2016 Fade Huangpian Raw Pu'er

Got this one out of the pu’ box.

At first I thought it was the yellow tea pu’erh stuff that I drank almost a year ago: https://www.instagram.com/p/3AIuZMRYBb/

Has a very distinctive mushroom like taste with some more funk going on. Brews pretty light and isn’t so harsh. Has a tian jian vibe to it, like that sour’ish sheng taste.

Not really my thing because I believe…. I believe, my taste in sheng always has to have some sweetness I can identify. While this is a great leaf, easy to brew and consistent, it just isn’t for me.

I got this as a 10g sample.

For the tea soup, at first, I didn’t like the beginning flavor of smoky tobacco. And there was a slight sourness that was not disturbing and made mouth-watering. However, the smoky tobacco and sourness faded very quickly (maybe like its name). Then, sweetness strongly appeared and lingered for a long time.

The first time I drank this, maybe two weeks after recieving it, I was completely unimpressed. Drinking this today it’s a totally different tea. Classic yiwu profile at a fraction of the price, the mouth characteristics, cooling, and huigan are all what I expect from yiwu tea. I couldn’t recommend this enough at its price point. I think this is a tasty tea now and will be a tasty tea for the next decade or two.

From the April White2tea club

This puer I drank with about 1 month of rest time on it, fresh from the club. I felt it needed more time. It had some great notes, green grapes, floral, and a dry tartness, but it was quite light and delicate. I’d describe this tea as Cute.

Anyways, I’ll be revisiting this one after awhile. At this stage I quite like it, more than other White2Tea’s shengs at this price point of $25.

Full review at Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/2016-fade-sheng-puer-april-2016-white2tea-club/

Oh, huang pian, how you flummox and befuddle me. I huangpianed twice before Fade, the first time on some Jingmai sheng from Chawangshop that tasted ok but was a bit too much with the florals, which often seems to disagree with me, gastrically speaking. Then there was Brown Sugar. Sugar? Not so much. Brown Hydrochloric Acid more like. Now, I like a deep, dark, sweet, motor-oil-like shu as much as the next person, but this stuff was like a footballer doing a slide tackle into my gallbladder, studs up. So when the Fade came I was concerned, but I went ahead and had it anyway because there was 200g of it and the wrapper just looked like it needed opening. Fade. What can I say about Fade? Well, I saved it for my 100th tasting note, so that says something.

I’m a Bosch freak, and yes I taste the Bosch in here in a big way. Funny thing is, everyone kept talking about how tea drunk they got on the stuff, and I’d had it about five times and not once was it anything more to me than a very pleasant Boschy cuppa yummy. As it happens, the arrival of the Fade brick coincided with the arrival of a new 50ml gaiwan from Teaware.house, with which I was immediately enamored and began to use almost exclusively for several weeks. Thing is, a 50ml gaiwan holds about 2g of huang pian, give or take. You see where I’m going with this. So tonight I decided to go big or go home. Well, I am home already, so big. My largest sheng pot, the one I use for aged stuff, is 80ml. The other one is 75ml. I usually brew no more than 4g of anything. So…… I’m teadrunk as shit right now, about 750ml in (that’s about 25 ounces for the metrically impaired) because I brewed up 10g in a 150ml shibo. Like, all at once.

shit damn motherfucker (oops, wrong tea?) This stuff smells so frickin good! Seriously, I would like a small Fade atomizer I can take with me to work, so that when some idiot starts dancing on my last nerve, I can give myself a little spritz and feel right as rain again, and not have to suppress the urge to choke a fool.

I feel like I’ve been writing this review for hours.

I took some photographs. Here’s what 10g of HP looks like, not even steeped out yet:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEzieiPmgF6/?taken-by=curlygc

Here’s my big fatassed shibo with his enforcers from the Empire, staring down my little sheng pots:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEzir0AmgGT/?taken-by=curlygc

Here’s another of Shibozilla eating a 50ml gaiwan as an appetizer while the sheng pots run away yelling “run away!”:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEzix1rGgGf/?taken-by=curlygc

Best part is that my tummy is fine, so far. Or if this tea is eating a hole in my intestines, I sure can’t feel it. Now off I go; I have about another 450ml to brew up before I can say I drank a 40 of Fade and lived to tell about it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEzjH_FmgHQ/?taken-by=curlygc

This was a somewhat bitter but tasty raw puerh. I know this tea has some of the Bosch in it but it was not quite as sweet as I remember the Bosch to be. This tea did lose it’s bitterness over the course of eleven steeps that I gave it. I went a bit heavy on the leaf so that may have made it a little more bitter. I used 9.9g leaf and the teapot was only 150ml or maybe 160ml, not sure exactly how big the pot is. I think the seller called it 150ml. The teta does seem to have some qi to it. I am feeling energized right now in a manner that caffeine does not do to me. Not a massive qi but some. Overall I liked this tea. Not sure how many infusions the leaves would go but I stopped at eleven because of the caffeine factor. Could definitely have gotten a few more steeps out of this.

I steeped this eleven times in a 150ml Ru Kiln Teapot with 9.9g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, and 1.5 min.

I liked this one quite a bit more than the last time I tried it in May or so. It is maturing quite well – almost gone was the acidic sourness I got from it last time, and it also lacked most of the sour mushroomy note Huangpian seems to throw me most of the time. This tea was sweet and crisp vegetal through most of the session, with a little bit of tanginess. It had a thick texture and left a bit of a buzzy feel in my mouth – it felt quite active on my tongue. I’m glad this is the Huangpian I have a whole brick of, as it compares favorably to any of the others I’ve tried. I’m interested to see how it will develop over longer periods of time.

I got this tea in the monthly tea club.

My session with this tea was pretty great. I think it still needs more time to settle down from pressing, but overall it was pretty good. It reminded me of a baked fruit/malty spice that was light and sweet. It also had a very think soup that made ‘Fade’ very savory. I didn’t get any bitterness whatsoever, and I think that aging this tea for a few months will improve it a lot.

There was a mushroom taste, but I suspect it’ll go away over the next few months.

Got this with my monthly White 2 box. Wonderful packaging, as always, for a delightful young sheng. The tea starts out with notes of hay and grass, and a decidedly pleasant sour flavor. The sourness starts out acetic and then moves toward citrus, and after a while, once the hay toned down into pleasant bitterness, I got hit in the face with Arnold Palmer. Quite delicious.

I did 7 steeps, 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 120s, and the tea could likely have gone on further. I’m a fan overall, but I’m curious to see how this sheng ages.

Read the longer review, with pictures, up here! http://writing.drab-makyo.com/posts/tasting/2016/04/06/white2-fade/