Saturday, June 9, 2012

Premium Bai Cha Long Jing

From Dragon Tea House $19.99 for 50 g.

This was added to an order to get a new tea tray, the free shipping enticed me enough to finally pull the trigger and get the new tray. I really liked the fast free shipping, 11 days from when I placed the order to when it arrived at my door in the US. I was expecting somewhere in the area of 3 weeks, nice work DTH.
With the disclaimer that I am not too familiar with this tea, it smelled of plastic to me. It seems like a problem of the packaging that Dragon Tea House is using and was kind of off-putting to me. If they changed their packaging it might make the first impression a little better. With that being said I was not able to notice it when brewing. I like to drink greens that have nice full leaves grandpa style in a clear glass since it nicely compliments the whole leaves. The tea was very mellow, again something I may not be used to with a green processed this way but I definitely see the resemblance to a white tea. It was not as amenable to a long session making about 1 L total replenishing the tea along the way since there were some unpleasant subtleties that that became apparent after that much tea.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

2006 Haiwan Ripe Pu-erh Tea Tribute Brick

From Yunnan Sourcing  $13 for a 100 g brick.

 This was about as expected, a cool looking brick of tea made with mediocre finely cut material. Nothing shocking about the tea not being that great since the brick is pressed into a cool pattern. It was drinkable, but just a average or slightly below average tea. If I get another I would just display it.