pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
I am sipping through the entire 2016 offering by ChawangShop. Thanks to andresito for setting up the buy. I’m enjoying the teas more than I did when they first arrived. I’ll probably talk myself into placing an order, blowing my already busted budget for the year.
Just in case, there’s always a “meeting”. One can return anytime:
https://steepster.com/discuss/5244-tea-buying-hiatus-support-group
https://steepster.com/discuss/5244-tea-buying-hiatus-support-group?post_id=147904#forum_post_147904
;-))
I got this cake based on mrmopar’s recommendation: https://imgur.com/a/oAfKJ
It’s great! :)
Met Rui, VoirenTea & CoconutM1lk yesterday for a London meetup. Rui supplied the goods, a wonderful Yiwu from chadao – 2009? that I fell in love with instantly, and a HK stored which was also nice.
Today i’m trying W2T head, didnt have a lot to sample but i’m liking it.
I’ve been drinking W2T samples generously shared by Rui at said meetup.
W2T 2016 Diving Duck – started off sweet and fruity (I thought white grape/lychee, other people have said apricot), became more subtle and a bit greener, with a lingering mouth tingle and lasted a long time like that.
W2T 2016 Heart of the City – greener and more astringent, very floral to start. Sweeter aftertaste than expected with the amount of astringency, and I got one steep with an almost blackberry taste, which was really good. Had to pay attention and keep steeps very short or it gets unpleasantly strong. I wrote “has a lot of pow” :p
Some commercial loose leaf shu puerh.
I realized that I had never tried mainstream loose leaf shu, so on a whim I bought a 250g bag of the stuff. Very nice looking bag, lots of claims of specially selected this and that. Very earthy, dusty and maybe even a bit moldy (?) smell from the leaves. Not sure about the mold, can’t see any on the leaves. Seller claimed it is from 2003 which I can say right away it is not.
Ok, so how did it taste? Awful. Not in a danky, basement sort of way, it’s drinkable, but massively meh with no particular redeeming features. Also, I can clearly taste the fermentation so big LOL at the 2003 claim.
I suppose this experiment is at an end.
Yeah, I never expected it to be good to be honest. I can now bash cheap loose leaf puerh with authority :)
I have learned, acquired a bunch of stuff. My first taste of shou almost turned me off completely.
yes, same. I bought a bag of the coloured, different ‘flavour’ mini tuos from eBay. The different flavours were:
bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, & bad
@mrmopar I hear you. The first time I drank sheng I could have sworn it was gasoline. A combination of poor quality tea, poor brewing parameters on my part and my palate not being used to the flavor profile. My first attempts at shou was a little less unpleasant and I persevered, convinced that there must be more to it given how much some people loved the stuff. Glad I did, obviously.
Teanami’s 2013 Ashima Silver Needle Raw, which I got a while ago.
This was my third time drinking it, second time brewing gongfu style, and first time using a jianshui zitao teapot and cup.
Not sure if it’s my palate developing, the clay teaware, or improving my gongfu brewing parameters, but I tasted honey notes in sheng for the first time! I’m pretty excited and looking forward to dive deeper and deeper into pu erh!
I decided to check in on how my shous were airing out and thought you might be interested in a picture! Most were bought <6 months ago with the intent to air them out over a few years, so I’m just beginning to see the benefits :)
I’m very interested in trying out the very light colored one on the bottom left, description from the website: “Fengqing ripe pu erh is fermented in bags or sacks rather than being wet piled on the floor as the more traditional way is done. This unique process leads to a very sweet burnt sugar and earthy tasting tea. The tea soup is a creamy beautiful dark colour and has a strong aftertaste. What makes this tea cake unique, is that it consists of all tips or (highest leaf grade) which is now recently very hard to find.”
The 100 year cake is easy drinking.
Many thanks! Impressive line-up. Presently, my shous are stored in their original wrapper. I’ll try aging some in crocks.
Shine Magical, Nice shou selection! Very organized too. Where did you source your very appealing crocks?
mrmopar, Pumidor, crocks, or both?
I would say either. As long as the storage is clean. I think sheng benefits from more humidity than shou though.
Every bit of humidity counts when you live in NYC and not China. I personally prefer breaking down shou cakes ahead of time, and I think this storage method is well suited for that. To mrmopar’s point, I don’t drink much sheng (you can see I’m just storing one kind).
looseTman, I’ve found that doing an eBay search for “frankoma bean” got me the kind of pots I wanted. Just don’t get the pure yellow kind like in the middle of my picture. I was feeling lazy and couldn’t find a nice one I liked so I bought that one, and not only is it very ugly, but there is a glaze on it that I think will prevent some humidity from coming in. The less shiny, the better. Apart from the yellow one, the rest are great. =)
mrmopar uses a pumidor
Thanks for the crock info. Yes, I’ve read about & seen pics of mrmopar’s pumidor system. mrmopar = mrpuerh!
Has anyone here ever had an 80’s or earlier shou that had a thick body? I feel like it might not be possible.
80’s and earlier shou are incredibly rare. Not sure I have ever seen one for sale. And a genuine 80’s tea would be expensive.
I’ve had about 4 in my life and they all had a thin body, but they had a stronger qi than is typical in a shou.
Even sheng eventually degrades over time. So it would be normal to expect shu to begin degrading significantly earlier as it has already been overly processed. Of course, whether this begins to happen after a few decades or over a century would depend on various factors. A well compressed shu with good quality leaves from the 80s should be fine.
If you read the chaxi for this tea ( http://www.tea-masters.com/en/puerh/192-jingua-gongcha.html ) he says:
“Very dark, but very clear (no turbidity). The brew appears very rich and almost like jelly.”
At $3 per gram I don’t think I will buy any but it does look interesting. It seems the 80’s are when ripe goes through the roof price wise. Got a 1996 CNNP ripe from Yunnan Sourcing for about $135 a cake or so.
Psyck, I’ve had that 80s shou from Stephane. I wouldn’t describe it as having a thick body.
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