2010 Haiwan Ultimate Ripe Puerh Tea Cake

Right now I have and will have no free time at all for the next 4 weeks, and I am killing myself to try and push in this rating into my ridiculous schedule. needless to say the upcoming tea ratings will be much shorter than usual. This is all due to the fact that finals are coming up, and at the school that I go to, 90% is passing so I cannot miss anything on any of these tests if I want to pass any of my classes. This is why I start preparing like crazy for 5 weeks before I take the tests so that I am absolutely solid on everything in all of my classes.

Enough with my stress, let me tell you a little bit more about the tea itself. This tea was really really earthy, almost to the point of it being overwhelming. it was as if you took mushrooms and left them in a bowl of boiling hot water poured it in a cup then drank it. As you can probably tell i’m not a big fan of earthiness, but for those who love that taste this tea is for you! after 2 steepings the earthiness faded and I was left with he usual ripe tea tastes which I absolutely love from ripes. This taste carried on for 2 steeping then fell super fast. One steeping was a very nice taste then the one immediately after was like water. Would have loved to see this tea last a little bit longer, but I enjoyed the two steepings of that amazing ripe puerh taste, because that is why I keep coming back to ripe over raws most of the time.

Along with this mushroom taste there was a fresh green almond taste, but after the earthiness stage there was the regular ripe puer taste and along with it this over brewed black tea taste hiding behind it. Not a ripe that I particularly liked, but it was still very tasty nonetheless.

Another hiccup from Steepster to review this tea. Steepster automatically logged me out ands asked for my password which I do not remember. So I went to another page where I was logged in and brought up this tea. This is one I bought and finished before I was brewing gongfu and before I was on Steepster basically.

This tea is very nice. I was not paying attention to the specifics but it had a sweet note from the beginning with little bitterness. It had some fermentation flavor but not a lot. When I saw Puerhshop had restocked on this tea I bought another. I think Yunnan Sourcing used to sell this tea too but called it the Haiwan Peerless. I still have some of that.

I steeped this twelve times in a 160ml solid silver teapot with 14.3g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 minutes. Could have gotten a few more steeps out of it but I had had enough at twelve steeps from a 160ml teapot.

A very light and clean shou. Prominent camphor-spice note with a mineral, pecan, and cocoa background. Very soft and velvety mouthfeel. Slight pencil shaving note.