/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>16405638
You're in luck, I happened to get my sampler just a few days ago and had yet to decide what tea to drink this morning, so thanks for choosing for me.

To start with, I wasn't impressed with the sample immediately upon opening. The leaves looked pretty broken and they even had the courtesy to send me a giant stem. I brewed the whole thing gong fu in a ~120 mL pot for 60 seconds with boiling water. Before I poured the water I noticed an odd looking object in my teapot, it turns out they also were kind enough to send me a pebble (bottom pic), never seen that before, I guess this is my first rock oolong.

The tea itself was decent. I've had a few oolongs and this was much more similar to a cheap green tea however. No bitterness, mild astringency, and very strong saltiness/minerality, the latter of which I very much enjoyed. Absolutely no floral notes, and no butteriness.

I don't think you messed up the brewing, this doesn't seem to be a high quality tea at all but it was definitely drinkable. You can see the broken leaf in my strainer from the first brew, there is quite a bit there. I will keep brewing it for the next few hours periodically and if anything crazy happens I'll post an update. I certainly wouldn't buy this though or anything from Verdant in the future. Taste and price aside I don't appreciate getting a rock and a twig with my tea.