Tea Urchin

Breaking this one out after one of these long work days. They are terrible and don’t leave a lot of hours to drink tea.
I did 10 grams in the Gaiwan to start out. A quick rinse and 3 5 second steeps into the fair cup. The brew is crystal clear in the cup. No cloudiness at all. A little touch of grape in the aroma and the first sip is “Bang” a large hit of the bitter as noted on a previous review and a nice mouthfeel to this one. This has one of the hardest bitter punches I have experienced. It gives a slight touch of faint sweetness in there after plowing through the bitter. Some hints of pine and flower in there.
Nice and strong as this one will punch you in the buds. You will have to enjoy the strength of the bitter it brings to truly enjoy this one with the good Ku Wei and Hui Gan.
Strong and powerful balanced a bit more to the bitter side but enjoyable.

Another excellent Sheng from Eugene and Belle. The soup is a beautiful golden hue. The smell of the soup is a really pleasing floral smell that reminded me of wildflowers. The taste is incredible, simply incredible. This Sheng has a unbelievable taste of grass mixed with butter. Like the Wan Gong 2014 Spring that I drank last night, this is one extremely smooth Sheng. Absolutely no hint of kuwei or astringency at all. Again, way to go Eugene and Belle!

Another excellent Pu’er from Eugene and Belle. In their words “… this Wangong cake is a stand out processing from the 2014 spring harvest” and are they ever correct. The color of the soup is a beautiful golden color. The smell of the soup is an excellent floral and grassy combination that is a delight to smell. The taste is quite simply amazing. To my taste buds the soup has a very well balanced floral and grass flavor with just a hint of honey that comes out at the end. What really surprised me is just how smooth this Sheng is. After seven steepings there was absolutely no astringency and just the slightest hint of kuwei. My favorite part of this Sheng is the energy it exhibits. Here I am twenty minutes after my last sip and my tastes buds are still excited and I can actually still taste this wonderful tea.

This is SUPER good sheng!!!!

Excellent balance between sweetness and pleasant astringency, with some fruit and floral aromas. Great energy. Seems super solid and one of my top picks from TeaUrchin so far :)

Good Monday tea, for sure.

Drank this one all day! It started out somewhat astringent, which I enjoyed but I think perhaps others might not appreciate. It was good, as almost all of my TeaUrchin shengs have been, but definitely not my favorite of the bunch. I give it a B-

Beautiful leaf from 100+ year YiWu tea trees so I was anxious to try this one. First few steeps were very subtle – pleasant enough but little depth or complexity. For a moment I wondered if I should just move on to another tea but I decided to keep working with this Yiwu. After the fourth steep there was stronger flavor but certainly not overwhelming – sweet taste, coats the mouth and throat and lingers; enough subtle bitterness slips in to balance nicely. In general this is an easy to drink tea with beautiful high quality leaf. It won’t knock you over with its flavor but a good tea to keep on hand. I used 6.5 grams with a 5s rinse and a 30s idle followed by 10s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 25s, 30s, 40s steeps. Not my favorite YiWu but definitely worth owning. Note: fairly priced at $35 for a 357g cake.

This is one of the more expensive teas at Tea Urchin. The good: the quality of the leaf is amazing. The color is a crystal clear amber that holds up to seemingly endless infusions. The tea is very thick and hearty. There is almost no bitterness. But it is lacking in character. I find the flavor is kind of dull, with no punch and little huigan. I wonder how a tea like this will age. It is clearly very high quality, but little flavor for my tastes.

This is a sample from Stephanie – thank you so much
5g 100 ml gaiwan 200F
Rinse/pause/5/5/10/10/10/15/20sec etc
I’m going to continue later. I love it. It’s nice, sweet, juicy bell peppers. There is slight cooling sensation in after sip in earlier steeps. I wonder if it continues later on. Enjoyed it a lot.
Thank you Stephanie for the great experience. I would buy it if it would be some specials

I’ve been enjoying this sheng all afternoon. This is another one of my huge batch of TeaUrchin samples I got for my birthday :D

Lovely sweet and somewhat mellow. I’m digging the vibe and creamy mouthfeel. Flavor is bright and fresh with hints of floral.

Another excellent Sheng from Eugene and Belle at Tea Urchin. I have to agree with Stephanie and DP’s review on tea Urchin. The soup is a very nice golden color. The first few steepings produced a very nice vegetal taste with just a hint of kuwei and astringency, and I do mean a hint. Later steepings transitioned to a much sweeter taste with a nice honey undertone. To keep the tea as strong as I like it I did have to increase my steeping times on the later steeps. Over all, an excellent Sheng that is well worth the money. Well done Tea Urchin!

This is my first sample from Eugene and Belle and it is a gem!!!! The smell of the leaves is that of green hay (my grandfather was a hay farmer) with a slight floral accent. The soup is a very light honey in color and smells like green hay mixed with flowers with a bit of smokiness thrown in. The taste is excellent. It is a very bold fruity/floral mixture with a beautiful huigan and absolutely no astringency. The energy of this tea is incredible, long after drinking this tea my taste buds are still excited and I can still taste the tea itself. I will be ordering a bing of this gem!!!!!

This is just a tasting note/book review. I just returned from vacation and while on vacation I read a copy of the English translation of “Pu-erh Tea” from the Appreciating Chinese Tea Series which is an excellent book by the way. The most important thing that I learned from this book was that I was steeping me tea incorrectly. So today I decided to put the techniques that I learned from the book into practice. Let me just say, I was BLOWN AWAY. Those techniques turned this excellent tea into an incredible tea, they really did!!!! I still want to know what that secret 20% is.

