A Tea Addict's Journal

Second of the many samples

Sorry the picture’s a little dark, but there’s not much to see anyway. It’s a tiny piece, the tea is VERY hard compressed, and it looks and feels quite… regular? I thought it might not be enough tea…

It took two steeps and a little twisting to get it separated enough to actually make a proper brew. The tea is cloudy at first

Yes, cloudy means very cloudy.

The tea is odd. The first infusion — the under the lid smell is that of a the raw leaf. The liquor and leaves smell like a pretty normal young puerh of a few years’ age — a bit similar to the Menghai tuo I’ve had. The tea itself, however, it rather weak…. almost lacking in taste. I tried brewing it longer, and yes, it does come out a little stronger, but all the taste is concentrated on the tongue itself. There’s a fleeting sensation of huigan and throatiness that seems to be there… but also seems to be not. There’s also some weird taste in the tea, I’m not exactly sure what… as well as a hint of smokiness in there. It’s not strong. The leaves is extremely chopped, but probably because of the way the sample came in (but I’m sure the HARD compression has something to do with it). The tea ended up being a little more than I imagined….

As you can see, chopped to high heavens.