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[Tea Review] The nomalicious of coconut puerh
Sunday, 4 August 2013 11:20 pmI will not lie to you, journal: this review for Republic of Tea's coconut puerh is short because I polished the tea off before I had the chance to write it up. It was that good.
In the Bag:
Visually, it's very dark and well-shredded tea with big hunks of coconut in it.
Olfactorily (really, we have no better word?), it's a syrupy, milky coconut smell--a little odd, but an improvement over the plainly chemical coconut scent I've encountered elsewhere, like Adagio's coconut black, which isn't bad, but isn't good either.
Yes, I've tried multiple coconut teas. I was not joshing you about how dire a coconut allergy would have been for me.
The Steepening:
Boiling tap water over a teaspoon of tea, steeped a minute or so longer than my usual test time because puerh likes it that way, served up plain with no sweetener and no milk/creamer.
On any given puerh tea, you'll see some "This is the worst black tea I've ever tried!" comments, and you can ignore them, because puerh isn't black tea--it's not just oxidized, it's fermented and put away for a long while to get funky, let things grow in it, be tripped over by hobbitses, and so forth. Generally speaking, the funk those reviewers are complaining about is what puerh is supposed to be. But in order for it to brew up deep and earthy and a little shroomy, rather than muddy and dank and suspiciously fishy (in the sense that one asks, "Is there fish in this tea?"), it usually needs a brief rinse. Most loose leaf teas benefit from a rinse, really--dried leaves packed into small contains and jostling against each other in transit can lead to a fair bit of grindage and dust, and that's putting aside any actual dust (etc.) they might have picked up in picking, processing and waiting around on the market.
The point of all that is, I got a whiff of fishiness and realized I'd forgotten to give the cup a quick rinse. The scent of the tea was mostly rich earthy dark chocolate (!) and coconut, but with a little background aquarium tang. More disturbing than the fish tang was that this was not an unappealing combination of scents.
When I used the last of the sampler, I gave it a proper rinse. It eliminated the fishy scent, but it also took some of the depth from the flavor. I've decided not to think too hard about that.
The Verdict:
Some strange alchemy of the base puerh and coconut chunks gives this a complex dark chocolate/coconut vibe. I would accuse the coconut of playing mind tricks on my taste buds, but as I said, this isn't my first coconut tea, and it's never gone chocolatey on me before. It's got to be the fish.
But I'm okay with that.
In the Bag:
Visually, it's very dark and well-shredded tea with big hunks of coconut in it.
Olfactorily (really, we have no better word?), it's a syrupy, milky coconut smell--a little odd, but an improvement over the plainly chemical coconut scent I've encountered elsewhere, like Adagio's coconut black, which isn't bad, but isn't good either.
Yes, I've tried multiple coconut teas. I was not joshing you about how dire a coconut allergy would have been for me.
The Steepening:
Boiling tap water over a teaspoon of tea, steeped a minute or so longer than my usual test time because puerh likes it that way, served up plain with no sweetener and no milk/creamer.
On any given puerh tea, you'll see some "This is the worst black tea I've ever tried!" comments, and you can ignore them, because puerh isn't black tea--it's not just oxidized, it's fermented and put away for a long while to get funky, let things grow in it, be tripped over by hobbitses, and so forth. Generally speaking, the funk those reviewers are complaining about is what puerh is supposed to be. But in order for it to brew up deep and earthy and a little shroomy, rather than muddy and dank and suspiciously fishy (in the sense that one asks, "Is there fish in this tea?"), it usually needs a brief rinse. Most loose leaf teas benefit from a rinse, really--dried leaves packed into small contains and jostling against each other in transit can lead to a fair bit of grindage and dust, and that's putting aside any actual dust (etc.) they might have picked up in picking, processing and waiting around on the market.
The point of all that is, I got a whiff of fishiness and realized I'd forgotten to give the cup a quick rinse. The scent of the tea was mostly rich earthy dark chocolate (!) and coconut, but with a little background aquarium tang. More disturbing than the fish tang was that this was not an unappealing combination of scents.
When I used the last of the sampler, I gave it a proper rinse. It eliminated the fishy scent, but it also took some of the depth from the flavor. I've decided not to think too hard about that.
The Verdict:
Some strange alchemy of the base puerh and coconut chunks gives this a complex dark chocolate/coconut vibe. I would accuse the coconut of playing mind tricks on my taste buds, but as I said, this isn't my first coconut tea, and it's never gone chocolatey on me before. It's got to be the fish.
But I'm okay with that.
