2015 Poundcake

I’m still drinking this at the moment. I’m about four steeps in, but I wanted to note on it while I’m on the computer.

I’ve 54g left of this tea. I’m happy to know that W2T still has it listed on their site. However, I’m all through with buying more tea for 2020. I got a huge load of it coming through from Black Friday, that I might’ve missed on getting more of this anytime soon. ;)

Anyway, this is an oddly satisfying session. First steep had a corn (popcorn?) note right off the bat. I brewed the second steep a little longer, and there had been a slight smoky note on the tongue, but it only lasted briefly, and faded back into the corn note. I also noted ‘bran flakes, but not long lasting.’ I’m a bit baffled by the tea, but it’s definitely not as sweet as the tea which I noted on a few moments ago. Rather than experiencing the sweetness from the last tea, I’ve moved on to the savory session.

Drinking tea outdoors is all that it is hyped up to be. Annoying to prep for but worth the effort. Poundcake continues to be very good, though the original dessertlike qualities have become more muted. It has been so hot here that 81 degrees at 6:30pm feels autumnal.

song pairing: plastic angels – eben

161/365

The reviews of this are so good, I feel kind of nervous. What if it doesn’t live up to the crazy expectations I now have for it? That part of the reason why I’ve left it so long, I think. That, and no bad ever came from leaving sheng a while. It might even be better now than it was before.

While brewing, I get the typical sour, metallic scent I get from most sheng and dislike intensely. It’s one of the things that puts me off; that, and the Teavivre Fengqing from 2006 that actually tastes like that scent. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one.

The first steep does have a brassiness to it, but underlying that is a thick creaminess and a light sweetness. It develops a little in the aftertaste into a definite sugarcane flavour, with a hint of baking flour. I’m hoping the top note of sourness will fade in successive steeps…

Second steep retains most of the metallic/sour/brassy flavour; it’s perhaps even a touch more prominent than it was. The creaminess is developing, however, and there’s still a light sugariness underlying. As it cools, I’m picking up the tiniest hint of menthol. I’m finding that there’s a happy place with this one, where the creaminess is at its peak and the sweetness is most noticeable –it’s not when it’s freshly brewed or hot, and not when it’s cooling rapidly, but somewhere in between. It’s hard to define, but it’s almost like it needs to settle a bit first to be at its best. If you catch it at this point, most of the characteristic “young sheng” flavours are significantly muted…but it doesn’t last long!

Third steep is much improved, with the sourness finally fading. The creamy sweetness prevails, with a hint of flour, but I’m not getting a lot more from it than that.

Fourth steep is very similar to the third. I’m not getting as much from this one as I expected to, but the mouthfeel alone makes it worth drinking. I’ll probably take it through a few more steeps before I call it a day, but I don’t expect too much variation for the new few.

I would try another iteration of this one with a future White2Tea order. It’s one of the more palatable young shengs I’ve come across in a long time, even if it wasn’t quite what I was hoping it would be.

This tea was astounding. I have it both warm and iced. The flashed iced tasted so much like canned peaches and delicious stone fruits. Pineapple and flour and there was so much depth to this tea. The warm had much of the same, this tea had so many flavors going on that it almost felt like it wasn’t even a puerh tea but rather a blend of just random fruits and bakery goods. This tea is definitely worth a buy.

today i have the w2t poundcake brewed, thanks to mrmopar who sent this and others.

i brewed this western style. the liquor comes out a light yellowish gold, i like the look of it.
it tastes sweet with a slight maple syrup note. it has some vegetal taste too, with some peach. i get a nice rich mouthfeel- some menthol on the tip of the tongue. im really happy with this one.. could be a potential daily drinker, who knows.

its a quite sunday and this poundcake stuff is just the thing to drink while i read through mtg pdf guides. ive always had magic cards, but never bothered to play right, and since i havnt grown out of it, id like to revisit the game.

i just poured a second cup from my pot and i think there is more astringency somehow.. i ve noticed these slight changes in the past, and i assure you the basket is not in it ( although i have been known to forget it in there.) how does this make sense? anyways this is a nice tea. maybe ill set up the gongfu another day for a more in depth review.

