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I have already written about this tea on my blog. My note there says everything about this tea but does so in themes using a local folklore style and a true story from my life. Perhaps that note is best read after spending some time with this tea, because the details about the tea are less important than the experience and the reason why you might choose to drink it. This is a very high quality experience, you have to gut yourself in every way in life to get to a place where you need something more. But details matter for purchase decisions, they don’t matter to me on my blog but make more sense on Steepster. I also don’t want more people asking me about it, so here are more details for people who really need them, or for the merely curious person who won’t be buying.

I drank approximately 6g per 100 ml with boiling or just a few degrees under. I brewed the tea in a Lin’s ceramic teapot, and eventually transeferred the tea to a very thick porcelain teapot. Both pots hold very high temperatures.

This is a very high tier of puerh evidenced by the thickness of the stems, the durability of the leaves and a myriad of physical effects that you must drink a lot of tuition tea to recognize. The tea is motor oil thick, even with the cake still very wet and with the lighter amount of leaf I used. Flavor explodes in the front of the mouth. The liquid then goes into the throat like a ball of Nyquil and remains there. Finally, it settles into the stomach and stays alive there.

Top notes are both apricot and the grape, early steeps are bitter with honey sweetness creeping in much later. Peppery and medicine in the throat but without the medicine taste, just the burn. Right now the tea is very green and wet and has a lot of settling down to do. Some steeps were yellow or greenish yellow, suggesting that the tea is still green tea. Processing of course is top notch. Some older leaves in the mix of buds and leaf/bud combination stems.

Mega steeper and I’m still trying to steep the tea out after four days. Lost count now past 15 steeps. However, because the tea is wet I’m getting some degradation of the leaf due to high brewing temps that will not be the case in 6 months to a year. That wet vegetal needs to dry out a lot more. I’m amazed the tea holds up so well in the wet state, for example last year’s Poundcake, a lower tier tea, broke down after 8 steeps while this wet. This tea is definitely much more durable. Qi is energy in the middle of my back. I’m not noticing any psychedelics yet, might be too early and too wet. I did, however, get heartburn from the tea which is due to the greenness. I never have got a heartburn from a tea before. But this is powerful stuff, and I expect the greenness to turn and it won’t happen again. I didn’t get any bowel effects as I would from cheap tea though.

I plan to let the tea sit now for at least six months and then I will drink it up. I don’t have time to wait in my life to age this, though I expect that lower notes and many more interesting aspects of the tea are yet to come as it changes. There is strength and bitterness to age but I’m too old to wait. I think if a person is older than 35, just plan to drink it. I don’t want anyone else to drink this but me.

If you want to complain about the price, the size of the cake, the lack of details and marketing issues, then go buy cheap tea and drink that. I’m not trying to make too many more notes here than what I’ve written on my blog except to give a bit more for people who want to buy this now, because it won’t be around for long. This is conversation tea in its very early days, and I hope more people decide to go for it and we can all talk about it for the next year while we enjoy it together.

Flavors: Apricot, Beany, Bitter, Grapes, Honey, Pepper

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 6 g 3 OZ / 100 ML
TheOolongDrunk

Beautifully said

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TheOolongDrunk

Beautifully said

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