What-Cha

Tea that is supposed to taste like sticky rice? Count me in!
And this tea did not disappoint! A strong sticky rice flavor, that continued to be there after several steeps.
I liked it so much that I put the spent leaves in a water bottle in the fridge overnight, resulting in guess what refreshing sticky rice flavored water!

this is definitely out of the ordinary. will review better after another few steeps. out of time but wanted to make it known that i have imbibed the dark tea!

I really like this. I was alternating pots of tea (over the course of a few days) between this and What-Cha’s Assam Heritage Green Tea and the Taiwan Green Dong Ding Oolong, and this hit a good balance between the two of those. I use sugar in my tea, and this tasted like a bit like white chocolate to me. The package says “gentle nut tones” which I agree with. It’s a little bit savory, as opposed to floral or sweet or fruity, but it’s not at all astringent.

I think I’ll eventually add this to list of regular-buys.

My first steep of my new batch had a slight floral scent, and a somewhat nutty apricot-like taste. Second steeping the nutty taste was gone and apricot was stronger.

I like how the scents/tastes are distinct and change so much between steepings. You won’t necessarily get the same thing as you tasted before, but what you get next will be good too.

Got a sample of this with my order of mystery teas. I’ve made two pots of it. First obviously had most of the taste, and I definitely enjoyed it. Second is a bit weaker (expected as I didn’t start out with much tea) but still good. I like it.

Very sweet (I tasted sweet corn), fragrant, and creamy, with a big, round mouthfeel. A little bit drying in the back of the throat at the finish. A seaweed-like savoriness came forward in the 2nd and 3rd steeps as the sweetness faded.

I drank this tea back-to-back with two other What-Cha green oolongs which don’t seem to be listed in Steepster. The Taiwan Ali Shan Jin Xuan tasted very clean and creamy with a sweet, nutty flavor from the start. The 3rd steep brought lots of floral and milkiness that I recognized from other Jin Xuans (particularly those from Tea Trekker, Maitre de Thé, and Teavivre). The Taiwan Ali Shan Qing Xin had a lovely round mouthfeel (I’d say even a slight bit more than the Thailand Winter Frost) and seemed the most floral in taste and aroma of the three teas.

I’ve learned that I prefer oolongs with more roasting and/or oxidation, but these have still been fun to taste!

I got this white tea with a bunch of other “Mystery Teas” I purchased from What-Cha.

At first glance, I wasn’t particularly excited about this tea. The tea is broken leaves and dust, and very floaty when I poured water into my pot…I had to stop pouring a few times because the particles were clogging my infuser’s holes. (Usually that only happens with certain chais…)

Once brewed, I expected it to be terribly bitter…I much prefer whole leaves since I have to abuse them more in general before they turn bitter.

But it’s actually it’s a completely serviceable tea. There is a tiny bit of bitterness, but I think that’s because I overbrewed it because I half-ignored it while cooking breakfast. I think I left it brewing over 5 minutes. It’s a white tea, and my tea came out looking red…if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it a lighter black tea. I expect if I don’t abuse it, the hint of bitterness wouldn’t have been there and my white tea wouldn’t have been a reddish color!

Overall, I’m not terribly excited by this tea, but it weathered my overbrewing better than I expected. I’d be perfectly content to drink this if it’s given me, and I expect to use up the rest of what I have.

I’ll leave another tasting note when I brew it under better circumstances. I did brew it once prior to this, and I recall liking it just fine.

I really enjoyed this. It is super resteepable, sweet, flavorful, and is good with and without honey.

Tasty and savory, but also sweet. I enjoyed drinking this one. I actually preferred the second steep. Normally I enjoy resteeping for cost effectiveness, but I still prefer the flavor of the first steep. I think I like greens a bit more mellowed out.

Got this in an assortment of mystery teas, and it’s delicious. It has a floral scent and taste. Smooth, no bitterness or astringency. I could drink it every day.

I got this tea in an assortment of “mystery” teas from What-Cha. I find this to be an…interesting tea. I didn’t pick up the fruity or citrus taste that the bag claims, or that other reviewers tasted. Instead, I got a taste that reminded me of the pu’ers I have tried, but much fainter. I’ve found I don’t like pu’er teas at all…but that taste in this green tea was actually interesting.

