The latest installment in the Green Hype saga. A significant amount of aged material in the blend to smooth out the experience. The new material in the blend is punchy and full bodied with an intense huigan [the lingering sweetness in the mouth after drinking a tea]. Excellent daily drinking raw Puer with plenty of intrigue and character to keep you engaged from cup to cup.

Each cake is 200 grams. Tongs are 5 cakes wrapped in bamboo.

From the June 2022 tea club letter:

This year’s blend includes some very old material (already 4 years of age on some of the blend) as well as a blend of teas from this year’s spring. Some of you are longtime fans old enough to remember the first hype cake back in 2017. The blend started as a way to make a reasonably priced blend with ultra-clean material. At that time we used the strictest possible European Union MRL test available listing every agricultural chemical in the standard and it came back sparkling clean. (Since then, we haven’t tested again—partly because we aren’t made of money and those tests are pricey and partly because we’re pretty hands on with this stuff and nothing has changed drastically since the first blend) With all that being said, it’s a pretty rustic blend. It’s not the prettiest tea, not going to win any beauty contests. Not as much of the refined aromas and mouthfeel of higher end raw Puer either. Instead it’s a straight off the farmer natural brawler type of tea. A burly comb of flavors and aromas that punch right out of the gate with plenty of kick. If I have scared you with that last sentence, the youthful vigor of the cake is tempered by a healthy dollop of older material too. This spring was by most accounts one of the more troublesome for weather in the last decade. Heavy rains made processing tea and selecting materials more challenging than any tea maker would hope. The aged materials in our blend help bolster the strength and feel, and even out some of the harsher character of the youthful teas. Our usual advice applies, when you’ve got a big cake to play with, do a little experimenting. Try this cake when it first arrives. Take a few notes. Try it again in two weeks. Take more notes. Stash it away and try it again in three months. Take notes again. Observing a new cake of Puer tea as it settles will teach you a lot about your aims if you plan to age your own teas in the future. The material will calm down quite a bit as it sheds excess moisture from pressing and begins its journey towards becoming an aged tea itself.
Brewing instructions: Gongfu style, with roughly 6g per 100ml in your vessel and fast steeps. Personally, I would use boiling water for this tea. However, if you are opposed to astringency, bitterness and/or intensity, we recommend that you drop the temp down to 90C. You could also brew a couple (as in 2 or 3) grams or so grandpa style. This will be jet fuel to some, but a pleasant pick me up to others. Follow your own preferences.

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