Mandala Tea

Alright pu’erh. Let’s do this.

Recently I decided to try pu’erh and really learn more about it. I timed it perfectly with Black Friday sales, and this is the first tea I wanted to try from Mandala. I figured I’d go with a shou first since it’s darker and I do so love black teas.

Rinse: 15 seconds

Steep one: 1 minute. People mention the term “fermentation flavor”, but maybe that is what I think of (or what my boyfriend mentioned, and now I cannot un-think of) as hamster pellets? It’s kind of woody and hay-y. I’m so inexperienced with pu’erh that this smell is making me nervous. It doesn’t smell – drinkable. But I’m determined to try it, so I take my first sips. At first there is a small amount of this pellet flavor but there is also something surprisingly pleasant. Kind of coffee-like (a dark french roast), but without the acidity of coffee. This is very smooth. I can also get the dark cocoa powder notes. If the fermentation flavor ages out of this I think I will like it a lot, but it’s not bad as is.

I can see how it’s an acquired taste, though. As it is I’ve kind of had my fill with this and want to save the leaves for later. That could also be because I am super tired because I just finished my 12 hour night shift though. Oh well, to be continued in later notes…

I enjoyed this one so much last night that I’m having it again this morning. It’s incredibly smooth and delicious. It morphs from steep to steep with some cups tasting deep and earthy while other cups are full of chocolate notes, hints of bread and honey, or leather and leaves. Every steep has been nice.

This is good. This is so good. It’s incredibly silky with a woodsy/nutty flavor that morphs into something chocolaty as I sip. There’s earth and leather as the tea cools. Yeah, this is a good one.

This is one of those teas that I’m glad that I was able to sample before committing to buying it. It’s was actually really good on the first steep and pretty good on the second steep, but after that I found it difficult to get a good amount of flavor out of it, even when steeping for several minutes. So while it does taste nice, I prefer my teas to have a lot more stamina than that so I doubt I’ll be purchasing this one.

A little while back, my sister went to the opening of a William Ashleys store and came back with a cute little teapot (http://instagram.com/p/wOp7cPvJV5/). I have been trying to think of the perfect tea to use in it first and today I finally recalled the flowering tea cones Sil gave to me a few months back. And so, I got to brewing (http://instagram.com/p/wOqO1avJXl/).

Now as I sip on the tea I am surprised at how good it is because usually I have found the flowering teas to be more about the looks than the taste. This one actually delivers. It has a slight astringency that underlies the taste but for some reason it seems to work in this case. It provides a nice contrast to the sweet maltiness and the fruity undertones of the tea. Yum.

Tea of the morning . i had to revisit. also Im trying to sip down enormous amount of red teas i bought last year. So many of different companies. i think it will be easy because they are in 25-50g pouches.
This tea is very nice. leaves are gorgeous. tastewise i’ve had better ones. not that anything wrong with it. its just not complex enough. Kinda the same from steep to steep.

Anyways, i did enjoyed it. Because I love Chinese Red(black) teas

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i got my BF order very late last night. no matter when I’m very happy. really hate to go to mail jail.
Man, i wish i wouldnt be so stubborn and just make it per Garret’s suggestion.
I made it my usual gongfu parameters. 5g 100ml porcelaine gaiwan 200F
rinse/ 10/ 15/30/ 60/sec
with this method i probably go with 20 sec next time.
this tea has absolutely gorgeous dreamy leaves. long, wiry, golden silver, fuzzy.
complex, tasty. I’ve noticed some malt and wine. Yes, this tea is kinda Keemun-y to me. i maybe wrong trying to get the perfect cuppa. and i did get it.
Also few minutes after i experienced very strong sweet aftertaste like when i drink some puerh .
Garret, i promise to try it your way next time ;)

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Another gift sample from “PUG”. Used a 100 ml Jingdezhen gaiwan, thin walled so not to over heat the leaf. One rinse then let it rest with the gaiwan lid on to allow for leaf expansion. The first 4 steeps were basically 5 seconds and then gradually added 5-10 second until the 15th steep then 30-40 seconds. 25 steeps and it started to peter out.
The aroma was not that big for me. New sneakers, hay a bit of pine nut. The flavor profile was also not that large. The pine nut and hay predominate for me ultra smooth with a slight astringency. Later the sweetness comes out to caress just when the astringency picks up, offering a nice balance. This is a good tea, but not showy or flashy, and when you have so many flashy showy shengs out there this one can get lost on your palate. I would brew this one for nubes who are expanding from greens to the pu erh world like my brother-in-law. Again not a bad tea just not a shiny jewel.

This Puer starts out very strong and in-your-face, with notes of wood, cork, and cigar ash. In later infusions notes of ocean spray and clay emerge and in even later infusions it becomes more mellow and sweet with notes of tobacco.

