Bryan Hoffman Send Message

As I am preparing for my move from Florida to Maine, I cleared out my tea cabinet to pack all my tea. I bought a lot of Puerh samples from Yunnan Sourcing which I haven’t drank yet, so I’m going to finish up some of them.

Here we have a quite strong puerh from the Bu Lang mountains. Upon first sip, my taste buds are awakened with a bright, bitter, cacao note. The tea is thick and warm. Zero forest floor funk in this tea – it tastes clean and curated.

This tea smells delicious. Breakfast oats dominate the smell with hints of maple syrup or honey.

The tea instantly turns black when steeped for the second time. The once-subtle and bright bitterness is at the forefront, with an interesting sourness that fades to an oaty finish. Strong and bitter, but not unpleasant.

By the third steep, the bitterness is beginning to fade and make way for creamy, delicious puerh.

This tea is still quite young, but is already so complex. I suspect it will age gracefully.

Time for breakfast!

Here we have a factory puerh from Haiwan. This is a very inexpensive cake at ~15 USD from TuochaTea.

The smell is very clean, no funk, somewhat generic. Quite nice dry cacao notes.

This tea has a mild upfront bitterness that quickly fades to a pleasant toasty maltiness. There is some funky forest floor which provides a bit of dimension.

For the price, this tea is incredible. NIcely balanced, but a bit subtle. I would drink this every day and not regret it.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with some factory puerhs, and here we have a fantastic slab of ripe from Menghai.

The smell right after first rinse is sweet rye bread. Think rye bread pudding…yum. This is gonna be good.

…and it is! Great maltiness in the aftertaste that lingers. As it lingers, it gets better and evolves into a nice toastiness. This is a crisp puerh with almost no funky, smokey, or musty flavors.

A slight bitterness appears as the steeps go on, but it’s subtle and pleasant. The bitterness turns into that toasty aftertaste and actually increases it’s intensity into something resembling marmite.

This tea is fantastic, no doubt.

This is my first purchase from tuocha tea, and so far I am impressed!

This brick is very nicely pressed, dense but not difficult to pry apart. Cool artwork on the pressing as well.

Velvety smooth, I would recommend this one.

This is a very nice Oolong. Grassy and fresh with a piquant jasmine floral note. Nothing offensive and quite mellow.

This is a great daily driver tea. It’s not offensive at all, the aroma is crisp and clean as is the taste. Decently long aftertaste of nice roastyness. Bitterness increases with each steep.

The brick is very dense and tightly pressed.

I got this as a free gift from Yunnan Sourcing during a promotion, so it was a really great price!