white2tea

Dry leaves smell like raisins and musty books. My sample looks like it was literally cut with a saw/serrated knife haha. Brews a clear golden orange. Tastes of dried herbs, raisins, old books, and citrus. Nice, oily mouthfeel like I get with a lot of W2T teas; I feel like that’s something he selects for.

It’s got the mellow caramel sweetness that I look for in a Pu’er with no wet-piling dank flavour to it. The liquor is very thick and robust. The individual flapjacks are perfectly sized with gorgeous packaing to boot!

Has a dank wet-leaf smell, a bit of astringency and could benefit from airing out and/or aging for 6 months to a few years. When purchased in 2017, it isn’t one I’d buy again unless it was left to age and air out longer.

The tea is very tightly compressed. As a relative newbie, I had difficulty chipping the leaves off.
First steep, DAMN that’s bitter. Not the most bitter that I’ve tried, but it definitely has strong kuwei. It wasn’t unpleasant at first, but I was drinking on an empty stomach and quickly got nauseated.
Ate some food, but the tea is still bitter with flash steeps at steep number 5 or something. Ugh, now I’m kind of sick of the kuwei.

I think I’m more of a cat person.

Been a while since I’ve done one of these…

Opened my humidor to grab some tea before work today, I like taking younger sheng because I “grandpa Style” brew at work and I’d prefer drinking tea leaves that are in tact and not in pieces.

So took of what I thought was a regular amount of leaves for the day. Threw it in and pour boiled water on it (not very careful with metrics for grandpa drinking). First brew was like a few shots of espresso. Second pour was like doing cocaine. Third pour had me killing the game at work. The rest is history.

All this energy and all this flavor. So much leaf, maybe too much. So hot, so cold, so sweaty. All of this, but not without much bitterness you’d find in Menghai type teas. I think I need to get some more of this tea for the simple thrill of Grandpa brews at work. This is a winner and is still sweet and fruity towards the tail end of the brew sesh. All the while, maintaining a steady flow of astringency to coat the pallet for hours on end.

Grandpa Style- Approved
Gong Fu Style- Approved
Helps you relax ‘Style’- Rejected

This was one of the best mini ball type raw I had so far! Very strong, full creamy body and very intensely fragrant. Major notes of Mango and Honey ~ this fellow is for sure very sweet and fruity with a certain spicy Sichuan citrus flowery pepper aspect to it. There is a lot of power within this ball. It can get overbrewed easily – so take care! This young Sheng is definitely strong on the stomach so eat something beforehand. Very long lasting and a good long way to go! Great good quality travel pu – worth to carry one or two within your pocket on your next journey

Scent-wise this dark buddy exhales such a sweet thick earthy bouquet with deliciously deep notes of marshmallows and bourbon vanilla. This whole construct changes a bit within later infusions into a more medicinal aroma with a hint of licorice.

Further on within the actual tasting and steaming scenting phase a very dense forest earthy melody whistles like a really spice strong balsamic breeze over the mossy surface of a with rain soaked jungle covered in mist. This is without a doubt a very rich and well balanced Shou with first impressions of shiitake mushrooms grown on old with moss covered tree barks while a from the mountain leading pure fresh creek wriggles its way through the thickness of this evergreen forest. With its deep creamy texture it literally develops a tingling sensation on your tongue and palatal. On one side it started with balsamic woodsy roots it soon transforms further into a quite milky chocolate note with hints of caramel and vanilla. The aftertaste is very long lasting as expected within a great fusion of sweet and earthy components.
Warming your body and soul it is easy to fall in love with this fellow which makes him a great beginners Shou but also to be enjoyed by tea lovers of any stage ~ You want it chill & cozy add some brown sugar to it!

This half ball Xiao jin gua shaped Shu really is a beauty of its own. Even within its tight compressed way its full texture and bouquet shines already through. Its steaming atmosphere completes the now ultimate thick profile. With a creamy silky character it already gives its first impressive speech while waiting for the actual liquor. This fine mist within those steaming darkness really reminds me of a wet rainy Autumn day surrounded by gigantic old trees like birch while the ground is soaked up wet covered with moss and bark mulch – this also is a major part of this creamy silky soft liquor – like a beautiful unforgettable day in the middle of nature while Autumn kisses every tree and leaves with its bright and diversity of coloration. Between this whole nature aspect there might be something else too – in this case it reminds me a lot of a subtle light with juniper smoked ham plus a fine sweet echo of cranberries. This Shou really got a nice profile and well rounded body liquor. There is a certain sweetness to it like a hint of brown cane sugar. Very highly enjoyable!

