Boyou Tea Factory

I got so much work done yesterday that I have a little bit of time to taste this tea and review it!

At the beginning, I swear it tasted exactly like milk. Like not the creaminess of milk, but it just had the actual flavor of milk. It was quite enjoyable, but this “milk” taste really overshadowed all of the flavors for the first two steepings. This also has a mouth drying effect and this cooling sweetness thought my mouth. very enjoyable!

So sorry, but I totally did not write down any notes for the steepings so I can’t really pin down exactly which steeping I got which taste.

After the milky flavor died down in the 3rd or 4th steeping and the classic deep and dark ripe puerh tastes (though a little died down) presumed. I also noticed this cherry nutty flavor in the beginning, in the very first steeping, but the milky flavor was too strong in the 2nd and 3rd for me to taste it again. Overall, very enjoyable!

Taking a sip of this again there is this amazing cooling effect that is followed by sweetness, and the cherry taste is back!

It also lasted very long, but as I’m seeing with other purees it fell fast! I think falling in taste is a normal thing with most ripes, but I don’t think this lasted as long as some of the menghai puers that I had as I found that I still had about a liter of water left in the kettle where in the menghai one I drank around 2 liters of tea! But, I shouldn’t be comparing the two as I am sure they have very different price points, and this tea still delivered very well in taste. Still very impressed with Boyou, as Boyou doesn’t seem to be a tea factory that I would have initially even thought to try, but thanks again to mrmopar for really showing me what this factory has to offer!

Though, I would have liked it to be a little bit more balanced, with the flavors that I had it was still a very nice tea, and a tea that really calmed me before the day of studying ahead.

[Like an hour later]

Ok so I kinda wanted more tea and I noted that the rest of the bag definitely wasn’t enough for a whole other session so I just plopped the little chunks and powder in there and brewed about a 50ml per steeping of this.

Wow, I don’t know why but it tastes like chocolate, like milky milk chocolate with dark puerh tastes. It’s like a milk chocolate puerh bar! It really complemented my school work quite well. Also, for the first time I didn’t want to add sugar. I found that with this the sugar actually hid a lot of the taste and unnecessarily soothed out some of the flavors that I liked. I put sugar initially because I found I enjoyed it that way, but now I will taste every tea to see if I actually need to add sugar to enjoy it or not. There was also this smoke like black tea bitterness that was not overwhelming at all!

ok I know this tasting note is all over the place, but I added sugar to this mini steeping and it became smoother and much easier to drink, with a marshmallow like creaminess.

Courtesy of a very kind Steepster friend, my wife & I were able to experience this 8-yr old shou.

Fragrance – nothing obvious
Color – Chocolate brown few gold tips on the surface.
Rinsed leaf aroma – pleasing, sweet, moderately-strong, barnyard smell
Brewed aroma – mild typical pu-erh aroma
Liqueur – Dark brown

Taste – Thin, flat, homogenous, woodie, w/o bitterness, fishiness or funk. However, there was noticeable astringency that gradually increased with each serving. There was also a woodie aftertaste that persisted long after this gongfu session. Even though we had toast with our tea, we both had stomach upset after drinking 6oz each of this shou.

Flavor profile – Woodie

Impression – Not our cup of tea. Perhaps the 10-sec rinse suggested in mrmopar’s review may have helped. Unfortunately, I didn’t read it until after this session as I didn’t want it to potentially color my observations.

12.6g / 6 oz / 205° / 60s preheat / 60s warm leaves / 5s rinse / 20 min rest / 5s / 5 / 5 / 5 / stopped session due to stomach upset.

[Just a short intro skip to the tasting note if you don’t care much]

I woke up today with my face covered in blood. However, this is nothing to worry about, as it was just my tooth extraction for my braces acting up. So, this means that I got to skip class today for a rainy day at home with some ripe puerh. Initially, I was going to wait until the weekend, and hopefully get distracted by school work enough that I could make these teas last. But, I was home alone and it was a rainy day, the perfect day for a ripe. Also, I was worried about the bloods effect on my stomach, so I decided that drinking a puerh would aid in the digestion of it, and calm my tense stomach.

[Tasting note]

(3rd Infusion) The second infusion was a lot like the first so I skipped it. The 3rd infusion was a bit confusing, as the barnyard found it’s way into the taste, and the warm vanilla and marshmallow were going away. I was mainly getting a warm hay, and a dark woodiness.

[4th – 6th overview]
I lost track of infusions completely after the 3rd infusion. But all I know is that It fell really fast. I was hoping that this tea would be a champ and go on more, but all of the vanilla goodness in the 1st and 2nd infusions was lost in the 3rd then it just was a downhill from there. I drank it until the 6th infusion because I was stubborn, but realistically it lasted 5.

