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After trying this tea in a gaiwan I decided to do the western brewing and steeped the heck out of it. I used out 3 grams and let it sit in the amount of water equivalent to a large coffee mug for 3-4 minutes. It produced a very lightly-colored yellow-green brew with a pleasant strong taste: grass, tulips, peaches, and a lot of naphtalene mothballs – but in a good way.
By the way, “but in a good way” became my perennial copout for an usual but pleasant taste… although my wife keeps making fun of me every time I use it after I described one of the raw puers to her as “It tastes like throw up – but in a good way”.

In any case, this tea is very forgiving to a long Western-type brewing, and while not as complex as doing it gong fu style it produces a lot of tea with intense pleasant smell and taste ( I got three steepings out of it for 3-4 large coffee mugs). A keeper for sure.

This was a nice ripe puer. I got it A.because I wanted to try something from Menghai and B. because it was quite inexpensive for a 100g cake. The taste is strong and pleasant, with fallen leaves and dry wood. No fishiness, not danky. Nothing too complex or changing over multiple steepings but still consistently pleasant.

My second oolong from Yunnan Sourcing and a very green oolong it is. This tea smells and looks like a lightly oxidized Ti Guan Yin but with a much stronger grassy component. The taste is quite complexand includes spinach, broccoli, grass, rubber, spices, grass, butter, something floral… And naphtalene mothballs… but in a good way.

This tea goes the distance and lasts for multiple steepings (at least 5-6) without losing much of complexity or becoming bitter. I started with a 20 sec. infusion but it was to short of a time so I transitioned to 25-35 secs afterwards.

All in all, it is a very tasty and fairly complex tea that is suited well for gong fu, which is quite typical for oolongs. It is inexpensive, distinct enough from a green Ti Guan Yin offered by Yunnan Sourcing, which makes it a good buy worthy of a reorder.

It was my first purple puer. The cake was not particularly tightly pressed but still required patience and my newly purchased puer needle to separate without turning half of it it into dust. The leaves are large and appear to be black but steeping reveals them to be mostly green.

I have not had much of luck with my puers so far: I stick to cheap products and in that range raw puer is barely drinkable and ripe ones are pleasant but rather lack in complexity. And this purple puer turned out to be a very pleasant surprise in that respect. First, its taste and aroma are decidedly different from other puers I tried. I did the short steepings (10-12 seconds), which produced an interesting mix of lingonberries, red currant, cranberries, black currant leaves and the overripe blackberries that were sitting in the hot sun for a bit. And some honeyed sweetness. The aroma is very intense and consists of the same components.

I got no less than 7-8 good steepings out of it. As usual, only the first couple of them were remarkably complex , but the next 5-6 steepings were very pleasant nevertheless, with the cranberry/lingonberry sourness coming to the fore in the steepings 3-5 , while last steepings were full of calming sweetness. All in all, it is a very interesting tea that gives you a very different taste depending on the duration and number of steepings, which gives ample space for exploration and experimentation. Every time I drink it I pick up something new., it is never boring and repetitive.

This is a very subtle tea. And usually I dislike the understated teas that you have to give your full undivided and focused attention to pick up specific variation in fragrance and taste (many greens and whites fall into that category for me). But this tea is very enjoyable in all its subtlety. The leaves have a malty and flowery sweet aroma and the taste is mineral, malty and sweet. It also has a wonderful and long-lasting aftertaste that comes kind of suddenly and has a lot of different components that I totally do not want to analyze.

What I like about this tea the most that it is very comforting, and “homey”. You seep it and feel instantly cheered up and happy – without any need to deconstruct and analyze. In short, I liked it a lot. Oh, and it is very forgiving with water temperature and steeping times – no need for precision.

The first green tea from China that I really enjoyed. The detailed description that
eastkyteaguy left for the 2017 version still applies. I will not go in such detail but just say that it has a great aroma and a really complex taste: floral notes, citrusy spiciness, spinach and honey. It also gives multiple quality infusions (with sweetness becoming more prominent in the later ones), which is always a plus.

Just a very accessible and forgiving (re: temperature, seeping time) tea for an extremely affordable price. I will probably order more.

