Tea Urchin

This is a sample from Stephanie – thank you so much
5g 100 ml gaiwan 200F
Rinse/pause/5/5/10/10/10/15/20sec etc
I’m going to continue later. I love it. It’s nice, sweet, juicy bell peppers. There is slight cooling sensation in after sip in earlier steeps. I wonder if it continues later on. Enjoyed it a lot.
Thank you Stephanie for the great experience. I would buy it if it would be some specials

I’ve been enjoying this sheng all afternoon. This is another one of my huge batch of TeaUrchin samples I got for my birthday :D

Lovely sweet and somewhat mellow. I’m digging the vibe and creamy mouthfeel. Flavor is bright and fresh with hints of floral.

Another excellent Sheng from Eugene and Belle at Tea Urchin. I have to agree with Stephanie and DP’s review on tea Urchin. The soup is a very nice golden color. The first few steepings produced a very nice vegetal taste with just a hint of kuwei and astringency, and I do mean a hint. Later steepings transitioned to a much sweeter taste with a nice honey undertone. To keep the tea as strong as I like it I did have to increase my steeping times on the later steeps. Over all, an excellent Sheng that is well worth the money. Well done Tea Urchin!

This is my first sample from Eugene and Belle and it is a gem!!!! The smell of the leaves is that of green hay (my grandfather was a hay farmer) with a slight floral accent. The soup is a very light honey in color and smells like green hay mixed with flowers with a bit of smokiness thrown in. The taste is excellent. It is a very bold fruity/floral mixture with a beautiful huigan and absolutely no astringency. The energy of this tea is incredible, long after drinking this tea my taste buds are still excited and I can still taste the tea itself. I will be ordering a bing of this gem!!!!!

This is just a tasting note/book review. I just returned from vacation and while on vacation I read a copy of the English translation of “Pu-erh Tea” from the Appreciating Chinese Tea Series which is an excellent book by the way. The most important thing that I learned from this book was that I was steeping me tea incorrectly. So today I decided to put the techniques that I learned from the book into practice. Let me just say, I was BLOWN AWAY. Those techniques turned this excellent tea into an incredible tea, they really did!!!! I still want to know what that secret 20% is.

Another Sheng Yiwu snob alert!! Here is Eugene and Belle’s description for this tea: " This cake is a special Yiwu blend that we made to celebrate the birth of our son Miles, the dragon baby. When he was 5 months in the womb, he visited the mountains where this tea was made. The leaves are 80% Gua Feng Zhai, 20% secret :) Completely hand made, stone pressed & double wrapped, this cake is a gem." The soup starts off a very pale gold in color that by steeping four turns into the color of raw honey. The smell to me is a combination of butter and hay that is very pleasing to to the nose. The taste is a very sweet with a beautiful floral undertone. There is just a hint of kuwei with a very nicely balanced astringency at the end. This tea is not cheap, but it is worth every penny I spent on it. I just want to know what the secret 20% is!!!!!!

Another tasting note. This is the second Pu’er I have brewed using boiling water instead of 200 degree water. I am blown away by the difference 12 degrees makes. This tea went from excellent to incredible. This time around I noticed a buttery smell to the soup that was not present during my last steeping. Also, there was a touch of butter to the taste of the soup as well. Again, if you love Sheng Pu’er, you really need to give this tea some serious consideration.

This is my first Tea Urchin tea and it lives up to its name. Eugene nails this one on the head: “Our 2013 Spring Bulang blend has all the hallmark bitterness of Bulang kucha, but with a complex mid-range and a delectable sweet top note & huigan.” The soup is a beautiful light gold and to me has a beautiful smell of butter. The taste is perfectly balanced between sweetness and bitterness. My favorite part of this tea is how it’s energy keeps the taste buds alive long after I am done drinking it. This is an excellent Sheng and if you love Shengs you really need to give this tea a lot of consideration. Well done Eugene and Belle!!!!!!!