I do think I over-brewed this one a bit—either my water was too hot, or I let it steep too long. But I am enjoying it, because it’s interesting but not overpoweringly interesting! (Ha.)

I received this tea in a mystery tea assortment from What-Cha. This was the first tea I tried out of all the mystery teas I’d gotten, and I admit it made me do a double-take on the wisdom of buying so many mystery teas at once as my very first order.

At first glance after opening the bag, I was charmed by the idea of all these little white/yellow buds. They were interesting to look at, and faintly fuzzy. I hadn’t had any tea like this before. But when I brewed them, the tea was rather bitter, but not the type of bitterness one usually encounters with tea. It has a peculiar taste that I can’t identify, and you can actually smell the bitterness when you sniff the unbrewed tea in the bag. At the moment, I won’t recommend this tea to anyone, but I’ll probably do another brew at a lower temperature later and see if my opinion changes, as it’s entirely possible I just didn’t brew it properly. Or maybe I’ll use the buds as decoration in a glass jar, as they’re pretty to look at…

I received this in What-Cha’s mystery tea collection (among a bunch of other teas). I’ve been rotating through the other mystery teas, but I’ve already drunk all 50 grams of this, so I count this one as a winner, even if I’m undecided if it’ll go on my permanent “buy” list.

It brews well, only the teeny tinest bit of bitterness when I brewed it for a very long time with a large amount of leaves, but is head and shoulders above other unflavored black teas I’ve had.

The packaging says “Gentle brisk tones with a malt finish” and I won’t disagree with that.

I brewed 5g in 110ml Gongfu, the aroma was smokey for the first 3 steeps then went to a wet grass smell, but the taste was mild wood, wet sunflower seeds at back of tongue, but a lingering sweetness around, with some floral notes to it. Very silky and smooth tea.

This tea is very good! I got 8 steeps out of it! The quality of leaf is great. I found it to be very sweet for a tea as dark as this one. Very enjoyable.

Yum! I wasn’t sure what to expect because a 30 second infusion didn’t seem like enough to me, but it was perfect! Smooth, earthy cocoa, and a wee bit of fruitiness that lingers. Second infusion (45 seconds) is more malty and earthy, perfect for what I was looking for this morning! Though I don’t know if I could get on board with using big balls like this regularly, they’re cute and fun for once and awhile though.

Sooo I think this is the right tea. It has such a long name, lol. Anyway, I haven’t been doing many reviews lately because I feel kind of intimidated by everyone else’s eloquent reviews and kind of powerless to articulate what it is that I’m tasting in the tea. But I guess I’ll never get better without practicing . . .

I think this is the first real high-quality Darjeeling I’ve tried (most of the samples I’ve gotten over the past months have been Chinese tea) and I was worried I wouldn’t like the difference in flavor but apparently I really do. It somehow manages to be floral without being too astringent, and it’s great on its own or with milk and sugar. I didn’t steep it as long as recommended because it reached desired strength before that, which means it’ll probably be great for several steepings (though I haven’t got there yet). Of course, I don’t know how representative this is of other Darjeelings, so I guess I’ll have to look around for some more samples so I can compare them all. Thanks for sharing, JK7ray! :)

Now I just wish my neighbors would stop singing “eeeee” in such a pained tone of voice. I mean, what possible purpose can that serve? If it’s so important to sing “eeeee,” at least try to sound happy about it. Maybe I should go ahead and do some opera singing today just to make things even.

Balanced perfectly between sweet, savory, malty, fruited, and bready, without being overtly any one of those. That’s what I find so hard to describe about these Georgian teas, they’re very subtle in their complexity. This one brews to a lighter hue than some other the others but is still stout, flavorful, with hints of acidity but no bitterness or astringency.

Pleasant and mild with a slightly tannic aftertaste.

Happy Lupercalia everyone! It is an ancient Roman festival held roughly February 13-15 celebrating things totally outdated, like cleansing and fertility! It is all about the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus (maybe) and fertility gods of the fields (maybe) basically it is one of those holidays that history has not been kind to so researching it is just a mess, but it is special to me! See when Ben and I first got together we didn’t want to celebrate Valentines because neither of us have good associations with that day, so we rummaged on the internet and ran into this archaic holiday and decided to use it instead, specifically on the 15th because that means the restaurants won’t be packed, everything stops being hideously pink and red, and the candy goes on sale…perfect reasons to celebrate! Plus wolves are cute and fuzzy and cleaning things is always worth celebrating.

