Green Shit or Brown Shit? The Shittiest Tea in China

Hello hello!

This past week I got into a car accident and was rear-ended by a truck going 45mph and consequently thrown into oncoming traffic. If I could take anything remotely hilarious from this experience I’d say that it’s gotta be that a local school’s security truck was the one that rear-ended me. I kept asking myself, “do I feel safe now?” No. Not when security was going 10 miles over the speed limit and ended up messing up my neck. Thankfully I’m not more injured than what I already am because it could have gone much worse. I would like to thank pain killers for helping me cope with the damaged muscles in my neck, because without them I’d be feeling like shit. To be fair, I already do feel like shit. So with all of these shitty feelings we’ll be going over the shittiest tea in all of China - Dan Cong “King of Duck Shit Aroma” Oolong.

For this review, we’ll be going over two different varieties of shitty tea, which can be found on YunnanSourcing’s website. First we have a version of this tea that’s lightly oxidized (the traditional way of making this tea) and put through a ‘kill green process’ (where tea is lightly roasted to stop oxidization) and a new variety of this tea thats not oxidized. Chou Shi, which means dehydrate, is a new way of processing this tea where this tea is quickly dehydrated before the tea has a chance to oxidize. However, you may be asking yourself why this tea has such a grotesque name. Well, this tea is an uncommon oolong which is grown in the Phoenix Mountains in the Guangdong Province of China. The soil that this tea is grown is very unusual because it has a yellow-brown color to it, and the villagers that guard this tea claim that large amounts of duck shit was added to the soil. Now we have a tea called “Duck Shit Aroma”. Regardless if this tale is true or not it still creates an interesting tale.

Oxidized Shit

First off, I’m going to start with the traditional “King of Duck Shit Aroma” Dan Cong Oolong. When opening this tea, the first thing I noticed was how fragile the leaf was. I was also overtaken by a powerful yet rich aroma of sweet caramel. The aroma really took me by surprised because due to the name of the tea, I was expecting something more pungent and vile. Anyways, I measured out 5g of this tea for a100ml vessel and started off this oolong with a thirty second steeping time.

At first this tea came off mellow and warm. The hints of sweet caramel was exquisite and made a lasting impression as it trickled down the back of my throat. The more steeping times that I had with this tea, the more savory it became. Around the fifth steeping of this oolong the notes of sweet oolong started to feel a bit rough, and left an aftertaste of black liquorish that was so light that you almost couldn’t detect it. Although it was still pleasant it was now more savory than sweet. Towards the end, around the tenth steep when this tea started to lose its flavor, it left a diminutive bitter bite that was hiding behind this tea’s smoothness.

Dehydrated Shit

After my session with the oxidized version of this tea, I grew very curious how it would taste green. When I first opened my package of Chou Shi “King of Duck Shit” Dan Cong Oolong, I was surprised to see how green the dry leaf looked. It still radiated a deep lime-green appearance that almost reminded me of dry seaweed. Another aspect of this tea that I noticed was that it emanated the odor of milky sweet-peas with a magnolia flower undertone. Just like the previous session with this tea’s relative, I used 5g of it in a 100ml vessel and started off the session with a thirty second steeping time.

At first, the taste of cream glided past my tongue as it left a sweet aftertaste of sugar-snap peas and magnolia flowers. I was a little surprised by this because it strongly resembled an Anxi Tie Guan Yin - a variety of green oolongs. As I continued to steep this tea it got stronger and stronger. One thing I liked about this tea was its clarity. Although it was exploding flavors in my mouth right and left, it was still clear and easy to detect everything that was coming out of the cup. Another aspect of this tea that I liked was the fact that it left a gentle and sweet aftertaste of cream that filled the space in my mouth. Even long after I had taken a sip, these notes kept lingering and refused to leave. I kept pushing steeping times and it seemed to keep going and going. I eventually put an end to my session with this tea at the twelfth infusion time, mainly because I was way beyond tea drunk.

Green Shit or Brown Shit?

There we’re a lot of similarities in these teas. One thing that I saw in both of these teas is that they were both temperature sensitive and didn’t respond well to being prematurely pushed into a longer infusion time. These teas also had a pronounced tasting note that lingered in the mouth long after I had taken a sip. Another side of these teas that I liked is that for an oolong, and for the fact I only used 5g of tea in each session I got a substantial amount of tea.

Now that I’ve gone over the similarities of these teas, let’s go over the differences. First, I got (a longer steeping time out of the green version of this tea compared to the traditional version of this tea, it phased out a lot sooner. Second, the green version was smooth as the oxidized version had a more bitter aftertaste in the final steepings. Even though the bitterness was minimal, it was still present. Lastly, there are other oolongs out in the market that has a similar palate of flavors and steeping times as the oxidized version. Although the green version of this oolong had a similar taste to an Anxi Tie Guan Yin, its quality and flavor was as high as competition grades of other Tie Guan Yins that are on the market, but substantially more cost efficient.

Overall, the experience I’ve had with these teas wasn't a shitty one, it was a golden one. I think that these oolongs are some of the best you can find on the market as far as taste and quality goes, but in the end the Chou Shi (unoxidized) King of Duck Shit Aroma Dan Cong Oolong is the winner between the two.

Oh, one more thing. I wanted to thank you for reading this shit post ;)

Rating

Green - 9.4

Brown - 9.1