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2013 MGH 1312 MengKu Ancient Tree Green Pu-erh Tea #1503

5.2g, 100mL gaiwan, Brita filtered water, 200f

1x 5s rinse

dry leaves smell like rest of PS order: dried fruit

wet leaves smell of tart dried fruit, w/ hint of smoke.

5s: light w slight sweet aftertaste

10s: astringent and sharp notes. Stopped here to put the rest to cold brew overnight.

Cold brew turned out nice and fruity. Generally speaking though, likely wouldn’t repurchase. Can’t remember from my notes why I stopped after 2nd infusion, but this was probably one of the days where I was trying to focus on too many things at once and lost interest in this one.

2011 Dayi 7542 Green Sheng Puerh #1324
5.2g, 100mL gaiwan, Brita filtered water, 200f

This is one of the advised first stops in the puer journey, so I’m making a roundabout of sorts here in my own tea history.

Dry leaves, like rest of PS order, smell fruity and sweet

The wet leaves smell of light smoke and unexpectedly very sweet.

1x 5s rinse smells of shou: damp, mushroom, earthy

2s: slight sweet, slightly thick. Light, clear yellow broth.

5s: leaves smell a touch more smoky. Bitterness hits. Sharp and a touch medicinal. Broth thinned out.

10s: brew darkens to a light golden color. Bit drying in the mouth, unpleasantly so.

15s: feels slightly thicker again. Sweetness more pronounced.

30s: color returns to a light yellow, thin and sort of lifeless. Decided to kick temp to boiling for next steep.

1 min, boiling: not much to note. Put in a cold brew, which tasted pretty alright, but not much else to note.

Not terrible, but unlikely to purchase again.

2006 CNNP 7542 Green Pu-erh Tea #1602

5.4g, 100 mL gaiwan, Brita filtered water, 200-212f, increased for later steepings

1x 5s rinse

dry: woody and slight medicinal.

wet leaves smell very smoky.

5s: a shou-like smell: grainy, mushroomy, dank. tastes lightly sweet and medicinal.

continued steepings of various times brought little progression. This tea was rather linear. The lightly sweet notes become more noticeable at the end as the medicinal woody notes fade. I’ve never had a sheng older than a couple years, so this was a sample I bought to see how it evolves, so to speak, and it tasted like a light shou, which I didn’t like before, but am growing to appreciate more (not enough to buy a cake, but I don’t dislike them in the same way I used to). Not much in common with shengs I’ve tried so far. Wouldn’t purchase a cake, but this was okay. Will probably drink through the rest of mine on lazy days where I just toss things in a mug to steep. Also perhaps of note is that I’ve never tried a CNNP tea before, so maybe this is expected?

One thing I didn’t expect was how thin the mouthfeel was. I read Jay’s review from his HK stored one, so I went in expecting a thickness to the brew, and that never happened. I know storage makes a difference through what I’ve read, but it’s not something I’ve experienced yet. We’ll see how the rest of the samples I bought turn out! Cautiously excited. Maybe some gems, or perhaps just tuition. :)

3/5 stars

Got a free sample of this with my first PS order.

Little anecdote: I called the shop the other day, and asked the guy for any recommendations since I’m fairly new to puer (more like I actively try to avoid expensive hobbies as a broke student and yet the siren call still drew me in eventually). The guy told me they don’t give recommendations since if I didn’t like the tea based on their recommendation, they’d have a problem on their hands. Seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of recommendations (do we all share the same tastes?), but whatever goes. Must’ve dealt with some rough customers in the past LOL.

Anyway, review time.

7.9 g (whole sample), 100 mL Brita in a 200F, gaiwan

Rinsed 2x 5s w/ 212F

dry leaves have a medicinal date smell, but so does the rest of my PS order so I don’t know if it’s storage or what.

wet leaves smell smoky and fruity.

5s: medicinal, sweet dates. Aftertaste is sweet and smoky. Slight thickness.

10s: stronger sharpness. Something reminds me of cherry.

20s: bitter and sharp. Drying.

Bubbles throughout, but not /as/ scum-like as the last Beantown tea I tried.

Later infusions brought up a light fishy smell. I couldn’t continue drinking, but continued infusing to see what happened. Nothing exciting. Continual sharpness with a bite, but sweetness fades almost immediately after the first few steepings where sweetness was noted. I would be sad if I had to drink through a brick of this.

TL;DR: I’m glad I didn’t pay for this one.

First impressions:
Brewed in Yixing, Zhuni 125ml / 5g tea with spring water.

I read previous tasting notes (from 6 years ago) stating that this tea was incredibly smoky and bitter (no surprise, that’s exactly what I’d expect). That’s largely disappeared now.

The cake looks to be well produced, with large leaves and little brittleness. That usual ‘aged’ smell is present on the dry leaf. I put it into a steaming hot pot and I’m getting a slightly acidic ‘guava’ note off it along with the usual ‘sheng’ notes (and a barely detectable smoke).

