JalamTeas

From the Pu TTB round 5
Grassy and buttery with a thick, oily mouthfeel. Moderate bitterness. Slight honey sweetness and a hint of fruit in the later steeps

Puerh Tea TTB. This is a fairly nice and slightly bitter sheng. It did not have an abiding bitterness that some sheng has. It developed a sweet note but I am not sure if I would call it apricots. It was pretty good. The leaves looked like good quality leaves from what little I can tell from appearance.

I steeped this eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 7g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec.

I liked the strong bold flavour of this one. After the 15s rinse, so far I’ve had several drinkable steeps at 20s and 30s. I can taste vegetal, astringency and wet hay. Unfortunately I don’t taste the apple peel or corn tastes, or milkiness that others noted.

This was great. After the rinse I did a short steep of 20sec in the gaiwan. It was lighter than other Shou Puerh I’ve had, bright, not so heavy and earthy. So I steeped it 45 sec for the second drnkable steep. Lovely, more complex than other Puerh I’ve had and still smooth. I’d like to say that there is also a slight fruit taste, perhaps plum or prune but I don’t know that that’s really what it is that I’m tasting. Definitely wish I had more of this.

After a short rinse (15sec), I’ve so far had 2 drinkable steeps of 20 sec. I was pleasantly surprised that it was smooth and not astringent. There’s a smokiness and slight sweetness with a hint of peach at the end. I’ve been having a lot of oolongs, so it was nice to get back to a sheng Puerh. Really enjoyed this.

I’m in my second drinkable steep. Made it in gaiwan with a 15s wash, followed by 20s steeps so far. The scent was a little earthy but also a scent of sweetness. The taste is similar to the scent. Smooth but also bright. Even though it’s supposed to be a lower caffeine content I definitely feel a stimulating effect. I don’t taste all the complexity the previous reviewer mentioned. At least not yet.

I wish there were other tasting notes because I can’t quite describe what I’m tasting and smelling. I’m currently on the second drinkable steep. The scent seemed smokey. The taste seemed vegetal. It was nice. I’m intrigued by it since there is more here than I know how to describe.

Did a couple of sessions with this tea over the last weekend. I’ve used up about half the cake now.

I really do not find this one to be plausible at the price. It is not horrible, but it is… boring. There is a little huigan in steeps 4-8, the mouth feel is decent, and I got a pretty solid tea sweat. But the endurance is poor, the tea being pretty much completely played out after around 10 steeps, and little feeling of power. I would as soon drink young Menghai factory tea at 1/3 the price.

My second session with this tea. The first time I thought it was rather boring, but this is really quite nice. Fairly thick mouth feel, sweet and bitter, nice mouth coating by the 3rd steep, smell of something powerfully fruity… pineapple maybe?

After 5 or 6 steeps the lid scent weakens and changes to something more like sugarcane, and I’m getting a pretty decent puer sweat. Tragically I won’t have time to steep it out in the gaiwan, something has come up and I’ll have to dump the leaf in a mug to finish.

Possibly I like autumn sheng more than I thought.

This tea is now unavailable. I was lucky to get a sample. I didn’t think I’d like a fermented pu-erh, but this is nice. Earthy and smooth. I know there’s another flavour in there too, but my palate is not sophisticated enough to figure out what it is. I’m curious to see how the taste changes after a few steeps.

I think I’m becoming addicted to this one. I’m not normally a fan of pu-ehr or green teas, but I like this one. Has a tang and brightness to it. Only a short steep is needed at first and can be resteeped up to 20 times. I think what I enjoy most about this tea is the ritual I’ve built around it by steeping using a traditional gaiwan.

From the Puerh TTB #2

I have a terrible habit of hoarding the last few grams of a tea, and when I participate in a TTB, that’s often all that I get. So I have a box of about 30 samples I’ve taken from the TTBs over the past year that I haven’t tried. Kind of dumb. Yesterday I polished off the last 2 grams of an EoT sample and enjoyed it so much I decided to try this tea today.

It started out really well with a sweet straw flavor with very long strong finish. Good mouth-feel. Hint of caramel. Strong cha qi. Very approachable, but fairly complex and interesting. The 2nd steep smelled a bit like damp ashes but that quickly went away. Mild taste builds power in the mouth leading to a big finish. Taste is damp straw with no sign of the caramel, but a hint of ashes. Becomes astringent as it cools. The 3rd steep again gave me a hint of ashes in the nose, but they again dissipated quickly. The taste is stronger, with wood as well as straw flavor. Astringent but not bitter; the astringency builds in the finish to the point that it is too much.

In both the second and third steeps, the finish is stronger than the taste, and the flavor increases dramatically if I aerate the tea while it’s in my mouth. If this were a wine, I would say that it is “closed-in” and together with the tannin I would suggest that it needs age to come together. I’m not sure if it works that way with tea, but suspect this is a tea that would age.