Just because my blog is exploring a new schedule does not mean I have forgotten about my beloved What-Cha Wednesdays, they are still kinda happening, just more random and not always on Wednesdays, like today. Plus my stash was running low and I need to stretch it out a bit! Today I am looking at China Yunnan Simao Pure Bud Golden Snail Black Tea, possbly some of the prettiest leaves, I mean just look at them, they are adorable, all fuzzy and curly. I am such a sucker for Dian Hongs it is ridiculous. The aroma is super sweet, strong notes of cocoa and malt mix with yams, toasted peanuts, a bit of cooked peaches, and a finish of a pepper and resin, a bit like pine sap. The yam note is strong, very starchy blends well with the cocoa and malt.

The saddest part of steeping these golden beauties is watching the fuzz go away, but the color of the liquid makes up for the lack of fuzzy. Woo, the aroma of the wet leaves is intense, not so much sweet, but strong notes of yam and toasted peanuts with malt and cocoa, at the finish is a burst of black pepper and a touch of woodiness. The liquid is very sweet, blending honey, chocolate, dried peaches and a woodiness that vaguely reminds me of bourbon.

This tea starts strong, not a weak first steep here. Smooth in the mouth with a slightly sharp citric note in the texture, but not in the taste. It starts with yams and malt and quickly moves to cocoa and molasses and the finish is a blend of peanuts and raisins. It balances sweetness and richness really well, I was impressed with the oomph this tea started with.

The aroma of the second steep is malty and molasses heavy, with cocoa and that woody bourbon note again, I almost want to get a bourbon barrel and toss this tea in it to see if I can really bring the quality out. Somehow this steep manages to be stronger and richer, but luckily there is no astringency or bite to this tea, it is smooth as silk and heavy with its richness. I feel like sinking when drinking it, this tea makes me melt in my chair just a bit. The taste is sweeter this time around as well, the cocoa has gone straight to chocolate and the yam is more candied. Notes of roasted peanuts and molasses at the finish and just a tiny, tiny, hint of rose in the aftertaste.

Last steep, ok not really, I could pull a few more out of this one, not a ton, it seemed to max out at five but could go for a couple more but only be really light. The aroma for this one is malty and starchy, strong and sweet with undertones of resin and bourbon. The taste is similar to the second, formidable in its intensity of texture and taste but smooth and gentle, I assure you I can make a few off colored jokes here, but I resist. The best part is my notes are a jumbled almost unreadable mess, totally unintelligible to anyone but me, and only barely to me! Strong notes of yams and malt give this tea its start, it is not sweet but starchy and rich. The middle and the end are sweet like chocolate and a touch of peaches with a slight woody finish and a lingering peanut note. I kinda love that peanut note, reminds me a little of boiled peanuts but without the salt, and being Southern I cannot get enough boiled peanuts, ever. As you can tell I really liked this tea, my next What-Cha order will definitely have more than just a sample of snails, I’m getting a big ol bag of this stuff…but like all my other Dian Hongs it will be gone far too quickly.

Blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/02/what-cha-china-yunnan-simao-pure-bud.html

Hmm, this one is weird. A little too intense for me perhaps. The aroma is very mushroomy or reminiscent of a rotting log. The taste is not too far off either. After a few steeps, it starts to mellow out a bit and acquire some sweetness beneath the heavy forest flavors, but for me each sip took a good bit of effort lol. Does have some nice flavors if you can get through the first few steeps, but not really worth it to me. Maybe would be good when you’re sick, as the flavor is very strong and each sip cleared my sinuses right up by its sheer strength.

Very nice Darjeeling, light but with full flavor. The vendor’s notes are in line with my own thoughts, finding red wine and floral notes. Would like to try this again at first and second flush.

This is a wonderful black tea. The notes from the vendor are right on target: grape, molasses and malt. Pleasurably brisk and rich at the same time. Definitely on my wish list since all I bought was a sample.