12 Days of Chris-Tea-Mas - Day 9: India Nilgiri 'Hari Ghatta' - What-Cha

India Nilgiri 'Hari Ghatta' - What-Cha
Type: Oolong (unflavored)
Appearance (dry): Small, dark green with streaks of brown white rolled & balled oolong
Recommended Brewing Parameters: 85°C, 1 tsp, 2-3 min.
Rating: C+ | 78/100
# of Brews: 6

Tasting Notes:
Don't really have any preliminary matters to attend to this review, so today's album is the Oldboy OST by Jo Yeong-wook (as my friends say, I'm always a slut for waltzes, and this soundtrack has quite a few).

From what I've noticed, it looks like a vast majority of Indian teas have a muscatel flavor, and this tea is no exception. The liquid is a golden orange, with an aroma similar to puerh (in terms of the fermented, maybe fishy smell), rain/wet grass, and fruit (perhaps apricot or peach). The texture was generally smooth, but it did dry my throat quite a bit at first. Unexpectedly, one of the strongest flavors at first was cilantro, which was followed by muscatel and finally citrus fruits. Over brews, however, the fruity muscat flavor became the main flavor, accompanied by something I can only describe as sweet dish soap; it was very bitter, then very sweet for a split second (I'm guessing the water temperature was too hot, and I was brewing for too long; this flavor came out once I reached around the 20 second mark). It did lose its dry quality over time, but I ended up stopping at 6 brews because the tea had gotten that bitter. It could go for a few more brews, and I'm guessing if you used a lower temperature water (I'm guessing mine was around 80-90°C) and brewed for shorter times, it would taste quite a bit better. Overall, a decent tea, but I think it requires very specific brewing parameters which, when not followed, make for a pretty terribly tasting tea.


Misc. Notes:

So, busy day today. I cleaned my room, started prepping for a second round of my experiment and cooked tonkatsu (I got that recipe perfected now, which is great since tonkatsu is one of my favorite Japanese dishes). Later, I'm going to get a massage with the family, have dinner with the girlfriend, and watch Star Wars. I'm pretty excited for it, and also for tomorrow, since I'll be tasting some puerh (the first real puerh I tried was Planet Jingmai, and it set the bar pretty high).

As for the rest of break, still not really sure as to what I should do, but I think I'm going to try and get all of my work/applications done in the first half of this week so I can spend next week and Christmas chilling.