JalamTeas

My second session with this tea. The first time I thought it was rather boring, but this is really quite nice. Fairly thick mouth feel, sweet and bitter, nice mouth coating by the 3rd steep, smell of something powerfully fruity… pineapple maybe?

After 5 or 6 steeps the lid scent weakens and changes to something more like sugarcane, and I’m getting a pretty decent puer sweat. Tragically I won’t have time to steep it out in the gaiwan, something has come up and I’ll have to dump the leaf in a mug to finish.

Possibly I like autumn sheng more than I thought.

This tea is now unavailable. I was lucky to get a sample. I didn’t think I’d like a fermented pu-erh, but this is nice. Earthy and smooth. I know there’s another flavour in there too, but my palate is not sophisticated enough to figure out what it is. I’m curious to see how the taste changes after a few steeps.

I think I’m becoming addicted to this one. I’m not normally a fan of pu-ehr or green teas, but I like this one. Has a tang and brightness to it. Only a short steep is needed at first and can be resteeped up to 20 times. I think what I enjoy most about this tea is the ritual I’ve built around it by steeping using a traditional gaiwan.

From the Puerh TTB #2

I have a terrible habit of hoarding the last few grams of a tea, and when I participate in a TTB, that’s often all that I get. So I have a box of about 30 samples I’ve taken from the TTBs over the past year that I haven’t tried. Kind of dumb. Yesterday I polished off the last 2 grams of an EoT sample and enjoyed it so much I decided to try this tea today.

It started out really well with a sweet straw flavor with very long strong finish. Good mouth-feel. Hint of caramel. Strong cha qi. Very approachable, but fairly complex and interesting. The 2nd steep smelled a bit like damp ashes but that quickly went away. Mild taste builds power in the mouth leading to a big finish. Taste is damp straw with no sign of the caramel, but a hint of ashes. Becomes astringent as it cools. The 3rd steep again gave me a hint of ashes in the nose, but they again dissipated quickly. The taste is stronger, with wood as well as straw flavor. Astringent but not bitter; the astringency builds in the finish to the point that it is too much.

In both the second and third steeps, the finish is stronger than the taste, and the flavor increases dramatically if I aerate the tea while it’s in my mouth. If this were a wine, I would say that it is “closed-in” and together with the tannin I would suggest that it needs age to come together. I’m not sure if it works that way with tea, but suspect this is a tea that would age.

The fourth steep is ca return to the first steep: no ashes in the nose, but a rich clean flavor. Like it finally woke up. Shows a hint of tart bitterness at the finish. The cha qi is still very strong. Overall a good tea; I wish I could try it again in 10 years.

puerh from this morning, courtesy of the lovely dexter Now, i’m not a huge fan of sheng. They’re more hit or miss for me than shou, though i have found a couple i really love (wild monk, i’m looking at you!). This one is sort of middle of the road for me. it’s too shengy for me, without that sort of sweetness that i do enjoy from sheng’s. Happy i got the chance to go at it this morning, but i’ll likely swith to a shou this afternoon before going back to another sheng :)

I’ve been sipping on this puerh all morning and in light of the fact that i can’t get it anymore, i didn’t take super detailed notes. dexter sent this one my way and i’m always happy to try out more shou’s. this one had an earthy aroma initially but it lessens over the steepings and takes on a more subtle taste. The brew is smooth and extremely pleasant.

Happy Christmas fellow steepers! Enjoying a nice pu this holiday afternoon. This is a wonderful tea from Jalam’s December tea club. It is from a region described as being “off the grid” in the Menghai area. It brews a copper color, with no bitterness at all in early steeps. It is acidic like young pu erhs are. Bitterness starts to come through in later steepings. It is buttery and delicate, full flavored if not simple. Very high quality as all Jalam teas are in my experience.

Tea of the day. The moment I pulled back the paper I was impressed with this one. I am not used to such a fresh green aroma with only a little shengness to it. The leaf is as nice as the aroma. There is a lot of green, some brown, and an abundance of silvery buds. I can tell by looking there is a lot of large leaves in this cake. I did a rinse (for once), poured off and let the leaf rest for while before preparing the first cup.

The liquor is apricot in color. I braced myself for the young sheng astringent blast and was happy to find it wasn’t present. This is a 2014 cake but the astringent bite is light and comes and goes. This is lightly sweet. I caught hints of smoke. The aftertaste reminded me of peach.

I am not that educated in sheng so I can’t tell much about quality. I can say I enjoyed drinking a sheng that I didn’t have to wince with each sip.

I’m continuing my Bulang sampling mode this week, starting with this one from the Jalam Tea club. It’s a beautiful compact little cake, rich mahogany colored. I loaded up my yixing and even though the steeping were short, the tea was very dark & rich, and the flavor brought to mind coffee, cinnamon, and a dense chewy whole grain bread. I drank several steeps over the afternoon, and I should be able to get more out of it in the morning, I think.

I enjoyed sipping on this all afternoon, and will probably try a few more rounds in the morning. I wish I had more to say about it, but that was hours ago. It was smooth & tasty, & helped to rid me of the headache that I had all morning. Sadly, this is a sip down.

a nice smooth tea!

when i smell the leaves dry, i smell mustyness.

when i smell the leaves wet, they smell green.

when i smell the brewed tea, it smells like sweet and honey.

when i taste the brewed tea i taste honey and sweetness.

i rate this a 75 because it is too smooth for me.

many thanks to Scribbles for this sample :)

I got this in the mail earlier this week, but haven’t had time to sit down with it yet. I took today off to relax, so it’s a perfect day to spend some time with this tea.