I was able to easily loosen a chunk from the side of the cake with minimal breakage (didn’t have to use a pick at all). So the compression isn’t overly tight which (I imagine) helped speed up the ageing process a bit.

The wet leaves are aromatic and I get that spruce scent with a tropicality and a hint of forest floor.

A clean, vibrant and golden hued brew proved consistent across all of the steeps I did.

Nice and fruity first glass, I mean… it still tastes of a well mellowed sheng. Mouthfeel is good too. Very smooth now, with absolutely no bitterness and very little astringency. It makes you salivate and has a good hui-gan. There’s smoke in the distance, but it serves to accentuate the sweet/savoury barley-water mouthfeel.

The second steep I’m getting a bit more ‘sweet rock’ minerality in the roof of my mouth. Also a bit of ‘clover flower’ sweetness on the after taste.

Third steep, still performing well, but I understeeped a bit – silky mouthfeel is still there, but a bit thinner. The energy is good, fairly strong at this point. Very warming.

Fourth steep – left for longer – still similar, but I’m getting more sweetness ( the clover has moved toward sugar-cane). Excellent body, like a thick wine or barley-water. Quite a bit of oil visible on the surface and it coats the tongue

Revisiting the leaf gives an intensely bright metallic and sweet scent.

I’ll stop here, but this could definitely go on. Overall this hits the balance of savoury and sweet dead-on and has an extremely pleasant complexity worthy of many revisits.

A solid and well produced tea that has aged well (11 years old atm). If you’re familiar with a decent middle-aged (dry stored) 7542 you will have a close idea to how this feels and tastes. Energy is great.

Allowing for ‘value’ (an 11 year old Dali production is currently just under $500, this is $22).

This is 5 star tea. It’s been well stored, tastes excellent and the taste ‘lasts’. Very enjoyable. I would highly recommend it.

Small leaves. Really sweet and fruity for a shu. It is a solid cup. Received as a free sample in a recent order. I was really afraid of my tea having :shelf fatigue" or being too dry being that it is shipped from Troy, Michigan. No dry storage issue flavors detected. Just really inky dark punchy shu.

Edit: I bought a full cake. Still fruity, some vanilla, dry wood background. Earthy notes you’d expect from shu. The red fruits really are the star of the show here. Really pronounced.

I’m learning that with Puerhshop tea, one must take their time in getting the brewing methods right. It took me a bit of time to get it down with this one, but I’ve got it down, now.

Best water temperature is 205F/96C.
Flash steep, flash steep, flash steep!

Now, with that said, I enjoyed that this being dry storage, hasn’t made the tea awfully bitter (actually, it can be bitter, but if you follow the instructions above, you’l survive it). There are few notes of astringency that follows with each sip, but never bitter. I noted a ‘sweet-slightly sour note that remains in the back of the mouth, and a bit of smoke, but not too much smoke.’ It definitely brews up odd, at first, although, after the eighth steep I noted, ‘a sweet apricot finish, with a touch of lightly smoked floral notes.’ Again, a little strange, but never terrible.

I’m trying to get better with nothing stuff, since I’ve been away for two years. :P

The tea leaf (wet) reminds me of leather goods. The flavor profile is similar, but not really. It’s woody, astringent, and smooth. I try not to push the leaf too much. I start the first few steeps with a quick flash steep (5-10 seconds) until it softens up a bit. If one brews at a higher temperature (200+), one is expected to get a mouthful of bitterness, which this tea, I’ve learned, will never let go. Once you go heavy handed on water temp and steep time, you’ll never have an enjoyable session.

With that said, after you’ve learned how the tea wants to be brewed, it’s not a bad cup. Not my favorite tea, but a good weekly drinker.

Hello! It has been a long time since I’ve posted a review…Over two years, to be exact. I was without the modern means—beyond a cell phone—to post anything on Steepster.

Anyway, I’ve been drinking this one as a daily drinker. Had two bricks, but I’m nearly down to 100g of the second. I like that this has a nice longevity and it isn’t too harsh, if you know how to brew it (195-205 F, 30 second steeps through the first five or six infusions; increase the time to one-two minutes after the first few infusions). I brew an average 8g/120 ML; or when I get a little giddy, I use approximately 15g/120 ML. Hehe. Depends on if I want to push out those bitter notes at the beginning, or rely on the smooth notes throughout the entire session.

This one is pretty damn good, sweet and smooth, dark and rich, earthy with some cocoa and vanilla notes, it just Awesome, thats all.
I’ve had this one for a while,I’ve been going back and re-tasting some puerhs that ive had for years, I think i’ll keep this one out and drink it up since its so good And I see it is still available so I can get more if I need to.
At 12$ this is a Really Good puerh to buy and drink often I think, I’m totally gonna drink this up now.

