Bitterleaf Teas

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A really nice example of 陳韻 (“aged appeal”, or the smooth, mellow texture that is created as a result of aging) in pu’er. Not a particularly sweet pu’er, but absolutely no bitterness and incredibly smooth. The flavor is like dried Chinese dates and molasses. A subtle aged Bai Mu Dan flavor (like dried lavender stems) is revealed in the finish. Very subtle but lingering 回甘 (sweet finish). A relatively pricey tea, but very pleasant to drink – smooth, understated, and very comforting.

For a key to my rating scale, check out my bio.

First tea I’m trying out of my big Bitterleaf order. Probably the best Yiwu I’ve had (though I have not done much exploration of that region yet). Now that I’ve ordered 2016 teas from White2Tea, Bitterleaf, and Crimson Lotus, I think I’ll finally be able to lay off ordering for a while. I brewed some of this baby up in my Jianshui teapot – 6.6g to 100mL.

This tea is pretty consistently sweet and soft from start to finish. I got some honey and mineral notes for the sweetness. Often those kind of came together and reminded me an awful lot of graham crackers. I didn’t note any astringency, which is nice for such young puerh. In a couple of the middle steeps I sometimes got just a slight sour finish. Every once in a while that sourness took on a bit of a fruity character, but I could have just been imagining that. The body is pretty good, but not amazing. In the first half of the session, it has a bit of a buttery taste/texture as well, which I really enjoyed. Not thick and oily, but kind of silky. The tea starts to die off around 10 or 11 steeps, so pretty standard longevity. I noticed a bit of a buzzy feeling building in my upper body towards the end of this session, so I’d characterize the tea as having a gentle, slowly building qi.

Glad I get to try Bitterleaf’s tea, and if this cake (and Diamond Cutter, which I’ve already had) is any indication, there’s going to be some really good stuff in my box from them. At the current price, this cake is a hell of a deal, and I could definitely see myself picking one up next time I make a Bitterleaf order.

For a key to my rating scale, check out my bio.

Amazing value ($0.10/g) and surprising complexity. Because it’s made with the 黄片 or older leaves of the tea plant, it’s less punchy with more sweetness and viscosity. Overall very sweet and aromatic but with some notes of moss, cedar, oak, menthol, etc. to keep things interesting. Highly recommend.

Crazy game update time! Yesterday I woke up early, as Ben was leaving it caused me to become awake enough to have to go to the bathroom (tea drinkers woes) and I saw my phone was blinking up a storm, the Minecraft update had arrived…and my desire to go back to sleep left. New blocks and banners make my builder self happy (though so bummed about no purpur blocks, I neeeeed them) and the Chinese Mashup Pack was beautiful, but with almost all the really thematic textures it makes my world look so tacky so I didn’t buy it. Tempting though for a new world full of Chinese builds, but I have enough to do on Ramble, even if it does mean no Jianshi zombies. Later that night, unable to sleep, my phone starts blinking like crazy…apparently Ark Primitive+ got a massive much needed update to fix the enormity of bugs, so I keep bouncing between Minecraft and Ark and that is more or less my life right now!!

It is probably well known by now that I have a ‘thing’ for purple tea, and it is not just because it gives me a reason to shout ANTHOCYANIN like a battle cry, there is something about this flavonoid pigment that subtly alters the taste to a way that makes my brain happy. It is no shock that many of my favorite foods and flowers (and edible flowers) are loaded with Anthocyanin, so of course teas with high levels of Anthocycanin have to be tried. And they do taste different than their less purple associates, no matter how it is processed, I once tried a Kenyan Silver Needle and a Kenyan Purple Silver Needle from the same farm and year, and yep, definitely a difference in taste, so it is not just a visual difference. This all leads up to today’s tea from Bitterleaf Teas, Dragon Blood 2015 Spring Lin Cang Zi Juan Raw Purple Tea. Zi Juan (which is one of the names for Purple Tea, along with Zi Ya, and Zi Cha) can be processed like any tea (ones processed like a Hong Cha are a personal favorite) and this one is processed similar to a Sheng Puerh, similar enough that I brew it like I would a young sheng. Before brewing though, I need to give the beautiful dark leaves a good sniffing, and I am greeted with a smorgasbord of notes! Grilled eggplants, fresh sage and oregano, distant almost perfectly ripe peaches, basil, lettuce, and cooked tomatoes. It smells like a veggie kebab straight off the grill on a summer day, I want to eat the leaves, it is so savory and that slight sweet edge from the peach note is delectable.

