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Having this one again. Has been a while since the last time, but is still delivering a nice cup.The vanilla is still there in the background maybe muted a bit in the age process.

A very nice tea. Nice aroma flavor of almost a ‘chocolate’ note to it like a bittersweet piece of it infused into the tea. This tea has a “richness” that makes it very enjoyable to drink at the moment. Hints of vanilla in this one. Brewed in my recent acquisition of an “easy” gaiwan( still I brewed 3 gaiwans for my large cup). Very pleasant. A very nice brick from the Puerhshop.

This is the first my first dry storage aged sheng puerh tea that I’ve received a sample of. My initial impression is that the color is around the same of the wet storage ones but a little lighter. The taste is a bit different as it has still has the freshness of the younger tea but the harshness has given way to a more mellow tea. Overall an enjoyable tea and I am grateful for the free sample as it made me realize that when it comes to buying aged sheng that if it is not wet stored then it is not worth my money as I enjoy wet a lot more than dry.

This is the second pu erh mini tuo cha from a swap. Thank you CharlotteZero! I am quickly falling in love with Pu erhs. I love how the dark liquid appears after a short infusion time, I like how the leaves open up. Anyways this tea is so good, mildly smoky, faint smell of rice cakes, not bitter at all. I did 4 infusions with this and I could have got more, but it was time to CHHAAANGE PLACES! (I assume a place such as this gets its fair share of Alice in Wonderland jokes).

This is really nice. I tried a few cups of this when it arrived, and I can tell it’s going to be a really good tea. Smooth and earthy. I like these bricks sometimes for convenience, since they come segmented you won’t need your tea knife. I’ll be back to drink more of this one in 2015… It’s back in the tea cabinet for some aging.

★★★★
I previously reviewed the 2008 Dayi HongYun Pu-erh, I loved it, and have bought several since. I haven’t changed my view on this tea, other than—it’s grown on me quite a bit since my first review.

Also, I highly recommend PuerhShop.com, I’ve been a customer for several years, and I really appreciate the quality and service. Thank you Pu-erh Shop! :)

Tea Notes:
Delicious. Earthy and rich in flavor with a hint of sweetness on the nose. Nice leathery and woodsy flavor notes, a well-rounded Pu-erh. I steep my Pu-erh’s a lot longer than most, because I enjoy them strong, so my reviews might be skewed compared to other people’s liking. The first and second steep are great with this tea, but its rich flavor fades, thins out past where I like it by the third steeping. But that’s not really a negative for me. Delicious and Affordable.

My Ratings…
★ = Didn’t Hate It.
★★ = Not Bad.
★★★ = Me Likey.
★★★★ = Impressive!
★★★★★ = AwesomeSauce!

This tea is really good to me I probably just never had one like it.I am going to attempt to log a review of this one based one my hand written notes, it will be short so I don’t go astray too much like I’m sure I will in my blog, if i post it.
Anyways hard to tell is this tea Green Or white tea cuz i kinda pick up characteristics of both so it kinda confused me, Any way here is just some of my notes please with for the entire blog soon bear with me going through some horrible shit right not and gotta stay medicated, Any some from notes~~ Damn got two and a half pages omg it sill I’ll try to make it short sorry :)
First lets say this tea makes me happy, very happy for some reason unknown, kinda like my Black Pearl do, just makes me feel good :)

Read my whole review and photo here please :)
http://toadsteablog.blogspot.com/2013/02/yunnan-premium-silver-thread-green-tea.html

The first thing I smelled after brewing this tea was vanilla cake, but also a hint of pond. Typical of mini touchas, when it is brewed there are a lot of small fragments of leaves, so you have to be sure to use a strainer. It wasn’t very complex at all, and left me wishing that it had something more. It also left my throat quite dry. But overall, it gets relatively high marks for being very smooth and drinkable…and for smelling like cake.

This is the best packaged loose puerh that I’ve seen to date. Instead of the typical foil or plastic bag of the loose tea inside the box I was pleasantly surprised to find a paper bag instead. So in other words this 2011 ripe puerh has already had the chance to air out and is ready to drink now instead of a year from now after being opened. Overall this is a lot better than one would expect for its price range, the puerh is malty with a slight earthy edge but not earthy enough to have the companion sweetness that often goes with it. Reminds me of the early cheap puerh that made me fall in love with puerh but at a fraction of what I was paying for it back then.

yum!

Like all mini bricks which I dislike, I broke this one up to ensure better infusion. Overall this brews up a sweet and very smooth blend with a bit of depth in the taste which is hard to describe. If you like the old tea nugget puerh than you will love this one as it is the closest to a nugget taste for a non nugget puerh that I’ve yet to encounter.

Tommy The Toad Thanks so much for this one!

To me…this smells like semi-burnt rice, pu-erh, and tangerine.

It infuses to a medium-dark brown.

This is better than I thought it would be. The Tangerine flavors are a nice compliment but not overdone. There is some sort of burnt rice flavor in there, too. The Pu-erh isn’t overpowering either. There are even bit of cocoa powder type flavors I am picking up right at the beginning of the sip.

The more I drink this the more I am liking it. Not bad at all.

I infused it for about half the time TTT did – at about 1 minute.

Smell: This tea smells very doughy. It is like a raw tube of puff biscuit right after it is popped. It has a slightly salty and peppery scent but the thick doughy scent is the most noticeable.

Taste: This tea is a lot fruitier than I expected. The doughy scent is a lot lighter than it smelled. The flavor is like fresh baked wheat bread.

