Kenyan Safari ~ Eli

The biggest difficulty in brewing White tea is coaxing it into sinking. White tea has so much surface area and so little weight that it immediately floats when water is added to the infuser. One method I tried was to throw it into a paper strainer bag with a plastic toothpick to hold it down. From what i can tell, since the tea wasn’t given the room to expand as much as tea brewed in a real infuser, holding the tea down was a failure. One method that sometimes works is to brew, dump and rebrew in a wide infuser. Rebrewing a spent White will give the leaves enough weight to remain mostly submerged, but runs the risk of brewing with too much water. To combat that, simply brew with 1/2 ounce less water than the recommended amount.

Kenyan Safari by Eli is a unique White with somewhat smaller leaves than its Chinese and Nepalese cousins. Sadly this blend offers very little aroma apart from the faintest hint of chlorophyll.   Since I brewed this tea two different ways, I’ve frustratingly been given two different liquors.  In the first case (the snowman), I brewed it bagged to attempt to hold the leaves fully submerged in ceramic (which is usually unnecessary). In the second case (the moose), I brewed Kenyan Safari in the hard case plastic TeaVana Perfect T-maker (just because it’s quick and easy, there are other probably better methods) and was given a much more transparent liquor with less aroma, but a far more interesting flavor and texture. The first case tastes very similar to a first flush White from just about anywhere with a slightly acidic aftertaste. In the second case, I’m able to discern a lot more twigginess as well as a fuller tingly/malty less acidic flavor. The taste is quite different from the standard White Peony floral and I’m once again floored by Eli’s incredible tea finds. To try and place the flavor better, I rebrewed the infuser tea at 160 F for six minutes. It turns out this tea wasn’t quite that delicate and the third brew was too cold to result in a decent liquor. Meh.

On a lark, I dumped the remainder of my infuser brew into my paper brew and the flavors cancelled each other out. Kenyan Safari is certainly a tea that doesn’t enjoy being messed with. xD

1. Aroma – 84
2. Taste – 94
3. Texture – 89
4. Spunk – 92
5. Price – 88
6. Availability – 81
7. Appearance – 90

Mean score – 88%