[Things to note]

However, it may not be a champ when it comes to strength it sure was when it came to tolerance. In the 5th and 6th infusions I really wanted more tea, so I brewed this ridiculously long, and no astringency at all! Just smooth vanilla hay with a bitterness hiding in there somewhere. I also did an experiment with adding just a little bit of hot water and to see how the thick little thing tasted, and I was expecting like the Menghai for it to be too biter to even leave in your mouth, but it wasn’t that at all, I actually drank the whole little shot!

[After effects]

Not a strong qi on this one, maybe because it didn’t last long. Usually after drinking tea if I drink a glass of water it will be sweet. But Not much of a sweetness either, maybe pointing towards not that old tea trees.

An Amazing Amazing tea while it lasted, everything that I was hoping for in a puerh, smoothness, and creaminess with not too overwhelming dark flavors. But when compared to the Menghai “Taste of Menghai” I liked this a lot better (while it lasted). It was not that much in your face, it was so smooth and elegant with all of those dark flavors. But, again, it’s a pity it didn’t last very long. Maybe the “Taste of Menghai” would have been like this one if I carried on the session a little longer, but yesterday I thought that I was going to class. (if I would have known I definitely would have carried on!)

Though I haven’t drank any other teas yet, I think Puerh will be more special to me than I initially thought. I’m still only warming up to it’s tastes, but now I’m really starting to like puerh, with it’s huge variety and health benefits.

A delightful rich flavored ripe puerh! Easy to drink with absolutely no off-putting fermentation taste. Moderate compression with a mix of leaf pieces but fairly easy picking of chunks to brew. Flavor profile offers a creamy chocolate with a fair amount of underlying sweetness. Easily yields 6-7 flavorful cups. Very nice everyday ripe tea to enjoy and share with others (even those non-pu types).

Wow this is really good shu! Sweet and rich :) Definitely something I would drink again.

Steepster is making me sad. Still acting up all the time. I can’t get discussions to load at ALL!

It makes me not want to hang out here so much anymore…this was really good shu though and I never would have gotten to try it without hanging out on Steepster :(

This Boyou ripe is smooth to the taste with all the sweet, earthy notes one would expect from a good cooked puerh. Brewing the leaves produces a bright brown, ruby red liquor with a creamy, sweet taste. I was able to detect special and intense aromas of spicy dried fruits with a lingering finish. I’ve worked through six steeps and it has more to offer. Found this one at royalpuer.com and I am glad I picked it up.

I was gifted a sample of this tea and found time to drink it today. The first impression I had was that this tea is very smooth and mellow. This tea is so smooth it could be compering at a jazz club. There is no earthiness, no astringency and no bitterness. Instead it is mostly a wet woody flavour with tiny hints of cinnamon and cedar, and a thickish mouthfeel. I’m not getting much else from it, but that is alright because the smoothness is very pleasant and I am pleased to be getting a decent number of steeps from it too. Not every tea has to be challenging, you know.

I think I’ll call this one the coffee experience. Or perhaps the Guinness experience. This is my first tea from the Bo You factory. It is now my current favorite. I am steeping it quite strong, and get a brew that is like coffee – slightly bitter, though smooth underneath, strong, and with chocolate undertones. It is a real keeper, and a bargain at just $20 from Yunnan Sourcing, though it is only available at their China site. I’m going to try the 2011 version as well to see how it stacks up. As mrmopar noted in a review of another Bo You tea, this coffee type flavor may be typical of this factory.

I got this one about a year and a-half ago and it’s only getting better. It has such a rich roundness with just a hint of sweetness.

Lot’s of cooked pu-ers have a kind of tobacco, wet cardboard, with essence of molasses taste. After having drunk some richer varieties, and perhaps with age, the tobacco notes have become more attenuated. There is no sign of errant fishiness with this cake. The cha-qi might clock in at about a 6 on a scale of 1-10. It’s a grounding tea, a winter tea, something that would go most excellently with rich meals, like after all those sweet yams and turkey on Thanksgiving. It’s an top-notch aid to digestion.

As for brewing, I have two ways of going about it. The first is the technical pu-er fashion by giving it only a minute or so and pouring into a pitcher, but in the winter I like my tea hot, so I place a chunk into my 20oz thermos and drink at will. About half-way in, I’ll add more hot water, as the strength and quality of this Bo-you can more than accommodate 30-40oz of water. Maybe my serving size is bigger than 5g., but not much bigger. The tea is just that good.

This is my first Boyou cake and I find it to be very smooth and sweet with a dark brew almost like a cup of coffee. I am really enjoying the smoothness of this tea. It is made from material from 2008 and I would guess pretty heavily fermented from the color of the brew. I think this would be an excellent tea for a first timer. There is none of the fermented taste that you find in some other shu. This tea has been allowed to breathe to get rid of this aspect. brew at 210 with a 10 second rinse and a 10 second steep on the first cup. Overall a pretty good tea.

this tea was my first puerh, and when it arrived today, I opened the bamboo leaf and was attacked by the wonderful aroma. It smells like sweet iced tea, but I haven’t really tasted it yet, because the brew is incredibly hot, and the liquors color is similar to a reddish coffee. I would most definitetley buy more.