I bought a four-pack of these tuos, difficult to buy just one of these because they cost only $9.80 each. The age already on this tea enticed me, I prefer to buy something with some age on it. The other reviewer of this tea gave it a poor rating, but didn’t know to gong-fu this tea.
The positives are this is one Energizer Bunny of a tea, just goes on and on and on. Two days in and I’m wondering when it will end. The shiboridashi is stuffed to the gills and I’ve got more buds and leaves than sticks. Long huigan, thick and full, very bitter when pushed with boiling water and less so with cooler water. Mellows to sweet on the tongue.
Description includes tobacco notes, but this is more of a fresh pipe tobacco. There is no actual char from processing in this tea, so for me this doesn’t qualify as smoky. Not compared to a Menghai or Xiaguan raw tuo. The soup starts out caramel colored and yellows after the fourth steep or so.
One downside is the tea was dry stored and is still so green. It is definitely in second stage and hasn’t turned any corners yet into something I would consider aged. My tea fridge storage doesn’t penetrate the thick paper so well. I transferred the tuos to stoneware. Would love to ship them off to puerh boarding school for a year of humid storage. I like a bit of traditional storage on my tea, but not so much it obscures other flavors. This tea is very strong and could take a year of humidity without losing the other flavors. As it is now, the tuo tastes like a lot of other teas I’ve had, the dusky apricot with caramel notes.
Dunno if I’ll be around when this tea matures into a dark, red/brown love nest, still got so far to go. The material is what we want for aging, but I’m probably too far ahead of this tea myself.
Photos and blog post which is mostly unrelated to the tea itself, at http://deathbytea.blogspot.com
Flavors: Apricot, Caramel, Tobacco
Preparation
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pu’er boarding school… that’s a good one.
Sounds like I gotta pick one up.
I picked up one of these in my first White2Tea order and it accidentally became my default study tea. Tasty, strong, helps keep me awake/focused without actually getting tea buzzed/drunk, and lasts forever. I think it took me close to three days to steep it out. Gotta get more at some point.
Omg yeah 3rd day in and I can’t steep out that Jianshen, well past 20 steeps.
“The Jianshen is like a young boy toy who won’t go home and doesn’t seem to sleep.”
I fell out of my chair from laughing so hard at that description in your latest blog post. So hilariously accurate.
pu’er boarding school… that’s a good one.
Sounds like I gotta pick one up.
I picked up one of these in my first White2Tea order and it accidentally became my default study tea. Tasty, strong, helps keep me awake/focused without actually getting tea buzzed/drunk, and lasts forever. I think it took me close to three days to steep it out. Gotta get more at some point.
Omg yeah 3rd day in and I can’t steep out that Jianshen, well past 20 steeps.
“The Jianshen is like a young boy toy who won’t go home and doesn’t seem to sleep.”
I fell out of my chair from laughing so hard at that description in your latest blog post. So hilariously accurate.