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Huang Shen Mao Feng from Jing Tea Shop
I was very curious about this tea in particular because I’ve very much enjoyed Norbu’s large-leaf green tea from Yunnan also called “Mao Feng”, but I suspected it was quite different from the ‘real thing’, and wanted to see what the original was like.
Medium green, thin twisty leaves
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/5698368316/
5 grams in a 200mL pot with about 150mL of water, 150 degrees
First infusion 30 seconds, warm, sweet, a certain smoky/toasted/grilled vegetable background…..
2nd infusion 20 seconds, pale green liquor, the sweet warm flavor is still there, but the toasted vegetable flavor—not a bitterness, perhaps a touch of astringency in it—is dominant now.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debunix/5697792635/
Ran out of time, so I added cold water and set the leaves to the refrigerator to try to get one more steeping out of them. But the resulting infusion, a day later, has a strong bitterness underlying a delicious fresh sweet vegetal flavor; I did not finish it. I also forgot to shoot the leaves after infusion, but they were pale minty green, long, thin, rolled almost into little cylinders.
I used a quite moderate tea-to-water ratio, and very cool water with short brewing times, all designed to moderate and minimize any bitterness. This is a tea that sat, sealed from the shop, for some months before I opened it, so it might have lost something re: freshness. Before assuming this just isn’t my cup of green tea, I’ll try it again—it took me nearly a year to ‘get’ Dragon Well, after all.
Preparation
First time back with this tea in a while, after pushing a lot of alishan (opened several bags to do a comparative tasting a while back and was dutifully trying to finish them off before returning to the other greener oolongs). I really packed the gaiwan. Mmm….so floral and rich and sweet. I adore the spiciness of the Alishans, but my heart belongs to TGY!
Preparation
I don’t think you can have 100. Hey, you all, can she have 100?
That would be, like, PERFECT tea! Is that possible?
I’m just sayin.
Yeah, i thought the same. But you know, i’ve had some ‘perfect’ cups, even from mediocre tea! The perfect cup is more than just the tea that goes into infusing it. It’s everything that lead up to it, the whole context and the things that followed. Perhaps this time she was rating the entire experience instead of the tea :-) Though i’m sure the tea wasn’t mediocre either.
Yeah, that’s a good reason we shouldn’t shy away from rating the same tea more than once.
I would feel bad rating an experience. And as tea is so closely tied to the moment, so I have stopped giving points here.
It was a perfect tea—at that moment, I couldn’t imagine better.
150 F is probably too low for huang shan mao feng. You can try much higher temperature and a little longer infusions.
So, how does it compare to Norbu’s Yunnan Mao Feng (which is no longer available)? Nice pics on Flickr.
It has a much deeper toastier flavor than the lighter, more floral (camphorous, even) Yunnan Mao Feng. I prefer the Yunnanese version to my first experience with this one. Given my general taste preferences, I doubt higher temperature will please my tastebuds more here, but I’ll probably try a little more dilute and not quite so cool next time.