This Trap Bird Shu Pu-erh by W2T is a wonderfully strange fellow. The scent as the taste are very similar – clean, thick, full mouth feel but not overpowering. Definitely a nice introducing Shu for some new devotee of the dark side ;) – It is really amazing how excellent this Pu-erh was composed. I never experience such a clean harmonious bouquet and such a mellow rounded flavor within a Shu. Within the second infusion those nearly pitch black cups are stunning – I’ve never seen such a deep darkness within a teacup. This isn’t by far the first Shu I enjoyed but definitely the one with the darkest soul. This little demon really seduces your senses with such a fine and elegant creaminess – Taste-wise this fellow seems to be in existence just to please every tasting buds your mouth might offer. Its taste is hard to describe because it is like an overall concept where every part and bit works perfectly together within this symbiosis. Although the texture of the liquor is a very creamy one the feeling within your throat tells a totally and quite dry different story – a really interesting unfolding. Beside this typical Autumn woodsiness there is a distinct bourbon vanilla note noticeable within its nicely crafted profile. BUT this fellow isn’t a Shu for long infinity hours – the strongest parts are definitely the 2nd and the 3rd infusions – it still got a lot of potential until the 6th but then the show is nearly over. Nonetheless this Trap Bird’s whistle will be remembered!

For a ripe pu-erh this fellow really comes along with such a nice sweetness plus a hint of fruitiness – just lovely. Scent-wise there is a first and foremost chocolatey aroma noticeable – very thick and well balanced. Further a very creamy view into the future one with a herbal nearly minty flavor to it but a bit more like ginseng is playing a very important role within this delicious act.

Like the shu fortune teller foretold this liquor is predestinated to be creamy and thick in its texture with a nice mixture of chocolate, a small hint of roasted hazelnuts, a much more distinct nuance of Chinese herbal medicine flair, a bit of wood and somehow there is a certain taste of marshmallows ready to be experienced – but not that extremely sweet ones – more like we know it in our Country called “Eibischteig”. But the most focus on sweetness definitely builds up again a nice elegant composition of filled chocolates with a fine hint of cherries inside. Like a fresh salad at the end you also might taste a subtle note of fresh spinach. Of course you can’t left out the main ingredients of earthiness and mushroom flavors when it comes to a nice dark Shu but this aren’t the main aspects of this wonderful Pu-erh – more like a known side effect. The balance and the creaminess within its dark magic is just breathtaking and really well put into the spotlight. A skillfully overall rounded concept.

This fellow walks hand in hand its tasty path when it comes to its taste and scent. Both express themselves in a very woodsy flair which really reminds me of the following components – Old Indian furniture like teak or mango wood, wet tree bark, a deep dense rainy day forest flair with a thick layer of mushrooms to it like shiitake and those brown mushrooms (we call them Creme Champignon). Beside that there is an unknown secret sweet accent to it and a very nice mineral / stony fusion. This fellow is definitely a worshiper of the dark side as you can see. Already the first infusion near lead into a deep sinister bloody red and transformed very quick into its final nearly blackish zone. Typical for a good little devil this fellow keeps going for many following rounds.

Aroma: Old red wine barrels, cork, yogurt, old woodsy furniture, fine delicate cranberry smoked ham and camphor – Very magically sourly mouth watering. A hint of dark chocolate.
Taste: This is exactly the type of aged Sheng I prefer. Strong and with an in your face profile. Gosh how much I love this aged fellow with all its deep flavors. I am really so so sad that this Pu is gone for ever. Without exaggerating this was and is by far the best and most loved aged Sheng I tasted so far (plus the Green Mark @thetea.pl). This fellow offers the most unique and deepest thick profile of strong flavors I ever experienced and I loved it to the bits. Very strong expressional woodsy Autumn flavors with a major tone of camphor and a creamy silky sweetness to it which shares its space and place with a deliciously sourly layer. Within the smooth texture there is a certain fury mouth feel to it. The major aspects always keeps their focus on the woodsy camphor old library parts but within the finish there is not only something like baked apple noticeable but also another sweet layer of blueberry muffins. Really delicious and so so GREAT! But also look at the coloration it turned from bright yellow into a juicy deep red ~ lovely! Sooner or later everything transforms into a Chinese TCM medicinal herbal atmosphere plus those woodsy camphor notes. I love this Sheng so much!

This tea has some very familiar shou notes, but the progression of this tea over a session is quite different from what I’m used to.

I’ve been paying less attention to my exact brewing lately, so I couldn’t say what it was, but my general pattern for shou is 20 second rinse, 10 second brew once it starts to open up, slowly progressing from there.

The wet leaf aroma of this tea didn’t wow me — fairly common wet leaf pile smell. The liquor has a fruity aroma with light hints of spice and earth. It’s brews up a very clean amber red color and never gets dark like a highly fermented shou, although is does darken halfway through the session. The body matches the look, being light and crisp — contrary to other reviewers I did not find it at all thick or creamy (despite the tea’s name).