The fourth steep is ca return to the first steep: no ashes in the nose, but a rich clean flavor. Like it finally woke up. Shows a hint of tart bitterness at the finish. The cha qi is still very strong. Overall a good tea; I wish I could try it again in 10 years.

puerh from this morning, courtesy of the lovely dexter Now, i’m not a huge fan of sheng. They’re more hit or miss for me than shou, though i have found a couple i really love (wild monk, i’m looking at you!). This one is sort of middle of the road for me. it’s too shengy for me, without that sort of sweetness that i do enjoy from sheng’s. Happy i got the chance to go at it this morning, but i’ll likely swith to a shou this afternoon before going back to another sheng :)

I’ve been sipping on this puerh all morning and in light of the fact that i can’t get it anymore, i didn’t take super detailed notes. dexter sent this one my way and i’m always happy to try out more shou’s. this one had an earthy aroma initially but it lessens over the steepings and takes on a more subtle taste. The brew is smooth and extremely pleasant.

Happy Christmas fellow steepers! Enjoying a nice pu this holiday afternoon. This is a wonderful tea from Jalam’s December tea club. It is from a region described as being “off the grid” in the Menghai area. It brews a copper color, with no bitterness at all in early steeps. It is acidic like young pu erhs are. Bitterness starts to come through in later steepings. It is buttery and delicate, full flavored if not simple. Very high quality as all Jalam teas are in my experience.

Tea of the day. The moment I pulled back the paper I was impressed with this one. I am not used to such a fresh green aroma with only a little shengness to it. The leaf is as nice as the aroma. There is a lot of green, some brown, and an abundance of silvery buds. I can tell by looking there is a lot of large leaves in this cake. I did a rinse (for once), poured off and let the leaf rest for while before preparing the first cup.

The liquor is apricot in color. I braced myself for the young sheng astringent blast and was happy to find it wasn’t present. This is a 2014 cake but the astringent bite is light and comes and goes. This is lightly sweet. I caught hints of smoke. The aftertaste reminded me of peach.

I am not that educated in sheng so I can’t tell much about quality. I can say I enjoyed drinking a sheng that I didn’t have to wince with each sip.

I’m continuing my Bulang sampling mode this week, starting with this one from the Jalam Tea club. It’s a beautiful compact little cake, rich mahogany colored. I loaded up my yixing and even though the steeping were short, the tea was very dark & rich, and the flavor brought to mind coffee, cinnamon, and a dense chewy whole grain bread. I drank several steeps over the afternoon, and I should be able to get more out of it in the morning, I think.

I enjoyed sipping on this all afternoon, and will probably try a few more rounds in the morning. I wish I had more to say about it, but that was hours ago. It was smooth & tasty, & helped to rid me of the headache that I had all morning. Sadly, this is a sip down.

a nice smooth tea!

when i smell the leaves dry, i smell mustyness.

when i smell the leaves wet, they smell green.

when i smell the brewed tea, it smells like sweet and honey.

when i taste the brewed tea i taste honey and sweetness.

i rate this a 75 because it is too smooth for me.

many thanks to Scribbles for this sample :)

I got this in the mail earlier this week, but haven’t had time to sit down with it yet. I took today off to relax, so it’s a perfect day to spend some time with this tea.

I liked it right off the bat. As the information card notes, it has a sweet tang to it. I decided that this was an apricot sweetness with kind of a sour note, like a sweet and sour flavor. Very interesting! I love when a tea has a unique characteristic that makes me want to come back again. This one has that. The texture is slightly oily, which sounds bad, but it’s kind of how I find good sheng texture thickness. This one isn’t that thick but has that smoothness. It was not hard on my stomach at all, which is also nice. Overall, a very good sheng!

Ya know, this tea is alright, but nothing stands out. Usually there’s a quality or a flavor note that causes me to remember a tea. I tried this the first time when I was comparing my new Juan shui clay pot with a gaiwan and it just tasted like sheng, nothing remarkable. I had it again yesterday with the same result. Perhaps my palate isn’t refined enough, but I seem to get more enjoyment out of other sheng, so maybe it’s just this tea. I guess it won’t hurt it to hang out in my cupboard for awhile, and then I’ll try again. Maybe some age will help it along. Weird, because they say such promising things about this tea, like, “we want to be able to offer this tea at least once a year.” Oh well. :/

June 2021, 6 years after my last note on this tea. I find that I agree with the note from Jalam on this tea. It is non-astringent, with a coppery color and nutty aftertaste. Quite pleasant. Seems ready to be drinking it.

Reasonably loosely compressed, attractive dark purple leaves, the tea brews a bit more copper colored than typical young shengs, and has an enjoyable smooth quality (in comparison to other purple leaf sheng I’ve had). Quite flavorful and an enjoyable cup.