Another lovely tea from the slew of samples from TeaUrchin I got for my birthday. This is a different flavor profile than I am used to from sheng. It is quite bold and full of “darker” notes. It is kinda smokey and earthy as well as somewhat mushroomy and woody. Not exactly delicious tasting but not offputting either. Perhaps it’ll be one of those “feel good” shengs…we’ll see :)

I need some “cosmic” sheng to cheer me up!

Took my bird to the vet this afternoon. She has a tumor on her tummy :( Anyway, it is growing, and there is nothing they can do for her. Luckily for now she is maintaining her weight (which means she is feeling well enough to eat properly.) She’s getting to be an older birdie, so I am trying to take solace in the fact that up until this point she has had a very pleasant life, and trying to wrap my head around the fact that sometime in the not too distant future I will have to deal with her slow (hopefully not painful) death and all I can do is comfort her as best as I can!

Sorry to be a downer…ANYWAY, I got new birthday present TeaUrchin sheng samples! YAY! So far everything I’ve tried from TeaUrchin has been top notch. This one is pleasant. I think there is something extra special about Autumn harvests, as much as I have raved about a few first flush green teas in the past, heh. My vocabulary for describing sheng flavors is still in its infancy, but this one is rich and somewhat herbal/floral tasting. It has a nice balanced pleasant bitterness/astringency. When I inhale as I am sipping I feel the camphor-like vapors seem to permeate my entire being. Good sheng. Sheng good.

I have to agree with Tea Urchin’s description of this tea. It is quite nice, smooth with a touch of bitterness, a little coffee type flavor. Clean and medium bodied. And it’s gushu (wild trees), so that’s a plus! A quality tea all around. This and the Lang He Yu Pin are great ripe cakes from TU, I’ve tried the other two they currently have and they are not terribly interesting.

This generous sample came to me from Stephanie – thank you so much.
5g 150ml gaiwan 195F
rinse/pause/5/5/5/10/10/15/15 etc
i think i had this tea over 4 days, still saved leaves,may try today.
beautiful long leaves. 1st steep was very nice mild, sweet and citrusy. nice mouthfeel,sweet peppers emerging
i decided to raise the temp to 200F
the color is dark yellow-orange. very juicy, sweet peppers and apricots. The following steeps were very sweet. eventually peppery notes disappeared and were just sweet and mild, some astringency (nothing major) and no bitterness ( or maybe it was just barely noticeable and i just got used to it). Anyway very nice and positive experience. Made me tea drunk ;)

Another one from the group TeaUrchin order.

I have been drinking the same leaves all day, but didn’t have time at work to take detailed notes on each steep. The steeps did get progressively sweeter and more honey-like. There is some slight tongue tingle, but not much. A little tiny bit of woodiness, with some crisp vegetal flavors. When I did a long steep I got a pleasant, light sort of bitterness. I’m excited to explore this one further :)

This is a cake I would definitely not have been able to afford on my own. Luckily this was part of a group TeaUrchin order I took part in. Thanks Yang-Chu and all the other Steepsterites who let me in on it!

Anyway, this might be my new favorite sheng! gasp! I’m not sure what a rockmelon tastes like, but I do get some fruity notes, as well as floral. Great energy and a tangy sweetness. I regret that I lack the proper words to describe this one. So much flavor!

Good shengs are magical though. That’s all I know :)

Just received my second Tea Urchin order, what a great company. They put their cakes into individual little boxes. Everything was packed with care. This tea is a blend. It was pretty good, as usual from Tea Urchin. It had some interesting flavors, a moderate amount of bitterness for a Lao Man E, and strong cha qi. My wife and I got a little tea drunk. It lacked somewhat in zip and strength, which are my top preferences. But it was very nice nonetheless.

Thanks a bunch to Yang-chu and the rest of the Steepsters who went in on a big TeaUrchin order! And special thanks to mrmopar for hooking me up with the puerh group order thread :)

Trying my first sheng from the shared cakes! YAY! The leaves are slightly glossy and beautifully compressed. (All the leaves from the TeaUrchin order appear high quality to my admittedly untrained eyes.) This is an energetic, punchy young thing with pleasant astringency and slight bitterness. Slight floral undertones and just enough sweetness to balance it out. I REALLY dig this. Very happy I got to have some. I will eagerly drink the rest :D

Can’t wait to try the others!