After the rinse and first steep, the aroma of the leaves is fascinating, it is malty yet meaty, savory and sweet, green and smoky, fun times! Notes of sage, grilled eggplant, lettuce, gentle pine wood campfire after rain, pine greenwood, and a touch of camphor lift off the wet leaves. The liquid is light, a buttery blend of eggplant (man I really want Baba Ghanoush now) with fresh sage and a touch of peach skin and peach leaves. Like the dry leaves the peach note is just short of being perfectly ripe so it has that crispness and not just intense sweetness that a perfect ripe peach has, I am Southern and the ripeness of peaches is very important, clearly.

This tea starts out nectar sweet, like an immense burst of flower nectar that takes you by surprise, it then changes into something else and depending on what steep it is can be either vegetal notes of lettuce and bok choy or bitter hops. This then turns into the part of the tea that was one of my favorites, grilled eggplants! I hated eggplant when I was a kid, nowI love them, especially when they have been grilled and have that touch of smokiness to them. The finish of the first couple steeps all have a peculiar hard to nail down finish, it is not quite malty, not quite savory, not quite salty…it flits around between different notes at lighting speed that when I finally feel like I know what it is the taste has drifted off to something else, it reminds me a bit of the way Kimchi dances around from note to note at a rapid speed, though it tastes nothing like Kimchi except savory and a bit like cooked cabbage. The mouthfeel starts thick and stays thick, almost oily, coating my mouth like a non-Newtonian solid. I enjoyed the first part of this session so much I drew a little heart in my notebook next to it.

Let it be known that steep four, five, and six had me floating on an eggplant like cloud. Seriously I was so happy and floaty that I think I am going to drink this tea next time I have to do public speaking…I might not make any sense though since I am pretty sure this tea makes me super tea stoned. Even though this tea’s qi is super powerful, its effects were pleasant, not the ants crawling under my skin sensation some powerful qi can hit me with. There is more to the middle steeps than a qi that makes me float off into another realm, there is the grilled eggplant note that sticks around til the very end, a gentle sweet sugar cane note, a rain on slate and copper note with a finish of bok choy. Like the earlier steeps this one is thick and oily but finishes with a subtle lightness that matches the floaty feel of the tea.

The end is near, the final three steeps bring in notes of sugar cane, distant grilled eggplants (until the very last steep, steep ten, where it is gone) and a blend of mineral and copper. There are fleeting notes of bok choy and peaches, but they float away quickly, at times having me wonder if I dreamed them. This was quite the enjoyable session, one that lifted my spirits and made me feel relaxed and blissfully without pain, something someone with Fibromyalgia doesn’t get much of. I am saving the rest of my sample for extra pain or stress filled days and hope to get a cake for later, as I am very curious to see how this one ages.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/10/bitterleaf-teasl-dragon-blood-2015.html

This is another great one by Bitter Leaf Teas. This tea is vey sweet, fruity, and has a pleasant taste of green to go with it. I think that this tea was one of Bitter Leaf Tea’s left for their 2016 line-up, and I do believe that their tea company will only continue to get more successful.

I’ve already gone through half of this beeng, so I’ll hold the rest of it off to see how it tastes with a bit of aging.

I was blown away at the quality of this tea, especially for the price. These bricks weigh 250g, and for the price of the brick its one hell of a steal. If anything, this tea is probably one of the best values of tea that I’ve seen all year. Sometimes with tea, you sacrifice quality for price. However, Bitter Leaf Tea’s did an amazing job at sourcing a tea that doesn’t sacrifice anything. Yet again this is another offering from Bitter Leaf Teas that won’t leave you disappointed.