It’s very dynamic from one infusion to the next, but I don’t think it’s really my tastes simply because of how pungent it is at the start. I used flash infusions and it was still rather intense from the get-go.

I can’t be the only one who has tasted this tea… But it doesn’t seem to be in the database, so…

I wish I had tasted this generous sample that was included with my previous order before placing my Black Friday order… This would have been on the order without a doubt. Mandala has so many lovely teas of this kind that I will admit I find it hard to distinguish between them. Not because they are so alike, but because my powers of description seem to be so limited!

This smells (and tastes) like a deep, dark chocolate and a savory broth at the same time. Like an 85% dark chocolate but without the winey notes often found in that. My husband thinks I’m crazy – sitting here with my hand wrapped around the top of this tiny cup, exhaling so that the steam fogs my glasses and then inhaling the scent of this tea! There is a dusty hay note in the background as the steeping time increases and a roundness that reminds me of not very sweet fruits. Not a bit of bitterness or astringency.

I really can’t tell you how much tea I used – half of the sample. I think about 1.5 teaspoons. I should get a scale to be more precise, I know. I steeped in my little glass pot and tasted at 30, 60 and more seconds. I think I prefer 60 seconds but even up to 5 minutes and more, this tea is simply wonderful. And the leaves are beautiful! Fuzzy wuzzy twirls of tea!

Update: If I slurp like you are supposed to the most magical thing happens and I start tasting the floral notes! Amazing!

I received a sample of this with one of my Mandala orders.
I really shouldn’t be writing anything about this tea. I’m still pretty sick – not sure how true my taster is. I’m just tired of drinking lemon tea, ginger, honey etc. Desperately needed real tea tonight.
This is real tea. I’m finding it really malty, little yeasty (bready), hint of chocolate. It’s doing the trick. I have more and will try it again when I can actually breathe.
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Simply perfect. Cup after cup. I hope to never go without this tea again, now that I’ve discovered it.

This is a mildly sweet, somewhat floral, somewhat vegetal, tasty green tea. It also seems to have a slight sour note to it. As I have little experience with Bi Lo Chun teas I don’t know how it compares to others of its type. But it is good. If only it didn’t have this sour note. I wonder if that could be my taste buds? Could it be brewing temperature? Did I use slightly too much tea? I brewed it for the right amount of time. I picked up the greens in my latest order with Mandala and Teavivre because I have been told to cut down on my caffeine and there are nights where I just must avoid caffeine because of my work schedule. It is established that green tea has less caffeine than black tea, the science is not clear on puerh. Sometimes puerh keeps me awake, but that may be because of the tendency to resteep it many times and extract all of the caffeine.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 175 degree water and 3 tsp leaf for 1 min.

So far this is my favorite GABA tea – this one has an tasty sour dough raisin bread with honey flavor. The other GABA teas I’ve had were all green oolongs which are more in sour vegetal country. However, Black GABA appeals to me more as that crazy GABA flavor works better with the black base adding more comfort food feels, at least in my opinion.

This tea is also very pretty – it steeps up gorgeous, glowing and clear with a huge leaf!

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/gaba-black-tea-mandala-tea-tea-review/

Even though I have to be up at 5am I desperately needed a cup of tea. This was the first green I saw from my Mandala order so I picked it. I spent this evening at that most frustrating of things, dealing with a salesman over a new car. I used Truecar which turned out to be basically bogus. I think I saved a couple of hundred dollars, not what I was supposed to. They always find a way to put back your supposed savings. They use the strategy of wearing you down and to some degree it works. Thank god I only do this once a decade or so.

This tea is good. It is relatively sweet with a floral, vegetal taste. It also has a roasted taste that is not quite the roasted barley flavor of a wuyi oolong. It is a roasted tea.

I brewed this tea once in an 18oz teapot with 3 tsp leaf and 175 degree water for 1 min.

Whoa! Get ready to witness some stain miracles! This stuff totally works. If you love tea stained patina on your cups, stay away. If you have items you want clean, especially those with hard to scrub areas, this is the soak you want! David’s glass perfect mugs with those lids that have those impossible to clean under lips, Aladin travel mug with that lever basket mechanism, metal steepers, David’s travel mugs, super old Teavana gravity steeper, old steel thermos… all amazingly clean! I was able to get quite a few things cleaned with one quart and reheated it a couple of times to soak more items in it. It finally gave out on the gravity steeper and I had to make a fresh batch of soak. I wish I could post the before and after pictures because it’s such a drastic difference from dirty to clean!

The only thing that disappoints me about this product is that I can’t put it in my mouth and soak the tea stains off my teeth. Work on that, would ya Mandala? ;)

I should add that this came to me as a sample with one of their puerh sample specials. Thanks for that!