Another Sheng Yiwu snob alert!! Here is Eugene and Belle’s description for this tea: " This cake is a special Yiwu blend that we made to celebrate the birth of our son Miles, the dragon baby. When he was 5 months in the womb, he visited the mountains where this tea was made. The leaves are 80% Gua Feng Zhai, 20% secret :) Completely hand made, stone pressed & double wrapped, this cake is a gem." The soup starts off a very pale gold in color that by steeping four turns into the color of raw honey. The smell to me is a combination of butter and hay that is very pleasing to to the nose. The taste is a very sweet with a beautiful floral undertone. There is just a hint of kuwei with a very nicely balanced astringency at the end. This tea is not cheap, but it is worth every penny I spent on it. I just want to know what the secret 20% is!!!!!!

Another tasting note. This is the second Pu’er I have brewed using boiling water instead of 200 degree water. I am blown away by the difference 12 degrees makes. This tea went from excellent to incredible. This time around I noticed a buttery smell to the soup that was not present during my last steeping. Also, there was a touch of butter to the taste of the soup as well. Again, if you love Sheng Pu’er, you really need to give this tea some serious consideration.

This is my first Tea Urchin tea and it lives up to its name. Eugene nails this one on the head: “Our 2013 Spring Bulang blend has all the hallmark bitterness of Bulang kucha, but with a complex mid-range and a delectable sweet top note & huigan.” The soup is a beautiful light gold and to me has a beautiful smell of butter. The taste is perfectly balanced between sweetness and bitterness. My favorite part of this tea is how it’s energy keeps the taste buds alive long after I am done drinking it. This is an excellent Sheng and if you love Shengs you really need to give this tea a lot of consideration. Well done Eugene and Belle!!!!!!!

Another lovely tea from the slew of samples from TeaUrchin I got for my birthday. This is a different flavor profile than I am used to from sheng. It is quite bold and full of “darker” notes. It is kinda smokey and earthy as well as somewhat mushroomy and woody. Not exactly delicious tasting but not offputting either. Perhaps it’ll be one of those “feel good” shengs…we’ll see :)

I need some “cosmic” sheng to cheer me up!

Took my bird to the vet this afternoon. She has a tumor on her tummy :( Anyway, it is growing, and there is nothing they can do for her. Luckily for now she is maintaining her weight (which means she is feeling well enough to eat properly.) She’s getting to be an older birdie, so I am trying to take solace in the fact that up until this point she has had a very pleasant life, and trying to wrap my head around the fact that sometime in the not too distant future I will have to deal with her slow (hopefully not painful) death and all I can do is comfort her as best as I can!

Sorry to be a downer…ANYWAY, I got new birthday present TeaUrchin sheng samples! YAY! So far everything I’ve tried from TeaUrchin has been top notch. This one is pleasant. I think there is something extra special about Autumn harvests, as much as I have raved about a few first flush green teas in the past, heh. My vocabulary for describing sheng flavors is still in its infancy, but this one is rich and somewhat herbal/floral tasting. It has a nice balanced pleasant bitterness/astringency. When I inhale as I am sipping I feel the camphor-like vapors seem to permeate my entire being. Good sheng. Sheng good.

I have to agree with Tea Urchin’s description of this tea. It is quite nice, smooth with a touch of bitterness, a little coffee type flavor. Clean and medium bodied. And it’s gushu (wild trees), so that’s a plus! A quality tea all around. This and the Lang He Yu Pin are great ripe cakes from TU, I’ve tried the other two they currently have and they are not terribly interesting.

This generous sample came to me from Stephanie – thank you so much.
5g 150ml gaiwan 195F
rinse/pause/5/5/5/10/10/15/15 etc
i think i had this tea over 4 days, still saved leaves,may try today.
beautiful long leaves. 1st steep was very nice mild, sweet and citrusy. nice mouthfeel,sweet peppers emerging
i decided to raise the temp to 200F
the color is dark yellow-orange. very juicy, sweet peppers and apricots. The following steeps were very sweet. eventually peppery notes disappeared and were just sweet and mild, some astringency (nothing major) and no bitterness ( or maybe it was just barely noticeable and i just got used to it). Anyway very nice and positive experience. Made me tea drunk ;)

Another one from the group TeaUrchin order.

I have been drinking the same leaves all day, but didn’t have time at work to take detailed notes on each steep. The steeps did get progressively sweeter and more honey-like. There is some slight tongue tingle, but not much. A little tiny bit of woodiness, with some crisp vegetal flavors. When I did a long steep I got a pleasant, light sort of bitterness. I’m excited to explore this one further :)

This is a cake I would definitely not have been able to afford on my own. Luckily this was part of a group TeaUrchin order I took part in. Thanks Yang-Chu and all the other Steepsterites who let me in on it!

Anyway, this might be my new favorite sheng! gasp! I’m not sure what a rockmelon tastes like, but I do get some fruity notes, as well as floral. Great energy and a tangy sweetness. I regret that I lack the proper words to describe this one. So much flavor!

Good shengs are magical though. That’s all I know :)

Just received my second Tea Urchin order, what a great company. They put their cakes into individual little boxes. Everything was packed with care. This tea is a blend. It was pretty good, as usual from Tea Urchin. It had some interesting flavors, a moderate amount of bitterness for a Lao Man E, and strong cha qi. My wife and I got a little tea drunk. It lacked somewhat in zip and strength, which are my top preferences. But it was very nice nonetheless.