You can read my full review here!

http://coolcodyc.wixsite.com/theoolongdrunk/single-post/2016/10/01/Alter-Ego

Very subtle tea that doesn’t require much attention. Easy to sip away at, but nothing special. Doesn’t attack your stomach lining. Not as sweet as a fresh Bulang, but I tend to like younger teas to older ones though because I’m odd.

This one can brew for a while, but I suggest sipping it along with something else because I don’t find this to overtake any notes… maybe it’s just me, but I like to sip side by side.

“They’ll think you quite mad,” she told me.

She was right, of course. She generally was. But I wasn’t doing this to be popular. I cared not for the adulation of the people. Well, to be fair, when some of the younger ladies in attendance fawned over me, that was nice. But it wasn’t the point of the thing.

You can’t claim to hail from Ban Zhang, she told me. You might as well claim to be from Atlantis, been birthed via Immaculate Conception and play poker with Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis on the weekend. To that I say, they already accepted that my powers are given via divine decree. Nobody here has seen divinity decree anything in my lifetime, but Ban Zhang is real. It’s on the map. This isn’t like saying 1800 year old tree, or ultra weight loss potential, or first to be formed into a perfect compressed tea reproduction of the Brandenburg Gate!

Those claims might do you better, she said.

But what about my gradual buildup, the crescendo of flavors? What about the feeling of energy, not a manic sort, but just a buoyancy to the body one usually hasn’t got? What about the bitterness that yields to a soft, rich aftertaste?

Those are fine to mention, she told me, but you may not be believed, if you’re the sort of person that claims to be from Ban Zhang.

Can I at least note that I’m of Qiao Mu material? I’m not going to claim gushu. I will eschew “Zhengshan”. I will unapologetically admit that my leaf is not so striking to gaze upon as some newer productions. It’s in the cup, where it counts, that I claim my right to rule!

Humility is well and good, she noted, unless they don’t believe it’s sincere. And who would believe humility from a denizen of the great Ban Zhang?

You can’t please all of the people all of the time, to be sure. I’ll concede some may find me acerbic. I’m not as patient as some. Those who care only for everything to be candy and sweetness won’t love me. This is all fine. But all I want, I repeated again, as I was increasingly wont to do, is to provide a very good tea at a very good price. What’s so wrong with that?

Nothing at all, she replied. But they’ll think you’re mad.

This is not an elegant, subtle tea. This is a tea for those who want their tongues wrestled into submission. Potent and smoky. Laphroaig, anyone?

This is a pretty vegetal yiwu. I got notes of vegetal, fruits, mellow vibes and a floral aftertaste with a texture of melted butter. It does get crushingly bitter on the final steeps, but the first 6 were very good. I got 10 infusions.

Full review on Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/2016-secret-garden-sheng-puer-bitterleaf-teas/

So as it is probably well known, I have been playing a decent bit of Ark lately, mostly on the Scorched Earth expansion. Last night I decided to play around on Primitive+ and came to realize, wow, that update is full of issues. Mostly in the form of missing items, most of which I can just spawn in, but sadly one thing I can’t that really depressed me was the Allosaurus saddle, I was so happy having tamed my first of many Allos to find I can’t take it out because they forgot to put the saddle in the game. At least Scorched Earth seems to be working fine, but Primitive+ has many disappointments.

Today I am taking a look at Bitterleaf Teas’ Blackbird 2015 Dancong Chi Ye Oolong. I love Dancongs, they are probably the most varied type of Oolong in the Oolong world, they are the great mimics, tasting like everything from flowers, to fruit, to incense, specifically cultivated to imitate a huge variety of different things. It is odd, I have tried a decent amount of Dancongs (only really scratching the surface, there are just so many) but have only rarely written about them on the blog, that is something I am correcting now. Bitterleaf has two Dancongs, and I agonized over which one to pick, as much as I as tempted by Firebird’s honey description, I wanted the citrus notes of the Blackbird. Oh that aroma does not disappoint! Notes of orange blossom, grapefruit blossoms, orchids, plumeria, and a touch of fruity muscadines and…surprisingly…starfruit waft off the leaves and into my nose. It is heady and sweet without being cloying, but I always prefer the floral notes of citrus flowers over pretty much anything else.