However, the taste very much lives up to the name. Right off the bat I’m hit with notes of raspberry and sweet cream. As the session progresses the raspberry gives way to other fruits, first peach and then fresh apple cider, always with that sweet and creamy backing. Having too much of this tea too quickly is almost overwhelmingly sweet, like gorging on peach pie covered in whipped cream.

However, halfway through the session the tea does the opposite of maybe every shou I’ve had and gets less fruity and sweet. At this point I get a respite from the unending sweetness and can enjoy some balance. There’s a fresh, loamy earth flavor that replaces the sweet cream and calms the sweetness of the apple cider flavor. It’s joined by some added depth from minerality and a tingling on the tongue.

Overall a very solid tea for those that like a sweet shou. I didn’t get any qi from it, but the flavor was quite enjoyable (especially once the sweetness toned down slightly). I do wish it had a bit more body since that would have complimented the creamy flavor quite nicely.

These flap jacks are so cute!

I plopped one 7.2 gram flap jack into my gaiwan and went for it. One 20 second wash, a 20 minute rest, 15 second steep (still very light), then 10 seconds as it opened up. I didn’t pay too much attention to where the brewing went from there, but I would guess I got 12 steeps ending at a 3 minute steep.

The aroma of the wet leaves is very interesting. I got notes of cedar wood, smoke, molasses, and dates. It almost reminded me of a rich barbecue sauce. Unexpected but not unpleasant! The liquor smells a bit more traditional, quite fruity with a leading edge of dates.

The first brew was basically a rinse — very light still. The second steep is when the tea really opens up to me and brews quite dark. The liquor has a bit of cloudiness, but no off-putting funk to the flavor. As if it were the topping to a flapjack the mouthfeel is quite thick and syrupy, with a slick finish on the tongue. The flavor is well balanced. It leads with an earthy flavor and vague sweetness. As the cup cools it turns more fruity and you start to taste the date you could smell in the aroma.

The qi is more potent than I expected. It stays in my head, making my face slightly numb and my head heavy. There’s not much of a mood altering effect, but the physical energy is enjoyable. The feeling lasted into the fifth steep before it completely faded.

As the session goes on the aroma changes from barbecue vibes to vanilla and baking spices. This might be the first shou I’ve had that I would describe as aroma oriented. I say that because the scents this tea gives off are quite strong, interesting, and enjoyable but the flavor is less so. The flavor is rather mild and doesn’t have many flavors I could discern — just a general earthy and fruity flavor throughout the session. Definitely not a bad tea, but it doesn’t have quite the flavor kick I like in a ripe tea. On the plus side though, the mild flavor makes it very hard to push this tea too far.

7 g
5-6 oz water
2 rinses, 10 sec with a rest of 2 min in between

dry leaf: compact, dark, dry, brittle, faint sweet musky scent like dry leaves

1st steep: 10-15 sec, rich dark brown with reddish tones, no bitterness noted
2nd steep: 12-15 sec, same color, light forest floor taste
3rd steep: 15 sec, lighter, more red color
4th steep: 20 sec, same as before. just kinda eh for me.

Drinking a 90s HK stored puer. It’s not labeled ripe or raw, but I’m pretty sure it’s a ripe because of it’s amazing creaminess. School has been extrememly busy lately, I come home at 7 everyday and just fall asleep, so the only time I have for tea is on the weekends and friday.

But this tea just made my morning, it’s so great. It’s like a warm hug, or sitting in a grampa chair next to the fireplace with a kitten in your lap. Yeah, that kind of warmness, haha. It’s colour is so great too. I normally don’t talk about colour, but my word is this one beautiful. It’s like a deep dark red, but when the morning light hit it the red colour started to shine.

It starts out just like a ripe, without too much flavour, but a lot of creaminess, and you get some storage flavour. Except that it starts out at like the pinnacle of most ripes with the mustiness of an aged tea of course. If you’ve ever drank a ripe, you know what I mean. At around the 3rd steeping, it’s just pure smooth creamy mushroominess. If you haven’t tried a ripe yet, it’s deffinately worth a try. Anyways, after the first steep, it brewed pretty consistently up until the 3rd steep where I am now. I don’t have time to review the tea after I’m finished, as I’ll be working for the rest of the say.

But it’s super smooth, thick, and with an oily like texture at the top of your mouth. It dried your mouth leaving it with the great taste of aged puer until you’re compelled to take another sip. Hm, as I read above I don’t think I did a good enough job, so let me explain further haha. It has a chocolaty taste to it, like not milk chocolate but like a sweet cacao bean, with a mushroomy taste afterwards, it’s so calming. When I smell the tea the aged puer note is all I smell, but it has a grape taste to it as well. the aged note is such a great compliment to all the flavours I discussed before, it’s like the bitterness that I wish young ripes had.

