This is okay; I first tried cold-brewing it and it was really earthy and tasted like kinda dirty and sharp and a bit floral, but anyways that’s not as important to me as brewing gongfu:
The first steep was decent, it definitely wasn’t awake and you could tell, since the body was quite a bit thinner than it should’ve been, but still floral and earthy;
The second is thicker, thankfully, and earthy, floral, tastes like stems of a flower.. Wait how do I know what those taste like? When have I ever eaten a flower stem….. I.. well whatever, that’s what I’m going with. It’s a little sweet, and a little sour, there’s even a bit of mint in the aftertaste.
The third is much earthier, and astringent this time, with a kind of gross sour flower aftertaste, but the soup does have a very nice mouthfeel,
I’m really enjoying how thick it is, I think this time I used more leaves than I usually would for any tea, and it’s working out nicely for this one, not that the tea’s all that great or special,
I’m getting about the same in the fourth, but with some grassy notes as well.
The fifth gives me a very astringent feel, a bit of tangerine, quite a bit grassier, maybe a bit of hay,
Shorter steeps lend a lighter, warmer, fruiter (a bit of orange, lime, cranberry) tea while longer steeps give a darker, earthier, floral astringent cup, I much prefer the shorter steeps; but I think this tea is giving me a headache……. in fact, it definitely is. But it’s okay, I gave the rest of this one to my friend. I don’t really like it that much. Also the leaves are really, really ugly like shou mei’s usually aren’t pretty like at all but this one is very torn and seems to have an abnormally large amount of stems. Not that that really means that much, but I mean at the same time it kind of makes me disregard shou mei and bai mu dan teas, well actually I don’t think it’s because of how they look but that contributes a bit wow I’m rambling so ..
Flavors: Citrus, Cranberry, Earth, Floral, Flowers, Grass, Lime, Mint, Orange, Sour, Stems, Sweet