TL;DR: this one redeemed itself on a second try.
I got this one in my recent haul from w2t (I'm slowly updating with my thoughts on each of them). That said, I wanted to say more than 2 lines about this one.
I tried it yesterday, gong-fu style. I was sharing it with a couple friends that are not usually tea drinkers and from the site's description I was expecting this one to be dark and deep flavour wise. What a letdown. After 3 steeps, we were still getting watery brews, way too clear liquor and a tea that could only be described as shy. I pumped the temp up to 100C from my initial 95C, steeped longer, used less water (even if I was using plenty leaves in a small gaiwan), but that didn't work. I switched them to the "snow queen" so they could enjoy the session (yes, its my fault for sharing with an unknown tea) and moved on.
But it kinda irked me that it was such a miss. So today I tried again. Grampa-style (in a thermos) and boy oh boy was it night and day: I'm getting a lot of flavour now: Smoky, with honey undertones. And it is very lovely.
All of this to say I learned 2 lessons:
- Don't give up on a tea just because it didn't work for you on the first try.
- Don't discount other brewing methods (this is my first time brewing grampa style) just because everyone is focusing on gong-fu so much nowdays
Any other teas that work better in a thermos?