Update: I had this tea a few more times. While I still like it a lot, the truth is that all of the complex goodness lasts only one steep in a gaiwan. The second steep is already markedly less interesting, and the subsequent ones are simply not enjoyable at all (one-dimensional vegetal bitterness dominates). Had to lower the score accordingly

I am not into green teas but still diligently buying them and trying to develop a liking. The greens are supposedly really dependent on being fresh so here it comes a new harvest, right off the fields, Spring Snail Bi Luo Chun.

It is a very good looking, fragrant tea. it is rolled into nice little heavy snails, making it easy to put too much into a teapot if you go by volume vs. weight. Both dry and wet leaves smell of umami, grass and spices.

The taste is the same. I started with 15 secs (5g/100g) and it was to short, resulting in the taste being mostly umami a-la sencha. Then I increased the time to 25-so seconds and hit the right spot, bringing in the complexity. The tea gave off 4 solid steeps.

This is the tea that is hard to grade: the taste was good but not great, while the aroma and appearance are top notch.

An interesting tea. The leaves are nicely curled and when steeped they are gradually opening up into large unbroken beautiful whole leaves. The aroma is very good and representative of Laoshan Blacks. The taste has dark chocolate, overbaked bread, sweet potatoes, flowers and honey.

First I tried steeping it for 10-15 secs (5g leaves in 90 g water) but , while exquisite, that taste was clearly not enough. This tea benefits from longer steeps of about 30 secs. Both the fragrance and the taste are pleasantly complex. The tea lasted for 5 steeps and the last two were markedly sweeter.

In short, this is the tea worth playing around with on the leaf/water ratio and the length of infusions; it would give something different under different conditions. The only letdown is the pale liquor: I like more intense colors in my cup.

This is supposed to be one of the Nepal teas that should be similar to Darjeelings but without all the associated price premium. The tea is very light and floral. It has a winning brisk fragrance of grasses, spring flowers (tulips?) and some citrus peel zestiness.

The leaf is very much green and, while it is sold as SFTGFOP, it consists mostly of broken leaves with a fair amount of stems, while the tips are quite few and between. Truth in advertising, anyone?

With all that in mind, the taste is well-defined and not bad at all. Herbal, grassy, notes of dry white wine with bracing zest and pleasant bitterness. You need to be careful with it as it requires some steeping time to show the complexity but let it sit a bit longer and the bitterness will overwhelm everything. Despite being a South Asian tea it lends itself much better to the gong fu style preparation with its greater control over steeping times. I was content with 15-20 seconds infusions. Young sheng fans with a higher tolerance of bitterness can go longer than that since longer times definitely result in more fragrance and taste complexity. The aftertaste is long and, again, reminiscent of young raw puers but with the addition of floral notes.

In the end, this tea comes off as a lower grade offering from a good tea estate and, while not quite displaying a complex flavor of Darjeeling’s, still has an interesting aroma and a well-defined memorable taste. It is a solid buy for its price. Unfortunately, I tend to prefer more subtle and mellow tasting profile of Chinese teas and, while recognizing all the objectively good qualities of Himalayan Bliss, only very rarely feel the mood to drink it.

The risky buy of the month. It is the cheapest 100g-brick of puerh on Yunnansourcing.us and for a reason.

First, the good stuff: it smells good. The wet leaf has a complex, multi-faceted aroma that is very enjoyable. No fishy smell, no pure decay.

Now, the bad part: it needs at least 5 more years to develop because the acidic tatse of the fermentation is there, ready to pounce and overpower everything else. Which is a shame, because there ARE a number of more subtle, interesting flavors. Unfortunately, the only way to bring them all on the scene together is to do super-short steeps of 5-10 secs, and avoid the boiling water. So, you end up “savoring” a weak puerh for a 2-3 steeps – after that regardless of your efforts the sourness pushes everything else in far corners of the palate.

Oh, and I forgot to add that the brisk is tightly packed and produces a lot of dust – and whatever is not dust consists of small broken leaf pieces and lots of stems. That is, even five years from now it will still be a low-grade puerh of a questionable quality.

The take-away: avoid this brick, there are much better shengs for just a little bit more money.