Well, I think I’ve summarised it pretty well, this ripe or raw, but probably ripe HK stored tea is probably the best go-to tea if you’ve been working hard all week. I’d recommend this tea if you’d love to start off your day great.

Have a great day!

Oh wow, this is a raw? Haha, this tea is just too good.

Got my first ever White2tea order and for some reason decided to start off by tasting the tea most likely to be a huge hit or miss. This is a tea I almost ordered a full cake of because I love orange flavor, but I am so glad I didn’t!

The smell of the dry leaves is fantastic. Musty shou smell with a gentle orange hit. However, the taste is not so good… Unlike in the aroma the orange is quite overwhelming in the flavor. I might not mind that if it was a good orange flavor, but to me it was really unpleasant. It’s a bit medicinal tasting and so distracting it’s hard to taste much of the tea underneath. From what I could taste it was a fairly run of the mill young shou, but it was really hard to pay attention to.

I brewed this gongfu style and had to leaf very heavily since there’s quite a bit of orange peel so you’ll get a rather weak brew with the 6g I’m normally put in my 120ml gaiwan. Unfortunately I didn’t get much evolution of the tea over time, if anything I’d say the orange flavor was a bit lighter on the first two steeps, but by the third it had completely taken over.

I’m not going to rate this tea since it’s clearly so far outside my tastes, but I’d warn for anyone who hasn’t had a chenpi tea: approach with caution, this may not be the orange flavor you’re expecting. I’m going to save the rest for summer and see how it turns out as a lightly sweetened ice tea.

Smmmoooooooth

Definitely a keeper, but too bad the sample is depleted! :/ :)

So, I own a cake of Big O – but in an order other than the one where I bought that cake I did end up getting a Little O coin as well. I was just gonna log this one under the Steepster entry for Big O, but I guess it has its own entry so might as well pop it on this one?

Normally I’d use a coin of this size for a Gong Fu session but since I know I have a lot of this one in cake format to drink I ended up just breaking the coin in half and using it for two different Western style mugs of tea while I read a new comic book with some music going in the background. It was very relaxing, and a good atmosphere!

Flavour wise, I don’t think this is any different from Big O – and I mean, rightfully so since it’s the exact same tea just compressed into different sized cakes/coins. Why would it taste any different!? That would be illogical. It’s smooth and full bodied though, with a really nice, natural orange flesh/pulp kind of taste in the body of the sip surrounded by this sort of wet/damp earth and wood taste from the shou. Really, really thick liquor that coats the whole mouth, and a lingering finish that is warm and inviting and made me eager for the next sip. Or slurp, as was often the case. It was good reading tea, very calm and soothing! I have no need for the coins since I’ve got a cake of Big O for me to drink; but if I hadn’t caked it already this would definitely be an affordable approach to the tea with the convenience of not needing to break the cake up at all.

I think my cake needs a bit of time to rest/air out – but these coins seem ready to drink for me to me so if you like chenpi then I totally recommend giving these a go!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BePGJP7FmcS/?taken-by=ros_strange

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjaVrbEUbLQ&index=5&list=WL

Wow, this one was good. I heard a lot of hype in my tea-circles about it, so I gave it a try a little while ago. I don’t know if it’s just my brain making associations based on the name or what, but it really does have a flavor which reminds me of buttered waffles with a small amount of maple syrup on them. Very tasty, thick, sweet. Just about all you could want in a shou. I’ll almost certainly nab a cake when I make my next W2T order if they’re still in stock.

Having the last of the sample this morning. Currently drinking the last cup of the session at the moment, while going over the notes. Hot Brandy has been the tea that had me quite skeptical going in, unsure whether I’d like it, so I picked up the 25g sample, rather than the whole cake (despite wanting the wrapper).

I will state that I’m not over the moon about it, but it’s not bad, either. The pairing of the white/black tea makes for a solid chocolaty-floral combo. I think this would make a great grandpa-styled brew for the desk at work, but there are points throughout the [gongfu-style] session where it is rather weak. This is definitely the type of tea that cannot be flash brewed as well as it can be when steeped for 30-60 seconds each time one wants to drink it. I’m not a black/white tea fan all of the time—I’m pretty particular of which black/white teas are had—but, this isn’t a bad combo overall.

I was HYPED for this one! (you see what I did there?)

Dry aroma and initial steeps are herbaceous, hoppy, and honeyed with pine, mineral, and dried flower notes. Soft and warm in the mouth, moderate bitterness and astringency. The profile shifts toward peppercorn and green vegetables. Starts to give me the brain tingles and in the cheeks as well. Later steeps become less interesting; milder with a citrusy note.

Good tea, if it stayed as good as the first couple steeps it would be excellent.