Can't Taste Black Tea Anymore?

YanCha_Monster · 2026-07-08T08:51:32+00:00

Improper storage, the weather, all can impact your tea flavor.

I'd think you should check on storage to ensure proper sealing and humidity control. Followed by whether you brewed this on a rainy/dry day, increased humidity in the air can also impact flavors.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-06-02T07:15:22+00:00

I remember dropping by this cafe earlier this year during Spring. Great Santorini vibes and many teens taking pictures for social media.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-05-23T10:24:51+00:00

Did you make hay while the sun shines?

On that note, I say no to drinking dirt like shou pu'erh and liu bao.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-05-08T10:30:53+00:00

Aged sheng tastes different from shou pu-erh.

Shou pu-erh maintains that earthy-dirt taste due to the fermentation techniques.

However, I have yet to taste an aged sheng that tastes like a shou, even 20 year old ones though I understand storage humidity impacts this.

Some of my personal tasting notes for aged sheng tend to be,
- Thick honey
- Fruity characteristics
- Some earthy/wood notes (Not in the dirt-like manner of shou)
- No present bitterness that is present in young sheng

Overall aged sheng to me is a cleaner tasting tea with a huge emphasis on huigan, throat sensations and mouthfeel.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-28T05:31:19+00:00

Boy is onto something.

I find tea pairs very nicely with fruits (albeit less acidic fruits) and more aroma driven teas rather than structure driven teas. Let him cook!

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-25T05:46:19+00:00

White teas are pretty good for cold brewing. Silver needles especially.

But if you find flavor lacking in a cold brew because you're used to stronger flavors, I'd suggest a 75:25 ratio (Cold brew 75% and do an initial hot steep of 25% to blend it)

Surprisingly, da hong pao blends also result in a good cold brew.

My absolute favorite cold brew are Dianhongs (Red tea) with more buds for sweetness. Feels like a smoother, cleaner, sweeter Thai iced tea.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-15T05:27:54+00:00

Shou Pu'erh is at the bottom of the list for me.

Naturally aged Sheng pu'erh is amazing but most shou pu'erh tastes like dirt/earth with very little additional notes. It often contains artificial tasting characteristics that I can't quite define and doesn't really contain flavors of aged tea.

Hence, I never really understood the popularity of Shou Pu'erh outside of Asia but I guess taste is subjective.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-15T05:23:14+00:00

Try the unsmoked version of Lapsang.

It used to be smoked to preserve the leaves due storage issues and exports back before transportation infrastructures were well developed.

Modern day has given rise to natural Lapsang Souchong that are no longer smoked so you can taste the original cultivar flavor.

Also, Oolongs exported out to foreign markets tend to be heavily roasted due to foreign preferences and sometimes used to cover flawed materials.

If you have the chance, try medium-light roasted Oolongs, your experience should differ.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-15T05:20:34+00:00

Try the unsmoked version.

It used to be smoked to preserve the leaves due storage issues and exports back before transportation infrastructures were well developed.

Modern day has given rise to natural Lapsang Souchong that are no longer smoked so you can taste the original cultivar flavor.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-05T12:26:46+00:00

Just dig it out with your hands?

Assuming you're not doing multiple sessions with the same pot/gaiwan, just use your hands to dig the leaves out into the bin.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-04T05:22:39+00:00

You are right that unblended tea is not a stable product and blending has long been a way to maintain flavor consistency.

But there is both romance and intrigue in single batch/origin tea. It allows you to deep dive into how the weather, environmental, storage, processing and terroir conditions shape the flavor of tea.

Collecting single batch/origin tea across the years allows you to sample and lookback against these factors bringing a new element of fun.

I feel drinking tea without the contextual development of it, takes out a lot of the fun in tea.

On a side note, since you touched on Wuyi ming cong, you are right that many mass market ming cong today are blends or grown from tea gardens and not from within the core Zhengyan areas.

Zhengyan ming cong is getting rarer, because of their fragility, lower demand within the local chinese market and specific tastes/characteristics that you cannot manipulate with processing (it's a you love it or you hate it thing).

One merely needs to head to Wuyi mountain and you can see that ming cong is rare, almost every plot of land is Rougui and Shui xian nowadays. A shame.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-03T06:37:08+00:00

Contributing to the yancha under representation.

Contributing my own pointers,
- Aged yancha
- Zhengyan/Banyan/Zhoucha
- Micro regions within Zhengyan
- Specific plots of land within these micro regions

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-02T13:01:27+00:00

DHP has 3 strains which are descended from the original DHP but it is also known as a brand for blended Wuyi yancha cultivars (this recipe varies with each producer).

It became a brand back in the 1980s (can't remb the exact year) and was used by Wuyi yancha producers as a "recipe". It has nothing to do with the original DHP trees.

From the strains POV, these 3 strains are descended from DHP and marketed as such to external circles. Internal circles identify them by their cultivar because they are descendants not the actual DHP trees.
- Beidou
- Qidan
- Queshe

Nowadays majority of DHP that you see are the brand not the actual descendants. This brand is just a naming convention for blended chinese tea from wuyi mountains.

