What White Are You Drinking

Withered tea
Flavor Hedonist
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Fri Mar 29, 2019 3:40 am

It's summer here in the Philippines and I can't enjoy my usual Puerh or Heicha due to the blistering heat. So, I cold brewed 10g of Billimai Winter Frost White from Nilgiri with 2g of cascade hop pellets to 1 liter of water to make a very refreshing drink. The cold brew concoction tasted of ripe Indian mangoes and jasmine flowers from the Nilgiri white tea accompanied by pine dankness and grapefruit from the cascade hops.
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Victoria
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Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:05 pm

Flavor Hedonist wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2019 3:40 am
It's summer here in the Philippines and I can't enjoy my usual Puerh or Heicha due to the blistering heat. So, I cold brewed 10g of Billimai Winter Frost White from Nilgiri with 2g of cascade hop pellets to 1 liter of water to make a very refreshing drink. The cold brew concoction tasted of ripe Indian mangoes and jasmine flowers from the Nilgiri white tea accompanied by pine dankness and grapefruit from the cascade hops.
Interesting resulting flavor profile. Are you making beer with your hop pellets? I wonder if the more aromatic Noble hops are today doctored with added artificial ingredients, to highlight aroma and flavor of grapefruit, lemon, citrus, floral... or is it just the kind of hop plant used.
Flavor Hedonist
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Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:18 am

Victoria wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:05 pm
Interesting resulting flavor profile. Are you making beer with your hop pellets? I wonder if the more aromatic Noble hops are today doctored with added artificial ingredients, to highlight aroma and flavor of grapefruit, lemon, citrus, floral... or is it just the kind of hop plant used.
Yes. I have made some beers before. :D I also made some dry-hopped kombucha. I just thought of adding another layer to the cold brewed tea as I had some hop pellets lying around.

I assume the hop pellets just get the different flavor profiles from certain strains and cultivars as do tea with their own strains and cultivars. However, I won't put it past anyone to manufacture flavored hop pellets to make a quick buck.
Ethan Kurland
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Thu May 30, 2019 2:39 pm

Spring 2019 organic white tea from Ilam, Nepal:

Wow this is fresh and light with wonderful aroma starting with the dry leaves and continuing as they are hit with hot water and steep.This is definitely a white tea in all that I think that white tea is for: such as drinkable in great quantities, fresh in taste, aroma, mouthfeel, how the body feels.

Dry leaves' aroma is very green and strong.

Good for 5 infusions. (I as usual am using 1 gram of leaves per ounce of water, but am using cooler water for the time being, only 80C and steeping much longer than usual.)

Added to list on my vendor thread. Cheers
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Mrs. Chip
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Thu May 30, 2019 2:59 pm

Ethan Kurland wrote:
Thu May 30, 2019 2:39 pm
Spring 2019 organic white tea from Ilam, Nepal:

Wow this is fresh and light with wonderful aroma starting with the dry leaves and continuing as they are hit with hot water and steep.This is definitely a white tea in all that I think that white tea is for: such as drinkable in great quantities, fresh in taste, aroma, mouthfeel, how the body feels.

Dry leaves' aroma is very green and strong.

Good for 5 infusions. (I as usual am using 1 gram of leaves per ounce of water, but am using cooler water for the time being, only 80C and steeping much longer than usual.)

Added to list on my vendor thread. Cheers
Wow Ethan, sounds delightful, maybe I can coax Chip into trying this one, lol.
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Victoria
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Thu May 30, 2019 4:00 pm

++1 @Ethan Kurland sounds really special 🍃.
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Thu May 30, 2019 6:43 pm

Thanks for the support. Besides liking this tea as much as I do, it comes this Spring which has been disappointing for me so far. (For finding excellent tea.) Cheers
John_B
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Thu Jun 13, 2019 3:10 am

I just reviewed a Moonlight White that raises an interesting consideration of what those even are. It was a compressed cake version from Farmerleaf, so a Jing Mai tea. The odd thing is that it wasn't the silver and dark color that the loose versions often are, more brownish, so it looked more like a typical shou mei.

I had a similar version from Moychay (a cake of compressed Moonlight White, that looked about the same, both 2018 versions), so I compared the two. They were different in character, in the same general range, but with the Farmerleaf version a bit lighter, sweeter, and simpler, with the other tea showing more range and depth, and nice dried-fruit tones and a hint of spice. Ordinarily I like Moonlight Whites as sweet and intense as they can be, but in this case that other range worked better.

According to a friend who makes versions (the Kinnari tea owner, who keeps a low profile) only one kind of plant type will turn that same color, and it's common enough for Moonlight versions to be made out of others too. I tried one of hers not all that long ago and it was totally different, still sweet and rich but kind of subtle, with a savory edge to it. I liked it but it was even further from what I'd experienced before as standard ML range.
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Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:38 am

John_B wrote:
Thu Jun 13, 2019 3:10 am
I just reviewed a Moonlight White that raises an interesting consideration of what those even are.
Thanks for your erudite consideration of those white teas. Slightly on a tangent, I wonder about ?, what is the category of white tea in the sense of what people expect from them?