This one looks kinda funky…
kind of a earthy slightly sweet aroma and not funky at all but it’s kinda smells like some earthy old leafes.

I did 2 rinses and let it rest in the pot with the lid off for a few minutes and started with a 30second steep as usual, its kinda weak I honestly taste mostly hot water and slight earthiness.
I was going to go steep by steep but that was about it with this one, it stayed pretty weak the whole time, nothing at all wrong with the taste there’s just not very much of it.
I did get some earthy maybe kinda woody, slightly sweet flavors and even a bit of camphor notes when I abused it and steeped too long but still just weak, like the flavors have faded or something, I dunno.
See photos of it here on my blog :)
https://toadsteablog.blogspot.com/2019/03/outside-with-weird-puerh.html

9 years in and it’s still really in your face!

Not a bad tea, though I didn’t find it too interesting. Kind of thick, muted flavor, not very noteworthy.

This was an amazing value from Puershop. Where can you find a good quality shu for under $20 for a full sized cake these days? It is a solid tea – fairly smooth, robust, and straightforward. A little chocolate, a little bitterness, long lasting. It is supposedly wild arbor, but who knows. A great daily drinker.

I recently when on a ripe sample buying spree at Puershop. I bought 20 samples. Pretty cheap to do at puershop, though their teas are often mediocre. This was one of their premium ripes. It was pretty good, smooth and nicely fermented. It did lack character and complexity, but it was still a solid tea. But the price is too high at $47. I would definitely buy some if it were $30.

Another work tea session

Steeped at 3 minutes w/ 200 F water.

Smooth & vegatal.

Notes similar to a darker green tea; not so much a black tea.

Overall this is a nice tea and a good value. The entire brick was thrown in my last order as a free sample. Yunnan Sourcing may no longer give out free samples but Puerhshop still does. The brick was tightly compressed and took a couple of steeps to loosen up and open up. There was some fermentation taste to this but not as much as expected, and the flavor was more sweet than other things. Certainly no fishy taste. The fermentation taste lasted only a few steeps and I was left with a nice semi sweet ripe puerh tea. Not sweet like sugar but it was there. I would also say that there was a bit of a fruity taste in the latter steeps but cannot pin it down to a specific fruit. Overall I liked this tea.

This is a relatively nice tea. It has clearly been dry stored judging by the color of the tea which was a dark yellow except for the third steep which was darker. It is fairly mellow and a little bit sweet with no bitterness to speak of. It is a good puerh but by no means spectacular.

I steeped this nine times in a 70ml teapot with 4.2g leaf and 200 degree 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, 30 sec, and 45 sec.

Random sample… why does all the 5+ year old stuff from puerhshop taste the same? I think there’s something about their storage that’s off.

This tea was quite good. It had what I would call a muted sweetness from the start, no fermentation flavor to speak of, and very little bitterness. It had a flavor profile that I am not sure how to identify. My thoughts were dried fruits but not something real sweet like a pineapple. A dried fruit with more fiber than sugar I suppose might be a way to describe the main flavor note. As I am drinking the last couple of steeps now they have gotten a bit cold as I was concentrating on photographing my tea session. I have now upped my game by having a good table top background and a second flash on a light stand with a soft box linked to my on camera flash. At least for one of my cameras.

Iin any case I steeped this tea eleven times in a 120ml teapot with 9.6g 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, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, and 1.5 minutes.

This is a very nice ripe from Puerhshop. While it doesn’t qualify as spectacular it was quite tasty. I brewed this in a big teapot for an excuse to photograph the teapot both for Instagram and to make prints of. I am using a professional color printer to make enlargements of up to 13 × 19 in size and some of them are amazing. Of course I am shooting with a real camera and not a phone. Phones may have more megapixels today but they can never match the image processing engine of a good DSLR.

I wasn’t paying close attention to the notes on this one so I won’t speculate much. It did develop a bit of a fruity flavor in later steeps but I didn’t pick up oon any chocolate notes even though they could have been there. Overall it was quite good and I drank a lot of it. Nine steeps with a 250ml teapot is enough tea for me for the day.

I steeped this nine times in a 250ml teapot with boiling water and 16.8g leaf. 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, 30 sec, and 45 sec.

This is a nice ripe that was bittersweet at the start with the bitter being stronger than the sweet. There was a fair amount of fermentation flavor to it that lasted four or five steeps. The fermentation flavor was a little unpleasant but not fishy. This tea gradually turned into a nice sweet ripe puerh. In the end it developed a distinct fruity note although I am not sure if I could pin it down to a specific fruit. This was a highly enjoyable puerh tea.

I steeped this twelve times in a 150ml teapot with 13.7g 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, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 minutes. I would say there were two to three steeps left to the tea. But twelve was enough.