2023 Firebat

Type of tea: Raw Puer

Brewing method: Mini in gaiwan, boiling water

This is a bizarre tea. I've mainly had smoked black teas (lapsang souchong) before, but this uses the pine smoking process on raw puer leaves, which are much fresher, punchier, and have a strong hui gan or returning sweetness to their flavor profile.

The first steep of this was, basically liquid smoke, with very little of the tea taste underneath, but I was glad I stuck with the journey. The sweetness of the tea finally poking through the pine smoke flavor on subsequent steeps is tasty and so unique. The flavor evokes the weird sense memory of like, getting a burned piece of stick bark in the goop of your campfire toasted marshmallows. Really awesome and very affordable for something so unusual!