I got home to a wonderful package fr AllanK.
I had to have this tea right away. So my usual gongfu parameters for sheng
5g 100ml porcelain gaiwan 200F
Rinse/ 3/3/5/5/7/10sec etc
This sheng is very creamy. Like fruity cream of wheat. I really liked first 5 steeps. Then it got a little more bitter and astringent . Also some sour notes creeped up. Nothing major, nothing unpleasant . I just wish it stayed the same as first steeps. I really enjoyed those.

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Second to last I tasted in the sheng sampler. Brewed with the gongfu method in a gaiwan. 10 second rinse. Steeping times: 10, 10, 15, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 120, 150, 180.

The dry aroma has notes of dried grasses, tree bark, and a hint of spices. The wet leaf aroma smells sweet and fruity – sugarcane, grapes, plums, brown sugar, cranberries, all in the following order as the leaves cooled. A pleasure to stick my nose the gaiwan throughout the session. Nearly addictive.

The liquor is pale gold, medium-bodied, clear, and smooth. Consistently mild with a lively and bright personality. Due to my palate not being suited for sheng, I mostly discern sweet dried grass, though it is a kind of grass that is not off-putting, and the taste becomes more sweet than grassy as the session goes on. A juicy aftertaste stays with me minutes after I finish each cup. And each next cup I look forward to having. At the eighth infusion, grape and wine emerge notes. I am enlivened and comforted during this gray, cold late autumn afternoon.

I enjoyed this sheng greatly. Definitely my favorite in the sampler.

From the sheng sampler. Brewed gongfu-style with a gaiwan. 10 second rinse. Steeping times: 10, 10, 15, 15, 30, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 120, 180.

The dry leaf aroma offers a delicate fragrance of fresh honey, while the wet leaf smells of green peppers, and then of bamboo and a thick conifer forest.

The liquor is golden, clear, thin-textured, and full-bodied. The session begins with a light grassy and prickly cup, and a peach aftertaste. Thereafter, a bitter green pepper note dominates. The fourth infusion, additionally, has walnut and pecans, and the beginning with the fifth infusion, is a sweetness underneath. I also taste a forest floor, the sort of forest that big and crowded with trees, the sort of floor that has layered beds of moss and dried and freshly fallen pine needles. The feel is light yet powerful.

Despite my words, this isn’t for me (well, it is sheng, but I felt the need to broaden my tastes with the sampler anyway). I can’t be appreciative of it unfortunately.

an update as I should have waited to write this in:

when I infused this tea the second time, it gave it a lingering iron metallic taste. I never had the tea suddenly change taste before. still tastes a little like boiled cabbage the same with the wet leaves.. but the leaves now smell like spinach too. for some reason it made the tea taste even better.

this tea reminds me of lettuce

when I smell the dry leaves, I don’t smell anything.

when I smell the leaves wet, I smell a smell that smells like boiled lettuce :)

when I smell the brewed tea, it smells like boiled lettuce and flowers

when I taste it, it tastes like boiled lettuce and flowers

many thanks to mr. mopar for sending me this sample :)

This is a tasty tea with earthy notes and I think notes of dark chocolate. Other reviewers have said mushrooms, I didn’t find these but then again I wasn’t really paying attention. Dark chocolate notes are easy to spot and fairly common in earthy shou. The tea broth is rich and thick with I think what you would describe as a good mouthfeel. It was a bit more earthy than expected but then again I used more tea than usual by about a third. In any case this tea is an excellent value. I think I only paid $18.

I brewed this tea seven times in a 207ml Taiwan Clay Teapot with 9.5g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a long rinse to break up the tea and gave it a ten minute rest. I steeped it for 10 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, and 2 min. Judging by the strength of the seventh steep I would guess that this tea had at least five more steeps in it had I wanted to continue.

This is a very tasty tea. I was surprised when I had to enter it into the data base. There was a Four Leaves Ripe but the picture clearly shows a 357g bing, this is the loose leaf. Either Mandala used to sell a bing or someone put it into the database with the wrong picture. Rather than change the picture, I entered this back into the database, right or wrong. This is without a doubt one of the best ripe loose puerhs I have drank. It is sweet, I would call the main note a dates note. The fermentation flavor is very mild. It would make a good first puerh for someone not used to ripe puerh.

I brewed this twice in an 18oz teapot with 6.1g leaf and boiling water. I brewed it for 30 sec, and 30 sec. I put the second steeping in a thermos and will bring it to work with me. My companies religious affiliation is the worship of the almighty dollar and holidays and employee safety are considered second rate concerns at best. Luckily there is almost no dangerous machinery where I work or the employees would be in trouble. We are now open on Christmas too, that should be illegal.