pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
Today I brought the last chunk of my 2015 Gourd from W2T, It is the bottom part of it and it should be good for 3-4 separate sessions at work. It is highly compressed, as in ‘why didn’t Paul call this 2015 meteor?’, but the tea is delicious. It has some gentle bitterness to it with medicinal notes, thickness and it is well balance overall. It becomes more gentle as you steep with good body. I wish I had like 10 of these just to age in this type of compression, though I feel like the bottom part needs a special tool to pry apart.
2015 Winter Wings from Bitterleaf. Very enjoyable, and a good value at the price to my tastes.
Finishing up the “2005 Teji tuo” from the W2T club last winter.
This tea really has a fine, perfumed aroma from the dry leaf. If anyone can point me at anything similar, I’d really like to know about it. Also, does anyone know who made this thing?
I’ve found with highly choppy material like this that it works well to keep the steeps short for the first half-dozen or so. I think I was at #7 before I exceeded 10 sec. After that it falls off rapidly though.
I really enjoyed it too.
http://steepster.com/teas/white-2-tea/70438-2005-chun-cheng-teji-tuo
Today I’m drinking the 2016 Menghai Dayi Year of the Monkey raw puerh tea, obtained from Yunnan Sourcing a couple of weeks ago. This was a strong and bitter tea. There was no noticeable smoke to it. It did eventually become something sweeter, I’d say around the ninth steeping it got sweet. I hope this tea is a good one to age because I will probably not get around to finishing it real soon. I think this was a high quality tea and it had all the signs of being a real Dayi. It was wrapped right and had the security markings, plus it came from Yunnan Sourcing not some random EBay seller.
Interesting, I’ve considering picking this one up as I was born in the year of the monkey. Sounds like a good one for aging for sure.
2016 Yibang Manguishan from Chawangshop. Yiwu profile with hints of deeper Menghai bitter orange. Overall a light and pleasant drinker. My money goes into some super pricey tea and then to balance the wallet, I like to buy a few easy gems like this one. Some lingering huigan, a bit cooling, no problem for me to drink this up. I’m almost out of a couple of Chawangshop teas from last year. The good bit is that I’m not tempted to hoard them, and they are a nice diuretic for me in the heat. And it is hot and muggy this summer!
2016 Shujian Mahei (Sheng). Love this tea company. One of the rising stars in China. I picked this cake up in Kunming on my last visit to Yunnan for the very reasonable price of 210 RMB ($40 dollars or so). It’s continued to be my go-to tea for the hot, dry days we are having in the Midwest. The kuwei is right in my face in the first steeping, strong and unrelenting into my third 150ml pot. Huigan is throaty and sweet, and the texture is viscous. You could float coins on this tea, probably. I notice with this tea in particular moreso than other Yiwu cakes that the tip of my tongue goes slightly numb/tingly. The liquor slathers the inside of my mouth with a tea-induced membrane. I am so in love with it. As for the rather western notions of “what does it taste like?” Not sure. Smells meaty, savory. If I hold my nose directly above my teapot, I get a little dizzy…good dizzy. Very good dizzy.
This time I have an EBay seller that seems to be one to avoid, tealife2015. Today I drank a 2000 Zhongcha Purple Logo Royal Grade Ripe Puerh Tea. This tea has to be the worst puerh I have ever had. I also think it was a fake and not at all a year 2000 tea. The logo on the tea was not centered. That was the first clue this was a fake Zhongcha. The fermentation taste was very strong and very unpleasant, perhaps you might say even fishy. There was also way to much of it for the tea to be from the year 2000. I would guess it was actually a 2015 or even 2016 tea. The wrapper looked very old but this is easy to fake. It was without a doubt improperly fermented. After about six steeps this fermentation was replaced but not by a better note. It was replaced by a bitter off tasting note. It never got what I would call sweet and was quite the off taste. This was probably the worst tea I have ever drank. I think I already gave them feedback or they would probably get negative feedback for this tea. Avoid this seller at all costs. I do actually have several more of their teas to try. Perhaps this one was an aberration. I will find out when I get to their other teas in the next few weeks. But this one was pretty bad. In fact the only tea I have drank that I can think of that tasted worse was valerian root tea. And at least that had a good chance of helping me sleep. This one was just bad.
2014 New Amerykah 2 from White2Tea today.
I can imagine a mother, after hearing her child swear, deciding to wash the child’s mouth out with soap, then thinking ‘nah, I’ll just have Timmy drink some New Amerykah 2 instead. That should teach him.’ Then, the child drinking, winces from the intense bitterness, but cannot help himself: “Damn that’s smooth.” Thus starts a vicious cycle, but Timmy gets too tea drunk to care.
Today I drank a raw tea from Yunnan Sourcing the 2016 Yunnan Sourcing Wu Liang Mountain Wild Arbor Raw Puerh Tea. This tea was good but bitter. There was noticeable bitterness for about the first eight steeps. After this a sweet note began to emerge. I would not use the term apricots for this sheng. I think that this was a good quality tea from Yunnan Sourcing and it was quite enjoyable. I gave it fourteen steeps and I think it would have gone twenty. If you don’t mind the bitter character this was quite good.
How much tea were you using. On the fourth steep I’m generally at 10 seconds steep but I may be using more tea than you. I use about 10g to 12g for a 150ml gaiwan, or about 8g for a 100ml gaiwan.
For a 225ml Yixing I would probably use more like 18g if I wanted short steeps. 11g in 225ml will probably limit you to the longer steeps. It’s not really a linear progression as to using more tea for larger teapots in my opinion. I used to use 25g for a 64oz pot and get away with 30 second steeps. But then again I was looking for a lighter taste too. I would start by trying something like 15g and see if you get more out of the tea. It’s also good to buy smaller pots. Chawangshop sells a lot of good smaller pots at reasonable prices. I have bought a couple from them.
Sounds good I will look for a couple. One 150ml and another 100ml till and work with those until I get the process down. Thanks again for the suggestions
Most of the Yixing pots you see advertised are larger because the Chinese rarely brew for one person. They make tea for two or three as the norm while here in the west we brew tea for just ourselves because it is difficult to find people to drink tea with.
150ml, for gongfu prep, is a bit large for one person. Also with ripe you may want to try brewing in a big pot; 1g/100ml and just let it brew, and top with hot water as you drink. Most Chinese people (and Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, etc) brew their tea this way every day. Gongfu prep is much less common.
I used to gongfu everything, but now with certain teas I prefer to just use a larger pot and less leaf for the volume. Drinking 6g/500ml of red tea from 100-300 year old Thai assamica trees and I’m on day two with the same leaves. I just topped up the pot with boiling water. This pot of tea will probably take me through today, too, as this tea has a lot to give.
With your 225ml, you could do a mini brew with just 2g and let it steep for five to ten minutes after two rinses. I think you’ll like the results. You’ll get a lot less wired that way too. :D
If you use less tea you do get less caffeine too, as you say less wired. Tea never gets me classically wired although the caffeine does have an effect on me.
True, I completely cut the coffee out of my life after I damaged my heart on some good Filipino liberica coffee (long story). After over a year of random palpitations, my heart appears to have almost entirely recovered, but I’m not doing coffee anymore!
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