Dry – Fairly sweet and aromatic for a autumn cake, some floral notes.
Wet – Thick Honey and a more apparent floral scent.
Liquor – Mid amber color.

I got this tea as a sample from my order from TeaUrchin.

This tea started as a fairly surprising pleasure since it started with a very pleasant honeyed sweetness and some thickness although it was very limited compared to Spring offerings I’ve had. The broth had a fairly good hold and the Huigan lingered in the tongue for a while.

After the third steep the broth started going very thin and astringency started to become more apparent. The overall experience was OK, if you want a Puerh for work or to drink on the go this is a good choice, otherwise I’d recommend keeping with Spring offerings to fully enjoy the mouth-feel and apparent deep honey notes that Xi Kong can offer.

I have to admit, I bought this one because me and my wife just loved the wrapper. You should visit Tea Urchin’s website to see what I mean. Very cute. But it is an autumn pu erh, and it shows. It has a pleasant enough flavor, but it just lacks zip and zing. It is very safe to drink now while young, with very little astringency, well balanced and mellow. I still stand by my statement that Tea Urchin teas are outstanding, this one is definitely pretty good.

I am working my way through the several pu erh samples I recently ordered from Tea Urchin. This is another good one! Though I like some of their others better. It is well balanced, and brews a nice golden honey color. It has a sharp astringency, but not over the top. It has a mellow but stern cha qi. It held up well to numerous infusions. Another lovely tea from a great company!

I am really excited to sample this Bing Dao this morning. Hearing all the stories, I am curious as to what this tea is all about. Last night I sampled the 2012 Spring Guafengzhai and, I must say, I was rather disappointed. I found it to be rather fruity, probably too fruity to be true gushu. Anywho, I found it ok, but nothing special. This tea seems to be more consistent with true gushus I’ve had before. The wet leaves produce a subtle fruitiness with a tad of smokiness… just enough to make it pleasant.
The broth is thick in the mouth with a good balance of ku wei and sweetness, a sweetness which tends to linger for awhile. There is a soft citrus note that I commonly come across in gushus that I enjoy. Not much in terms of hui gan but definitely some qi. Really enjoying this one. Would I pay the asking price for a full bing? Probably not. 84/100

Another lovely tea from Tea Urchin. The first three steeps were quite bitter and acidic, and the flavor seemed kind of flat. But on the fourth, it opened up. Just a little fruitiness and honey sweetness. It held up very well to a good 10 infusions before turning a bit bitter again. The energy is strong and stable, not too flighty. For those of us getting into the pu erh thing, I think we are trying to guess about whether a tea like this will age well, lose the bitterness, and evolve into something wonderful. So it is a bit of a gamble when we lack the experience to tell what flavors will develop into. I think I am going to take a chance on this one and order a cake. At the very least, like all teas I’ve tried from Tea Urchin, it wreaks of high quality. In another few years, at least, I will hopefully see how this one ages and add it to my experience!

The vendor description is spot is spot on about this one. Woody notes with mushroom and a slight sweet on the end. This is a very quiet and calming tea that brews a rich amber color. It shows more age and depth of flavor than a cake pressed in the same year of production. I would guess as that having it stored has helped it age faster. Not for a faint of heart drinker! I started with one wash and 15 second steeps to bring this one out.

This is my fourth tea sample from Tea Urchin. The only problem I’m having is that they are all so good I want to order a cake of everything I’ve tried! Pu erh is an expensive passion. This was another high quality tea with a nice feel to it. It is definitely on the more mellow side and seems to already be exhibiting some signs of aging. Got a good number of steeps, each honey colored medium bodied with not much bitterness and some honey like sweetness. The cha qi was solid but not overpowering. Another solid tea from a great company. An added plus – the wrapper is adorable!