-nycoma

So, this is another shot in my journey to find a sheng that I like. The dry leaves of this brew have that sour sheng smell that I can’t stand, so already I am not holding out much hope for this being a positive experience. But I’m pushing forward with as open a mind as possible because I really do want to find a sheng that I enjoy.

It gets worse when the leaves get wet. The aroma is sour formaldehyde and hot spinach. I actually have to move the gaiwan away from my desk area so the smell doesn’t waft in my face as I’m working. Yikes!

Luckily, when the leaves are removed, the brew smells a bit sweeter, with no trace of formaldehyde, but there’s still a bit of a sourness that turns my nose up. This seems pretty standard for a sheng to me, so don’t let my description turn you off if you actually enjoy young sheng.

The taste of the brew itself is actually pretty surprising. It has a creamy, thick mouthfeel with a sweet taste lingering below the sour vegetal taste. There’s also a hint of spice…is that cinnamon? Perhaps with some aging, it would be perfect. In the later steeps, I got more of a sweet butter mineral flavor.

What made this tea undrinkable to me was the astringency. I brewed this tea from 30 seconds all the way down to flash steeping, and the temp varied from 195 to 165. No matter what, there was a cotton mouth feeling throughout the session. I might have actually liked this tea without it.

Using 8g of a 25g sample. I heard this described as a dessert tea and have to agree. The first few steepings had strong flavors of peach and stone fruit with a nice creamy texture. The cup smelled of overly sweet berries. By the 3rd or 4th steeping I started to get a slight bitter note and a grassy taste. Overall a very sweet and mellow tea.

I tasted a sample of the 2016 right after. 2016 is much more bitter right now and a bit less creamy. I would have trouble picking a favorite as each was good but a bit different at this point.

Brewed this the same timing as the previous note, but more leaves at 4-5 grams and more water at 6 ounces. I get a lot of the same things mentioned in that note with the added complexity I hoped for. This still has the astringent/bitter apricot taste that I associate with sheng and some green teas, but it really does come close to a unflavored Jin Xuan in its creaminess along with its vegetative qualities. Compared to other Shengs, this is also loads sweet.

I’m personally not the biggest fan of this Pu-Erh, but this really would be a decent introduction for someone getting into sheng, especially a green tea drinker or a green oolong drinker. Someone newer to tea may or may not like it, so I personally would not recommend it for a newbie.

I am very glad to have sampled this tea because it gives me again a better understanding of how differently shengs can taste. I will have to try the Da Xue Shan and the other samples I have, but so far, I’m really not a huge Pu-Erh person. They are worth swapping and trying, but I don’t think I want to own a cake anymore.

I made sure to pick up a sample of this tea with my first W2T order, because I had heard a lot of good things about it in the online tea community.

If ever there was a dessert tea, this is it. Crazy sweet flavor, but not overpowering. I thought at first that the flavor was a bit light, but then decided it wasn’t light, but was pretty subtle. The texture was anything but light – thick and oily to begin with, after which it came across as more of a milky/creamy taste/texture. I think I got a little bit of floral flavor from a few steeps, but mostly the sweetness was from your more sugary/sweet type of stuff – particularly honey (mostly in the early steeps), vanilla and burnt sugar. In the later steeps, i also got a kind of honey-nectar type of flavor that was pretty good. This was around the same time it started to acquire a slight mouth-drying effect as well.

I was able to get about 10 good infusions out of this one, which is actually a little less than I expected (maybe I’m just greedy). I did enjoy this for its milky sweetness, but I think I prefer the Little Walk cake (I think they make an alright comparison, as they’re both predominantly sweet shengs). So, this was good, but not one I need to order a cake of.

one rinse, let the leaves rest some minutes, flash steeps at the start.

first few steeps of this made me feel relaxed, warm, cozy, soft. very, very nice. gaiwan lid smelled delicious — warm spiced baking type smells, well rounded out with some deeper notes. stood around sniffing the lid for quite some time. the tea itself had a nice feel in the mouth while tasting fairly light, but still warm and soft, with some sweetness and maybe fruit. after a handful of steeps it started to taper into a more astringent tea that wasn’t bad, just not as exciting as the start. pretty sure i’m going to pick up more of this if i get the chance.