After I finally managed to pull my face out of the leaves I put the leaves into my Dancong devoted clay pot and gave them a steep. For anyone who is new to the world of Dancongs, definitely go for a flash steep with this tea, more than any other Oolong, this stuff will punish you with intense astringency if you steep it too long. The aroma of the now soggy leaves has increased the sweet and slightly sour note of starfruit, not a note I expected to run into with tea, it makes me happy. There are also heady notes of orange and grapefruit blossoms, plumeria and a gentle sweet candied orange peel note at the finish. The liquid is wonderfully sweet, just the right amount of headiness from plumeria and citrus flowers, but also a sweet note of orange peel and a burst of juicy starfruit and muscadines. It smells quite a lot like juicy fruit.

The first steep is surprisingly crisp in the mouth, it very much so reminds me of biting into a juicy crisp starfruit, and not just in the taste. There are also notes of sweet citrus, a combination of orange blossom and candied orange peel, with a touch of orange blossom honey. Around the midtaste notes of plumeria and orchid pop up, the plumeria only hangs out in the middle, but the orchid lingers well into the sweet muscadine aftertaste.

The aroma of the second steep still has the wonderful starfruit and citrus flowers, but also picks up a note of gardenia headiness which has made me think that this tea is inspired by a hothouse full of tropical flowers. This steep is much fruitier, still crisp and juicy in the mouthfeel, but the notes of muscadines and starfruit are joined by apples and a tiny bit of almonds. It reminds me of a summery fruit salad, sitting next to a vase of plumeria, gardenias, orchids and orange blossoms. The aftertaste of orchids lingers long, like the first steep.

On to the third steep, though certainly not the last, because this Dancong has a bit of longevity lasting for several more steeps. The third steep really stood out to me because the notes of apple and muscadines are the strongest, and the mouthfeel while still crisp takes on more of a smooth, juicy quality. The aftertaste of orchids is still present, blooming in my mouth for quite a while. This is a wonderful example of a floral and fruity Dancong, usually I go for the more nutty or incense flavored ones, but the fresh fruit and citrus blossoms won this one a place in my heart.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/09/bitterleaf-tea-blackbird-2015-dancong.html

Sipdown (146)

Tea and music pairing take two, courtesy of my awesome tea twin Roswell Strange! Thank you, Ros!!!

So my first thoughts going into this today…how does one brew purple tea? What is purple tea? Wtf is this going to be like? I ended up going with the whole sample in a 16 oz mug for 2 min at 200, aka my brewing method for black teas I haven’t figured out yet lol. Turns out purple tea, to me at least, is like a hybrid of green and blacks. Now this could be an incredibly incorrect analysis but to me it had the vegetal flavoring of a green while it had the fuller body of a black. Personally, I enjoyed the combination.

Once I figured that out, my next conundrum was “what makes this dragon blood?” For that, unfortunately, I have no answer because to me, this just didn’t seem to fit that bill.

Finally, it was on to the song pairing. The selection for this tea was: https://youtu.be/S0BDS0-ZwOw.

Unlike yesterday, this is a band I have heard before. I mean, who doesn’t know Chasing Cars? Though prior to opening YouTube, I thought this was a new song for me. Then it started playing and I realized this is one I have heard many times before but never quite placed as a Snow Patrol song. So as it played, I sipped, this time managing not to burn myself, and thought about why Ros picked this pair…

The song starts off kind of unsettling and almost a bit striking with its sharper high notes but there is also an ethereal quality to it. To me, the background music is almost trying to pull you into a search where something is lost and there is a bit of an urgency to find it. I can imagine this playing in a movie where someone is running through a forest or the wilderness trying to get to someone or something and I think that plays off the vegetal, almost peas and spinach notes, of this tea. The urgency reflects the fullness behind that vegetal quality that I am getting here, one I doubt I would ever find in a more light and mellow green base. As the singing starts, the song continues and actually remains rather consistent for most of the four minutes, however, nearing the end it begins to build and then tapers off, just as the flavors of the tea build in your mouth while you sip and mellows in the aftertaste. All in all, both the tea and song felt a little exposed and raw, sort of like “this is what you get, no surprises, just this”.

