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It feels rare to find a tea that has been smoked like this. There are plenty of western facing vendors with charcoal roasted teas from HK and pine smoked teas from wuyi, but this tea has a very different flavor profile. The smoke is more mellow and leaves a nice peppery note in the aftertaste. The tea has a tiny bit of sweetness and the oxidation has imparted some minerality to the taste. As with all of the Farmerleaf teas, the mouthfeel is great and the tannin dries out your tongue after each sip. Overall, I really enjoy this tea and I hope Farmerleaf tries this half-smoked process next year.

I purchased this tea back in 2021 and it was the first Lapsang Souchong I tried. I had it along with it’s un-smoked variant and I was impressed by how nice it was. This has what I’d call a medium level of smoke applied to it. It’s not overdone and overpowering like you’d see from other vendors. I feel like Hugo takes a lot of pride in finding a really good base tea and they want you to be able to taste a bit of the tea itself.

The tea is very smokey and pine forward, but you get hints of the sweetness of the black tea and a little bit of the tannin from it. The smoke is a little more tangy, closer to mesquite than the typical piney acidity. It is a really well crafted tea.

I have revisited this tea many times, gone through about 200 grams of it, and purchased it again in 2022. Every time I purchased a new Lapsang, I try it for a week and then compare it to this. Over the years, it has lost a significant amount of it’s kick. I still very much enjoy it, but I really wish Hugo would restock this tea with stock from this year. I will leave this not recommended as I see the site doesn’t have stock past 2022 and I really think you should try this tea while it is in its prime. As it stands, my 2022 stock is closer to a ranking of 85, but I ranked it around a 95 when it was fresh and punchy.

This cake is made for experimentation. While I don’t recommend getting the YOT stored cake, I’m really glad LP decided to mess with it. I see beerandbeancurd reviewed this and said “I don’t crave it, but I do find it interesting” and I have to say that sums this up perfectly. The storage that was added to an already strong, wet, and bitter cake adds some more flavors to distract you. It feels like it warms and wakes you up when you drink it. I don’t want to drink this a lot and I never pushed this past a few steeps, but I’m glad I got it and it will spend many years being slowly picked apart.

The rye barrel adds a big spicy note to both the taste and flavor. It also makes the slight sweetness in the tea taste a bit more like cocoa to me. There’s still tons of the dank wet storage and the bitter and astringent flavor from the original cake, but its much more acceptable here. It feels less intense and you can try to focus on the flavors from the rye barrel instead.

6g – 100ml – 15+ seconds – 100C
Smell: Wet, Acidic, Rye, Mildew
Taste: Wet, Earthy, Sour, Bitter, Rye, Char

So much wasted potential. This cake wasn’t really a let down given how infamous it is, but I was still hoping it would be a little better than it was. I got this cake to compare with the Rye stored version that LP sells and I’ll just start by saying I don’t see any reason to get this over the rye one. This cake needs something to help balance itself out. I’m going to hang on to it for a while, but I might end up breaking it up and mixing it with some cheap smokey puerh and see if I can get a better balance going.

This cake is wet and sour. It has so much of this bitter grassy taste that I’d expect from a young cake, but this thing has spent 14 years in storage. YOT shipped it loose in a box without a mylar or bag, so maybe mine got a little abused on it’s trip here. I let it sit for a month with a boveda before trying it and noted that it still felt dry. I left it for a few more months and it improved, but I still wouldn’t recommend it. The price is the only thing keeping my rating this high.

6g – 100ml – 15+ seconds – 100C
Smell: Wet, Sour, Less than expected
Taste: Grassy, Bitter, Wet, Earthy, Almost Charred like taste

I picked up this tea while YeeOn was doing their site-wide sale earlier this year. I saw this cake pop up in a few reviews and lots of folks recommended it as a good wet stored daily drinker. I have to say, it is perfect for that. As far as value goes, you can’t really beat this price.

I’m going to recommend this tea, but you need to like the wet storage to appreciate it. It is so smooth, thick, and a little dank. The storage flavor comes off as ever so slightly smokey and acidic. It has some sweetness and a nice herbal, camphor flavor that is really apparent when smelling the moist leaves.

As it warms up and my apartment gets humid, I set up a daily drinker rack next to my tea setup. Right now, my Camphory Shou slot is held by Camphornaught, but I think this cake will replace it the next time I run out.

6g – 100ml – 25+ seconds – 100C
Smell: Wet, Sour, Tangy, Camphor
Taste: Smooth, Wet Funk, Sweet, Herbal Camphor
Similar Teas: W2T – Camphornaught (No dank), CL – 2022 Imperial Grade Shou (No dank), LP – 2010 Bulang (Not as herbal), LP – Ginseng Shou

Smokey, sour, mesquite, citrus, tangy, and slightly sweet. You’re going to have a difficult time pulling this brick apart without a decent pick. I stored this tea in my smokey sheng bin (70F 62%) for almost 2 years and it is doing wonderfully.

Autumn harvest sheng with a good amount of astringency and bitterness. The initial sip of this is very smooth with the scent of leaves from a dry wooded forest. It has a wonderful lingering sweetness that is balanced with the bitter and astringent notes. This is the sheng I give folks to first introduce them to puerh. It is a great affordable cake.

A smoked sheng from white2tea. I definitely purchased this tea because of the description that is almost completely unrelated to the tea itself. The first few smoked teas I got from white2tea were a little too harsh for me and I fully expected this one to be smoked too much. To my surprise, while completely up front with the smokiness, you can still taste the sweet and sour flavors from the sheng. I really enjoyed this tea, but I think it will really improve over time. It’s a nice break when I want something with tons of smokey and briny flavor, but I’m hoping to save some of it for a few years to see how it mellows out.

Deep, dry, roasted seaweed, woody, earthy, bitter and astringent. Hints of lingering sweetness and basil. This tea can quickly become overly bitter. It is really nice and punchy when you steep it a little under boiling and for shorter times. If you overdo it, you will taste nothing but bitter and astringent tea. While I enjoyed this tea quite a bit, I’m not recommending it as there are so many other cakes from Farmerleaf this year that I recommend more and I do not think this is an amazing cake for someone who is new to Puerh.

Interesting, deeper flavor than it’s smell, and really tangy. Reminds me of the heartier citrus fruits like grapefruit, yet it is still soft. Slightly sour and sweet. Hints of watermelon and citrus peel. This is a wonderful tea and as it has sat in storage (70F 61%) for a year, it has improved even more.