To me, most defining is that white tea should give a drinker a pleasant light feeling & freshness. The white tea that I described in recent post, is very much like excellent black tea from Nepal & Darjeeling with its many wine-like flavors, but it also tastes like high-mountain green tea from Taiwan.... All in all in this difficult attempt to describe a tea and its category, what I am sure of is the light body of the brew & how this is refreshing.

If one steeps quickly, it is not so bold (close to an autumnal Nepali black in flavor), but if one steeps for 2 minutes or so, flavor can be bold (like first flush Darjeeling); yet, it is without astringency and deepness of full-bodied teas.

I don't know if this helps. Perhaps people would do better with more familiar information: Spring flush 2019, SILVER TIPS, delicate silver needle buds, USDA organic. Those are facts while the rest is subjective.

I think of the movie, SIDEWAYS, with the wine expert talking about every detail of a wine & his friend drinking twice as much & perhaps enjoying it as much or more because "that's good wine". I try to be in the middle but don't know if that position effectively describes tea.

Thanks John. There is a lot to consider. Cheers
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Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:09 am

Some of those related themes and opinions about tasting and review process keep coming up.

A wine maker friend was on one extreme related to that divide, a staunch advocate of subjective preference being the best milestone for experience of wines, and the only truly valid one. That was even though he made them, and at times the ranking of those he produced benefited from those scoring systems.

I tend to mostly think about teas in relation to being "type-typical," to matching expectations for a standard character and set of aspects. That way of arranging ideas sort of works, but at the same time it leaves a bit out, or de-emphasizes how versions might be just as good in atypical ways, or even increase in appeal to many due to variance.

That Moonlight White post kept going on about that, because I see that type as typically expressing a certain limited range. But then as many versions I've tried were outside of that, so maybe my own interpretation is biased towards my own preference instead.

Nepal white teas (and Darjeeling, but in a different range, often) tend to be very fresh and bright, sometimes including an intense citrus aspect, pronounced mineral undertones, with good sweetness. Moonlight whites I see as ideally related in terms of brightness, freshness, sweetness, and fruit tone (just swapping out citrus for whatever else), but these were a bit milder and deeper toned, in general, just a little towards what I'd expect from shou mei.

Then again it wouldn't surprise me if between being exposed to a limited set of Moonlight White versions and remembering them badly I would change opinion on what is most typical later on, or maybe just drop having any expectation or summary take and go with whatever I run across. One version that I've tried was quite savory; maybe that should be normal.

A tea maker friend clarified that only one particular plant type will turn the distinctive silver and dark coloration when processed as a white tea, which is the norm for Moonlight White, even though other plant types are used to make it. It seems likely that these causes join together, and what I'm interpreting as typical matches the appearance and resulting character from using that plant type.
Ethan Kurland
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Fri Jun 28, 2019 11:16 pm

I've been drinking so much of the white tea that I have written about before recently. It provides a lesson for how difficult it is to understand a particular tea. I cannot really describe its flavor. Moreover, I think I would not have liked this tea several years ago. I need to remember it is unusual.

I let it cool quite a bit, often all the way to room temperature. I prepare it ahead of time for outside family events or bring leaves to events held inside. My friends & family like it not hot & also cannot describe it.

How fair is it for a vendor to ask people to commit to a significant amount of a tea that he cannot describe clearly? Is it better that people should have small amounts of many teas (samples)? I think one often needs many sessions to fully enjoy a tea. Finding the parameters that suit me, is not always easy; & some teas take a while. So, I don't like sample sizes; ……. time to go to sleep. Cheers
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d.manuk
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Sat Aug 31, 2019 6:12 am

Based on the look of the leaves, does this Fuding white tea look better than average? The leaves do seem to look rather hairy.

One of my favorite tea vendors sent out this email saying he got this small supply in and if we want to order first before everyone else. He seems excited but I know by now not to get my hopes up by messages such as these.
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Victoria
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Sat Aug 31, 2019 1:13 pm

Those leaves look really gorgeous @Shine Magical. Fuding silver needles young buds are typically covered with white down fuzzy hairs. I think Fuding is lighter in body than some other silver needle whites.
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Fri Sep 13, 2019 9:49 pm

And on the furry hair young buds topic @Shine Magical;

This afternoon I’ve been enjoying a 2019 Silver Tips Organic White sourced in the mountains of llam, Nepal. Like your Fuding silver needles, the dry leaf has plenty of young silvery buds covered in soft white hair. It’s tasty, a little nutty and creamy, with a nice thick mouthfeel. Very smooth. Empty glass pitcher has thick musky malty fruity aroma. Brought to me via a friend visiting Katmandú shop, Buddha Tea Shop. @Ethan Kurland thank you for the recommendation. I like it :) 🍃

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d.manuk
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Fri Sep 13, 2019 10:01 pm

Looks fruity and juicy :o
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