So that was my experience today. Tbh, I had to listen to this one a couple of times to really start drawing parallels. At first I was like “I don’t get it”, as opposed to yesterday where the connection was instantly apparent. This took imagination and concentration which made for a nice peaceful break from all the stresses of the day but also might have made for a tasting note that sounds a bit like bullshit. I swear though, if you compare the two for a while, you’ll get what I mean :P

Thanks again, Roswell Strange! I look forward to the next one.

Drank this on Monday – made myself a thermos of it to sip on while I walked to the store. I was really craving carrot cake so I figured I’d just pop on over to the nearest store and buy one. Well, I totally forgot that it was Labor Day and everything was closed, so I got there only to have to just turn around and head back…

But at least I had tea for my pointless walk! It’s no carrot cake, but it is basically liquid hot chocolate and malt. So splendidly delicious, even with it now being four (holy shit, FOUR!?) years old… Damn!

Broke this one out because it’s finally fall, and Dian Hong is definitely one of those kinds of tea that I crave a great deal more seasonally – specifically in the fall and to a lesser extent in winter. Those deep, chocolate notes are probably my equivalent to a Chai.

I think, with this tea in particular, I’m kind of just unintentionally ‘aging’ it; I mean I’ve had it for a REALLY long time now. I still enjoy it though, and that’s definitely the part that counts! At least in my book. It’s got notes of molasses and chocolate, and a little bit of malt. This brew was also a wee bit astringent; a result (I feel) that is likely more so because it was made in a tea press.

Maybe a little flatter then when first purchased, but far from undrinkable.

This tea is very old now; maybe I’m just intentionally unintentionally aging it at this point!? I don’t know – I just know that thankfully it still produces a bomb as fuck cup of tea. Lots of baked bread/French bread notes still served with a heavy dose of cocoa. It’s less sweet/more flat, but that’s an age thing – and ultimately still tastes good even if it’s kinda stale…

Still hands down one of the most chocolate tasting black teas I have ever tried! I made this one with milk and the faintest addition of chocolate agave just for a bit of an extra push because the tea leaf is so old now, but on the whole the tea was still delicious! It reminds me a lot of chocolate milk but without the unnecessary sweetness of the store bought stuff, and just a hint of milk. I really should finish this one off given the age though…

Morning mug of tea.

This is exactly the kind of black tea that’s perfect to start your morning off with; it’s really rich and full bodied which exactly the sort of profile I want from an early morning cup of black tea. However, even though it’s full bodied it’s not harsh at all: it’s actually very, very smooth and velvety in mouthfeel with some brilliantly sweet and indulgent flavours.

The majority of the flavour notes are milk chocolate; silky and sweet. If you’ve ever done a professional chocolate tasting, you know that you start by holding the chocolate to roof of your mouth to heat up and melt – and that sweet, creamy melted chocolate flavour against the roof of the mouth is exactly what I’m experiencing sipping on this one right now. The rest of the profile are notes like malt, molasses and nougat with just a little hint of fresh baked bread. It’s a very complex and rich profile overall.

Mmmm!

Song Pairing: https://youtu.be/9dmgJ9xfIVs

My morning cuppa.

So, today is my brother’s 19th birthday so late in the evening we’re going out for dinner and drinks to celebrate him being legal drinking age. In the mean time, I’m enjoying having the morning/afternoon off by having some tea and listening to some good music and the rain.

I added some spiced orange honey to this cup as well to add an extra dimension of flavour to the cup and that was just a really smart decision. The spice notes of the honey actually didn’t really come through at all, but the orange became this smooth, sweet consistent flavour throughout the entire sip; since this tea is SO naturally chocolate-y tasting that added orange flavour almost gave this a Terry’s Chocolate Orange kind of vibe. Except, it’s a LOT more natural tasting so maybe more like orange slices dipped into high quality, melted down chocolate. Yummy!