1/21/14 Afternoon tea while cleaning my kitchen. 3g/6oz/190F/4min. First impressions. This tea is befuddling me. It brewed dark, and had an aroma, and trying to find the words for the tastes or scents is just… befuddling me. I"m glad that I still have a few more grams of it for some more cups. I like it, I think.
When I was 15, I got a job in a Chinese restaurant, and there were three different teas in the kitchen – the big urn that I brewed every morning to serve to any random person who ordered “hot tea”, the box tea bags that I brewed to order for VIP customers, and the good tea. The good tea was teabags that came in bundles wrapped in paper and closed with orange paper bands covered in Chinese writing, and the good tea was for the owners and their family, and anyone who ordered in Chinese directly from them instead of off the menu.
This tea reminds me of that good tea – I worked at that place for years, earned my up from kitchen/dishwasher drudge to second wok, and got promoted to good tea as well as cook. What is befuddling me is that the good tea was a fairly light jasmine oolong, and yet when I drink this dark utterly non-floral brew, that good tea is what rings in my tastebuds in my head.
So many words to try and explain how my reaction “this tastes like restaurant tea” isn’t insulting to this tea.