2018 Waffles

Nice. Not super complex but it’s quite alright for the price. Standout notes are vanilla and molasses.

I’m not sure I get shou. This just tasted earthy and fermented, as shou usually does, with the typical ultra thick mouthfeel of shou. Early steeps were more interesting, though difficult to describe.

See, I thought I had reviewed this long ago. I guess I was wrong.

This is pretty much my only experience with Puerh. As in… ever. I refuse call whatever it was I had from Adagio puerh or even tea for that matter. So, out of all my teas and samples, this is one of only two I have.

I’m gonna say it. I like this tea. For a Pu, it’s simple. Break off a chunk, brew, drink, repeat. It’s easy to manage and I don’t have to fiddle with my scale and make a mess. I know, my need for quick and simple probably makes me sound like a heathen, but I like simple. It’s one of the reasons I tend to brew everything western… and yes that includes this. It was brewed for 25 seconds for 12 oz water on first steep (once I got the leaves to unfurl).

As far as the taste of this goes, it’s pretty good. I’m still learning to appreciate this type of tea, and still feeling it out, but I’m liking this. It has a nice peat/wet earth flavor to it. I can also taste autumn leaf pile. I can’t think of any other way to describe it, and yep, it’s a flavor and here it is. Now, I’m not going to lie. There is an ever so slight fishiness to this. Slight. But it’s there, and I would be showing favoritism by not mentioning it. I want to be fully upfront and honest here. That said, it isn’t enough to make me not like or enjoy it. If anything, it’s a background note.

Once the cup cools down a bit, I’m tasting a bit of vanilla and caramel sweetness to it that I wasn’t expecting. Also, I’m getting hints of tobacco as well mixed in there – you know, that lovely turkish kind I used to love. It’s pretty good stuff, and I’m just hoping I can stay awake long enough to finish this session. (I never do.)

Overall, I like this. I like it a lot. For my first real foray into puerh, it’s pretty tasty. It’s nothing fancy, and I’m sure someday, if I can get over my Gong Fu hesitation, I will be able to enjoy far greater cakes than this. For now, this is fine. I’m almost out though, so that makes me sad. Sometime soon, I will need to make a new W2T order. Oh my aching wallet…

Sipdown

I started the day and ended the day with this tea. Even before/after the tea room experience, I continued drinking this one. I must say that it is fairly different than the 2017. It has more darker, richer notes. Malty syrup (?) & cocoa bits. It reminded me of a waffle if it were drizzled with molasses rather than syrup, with a touch of woody/slightly spiced notes as the session progressed forward.

The tea starts out thick and sweet, but by the time I was finishing it up, it was smooth woody notes. Odd for sure, but not bad.

Gongfu style.

5 gram sample mini cake, whole.

Initial steeping very light wet pile aroma. Something I could only label as fish sauce type of aromas …fermenti and briny. Mouthfeel is very thin. I think this has to do with the small cake was added as a whole.

2 – 5 steepings is much darker, a little more bold but not bold. comes in, still with a light mouthfeel but hints of pepper and cedar. It has a very medium light body, more than before. It has this after taste and feel that reminds you of a good, wholesome black tea. It’s overall not very complicated, but easy drinking. Slight medicinal flavor. Finishes with light leather and petrichor. It has a initial snap brightness, very quick, a flash up front. Develops some tobacco, menthol notes on the exhale. Still continuing much of the same lighter flavor profile. A salty tobacco , and cedar flavor, with an Umami finish. Maybe some Chinese five-spice? Idk the things surprising me at the moment are the lightness of the body and the kind of salinity notes that I’m getting, There’s an almost ocean characteristic.

Steepings 6-8 The tea it’s starting to flatten out it’s never really gained any sweetness. imagine it was a bitter tea. Which is kind of showing up I believe as a kind of bitter iodine note. Inky? The liquid is just now ever giving up some lightness in color. It is transitioning to and kind of back drop up generic black tea and malt. Energy however is noticeable, especially for the style of tea. This could go for at least 12 steeps.

Overall I think this is a great introduction into ripe/shou teas or possibly a daily drinker depending on your taste. All in all not a bad tea whatsoever… I was just a little disappointed, as I was kind of expecting a little more complexity. If you’re looking for a good daily drinker or to dip your toe into the water that is ripe/shou puerh tea then this would be a great place to start.

