pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
I’m back on the pu again today with a sample I bought from Zhi Zheng tea company. The culprit who drove me to this knows who he is. No names, no pack drill, but I am glad that he remarked about the company, from whom I had great service and now am enjoying a great tea. It’s a Mang Zhi 2004 Gu Yuan Chun Raw Puer, which I have written it up here:
http://steepster.com/teas/zhi-zheng-tea-shop/41859-mang-zhi-2004-gu-yuan-chun-raw-puer?post=204750
The tea is smooth and rounded and rather relaxing. There is a slight edge to it, but overall it is much smoother than my normal shengs.
While roasting pumpkins in my oven today in order to make a pumpkin pie tomorrow, I brewed three steepings of Mandala teas Phatty Cake. I ordered it last week after seeing so many positive reviews. I’m not in analysis mode at the moment, but I am enjoying the tea (3 steeps in a Zi Ni Purple Clay “Fang Gu” Yixing Zisha Teapot, 15-20 second steep after initial rinse, then blended in a porcelain teapot). Also purchased 2012 Mandala Tea ‘year of the dragon’ ripe cake, and received samples of 2007 special dark ripe, and 2012 noble mark. Right now, I’m enjoying the aroma of roasted pumpkin wafting through the house accompanied by the pleasant tea.
The combination of roasted pumpkin and Phatty Cake must be amazing!
I’m sipping on Year of the Dragon right now. Ahh, this cool weather makes for wonderful shu drinking.
I am making the pie today. I got a recipe from epicurious.com which is a great source of recipes and feedback on recipes, and will make it today for consumption tomorrow. The aroma was intoxicating yesterday during the roasting of the pumpkins. I have a tea friend coming over this evening and will be sharing some of the Phatty cake tea with her.
putting together a yunnan sourcing us order, has anyone tried any of their Yiwu purple cakes? specifically the 2010 autumn one or the 2012 spring perhaps?
Drinking “Menghai Golden Pu-erh Lao Cha Tou Aged Ripe Tea Nuggets” from yunnan sourcing. Even after a few months of airing out it still starts with a strong (though not quite as bad as it was) chlorine smell/taste, like it was fermented in a swimming pool, yuck. Thankfully that fades after 6-ish steeps and it’s just a really mellow, really smooth, and golden easy drinking sort of thing, overall I definitely wouldn’t recommend this one, it’s old enough that any fermentation funk should’ve long faded meaning the chlorine taste is probably permanent from the water they used in the fermentation process or something, and even without that it doesn’t have too much going on flavor-wise. It wasn’t cheap either, glad I only got 50 grams.
Thanks for this post. I appreciate hearing about problems with particular teas as well as positive comments. Your post made me think in whole new directions about tea processing.
Is this a dayi brand? If so, maybe it’s not a bad tea. If it’s already over 3-years old, probably you could try this: thoroughly rinse the tea, for multiple times, and maybe longer rinsing time. For lao cha tou, usually you don’t need to worry about it losing strength in rinsing. Afterwards, you could either drink as normal or use smaller amount of tea to boil in water.
It’s not dayi, the description doesn’t specify which factory, probably just a no-name menghai area factory (all it says is it’s made from bulang material), and rinsing more doesn’t help much, the chlorine taste persists for quite a while, though it eventually fades out.
Having a Boyou “0508” from 2006.“Having” a go at this one after a BIG Thanksgiving meal. I broke off about 12 grams of this to brew in the gaiwan. This cake is very dry probably due to the fact that it just came in from China last week and hasn’t had the opportunity to re-hydrate properly in the “pumidor”. The leaves in this cake are fairly large and from the aroma of the dry leaves it was deeply fermented. I gave a 10 second wash to rinse out the smaller pieces and leaf dust. First, second and third brews each five seconds apart starting with a 5 second steep. It brews very dark not as dark as some others. It almost has an “oily” sheen on the top layer. It has a woody vanilla plummy taste to it. It does leave the mouth a little dry. It has a slight honey finish to it. A good tea to settle back with after a wonderful feast with family.
2006 Fenqing raw tuocha from Teavivre this evening. I bought a sample with my last Teavivre order. It’s powerful and I am getting quite the buzz from it. I can really feel the tea’s energy in my extremities. The tea is sweet with some astringency that probably arises because I oversteeped it first off, but I don’t find that to be a problem. There’s a smidgin of smoke at the back of my throat when I swallow too. Overall, it’s jolly nice and just the ticket for an evening’s editing.
Yunnan Sourcing chrysanthemum shu mini brick. Not sure if it’s the 2012 or 2013 since it came as an unlabeled freebie. Was really kinda nasty when it first arrived (from the overpowering chrysanthemums, not the puerh), but after airing out for a few months it’s starting to settle down and get drinkable, and after aggressive rinsing it’s actually surprisingly nice. Sweet, and kind of a spicy medicinal sort of flavor. After cursing this tiny brick (and it is tiny, that 100g is so densely compressed) for completely stinking up my entire YS order on it’s long journey here, I’m now actually enjoying its existence, so long as it promises to stay far far away from my other tea (and from my yixing).
I got one of those with my last order. It’s still airing, but you are right about it being a solid brick. I reckon I could build a solid house with these. I’ll take your comment about keeping it away from the Yixing pot on board, and I am pleased that you pointed it out before I fell into that trap.
Eep! On my last Yunnan Sourcing order that brick was in my cart, but I pulled it out to drop shipping costs. Glad I did as it woulda reeked my yixing pot and the other pu’er in that tea order.
I’m continuing with the 2006 Fenqing again today. I have now had twelve good cups out of it and I am only up to 45 seconds steeping time. I reckon this should last a while yet.
Starting my day off with a steeping of 2007 Mengku Single Estate Organic series. This is probably one of my favourite broken cakes. Long live Mengku tea factory! Anyone else fond of Mengku production?
150 mL to ~6 grams
I’m not familiar with the Mengku products as my experiments in pu have gone in other directions. What is it like?
This particular production has a nice balance between sweetness and astringency (lately I’ve been appreciating a bit of astringency). If you warm up your pot and throw in the dry leaves, you will actually get interesting notes such as honey. Of course, the honey isn’t present in the flavour of the soup though.
In general, I’d say Mengku tea factory was successful with the single estate organic series.
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