pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
I am presently enjoying, courtesy of a swap with kieblera5, some Crimson Lotus 2014 Jingmai (aka “Special Sauce”) and it is indeed something special. The aroma of this tea is just amazing, and the taste is sweet, soft, light, fruity, abundantly flavorful, not at all bitter, and leaves a lingering sweet mouthfeel. Too bad there were only 5 cakes!
Today I drank a gorgeous Fuhai 2000 #7536 puerh — the second brew is what’s in my profile pic. I dip into this cake every couple of months, it has what is to me that distinctive sheng puerh bittersweet aroma and mouthfeel. It is a strong tea and one I have always loved. My understanding is that it was made by the Fuhai factory directly next door to the classic Menghai factory, made/blended by many of the ‘chefs’ known for the great Menghai cakes. Either way, I like it.
Having the 2014 Tao Cha Ju Nannuo. This is from the same factory as a White2tea offering of a 2012 by White2tea. A good pedigree to have.
I have to say that I failed to open this up to breathe when I got it in. Nannuo is a bit forgiving though.
I pulled 10 grams out to start with. The pouch had a chunk at just about the right weight and in it went. I gave a 6 or 7 second wash as the chunk wasn’t broken up to let the water in. I gave it a good 10 minute rest to let it take some water in.
There are some nice looking wet leaf in there. I started the brewing in a 200ml vessel. I gave a 5 second steep twice into my cup. I pulled back the top of the brew vessel imhaled the aroma on the lid and then in the shiboridashi, (aren’t you glad I got that right boychik!) and inhaled the wet leaf . An entirely different type of aroma. More vegetal and not as sweet as the first from the lid.
The tea color is a bright yellow. It carries the citrus pine mix that I find in a lot of puerh cha. It does have a bit of thickness in the front of the mouth. It carries some bitter but in an active way it seems. The bit of tingling on the front of the gums is there for a second or two.
On the second brew the tea has a quite bit more pronounced bitter to it. The leaves are mainly whole and this is a good grade above a general factory cake.
I have a little head buzzing going on but as I am eating late I wanted to sneak this one in before dinner. A decent quality tea. One that I wish I could get a cake of but alas my buying has been cut back by she who now holds the credit card,
Flavors: Bitter, Sweet, Thick, Vegetal
PREPARATION205 °F / 96 °C 0 MIN, 15 SEC 10 G 10 OZ / 295 ML
Enjoying 2005 Tibetan Flame today. I have sorted out the issues with the water at work but using bottled water. I now have a small tea station next to my desk and am quite satisfied with it.
Just arrived, some samples of lao ban zhang and other sheng. Crikey that stuff is expensive! The sample packs are really thin :D
I think its a bit late to start a session (7pm) so maybe tomorrow
Where did you get that LBZ from? YS? Usually with that type of tea I tend to use less leaf as it tends to be quite powerful.
Yeah, from YS. I was going to ask if anyone had any advice for brewing, what leaf/water ratio do you use?
It is probably if I tell you that instead of the usual 5-6 grams of tea leaves for a 90 ml pot I finally settled with 4.5-5 grams as 6 grams made my heart rush. You might have to adjust to your liking as you might use a different amount of leaves.
How do you people with huge stashes keep track of which tea is which? I wanted to drink some of Yunnan Sourcing’s Drunk on Red earlier today, but I ended up breaking a piece off a ripe puer cake with a similar looking wrapper. I only caught myself when I remembered that the Drunk on Red was about half gone and the cake I was breaking up was almost whole. I only have seven different cakes in my inventory and I’m already getting them mixed up.
I put stick on labels on everything I get. Then since some of the wrappers look alike the labels tell the real story.
I use a TreePad database, in which I’ve copied/pasted the wrapper picture and vendor description for each tea. I also keep my tasting notes in there. I started the database in 2013 when I bought my first puerhs. Now with way too many bings and bricks, plus oolongs and black/red/green/white teas, I’m glad I started some sort of system early on.
Now is the time, while your stash is still fairly small, to figure out what system works for you and start doing it.
Just like mrmopar I use small labels and I have a file of the cakes photos from when I buy them.
For teas which do not have detailed descriptions on them (mainly puerh cakes as the rest usually comes properly labeled in English), I stick a length of masking tape over them and note the name/year/source/price/… on it. I find using masking tape more convenient than stick-on notes.
Maybe someday I will maintain an Excel sheet with a full tea inventory, haven’t got around to starting it yet.
I use labels too but don’t stick them directly on the tea. I wrap the tea with a brown paper bag first. Then the label goes on the bag.
I just write on the wrapper, but there have been a few times when I’ve had difficulty finding the info on a crumpled/torn wrapper. I like the idea of photos as a backup.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I’ll probably end up labelling my teas. I have a label maker too, so that should work well.
Today I drank my first tea by Yangqinghao, the 2006 Qixiang. This tea was good. It started out with what I would call notes of hay and tobacco. These lasted only about two steeps. they were replaced not by an unpleasant aged taste but an unusual sweet aged taste. It was not the sweet apricot taste of a young sheng however. I am not sure how to describe it. It became quite smooth. In the end I gave this tea fifteen steeps in my 60ml gaiwan. This tea has a qi to it, it has me quite energized. Like I said in my review this tea gets a score of 100% for its qi and 90% for it’s taste. I am not sure that I have tasted a aged tea that is anything like this. The one recently that comes to mind was from White2Tea. It was not as good as this for sure. I think I will be feeling this qi for another hour at least. This tea was also a gamble as I hadn’t sampled it first and it was pricey. I think it was worth the price though. Time will tell what this becomes. We will see if this lasts long enough to become a truly aged tea. As a 2006 it does not quite in my book qualify as aged yet but it is getting there.
2013 Yi Dian Hong mini cake from Yunnan sourcing. Nice and comforting with dark woody/leather taste, thicker mouthfeel than I remember and a pleasant bitter bite afterwards. Don’t drink Shou that much but am enjoying it more and more each time I do now.
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