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Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:45 pm
by Teafortea
LeoFox wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:32 pm
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:12 pm
Irish is more astringent. Scottish more round and malty.
Now that you have more experience with single Origin, unblended teas, it may be fun to make your own blend
I will be looking to see if they have any assam locally here and experiment. Doubt it I’ll come up with the same taste as Edinburg company though, even Taylor’s Scottish blend is not the same. It’s something special about it, at least to me.

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:22 pm
by LeoFox
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:45 pm
LeoFox wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:32 pm
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 1:12 pm
Irish is more astringent. Scottish more round and malty.
Now that you have more experience with single Origin, unblended teas, it may be fun to make your own blend
I will be looking to see if they have any assam locally here and experiment. Doubt it I’ll come up with the same taste as Edinburg company though, even Taylor’s Scottish blend is not the same. It’s something special about it, at least to me.
You are likely to come up with something vastly better using whole leaf. These blends tend to use pretty low grade stuff.

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2022 3:17 am
by Teafortea
Ok now I’m motivated ✔️

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:52 am
by LeoFox
Some mystery gift tea - smoked zheng shan xiao zhong from Beijing wuyutai tea company

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:45 am
by LeoFox
Some nice Taiwanese hong to start the day
SmartSelect_20220920_094409_Instagram.jpg
SmartSelect_20220920_094409_Instagram.jpg (351.97 KiB) Viewed 4144 times

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 5:51 am
by Teafortea
Japanese black tea from Ashikita, benifuki cultivar, 1st flush

I tried this one in the summer and it felt like it was too astringent for my taste, same brewing temp and utensils.

Decided to give it another try today and complete different tea.

Aroma : very sweet vanilla
Taste: acacia honey mild astringent almost pleasant and very very long after taste.

Don't know what contributed to the change but absolutely loved it.

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 6:46 am
by Andrew S
Summer 2020 wuzhilan from La La Shan, brewed in a big zini pot earlier today before trying it again in a small zhuni one.

For me, hongcha seems appropriate on cool wet days like today. I'll probably drink a bit less of it as the weather starts to turn hot, but I'm sure that I'll find the time to drink nice examples nonetheless.

Andrew

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 7:52 am
by Ethan Kurland
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Oct 24, 2022 5:51 am
Taste acacia honey mild astringent almost pleasant and very very long after taste.

Don't know what contributed to the change but absolutely loved it.
After reading the first quote, I did not expect to be reading the second one. "Almost pleasant" usually means, somewhat unpleasant which usually = the tea is not absolutely loved. :roll:

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:21 am
by Teafortea
well I like weird stuff, and yes, it was almost pleasant, meaning I looked for that taste again in the next sip. ( plutôt agréable - I meant) Either things get lost in translation or I am not a talent in expressing tea notes am I hehe

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:54 am
by faj
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:21 am
( plutôt agréable - I meant)
So maybe "rather pleasant" would convey the intended meaning?

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:02 am
by Teafortea
faj wrote:
Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:54 am
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:21 am
( plutôt agréable - I meant)
So maybe "rather pleasant" would convey the intended meaning?
YES thank you :)

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2022 8:20 am
by Ethan Kurland
Teafortea wrote:
Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:21 am
... plutôt agréable...
I like that phrase. Of the few French phrases I remember, suddenly I believe I comprehend....

Sometimes the most interesting tastes are not the easiest to enjoy for me. I get alarmed by a characteristic that is a bit "too strong" or seems not to belong w/ other flavors of the tea; yet, if the "troubling" part, that is what does not allow me to drink most calmly, was not present; then, the experience would be greatly diminished.

I think you wrote well. Thanks.

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2022 3:49 pm
by Teafortea
And I realized how many times I've used "almost" the wrong way. 🙃

Thank you for your feedback 😊

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2022 1:56 am
by Andrew S
Ethan Kurland wrote:
Tue Oct 25, 2022 8:20 am
Sometimes the most interesting tastes are not the easiest to enjoy for me. I get alarmed by a characteristic that is a bit "too strong" or seems not to belong w/ other flavors of the tea; yet, if the "troubling" part, that is what does not allow me to drink most calmly, was not present; then, the experience would be greatly diminished.
I think that I started to appreciate a little while ago that some of my descriptions of flavours and aromas may be accurate enough most of the time, but yet may give a very different kind of impression to someone who isn't me (and vice-versa for anyone else's descriptions that I read).

I detected 'pumpkin' in the last infusions of a tea a few days ago; it sounds awful (perhaps less awful to people from pumpkin-eating jurisdictions), but it was quite lovely within its own context. It just sounds very odd, but it tasted nice.

I have also misunderstood what some people meant when they used a certain flavour to describe a tea, intending it to sound bad, and yet making me think that it sounded quite nice. I think things like 'smoke' or 'coffee' can be accurate descriptions, but can mean very different things to different people who aren't having the same tea at the same time together.

I think that whisky may have affected me (so to say), because that's a world in which there's nothing necessarily wrong with something that tastes or smells like 'wax', or 'wet dog', or 'the ocean', so long as it works well within its context. But that's the kind of thing that's hard to describe in words, and even harder to describe through the internet.

I've been trying to think about how best to describe some hongcha that I've been trying, without sounding too repetitious, but I think that I need more experience before I can do so.

Andrew

Re: What Black Are You Drinking

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2022 6:33 am
by Teafortea
true true!... I stay clear of smoke or camphor description. simply not my kind. Just very recently I was having some tea with a friend and she had served me a tea that mind you was described as having camphor notes. Before I knew that detail, I could have never imagined that camphor was the main description of the tea. ...Well, I had a good chuckle afterward. Tea was good, I can reproduce the camphor taste in my memory but it was not the camphor taste that I imagined it would be.

As far as dirty socks taste or wet dog, that is why I am so scared to try any puehr. One day maybe...I have some puehr I never opened :mrgreen: but no day has been enough courageous for me to dive. Mind is a powerful thing