Mandala Tea

Another sample from miss anonymous! I was happy to see this one, as I’ve tried a couple of Mandala’s black teas before and found them yummy. This one looks like a lovely fluffy pure bud Yunnan. The buds are floofy and fuzzy and about half golden, half grey. I can’t comment on the scent because everything from this package seems to smell vaguely of cinnamon, teehee.

Steeped, it smells amazingly milk chocolaty with some stonefruit (oooooh chocolate-covered dried apricots?!). Taste-wise, it’s very light. I can definitely taste that creamy milk chocolate flavor, but there’s also a light savory taste that I generally find in Yunnan teas. It’s an interesting combination! The stonefruit, specifically apricot, is also quite present, especially near the end of the sip. Yummy!

I have been drinking this tea all day and finished off the rest of my sample in the gaiwan. I had it in the morning, went shopping for a ton of house things (boxing day sales, hurrah!) had some in the afternoon, before dinner, and now I combined 3 steepings for a mug before bed. This tea has staying power! It is also delicious, woody and fresh, calming and good. Most pronounced is a woody flavor to me, with a tiny bit of caramel sweet coming out. Just a bit though. Mostly fresh, wet wood after the rain. I am digging this, and am very happy I still have some mini tu’s of this tea! Oh, and these last 3 steepings combined have led to a much more pronounced sweet flavor, smooth, mmmmm perfect for before bed.

Loving Mandala’s puerhs! If I ever let myself buy tea again (still working on sipping down teas/samples for the new year) I might add a bit of this to my order. Thanks Garret, for the free sample!!

This is a fun tea. Not as sweet as the big red robe Mandala offers but just as roasty. Wood flavors and maltiness. Mineral taste as with all yancha. I can’t place the sweetness. It’s a nutty sweetness. Faint.
However you can play with this tea. Lots of leaf with flash brews or less leaf and longer brews. Gives very different liquors.
Nice Amber caramel color. Smooth finish with a little lingering malt on the back of the tongue.
Not much change from brew to brew using gongfu style.
(This was my first review so bare with me). :-P

This is the other sample that came with my tray! I gong fu’d it and it was oh so buttery! Yum! I also got a hint of vegetal and floral at the end of the sip, but the butter really stood out. Would definitely drink this again. :)

I got a tea tray for Christmas! My first! And it’s beautiful! I put it on my wishlist, and my secret Santa (my grandma) got it for me! I was worried too, because when I looked at the site recently, it said it was sold out! My grandma’s got great taste! :D Of course the amazing Garret included a hand-written note and two tea samples, one of which was this beauty!

This tea is so fruity! It reminds me of TeaVivre’s nonpareil yunnan dian hong ancient wild tree. It’s also nicely malty with some honey notes. So good, and so pretty! Here are some pics of my session:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/97273956@N03/16087334526/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/97273956@N03/15927060809/

Snuck one of these from omgsrsly’s piece of her order that came to my place. I’m glad i did because i am a fan. I’m sick today and this is exactly what i needed in terms of a no fuss, don’t have to think too hard tea. I’ve been drinking it most of the afternoon. For sure going on my re-order list!

I’ve tried this tea multiple times now and I feel it’s time to finally do a review on it.
I used this sample with my yixing pot exclusively reserved for shou puerh.

This tea is compressed pretty tight it was hard to pry the leaves apart by hand.
A nice mix of small to large leaf mostly smaller to medium sized leaves were noticed.

After I added the leaf to my warmed up yixing pot, I washed the leaves about twice.
This helped open them up and infusion with minimal steep times.
I started off gradual 3/5/8/10/15/20/25/30/60/120

A very mellow that sho wasn’t overly fishy in my opinion.
I found this tea had a gentle warmth.
It certainly helped wake me out of my sleepy morning.

I had absolutely no idea what GABA was when I tried this sample this morning. I had a very long gong fu session with it and it was really enjoyable. It was malty, roasty, a bit fruity honey, and a bit of a tang. I really liked it! So now that I know what GABA is, I can actually say that this tea did have a calming effect on me. Feeling very zen and caught up on work right now. :) Love it! This is going on my wishlist for sure!

This tea is certainly one of the best oolong teas I have ever tasted. It tastes strongly of coconut and berries or fruity notes. There is only a hint of that characteristic oolong bitterness. This is damn good tea. I will have to buy more when I use up my coupon for Mandala tea.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 2 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 30 sec.

This is a fairly sweet green tea with notes of cream and honeysuckle. There is also a strong floral and vegetal component to the tea as well as a slight sour taste. Lat night I drank rooibos in the hopes of getting to sleep. I couldn’t sleep a wink, I think because of caffeine withdrawals. Ironicallu, lack of caffeine can cause sleeplessness. Hopefully there is enough caffeine in this to keep me from going through withdrawals but not to keep me awake.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 4 tsp leaf and 175 degree water for 1 min.

