We don't know when or if this item will be available.
“Although I’m not a huge shou puerh (ripe) drinker, I can definitely appreciate a good one for a combination of its smoothness and the nostalgia it brings to pot after pot of puerh that I’ve...” Read full tasting note
“My first puerh cake! I’m so excited! I don’t have a pick yet, so I picked through (haha!) my cupboard and came up with some tool that I can’t remember the use for. Cheese pick? It’s got two little...” Read full tasting note
“Here is the September offering for Jalam’s tea club, which features a different 100G puerh cake each month. I love that size of cake :) Most of the teas have been sheng, but a few have been Shou,...” Read full tasting note
Ba Ka Ngoi (pronounced ‘Bakanoy’) is a smooth powerful example of an oxidezed ‘black’ Puerh that has many of the classic fermented qualities: less stimulant effect, soothing tones, and great finishing flavours. The village of Ba Ka Ngoi is found deep into the southwestern Pulang Mountain region of southern Yunnan province. Both the Wa and Pulang peoples who’ve long cultivated tea and treat tea with a kind of animistic idolatry harvest teas of the area. This is a great tea to drink now and can be consumed both hot, cold, or lukewarm. Our Ba Ka Ngoi is a summer 2013 harvest with strength in the mouth. Teas from the Ba Ka Ngoi area are usually known for long flavour notes and with light hints of copper.
Known for strenth, Pulang Mountain teas are well-suited for palates craving slightly more powerful teas. This is due to both production methods, and the soil conditions. Our Ba Ka Ngoi is an excellent tea to age or to sip now, as it has a great vegetal force that will lesson with time. Refreshing to the mouth and system, it is a tea that does well seved at room termperature and it is well suited to consuming first thing in the morning before a meal to gently wake up the system and hydrate.
Learn more at www.jalamteas.com/ba-ka-ngoi
Company description not available.
Although I’m not a huge shou puerh (ripe) drinker, I can definitely appreciate a good one for a combination of its smoothness and the nostalgia it brings to pot after pot of puerh that I’ve consumed post-dim sum in Hong Kong… This Ba Ka Ngoi “fermented puerh” is a great example of one that I can drink for hours on end with very little change in flavor and a smoothness that is unlike some lower quality ripened leaves…
I often struggle to find tasting notes for a ripe puerh — simply, well because, it tastes mostly like a ripe puerh. Few things quite have that unrecognizable palate of flavors that make up the general flavor of this nostalgia tea (at least for me)… Oftentimes, I think that a lower quality shou will taste like cardboard, and a higher quality will taste like the sweet earth… this is definitely example of the latter.
I’m about 8 steeps in with a small gaiwan and while the mouthfeel and body of the tea has changed and become lighter, the flavor and color are fairly consistent. Again, I’ll steep this until I remember that I want to switch to a raw puerh, or maybe an oolong, but overall, it’s a GREAT tea and I recommend this for reading before bed, slowly waking up, or basically anything in between.
If I must place some notes on it, I’d say a sweet baked wheat aroma with a hint of charcoal (almost like a smoldering campfire)… The taste is gentle, smooth, silky-smooth in fact, and tastes something like a post-dim sum concoction of shou puerh and dried tree bark!
Flavors: Bark, Earth
My first puerh cake! I’m so excited! I don’t have a pick yet, so I picked through (haha!) my cupboard and came up with some tool that I can’t remember the use for. Cheese pick? It’s got two little spikes at the end. It worked really well on this cake, but I’m worried it cut the tea leaves, rather than prying them apart. I did end up with a few still-together chunks, so that should be good.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/97273956@N03/15199416980/in/photostream/
Holy crap this is dark! The cake is dark, and it brews up dark right away! Once the leaves are wet, they’re so black! The brew is pretty dark too, kind of a burgundy color.
15sec rinse
15sec steep: I was afraid to start with 30 seconds, seeing how dark it is. It’s incredibly smooth. There’s a hint of that cedar note I find in most ripe puerh.
30sec: super dark!! Cedar.
45sec: cedar is fading…a little sweeter, maybe bread-like?
1min: a little sweeter, still very dark, a little mineral-tasting and aha! I get that copper twinge at the end.
1min15sec: wow, this just stays dark! Sweet…cinnamon?
1min30sec: I don’t know why, but I think I’m getting cinnamon sugar, and that’s okay with me!
1min45sec: the color is finally starting to lighten up. Still getting cinnamon sugar notes. Woot!
2min/2min30/3min30/5min: creamy, cinnamon sugar water!
Overall, I’m extremely pleased with my first cake from the JalamTeas subscription. Thanks to Pureleaf for mentioning it in the discussion thread! Can’t wait for October’s tea and I’m certainly going to enjoy the rest of this cake!
Thanks for the pictures! Sounds like a really nice pu erh… I will check out Jalam Teas :)
Congrats on first cake!! This was fun to read :-)
Thanks, TTF!!
There is a lot of joy to be had stabbing away at a Pu Erh cake :) The cheese pick tool sounds perfect for the job.
Sounds delicious, i should check them out!
KittyLovesTea – it IS fun!!
Parsifal and boychik – I don’t see too many folks posting about their teas on steepster yet and I love seeing how different people find different flavors in the same tea, so I hope you do check them out. :)
I probably don’t need another subscription, but I’ve thought about this one….
Cheri- this is my first subscription…I figured it would be easier if someone else picked puerh for me. It’s kind of overwhelming, otherwise!
Do you have a fine screwdriver? That would work. I also know that some have used a letter opener. I share your concern for the pronged tool breaking far too many leaves – one of the pleasures of fine puerh cakes is looking to see if you have whole leaves as you “pick” the cake and in the tea vessel after they have unfurled (or maybe I’m just weird that way – simple pleasures).
DigniTea: ya, I have a screwdriver, but was thinking it might not be clean enough for food prep! I’ll probably get something specifically suited to puerh at some point. :)
Nice review! I started with a “scratch awl” to break cakes with. Even with a proper “pick” I still have a hard time breaking them properly. These big old hands don’t do so well with the good breaking technique.
Here is the September offering for Jalam’s tea club, which features a different 100G puerh cake each month. I love that size of cake :) Most of the teas have been sheng, but a few have been Shou, with this being one of them. Today was my first sampling of this one, which started out with an immediate sweetness & graininess, like boston brown bread, sweetened with molasses. It quickly developed a cream taste & quality, somewhere in the middle it tasted kind of like copper, followed by a kind of sour rye taste, and although that might seem weird to some of y’all, I’ve been enjoying every steep. Now it’s a sweet
There was nothing funky about this cake at all, no weird tastes or smells. It has a very clean quality, a strength to it, & immediately I felt great energy spreading throughout my body, revitalizing me from head to toe!
