew South Korean teas.

From the LiquidProust 2017 Regional Oolong Group Buy.

The dry leaves smell sweet and sightly woodsy more like an oak barrel than a forest. I’m excited to try a dark tea from South Korea and immediately brew up 5.5g in my 200ml ceramic kyusu.

The liquor infuses into a very pleasant amber color like Lipton done right. The aroma continues to be subdued, only giving me the same oak like sweet malt I got in the dry leaf. It has a fairly thin body and drys the mouth a bit. The taste is at the same time familiar and unique… It takes me back to sitting around the yellow 60’s dining room set having Tetely with milk and sugar as a young child with my grandmother… but at the same time fits my current much more snobbish palette. The tea is malt forward with a wet not overly assertive cinnamon and a balance of a tannic bite with a oak like smoothness and lasting sweetness.

At the third infusion the malty sweetness turns into a bit of fruity tartness , but turning the water temperature to 200F brought it back into that malty sweet spot. Flavorful for about seven infusions (1.5-1.7L of water) with the last two being several minute brews.

My comparisons to bagged black tea were not made in malice, quite the opposite in fact. I think a lot of tea drinkers would appreciate being catapulted back through memories while still being able to genuinely enjoy this tea. This is not a daily drinker, but rather a tea I would love to curl up with on a cold winter day and just for a little while bask in the warmth of my childhood and my grandmothers embrace, forgetting about the million things that are weighing on my adult mind.