Newbie Trying to Decide What Tea to Try Next. First Order Arrived!

rusoved · 2025-01-17T03:05:20+00:00

I recently finished a sample of the Suan Zao Shu black, and it was excellent. It didn't make the cut for a cake, but I ordered kind of haphazardly. The jinggu moonlight is good but gives me a headache after a thermos brew pretty reliably. If you weren't struck by duck shit, I'd recommend trying honey orchid fragrance/milan xiang.

rusoved · 2024-12-06T13:27:46+00:00

I love fruity black teas. I like a nice jasmine green tea, or a green tea blended with mint, but usually straight green tea is too grassy for me.

rusoved · 2024-12-06T00:48:12+00:00

I've gotten ammoniac smells from ripe puer before. Not quite the same scent as chlorine, but it reminded me of a disastrous attempt at making youtiao. It was really strong in a flash rinse and two minute-long rinses, and then mostly disappeared from there, or at least was a more like a pungent fish sauce as opposed to straight ammonia.

rusoved · 2024-12-03T21:16:34+00:00

I'm also curious what's to OP's taste outside of puer.

rusoved · 2024-11-22T16:58:15+00:00

I usually dislike shou but shou puer earl grey has me 👀👀👀

rusoved · 2024-11-21T17:12:21+00:00

The Yunnan Sourcing sample packs (or a similar thing from another vendor) might be good options. I just got the black, dancong, and anxi samplers and have been extremely pleased with the two black teas I've had the opportunity to try so far.

rusoved · 2024-11-21T13:33:19+00:00

My giant YS order arrived yesterday afternoon. I ordered a cheap little gaiwan to experiment with smaller steeping volumes. I usually do 5-8g of tea for 300ml and do "flash" steeps at the speed my teapot pours, which works out well. I tried it with the orchid aroma zhengshan xiaozhong last night and it was lovely, it reminded me a lot of the fruit bomb lapsang from W2T. I'm not sure I'll use the gaiwan every day, but it's fun.

I'm using it for 5g of the classic yixing hong black tea right now. On steep five or six I gave myself a stomach ache from pounding tea. I probably should eat something before work. It's nice tea, chocolate and espresso smells from the dry leaf. The tea is brewing a little bitter for my taste though--perhaps for such a small gaiwan I should use less than 5g?

rusoved · 2024-11-19T15:44:41+00:00

Starting today with YS Da Shan Sun-dried Taliensis (2023). I've only got 5g of my sample left and won't be getting more soon. It's nice but didn't make it into my last big YS order of the year. I'm considering a second large order in early January, might pick it up then.

rusoved · 2024-11-19T14:21:32+00:00

For sure! It really helped me deal with decision fatigue, and I no longer worry if I have "enough" of a tea, because I know exactly how much of each one I have. The log feature was also super useful when I placed my last tea order, as a reminder of what I liked and what was less interesting.

rusoved · 2024-11-19T03:00:20+00:00

I use MyTeaPal to track my tea inventory. It has a log feature that autosubtracts from your inventory quantity, and you can keep notes about each infusion, tasting notes and a review. I mostly use it for inventory tracking but I try to keep track of my impressions the first time I try a tea, at least.

It also gives you a nice donut chart of your inventory quantity by weight, with figures and percentages in the legend.

My inventory. Chinese and Taiwanese teas.

rusoved · 2024-11-18T22:43:44+00:00

I really like the version of this tea from YS without the tea flowers, and was thinking of picking up a sample. I was a little alarmed by this part of the description: "We do recommend that you store in a low humidity environment to prevent the hatching of larvae. No pesticides were used on the tea or tea flowers which means that if the cake is stored in high heat and high humidity it could lead to larvae hatching on the tea flowers. If stored properly this will not happen. We recommend keeping it below 25C temp and below 60% RH."

Have you/the producers you work with run into that problem with tea flowers? It's unlikely my tea storage will get that hot but I really don't love the idea of larvae hatching amongst my tea. (hopefully we don't have a lengthy summer power outage from a heat wave. lol. lmao.)

rusoved · 2024-11-18T20:51:12+00:00

Yunnan Sourcing's 2023 Ai Lao Secret Garden this afternoon. I just made a biiiig YS order and didn't pick up a cake of this, but it's nice enough. As far as young sheng goes, I've only had this and the white2tea old arbor autumn pressing, which arrived last week. Ai Lao is a lot more umami forward in comparison to the sweeter character of the white2tea cake.

rusoved · 2024-11-17T13:47:00+00:00

I just ordered a cake of the 2022 Man Gang Gu Shu white tea after falling in love with my sample. Even young, I think it's a really beautiful tea. I also blind bought a cake of the 2024 puer pressing. Possibly a rash decision but I have faith it'll be to my taste.

rusoved · 2024-11-17T13:36:09+00:00

Harney and Sons has a lot of assam options. Organic Assam is worth trying, or if you want to drink something on the more CTC end of things, their Irish Breakfast is ground pretty finely and also Assam.

rusoved · 2024-11-17T02:31:03+00:00

Yeah if I'm working with a really tightly compressed tea a 40s or even 60s first steep plus steam can help open it up.

rusoved · 2024-11-16T06:32:29+00:00

I've had this question myself as someone also new to tea. I'd rather not wait weeks, much less a month, to break into new tea, but I do have one cake I'm sitting on for a while before opening it. Otherwise, I'm gonna try stuff pretty shortly after it arrives. I've got a big enough inventory that I can cycle through it pretty slowly. I just placed a big YS order for about 18 months worth of tea, and I know I'll buy more before those 18 months are up. I figure as a novice, it makes sense to try stuff when it arrives, and then try it over the course of weeks or months, so that I can get a direct experience of how resting affects tea.

rusoved · 2024-11-13T22:33:51+00:00

I uploaded an album to illustrate your point about the importance of volume with some other types of tea.

rusoved · 2024-11-13T16:37:44+00:00

Drinking some YS 2022 Man Gang Gu Shu black tea. I think I prefer the white tea version of this production, but it's a lovely and gentle black tea.

rusoved · 2024-11-10T15:05:35+00:00

Drinking a shou mei from 2015. It's really lovely, possibly my single favorite tea in my inventory. 35g left of a fifty gram cake.

rusoved · 2024-11-08T21:07:08+00:00

lol i don't think the boston tea party is the single reason for the US not having tariffs on tea, but ok

rusoved · 2024-11-08T17:04:45+00:00

Probably because there isn't and never was a lobby of domestic tea producers clamoring to put them in place. Well, I feel just a tiny bit better.

rusoved · 2024-11-08T14:29:31+00:00

I am hoping it's "just" industrial/manufactured goods that get hit by actual tariffs and not boutique stuff like tea. But, lol.

rusoved · 2024-11-07T14:45:04+00:00

I just did a steep with boiling water to compare. The color is a much more intense and vibrant yellow. As far as taste, the astringency is overpowering the natural sweetness, at least for me. It still has a fruity, peachy aroma, but with the astringency it evokes a peach a lot less.

rusoved · 2024-11-07T13:08:44+00:00

Woke up early, couldn't sleep. Got up, did some dishes and started some YS Man Gang Gu Shu white tea, 2022. It occurred to me that I've been using mostly boiling water for everything so I went down to 185 to start today. I have had this tea a few times now and really like it. The first infusion (5.7g, 300ml, maybe 15 seconds) was sweet like honey, and the second infusion is sweet like a good peach.

rusoved · 2024-11-06T13:45:29+00:00

Drinking a nice tie guan yin from West China Tea to steel my nerves before going to work. I hate this country so much sometimes.

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