As I’ve said on several occasions, I’m usually hesitant when it comes to sampling pu-erh. \u00a0I actually have enjoyed most of the pu-erh that I’ve tasted over the years but if I had to choose between pu-erh and most other tea types, I’d probably go with something else. \u00a0I’m not a big fan of the earthiness that seems to go along with most pu-erh and especially with shou pu-erh. \u00a0And as the name of the tea indicates, shou pu-erh is the base tea used for this\u00a0Choco Shou Pu-erh Tea from Camellia Sinensis which is the last of the four teas that I’m sampling from this month’s Amoda Box.<\/p>\n

And while I don’t usually like that earthy flavor of pu-erh, it works with this particular blend. \u00a0The earthiness actually enhances the flavor of the chocolate and gives it a deeper, richer flavor. \u00a0So while I may not be all excited about a shou pu-erh, I do get excited about a tea that complements the flavor of chocolate.<\/p>\n

Yay chocolate!<\/p>\n

So, yes, this is earthy. \u00a0But not so much that it knocks me upside the head with a flavor that makes me think that I steeped soil instead of tea. \u00a0This tastes much better than I would assume the steeped soil would taste – I’m going to go with that assumption because I’m not going to steep soil and drink it. \u00a0Just not gonna do it.<\/p>\n

The chocolate flavor here tastes dark and decadent, like an expensive chocolate bar that says 70% cacao on it. \u00a0If you prefer your expensive chocolate bar to say “milk chocolate” on it, add a splash of milk to make a latte because this tea tastes amazing as a latte!<\/p>\n

To steep: \u00a0I used my Kati Tumbler rather than my gaiwan to steep this tea because of the little chocolate chips in the blend. \u00a0I felt like the Kati was the better way to go. \u00a0I did rinse the tea for 15 seconds before infusing though – you’ll want to do this with any shou to help wash away some of those stronger earthy notes. \u00a0After the rinse, I infused the first cup for 2 1\/2 minutes in 190\u00b0F. \u00a0I added 30 seconds onto each subsequent infusion.<\/p>\n

I resteeped twice – creating three very flavorful cups of tea – with the first two much more chocolate-y than the third. \u00a0The third was still quite nice, just not as much chocolate flavor.<\/p>\n

So smooth! \u00a0No bitterness (not even from the chocolate!) and no astringency. \u00a0Just a deep, mellow, luxuriously chocolate flavor that I would happily drink on a regular basis. \u00a0As I said before: \u00a0the chocolate flavor lasts through a couple of steeps – I got two very chocolate-y steeps out of the tea before the chocolate notes began to wane.<\/p>\n

This tea gets a thumbs up from me. \u00a0Quite good!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tea Information: Leaf Type:\u00a0 Pu-erh This tea is available from Amoda Tea. Tea Description: f you’re new to pu-erh, this is a great introductory tea. If you’re not new, you’ll still enjoy its vanilla chocolate goodness. This is slightly earthy and woody, as you might expect from an aged tea. The taste is smooth, rich…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[337,738,863,870,994,1132,1173,1504,1508,2257,2626,2628,2718,3612,3723,4276,4499,5033,5034,6149,6150,6378,6381,6384,6820,7320,7322,7571,8279],"class_list":["post-24368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pu-erh","tag-amoda-tea","tag-beverage","tag-blend","tag-blended","tag-box","tag-cacao","tag-camellia-sinensis","tag-choco","tag-chocolate","tag-drink","tag-flavor","tag-flavored","tag-food","tag-hot","tag-iced","tag-latte","tag-loose-leaf","tag-month","tag-monthly","tag-pu-er","tag-pu-erh-3","tag-review","tag-reviewing","tag-reviews","tag-shou","tag-subscribe","tag-subscription","tag-tea","tag-vanilla"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Nmje-6l2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sororiteasisters.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}