Today I was watching my caffeine at this hour so I picked out something I bought on EBay, a 2016 Tea Flower Cake. While this cake made the claim of being ancient tree I don’t know if it was true or not. It might be true because I don’t think the tea flowers from any age tree are worth much and I didn’t pay very much for this tea cake. The tea flower tea has an unusual taste. It was a little unpleasant at first but got somewhat better, even sweet to some degree. Kind of a mushroom sweet I would say. I specifically bought this for times when I wanted tea but couldn’t have caffeine because tea flowers have so little caffeine as to be basically decaf if not quite caffeine free. Still I didn’t take any chances and only steeped it five times. Despite being from 2016 it brews up very dark in color. If this was sheng yoou would think it was ten years old from the color of the tea. In the end I didn’t mind this tea as something to drink but I would rather have had ripe puerh if there were such a thing as decaf ripe puerh. I worked early today not having time for tea in the morning and got home too late to risk having any significant caffeine so this seemed the perfect choice. If nothing else it was a chance to try out the new gaiwan I bought the other day at Clipper Ship Tea Company.
I steeped this five times in a 180ml gaiwan with boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, and 15 sec.