I liked it right off the bat. As the information card notes, it has a sweet tang to it. I decided that this was an apricot sweetness with kind of a sour note, like a sweet and sour flavor. Very interesting! I love when a tea has a unique characteristic that makes me want to come back again. This one has that. The texture is slightly oily, which sounds bad, but it’s kind of how I find good sheng texture thickness. This one isn’t that thick but has that smoothness. It was not hard on my stomach at all, which is also nice. Overall, a very good sheng!

Ya know, this tea is alright, but nothing stands out. Usually there’s a quality or a flavor note that causes me to remember a tea. I tried this the first time when I was comparing my new Juan shui clay pot with a gaiwan and it just tasted like sheng, nothing remarkable. I had it again yesterday with the same result. Perhaps my palate isn’t refined enough, but I seem to get more enjoyment out of other sheng, so maybe it’s just this tea. I guess it won’t hurt it to hang out in my cupboard for awhile, and then I’ll try again. Maybe some age will help it along. Weird, because they say such promising things about this tea, like, “we want to be able to offer this tea at least once a year.” Oh well. :/

Reasonably loosely compressed, attractive dark purple leaves, the tea brews a bit more copper colored than typical young shengs, and has an enjoyable smooth quality (in comparison to other purple leaf sheng I’ve had). Quite flavorful and an enjoyable cup.

I got this in the mail today and couldn’t wait to try it! The cake was definitely darker in color than the usual Sheng, and it was pretty loosely compressed. Most of Jalam’s raw puerhs are loosely compressed and I appreciate that…makes it easier to break apart.

This tea brews up to a nice yellow color. I brewed 7g in my little Jian Shui pot, and I think maybe it could have used more leaf. In the early steeps, it had a nice thickness to it. The texture was also buttery. Taste-wise, it was more savory in the beginning and then changed to a delicious sweetness later. I also detected a dried berry note. I really enjoyed it and will definitely enjoy the rest of this cake!

I really enjoyed this tea is was medium thickness but a nice mild bitterness similar to coffee or bittersweet chocolate and a nice oily texture. This reminded me of rishi’s maiden which I liked a lot and actually wanted to purchase this tea as I can see myself drinking a lot of it especially since its lower on caffeine.

Unfortunately this is the first tea I have liked enough to warrant a purchase from jalam but they want $24/100g cake plus shipping… So working out the puernomics since it is in cake form I will loose 10% to dust upon breaking up the cake leaving 90 g or ~3oz so for $30 with shipping it will roughly work out to $10/oz for shupu! Thats insane especially for an autumn harvest. Sorry for bringing money into it because I really like this tea but for that money im sure I could buy a bunch of dayi ripes that have the same qualities if not better.

I had some friends over last weekend who were open to trying puerh for the first time, so I served them some of this tea. It was really fun serving them tea gongfu style. I used my Juan shui pot and my cute 1 oz. cups that I don’t normally use for myself. I realized when serving them why you want those tongs…that way you don’t handle everyone’s cup around the lip. I also realized why the presentation vessel and a tea towel are useful. I guess I might be looking into a proper serving set! Fortunately I have a sharing pitcher. :)

When they started to try the tea, one noticed a fishy smell! I never get that, but I know people who do, so that was awesome! That person also decided they liked it though after a few steepings, as it got sweeter. Aha! Then my husband, who never drinks hot tea, smelled it and said it smelled like mushrooms! Yes! I loved sharing it with them! Maybe someday I’ll have to open a tea bar. ;)

This is a tasty, tasty shou! The information card for this tea, which I love reading by the way, said that this is a mild shou with not too much stimulant effect and not bitter, but with strength. I definitely noticed the strength! I did a rinse, let it sit while I ate a brownie ;) and then gave it a 15-second infusion and the color was intense! Super dark for a first infusion.

The flavor was mild. It was smooth, with a clean finish. After a few infusions, I decided that I was detecting notes of cinnamon and caramel. Very yummy! I think my favorite infusions were probably the fourth or fifth infusions. The info card also said it was one of very few shou offerings this year. They like sheng, which is fine by me, because their sheng offerings have been really delicious. Nice to mix it up though!

When I got this in the mail I couldn’t wait to bust it open! Er, I mean, carefully separate the leaves. ;)

The information card notes that this tea is better in the next 12 months rather than aged…which is weird, but okay, I wanna have it now anyway!

The leaf smelled smoky, the kind of grilled smoke I remember from January’s offering, which I loved! The tea tastes like that too, but with sweet vegetal notes. In later infusions, I noticed a nice lemon note. Overall, I liked it. Maybe not as much as the Jinuo or Naka, but it’s decent. Have I mentioned I really love this club?

Thank you for the sample Cheri

But MEH…this sheng is not for me. It started out extremely smokey, which, I don’t generally have a problem with but it pretty much overwhelmed the first steep. The following steeps were less smokey but mostly a one note tea and that note is “pleasant bitterness”. Which don’t get me wrong, I like an assertive, even aggressive sheng at times. I just wish there was some sweetness, fruit flavor, or floral aroma to balance it out. Not a terrible tea, just not right for me!

I’ve been out of pu erh commission for several months now, but am making a comeback. I was having some stomach issues, and pu erh was especially hard to drink. I’m still having some issues with ripe pu, but today’s raw want down smoothly. this is a Jalam tea club offering from several months back. I was only a member for a couple months because I figured it was too expensive on a per unit basis. $24 for a 100 g cake is about a $84 per cake. not cheap. But the tea they offer is damn good.

This was a very nice cake. Super fresh smelling, like fresh cut flowers. The tea was not bitter, very smooth, flowery, and honey like. The quality reminds me of Tea Urchin. A superb tea. I just rejoined the club.