Gongfu from last weekend!

Broke into this cake for the first time to enjoy before heading out to a housewarming party; I steeped it up to enjoy with a bowl of cherries. This is pretty damn close to the 2017 pressing in terms of flavour, which is to say that it’s really good!

Not an overly complex shou by any means – but it’s just so damn smooth with a very thick and dense infusion. I over leafed this hard because I really wanted something very dense and strong, and even though I’d not tried this tea before I knew from my experience with the 2017 pressing that this would be able to handle the over leafing without getting funky. Velvety, thick mouthfeel. Notes of very wet, sweet earth – kind of petrichor-ish, but also a little bit of mellow date spread and overripe black cherry. Maybe a hint of vanilla? Nine infusions total – then I had to start getting ready for the housewarming party.

Cherries were a good choice for nibblies: sweet and juicy, but also a very dense flavour that worked with the thick, smooth earthy notes of the tea and complimented the subdued black cherry note already present in the infusions.

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxnGFYrhbod/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNlAvnBU__s

Backlogged from Friday, because Steepster had the latency of a baked potato and I got aggravated with it.
This Waffles cake is another one that I dug out of my cabinet and decided to try again. I brewed it Western style in my Kati.
White2Tea probably named it Waffles because the cake physically looks like a waffle. It was pressed with a cross-section pattern to make it easier to break into quarters. I don’t think it’s actually supposed to be waffle-flavored. I get no notes of maple, butter, fruit, or waffle batter.
I agree with other reviewers that the first steep has a wet earth-fishy-peaty smell, which then wanders off into caramel and vanilla-land as the liquor cools, somehow. You can tell by the list of flavor notes people have tagged this one with that it’s a bit of an adventure and hard to pin down. It’s complex, it’s fun, it’s fermented, it’s pu’erh. If this one had an astrological sign, I’d say it’s definitely a Gemini because of its duality and refusal to be labelled with either one flavor profile or the other.
You have to be in the mood for it and be open to the journey, is all I will say. Tune up your tastebuds and bring your sense of humor.

I got 2 mini waffles in a subscription box by sips by. I put half a coin in a muslin tea bag. I poured boiling water over it and steeped it for about 4 minutes. I’m rather new to pu-erh. It was sweat sweet smelling and less fungusy smelling than my tuo-cha I normally drink. Had a somewhat sweet flavor also. Nice dark mollassissy color to it. Second steeping was slightly sweeter with maple and grass and coffee and earthy notes to it.all in all I quite liked it and will be ordering some other teas from them

7g in 100 mL gaiwan

Dry leaf appearance – probably made up of lots of broken, smaller leaves, but hard to tell. Good, solid compression but not like a Xiaguan ripe where you have to break the pick to get enough tea to drink.

Dry smell – maple syrup, light chocolate, damp, humid forest in summer months, earthy

Wet smell – sweet, caramelized sugar, creme brule, coffee cake, cinnamon, cinnamon buns, freshly baked old fashioned donuts with glaze, plums, cinnamon raisin bread

Liquor – dark red, almost rose colour on first steep before fully opened. Almost opaque but not yet. On third steep a dark, semi-opaque plum-like colour, almost like a cola

Texture – soft and thick, velvety and smooth

Taste – very, very sweet. Light and sugary, maybe a bit of maple syrup on a sweet waffle or other kind of pastry. Extremely pleasant. Second steep even sweeter. I get a serious baked good taste, maybe a maple donut. A tiny bit of maple sugar candy

Empty vessel – syrupy, but there’s almost a kind of fruitiness along with it, a tiny bit tart. Like blueberry compote. Brandy-ish after third steep

Mouth finish – tingly palate, light coating but not significant. Produced a bit of saliva on the tip of the tongue

Wet leaves – pretty much what you would expect from a typical shou.

Body feel – a bit intense, but almost scattered and confusing Qi, maybe due to the blend or something. Still, not unpleasant.

A solid daily-drinker; definitely a great value for such a low price. Be warned of the possibility of a slight funk, however, as my S.O. thought it smelled fishy (though I didn’t get that myself).