This isn’t bad, but it’s not as good as I hoped. I like Special Dark a whole lot better.

Mandala Tea sells several excellent loose leaf puer teas, and this one is my personal favorite of the bunch. Can be made strong but still remains perfectly smooth with no overpowering flavors. One of my current favorite teas ever, and maybe the best one I currently have in my rather extensive tea drawer. Leans quite far towards the dry & woody side of the puer taste spectrum rather than damp & earthy taste that is more common. An awesome tea if you prefer this flavor profile.

The scent of the dry leaves is strongly floral. The taste is floral but less intensely so than the scent. I didn’t really get that buttery feel but I’ll try again with different steeping parameters. I did get the mild astringency at the end of the sip, though. It’s a very pleasant light oolong. If I can get that butter to come out, it will be a restock for sure.

Thanks, Garret, for the generous sample!

Backlog

Had this tea awhile ago and I remember it being really rough with bitterness in the first few steeps. It did not appeal to me at all. Around steep #5 it mellowed out. The bitterness was gone and it was a strong apricot taste. I didn’t try too many steeps after that. Next time I have this I think I will start drinking it at Steep 5 and see where it goes from there. It just kept getting better!

‘Tis the weekend, and I decided I want to have many pu’erh sessions today, so I chose a tuocha for this task. It freezing rained here last night so the roads are a skating rink, therefore I am staying inside all day. Oh, and I’ll be worrying away about the bf, who got called out to work 3 days early and is currently in a cab on the terrible roads heading to the airport. Hope he makes it there in one piece! :(

Anyways, back to this tea! I am guessing this is the same sample I had as Tealizzy, as it is similar to the 2011 Lao Cang tu on Mandala’s site, but just brown writing rather than multi colored. I can’t find a year on mine, but at least it is a Lao Cang! So I did a 15s rinse and I bit the bullet and did a 1 minute steep as recommended. I always worry it will be too strong haha. The tea is super dark, and unfortunately I am writing this review as the cup has already cooled, so there isn’t much of a scent, just a clean, light smell.

As for the flavor, this is a satisfying pu’erh. It’s not crazy caramelly or bright or musty or woody like others, it’s a bit nondescript, but definitely not difficult to drink. It is SUPER smooth, a tiny bit savoury, a bit of a mushroom savouriness actually. There is a mild brown sugar note blending in nicely too, and a bit of a hay aftertaste. It’s tough to describe because there aren’t any stand out flavors, but it is just good. Quite good actually! My stomach also feels wonderful, and I have a sleepy calmness about me, not strong cha qi, just a light calming sensation.

Overall, to me this is a really good tuocha, even if it is not overly distinct. I like that even with the minute steep, it is smooth and soft, not overbearing, not too strong, and no caffeine jitters. This will be a perfect one to steep throughout the day! And don’t let my mention of it not being distinctive scare you off. I enjoy that it is just a lovely, smooth flavor, with everything blending together into an excellent tea.

ETA – I have also made a big decision…I am going to re-season my yixing pot. I hardly ever drink oolong anymore mostly due to the caffeine effects, so I am seasoning it with Noble Mark, a shu that I have enjoyed for a while now and doesnt give me negative caffeine effects. In hindsite, I definitely should have waited until I was further into the tea scene before seasoning a yixing, but I adore the shape of this one and it truly is my most beautiful piece of teaware. I realize this may not work with my yixing, but it will be better than it sitting in the cupboard forlornly while I brew my shus in a gaiwan lol. It needs to be used! Wish me luck :)

Pretty damn yummy. Having a lovely Saturday AM tea party with my TeaFFs. I did very short steeps and this is very mild. A little earthy, but not outrageous. There’s a little sweetness on the end. Lovely Saturday relaxation tea!

From my shou/yarn trade with sarsonator. Thanks! :)

Drank this at noon. Let’s see if I sleep tonight. lol.

It’s becoming more an more apparent to me that 160ml is just too damn big, especially for when i’m using mini tuos because that’s when I can’t adjust the amount of tea. Anyway, I can’t afford another yixing so I have to make due with the one I’ve got. for a few of the steepings I only filled 3/4 of the way and that seemed to help :)

rinse, rinse, pause, 5s, 10s, 20s, 30s, 6m

1st steeping (in and out, ~5s): Chocolaty goodness. All of my ripe puerhs seem to be tasting like this now. lol. I think this one tasted closer to milk chocolate than dark chocolate though.

