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Finally I decided to break into this cake that I purchased 3 YEARS AGO (after trying a sample) and am just getting around to trying now. What remarkable self restraint I have!

So the rating on this just reflects my personal opinion and not my expertise in pu-erh. I feel like I’m still a noob so don’t make fun of me. ;)

This tea is almost 8 years old and it is showing some signs of darkness as well as a dark gold tea liquor. When I tried to break a piece of the cake off it seemed a bit dry and crumbly, so I wonder if it’s aging well in my apartment. Harumph.

I am doing 5-7 second microsteeps of this. I actually ditched the first two steeps and steeps # 3 & 4 are fairly woodsy and smoky with a definite bitterness in the finish. Strong! You can still taste the sweetness and the green vegetal notes of the tea.

Steeps 5 & 6 are mellowing out. Smoky vegetal notes are retreating and there’s a pleasant apricot flavor I’m picking up with a sour finish. This is a very energizing sheng and I can feel my energy lifting. I have to say young sheng gets me wired like no other tea I have found.

After the 8th steep, this is mellowing out quite a bit and becoming more brothy and fruity with a bitter/sweetness but the energy feeling still remains. Do you know how you feel when you jump into a pool of cold water? It’s kind of like that. Very interesting stuff. Maybe I’ll revisit this again next year. ;)