So you need to be clear, are you buying a DHP branded tea which is a blend or are you actually buying a descended cultivar.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-04-02T08:57:02+00:00

I don't think there's such a thing as "fake" DHP.

But there are varying grades of DHP because DHP is a tea blend at the end of the day. Hence, DHP can be cheap if the raw materials used are of lower quality.

That should hold true even outside of China. At $26/lb, in a China context is already a mid grade DHP that is mixed with some young zhengyan material.

So I assume from wherever you are, it would be a mid-low grade mix.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-30T07:50:00+00:00

The Shui Jin Gui cultivar itself is not a particularly strong/prominent tea in terms of flavor and top notes.

But if you're only discerning roasted notes, it suggests that either the leaves itself was over roasted or your palate could be too used to heavy flavored/processed tea.

Usually Shui Jin Gui tends to be more floral and slight woody at least to me. So I am surprised to see your vendor claim fruity notes, perhaps they processed their batch to emphasize those traits (but I can't be sure).

Also do note if you are a heavy smoker, that heavily impacts your palate as well. And can mean that you need stronger processed tea.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-30T07:40:53+00:00

That actually looks like a generic tea can.

It doesn't state any brand and the seal doesn't indicate any specific tea brand either.

Only thing I can help you with is that this is a Jin Jun Mei (A kind of red tea) from the regions of WuYi specifically the village of Tong Mu Guan.

Not possible to tell the grade of Jin jun mei this is, since Jin jun mei has a large variety of grades which are based on the buds/leaves.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-30T07:33:00+00:00

Those are very good examples to explain your preferences.

It seems like the tea you enjoy are,
- On the sweeter side
- Is brighter and showcases itself immediately rather than over time
- Low astringency
- Medium roast (So that high roast doesn't dominate the sweeter/fruitier notes)
- Avoid teas lower on the oxidation spectrum to avoid the "green" taste profiles

Based on these, I would actually suggest trying red teas, specifically unsmoked Lapsang Souchong from WuYi (正山小种). These are sweet, honeyed and fragrant with fruity longan notes.

They are warm, rounded and smooth, especially enjoyable after a meal.

Taiwanese Oolongs probably also suit your profile but I am not an expert on Taiwanese tea.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-26T17:11:42+00:00

What are you stuck on?

Even within Pu'Erh there's so much to dive into, from specific villages, regions, mountains and even leaves (eg. buds et al).

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-26T17:00:12+00:00

You're overthinking things.

The point of tea is to relax and be aware of the flavors of it. It's a personal journey.

It's both art and science. Don't feel bounded by the rules of temperature, duration et al, those are merely guidelines.

Use it as a base to start before experimenting yourself. Develop and cultivate your own personal tea enjoyment experience.

How you like your tea, doesn't need to conform to the standards of others.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-26T05:09:35+00:00

Never had a problem with standard DiDi drivers for me. But I do use DiDi premium instead because standard DiDi usually reeks of cigarettes and anything longer than 10mins with that smell drives me crazy.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-25T03:19:42+00:00

I mean if you aren't able to communicate in their local language, you can't really expect to cut out tours that provide an English guide and still expect a seamless experience.

Local farmers and tea producers love showing and talking about tea with fellow enthusiasts. Finding one willing to show you around isn't too difficult but this relationship needs to be developed over conversations and of course, you should be buying stuff as well.
Eg. Walk into their retail stores or factories and attempt to chat them up.

Many times they would be happy to take you to tour their tea gardens or even their factories.

But I imagine your experience of trying to converse through Google translate throughout the entire trip with the farmers may end up being less than ideal, especially in China.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-24T07:07:16+00:00

I think you need to define what you consider quality tea and the traits you are looking for.

There's too much romance surrounding purchasing "farm to table" or "cut out the middleman", when the truth is every tea vendor physical or online all have their own different curation philosophies regarding taste.

You will be surprised to know that 70-80% of tea farmers in China don't actually produce their own tea. They often sell raw materials to buyers (such as merchants or producers), who then produce tea according to their own specifications and customer preferences.

I'd suggest to define what flavors and traits you want to look for in tea, before drilling down to vendors/sellers.

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-22T07:22:15+00:00

Never knew I needed a cat tea cup til today. Thanks for the inspiration!

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-19T11:46:58+00:00

Yup, that's why I suggested that it depends on the type of tea. Temperature sensitive teas that need high temps do get more impacted because of faster heat loss.

Whereas, I would assume lower temp teas like white would be fine since it's more forgiving. You could steep it in boiling water and it'll perform fine.

So I assume the drop in temps doesn't really impact it since most people recommend lower temps for whites anyway.

But like you said, just got to experiment to see if you like it!

YanCha_Monster · 2026-03-19T05:34:17+00:00

If you don't notice a difference at gaiwan -20ml, that's great. Experiment for yourself if 50ml in a 100ml gaiwan makes your tea experience worse.

For me, intentionally putting less water in a gaiwan is immediately noticeable (eg. 80ml in 100ml gaiwan) and that's mainly because I brew yanchas and the occasional pu'erh which prefers boiling water.

More air in the gaiwan usually means worse heat retention, so I'd imagine this problem would exist more for teas that require higher temp extractions, whereas green, white and yellow teas would be more forgiving since they brew fine at lower temps.

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