I know, the titles long but it was worth it, I finally made a blooming tea! I found this tea at central market, which I usually avoid buying tea from there but I could tell that this tea was fresh and new. Seeing the price tag I lamented… $74.99 a pound. Of course, I just wanted a bud or two, which came out to $1.50. MANAGEABLE! Honestly, white tea is one of my least favorites, I still enjoy it but I would much rather have a green or black tea. Well, enough chit-chat, heres the scoop!

This is what it looks like at the beginning. It is hand wrapped bud that you drop in to the boiling water. No infuser is needed for making this tea. With this tea, it is good to use one bud per 8 ounces of water. One mistake was made! I poured the water into the pot with the tea already in there. This isn’t too much of an issue, but the tea started mending with the water before all the water was in there. So next time i’ll just drop it in there. The suggested temp for the water is 205. Then once the water is ready, drop it into the pot!

Almost immediately after pouring the water in, the tea started opening up. Since I was using my 2 cup pot, i used two buds. This was awesome to watch, I thought it would take a little longer. This tea only takes 2 minutes to steep and oversteeping is not good, i’ll talk about that later. As you can see in the picture, the tea starts to turn to a yellowish color very quickly.

This is what it looked like at the end of the steep, when the leaves were fully open, I wish pictures did it justice! The nose was very nice, it was a very subtle aroma. The leaves looked awesome, I could not believe that the whole flower was rolled into one small wrap.

This is what the flower looked like after I emptied the pot. As I said earlier, DO NOT OVERSTEEP! This tea goes extremely bitter if oversteeped. I knew from the get-go not to let it oversteep, being that I was drinking by myself and helping prepare dinner, it got past me. Now, I have oversteeped tea by little bits before because it is just something that happens sometimes, but this was awful. So just know, empty the pot entirely once it is ready. Luckily the tea can be steeped up to four times, and the oversteep happened on the second pot.

This is what the tea looks like in the end. In better lighting, it is a little more clear looking though. The tea was quite good especially for the price. This tea is really good with meals in my opinion, I had it with some tempura shrimp and egg-rolls. The taste isn’t too different than most white teas I have had, but I found it to be a little more tolerable. It had a lot more flavor than some that i’ve had, which is usually my problem with white tea.

Well, that is it for this time guys! Thanks for reading. I know I keep promising to do the Strawberry Pu-erh and I promise I will soon. The hold up is that it can be steeped multiple times (up to four) and I don’t want to waste it, being that i can’t drink that much. I didn’t get out to Teavana yet, but that is coming and I will still take suggestions! Until next time, have a Tea-riffic day!