2nd steeping [3/4] (10s): This one was kind of weak because I had let the water cool down by accident. My bad. Surprisingly the color was still really dark though!

3rd steeping [3/4] (20s): Temperature back up, the flavor is more like the 1st steeping again, mmmm, just not quite as chocolaty, more plain puerh flavor.

4th steeping [3/4] (30s): Chocolate gone, just simple sweetness.

5th steeping (6m): So I’m basically done at this point, just wanted to see what a long steep would taste like. Answer: EXACTLY like steep #4

All in all, a pretty good mini tou. I liked it :)

Finally trying this mini tu! I really have not felt like reviewing new teas lately (aka all last week lol), but I will try to be better this week. I still have so many to review that I picked up on vacation! Ah, all in good time. Tonight, I was ridiculously craving a latte with eggnog lol, but my stomach doesn’t do well with milk, so I thought I’d be nicer to it and have some pu’erh instead. And I have so many mini tuochas to get to, might as well have one tonight.

This one has a barn, hay-like scent to it. Definitely like wet hay in a barn haha. I do not mind this earthy scent, mostly due to my new love of pu’erh, although I can see it being off-putting to some. I did a quick 15s steep as recommended, then a 1 minute steep. The tuocha is just starting to break apart at the end of this steeping.

The liquor is dark and rich and smells clean and caramelly. Mmmm, man I needed this tonight. As for the flavor, ahh this is so good right now. A ton of caramel flavors in this one! A clean earthiness, a tinge of smoke, maybe leather at the end of the sip, but this melds with the sweetness to lend a sugar like sensation on my tongue. I’m totally picturing caramellized, slightly burnt brown sugar.

Overall, this is rich, thick, and immensely satisfying. I feel like I am not quite adept enough to determine many flavours in pu’erh yet other than caramel and earth notes haha, but this is certainly enjoyable, even if I’m missing (or mis-interpreting) some of the flavours. Exactly what I needed tonight!

ETA – I did the second steeping for 1 min as well, and the liquor is super dark like coffee. I was worried it would be pretty strong, but it is still awesome. More pronounced leather and some wood notes and not quite as smooth, but still delicious. And its also making me quite sleepy and relaxed :)

As I understand it, mao cha is what a lot of people in China drink as day to day tea. Not the aged shengs, not the freshly compressed shous, but just basic mao cha. This tea helps me understand why. The leaves smell of steamed spinach, and the somewhat thin, slightly dry liquor has a gentle mushroom odor, but tastes more like a moderate green. It was good for several steeps in the gaiwan, but I’m sure a mugful of Western steep would go down good as a daily draft. I think I understand mao cha just a wee bit better now.

I’m finally at a place where even though my consumption is hugely down, I don’t feel compelled to buy more! probably a phase heh.
I think now I can focus on drinking some teas down to a point where I feel I can actually justify a new purchase instead of feeling guilty for it. Perhaps that’s because fewer cups make me appreciate the ones that I do have that much more? Either way, this is a good place!
As for my Special Dark, I will cry when this one is gone…

Hmmm. I ordered this expecting to love it to bits! but strangely I’ve been enjoying my other Mandala one more.
Here, I’m not getting a lot of the complexity that others are finding. Instead, I get a lot of the heavier, more metallic notes. Mushroom and clay with a bare hint of fruit.
I’ll try it with my gaiwain and if that doesn’t work, this baby is destined for another home…

Today is a sad day. A childhood family friend who I used to play with during summers at my Aunts cottage died in a snowmobile accident. He was my age (32). Since I stopped hanging out at the cottage so much, I saw him only once every few years or so… in truth I didn’t know him well at all in adulthood, but my Aunt and cousin consider him a second son. They are family. I always regarded him fondly.
This is all so surreal. Larry was a good kid, he’s been riding since before he could walk! He knew all the rules and always took care to be safe. He never partied or anything like that. I’m so confused…

The tea: I need to try this again, preferably in my gaiwan. It was a little too thick for me and left me feeling unsettled- backlog from yesterday

Steep two: 2 minutes.

The tuo cha broke apart completely after the first infusion, which honestly I was glad for. I don’t know why but the whole piece just sitting in water unnerves me – it’s like it won’t distribute flavor evenly through the water. This is obviously not true but it’s something I’m visually going to have to get used to.

Anyway, the hay/pellet smell is back in the steeped liquor. It is still, thankfully, not present in the taste. The semblance is coffee is still really strong, and particularly so in the texture – it is a very thick, chewy tea. As it cools the hay/fermentation becomes present in the taste – boo. If I can get used to that I think I’ll be good as pu erh’s go. This is going to be a slow process but I’m determined – pu’erh is my final tea frontier and I really want to explore it as thoroughly as I have all the other types. More later….