I purchased this cake because of the price, shape and name. Obviously this was named in honor of Panchen Lama Norbu not Nyima, otherwise, the PRC would never let it see the light of day on western shores. I digress and don’t want to cause any political arguments here.

Anyway, I can’t say how pleasantly surprised I was with the quality of this Puer. I wrestled with the mushroom shape trying to break a modest piece off. I got a little bit bigger piece than I wanted, but gave it a go.

Because I had more cake than necessary, it was important to keep the steeps as short as possible. This worked wonderfully. Over many, many, many steeps, I was rewarded with a rich, full-bodied tea. This tea produced an impressive depth of flavor; typical puer flavors of earth, leather and finally pleasant salted mushrooms. Nothing spectacular as far as flavor or aroma, just solid, hearty and healthy flavors. As stated earlier, I kept the steeps very short,therefore I never encountered a harsh or bitter note.

Overall, this puer exemplifies only positive qualities: price point, flavor, aroma, and endurance.

Wow I find it amazing that I was sent a free sample of a tea that costs $95 a cake. So the question that I am sure everybody is wondering is if it turns out to be good enough to actually spend your own money on a tea this good. Quite honestly while it does appear to be a good tea, I highly doubt that it would be worth half its price. The taste is not really unique or different just a good drink now friendly young green puerh that does not have much harshness.

A handful of these little guys showed up in the mailbox today. They are cute little flat disks. I told my little boy (5YO) that they were candy. His excitement was short-lived.
Anyway, I tossed one into my Yixing pot,and gave it a quick wash. The dry tuocha aroma was unremarkable. With the addition of hot water, the tea comes to life. I was surprised to see the cake break apart so quickly, but this doesn’t seem to affect its endurance. I’m on number 6 or 7 steep, and this tea is showing no signs of waning.

The aroma of the wet leaves is fairly typical puerhy. Leather, wet soil, barky are my first impressions…all favorable and not overwhelming. There is a hint of ….hmmm… maybe soapiness, in a nice way. A slightly refreshing aromatic ending. Maybe they say this is the date, but its kinda soapy for me.

As for the taste, this one is smooth. In my opinion, this relatively thick, deep mahogany colored liquor is one of the smoothest and mellowest I’ve tasted. This attribute is the high point for this tea. What it has in smoothness, it lacks in depth of flavor. From steep to steep, there is a certain monotony in this tea. An expert would refer to this as “lack of rhythm”. With an undoubtedly pleasant taste, I am not too disappointed. I just would like to be able to decipher an evolution of flavors. This tea leaves me with a reasonably clean finish, but without that certain numbing pleasantness we can see in really good Puerhs.
The positive: clean, pleasant flavor, good endurance, nice aroma.
The negative: lack of rhythm.

Overall a nice tea and well worth drinking. Also the quality/price ratio is very high.

This review is going to be done in my new yixing teapot from teavivre so some of the points I’m making will be about the teapot.

Dry smell: This tea has a very nice dry smell. It has no fishiness. It is lighter and sweeter smelling than various other puerhs I’ve tried. It has a light aroma of wet tree bark and a dough like smell.

Taste: This tea has a nice dry flavor. I can sense a woody flavor and also a wet earthy flavor. It is a lot darker flavor than I expected. Although it is not sweet like it smelled, it has no astringency and is very smooth. I can still taste what I sensed as the doughy smell. It tastes like a cracker. This is a nice smooth Puerh and I’ll be ordering more soon.

Wet smell: The wet smell is a lot like the dry smell, it is just lacking the sweet scent. The pot adds a deep earthy smell

What the pot does: I drank this tea a couple times before I got my yixing pot from my gaiwan. I was somewhat skeptical of how much the yixing would actually affect the flavor but there is a notable difference. It gets rid of the natural sharpness the tea has and flattens it out. I can tell it is absorbing some of the flavor because it is slightly lighter, and I am very excited to see what the pot provides after it is fully seasoned.

This tea is extraordinarily drinkable; it has a kind of “creamy” texture. I don’t like this type of tea as well as the “rawer” green puerh variety, but as far as it goes it is quite delicious and flavorful, and makes one think of what an ideal Darjeeling tea might taste like…with absolutely no bitterness or tannins.

I’m guessing that this is typical, run-of-the-mill, puerh tea, hence, its agreeable price. The taste is “earthy” but not disagreeable. No bells or whistles, and quite mild in body. The brick itself is extremely dry and brittle. The physical effect is nice; it’s quite drinkable — one could do much worse for an everyday puerh tea! By the third infusion, this has the feel of a very satisfying puerh tea, but still nothing to write home about. I consider this a “value” tea, rather than a stellar standout.

“Aroma” is right, but it’s funky…quite fishy and maybe a little smoky….not exactly inviting. The tea is quite drinkable, but for all its “aroma” has hardly any flavor. Seems mild in effect also. Every time I steep a pot it’s like I’m standing outside of a fish-processing plant. Hard to believe anyone really enjoys this smell. Tea is brownish red in color, which gets deeper by the potful. I find that as the day wears on, I’m not looking forward to drinking more….it’s a little bit like drinking sewage. It’s basically a caffeine delivery vehicle.

This is without question the blandest puerh tea I’ve ever tasted. There is nothing disagreeable about it, but that’s only because there’s nothing there! It seemed weak in every respect…I tried steeping it longer than normal but it made little difference.