Yunnan Sourcing

Part of a set of hyper affordable, young Dian Hongs that I bought from Yunnan Sourcing last year. My 1st try at this tea. Beautiful leaf structure, intact, still curing by the feel of them, with a slightly sweet/fruity, earthy, classic Dian Hong aroma. The Feng Qing factory leaf is s beautiful thing.

5g, 195*f in a preheated, glazed 175ml Gaiwan

1st steep – 4 Mins – Broth, Umami, savory, very very slightly sweet notes, roasted sweet potato, fruity, oak wood, tannic, wet bark, a bit sour on the back corners of the tongue. This an unrested tea and since it is an Autumn 2017 tea and I am drinking it in March 2018, it will likely improve a lot over the next 12+ months. Next time for such a young tea I would go to 4g and steep for 3 mins, keep it lighter but still in the longer steeping range hopefully opening up some of the fruity flavors by suppressing the astringency.

Steep 2 -

I have no clue why, but I just have not felt like posting much to Steepster lately. It’s not that I’m bored with tea or anything; instead, I suddenly seem more content to keep my thoughts to myself for slightly longer stretches of time. I still want to share my impressions of the teas I drink and I have no intention of abandoning the community. I just no longer feel the need to post here on a daily basis. It seems probable that I will start posting reviews to Steepster in one go (perhaps once or twice a week) from this point forward. I’m also toying with the idea of starting my own independent blog in the coming months. I kind of want to do it. At least a couple of people have asked me to consider it over the course of the past year and I feel like I am running out of reasons to
avoid or delay it any further. Obviously none of the above has anything to do with this tea. I just felt the need to share a personal update.

In actual tea-related news, I keep making progress toward finishing all of the green and white teas I acquired last year. I’m much less worried about the white teas at the moment. I want to get to all of the green teas while they are still at, or at least near, their best. This Bi Luo Chun was one of my more recent sipdowns. I finished the last of a 50g pouch of it at the end of last week. I found it to be an excellent Bi Luo Chun, and that is saying something considering that I tend to be notoriously hard on Yunnan Bi Luo Chun green teas.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a quick rinse, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea in 4 ounces of 176 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was chased by 14 additional infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 9 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, and 3 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea emitted aromas of fresh bamboo shoots, hay, smoke, and corn husk. I found an emerging roasted corn aroma after the rinse. The first proper infusion yielded a roasted grain scent. In the mouth, the tea liquor offered bamboo shoot, hay, corn husk, smoke, and roasted corn notes. Subsequent infusions introduced impressions of butter, cream, malt, nectar, squash blossom, grass, beechnut, roasted chestnut, zucchini, lemon zest, lime, lettuce, minerals, and garden peas to go along with belatedly emerging roasted grain notes. The later infusions mostly offered lingering impressions of minerals, corn husk, roasted corn, and butter underscored by vague notes of grass and nuts.

In my limited time reviewing teas and in the slightly stronger stretch I have spent reading the reviews of others, I have noted that Yunnan Bi Luo Chun green teas kind of tend to be love or loathe experiences. My own impressions of these teas tends to to vary wildly. Though I may tend to grade other styles of Yunnan green tea highly on a fairly consistent basis, this is a style about which I am notoriously nitpicky. That being said, I found a lot to love about this particular tea. It never really veered into the unwelcome smokiness or astringency that can sometimes plague this sort of green tea. Furthermore, it held its aromas and flavors well and carried them throughout the vast majority of a lengthy session. That, in particular, appealed to me. If one were to start here with Yunnan Bi Luo Chun green teas, one could do far, far worse.

This is my third Tea from Yunnan Sourcing and boy was I in for a treat.
It’s a subtle tea at first. Pleasant and thick but subtle. But around the third steep there is some interesting things happening. There’s a hint of astringency mingled with a spice like cinnamon or Cayenne pepper but without the heat. It’s barely there but it took me by surprise and now it’s the prevalent flavor in my mouth. I really am enjoying this tea and I feel like the quality of tea is surpassing my expectations.

Today I tried to blend this with orange blossoms, 3.5g & 1g of each respectively. The dry leaf aroma is dominated by the orange blossoms, their scent is more pungent. Same deal with the wet leaves, although to a lesser degree. I feel that subleties of the jujube aroma are mostly hidden by the floral orange fragrance.

On the other hand, the taste has a great balance. I might like it more than the jujube alone, I am not sure. It is quite different that’s for sure though. As expected, the floral aspects are attenuated, but are not overpowering. I especially like the aftertaste in which the complex fruity & nutty characteristics of jujube blend nicely with the tangy & floral blossoms.

I definitely think this was a successful experiment. The scent became a bit more dull, but I think both the taste and aftertaste are more balanced like this. Whether it’s a more pleasurable experience probably depends on the mood and the occassion. Nevertheless, I am glad to have the option of mixing it up a little with this late night tea of mine, especially given that today’s addition – the orange blossoms – is caffeine free too!

By now, I have managed to find good brewing parameters, very short infusions and relatively small amount of leaf is the way to go. What you get is a very vegetal, sweet and fragrant drink, which I grew to like a lot. Even with a lighter brew it is quite pungent though, filling the room with a nice sweet, woody and fruity smell.

Very strong smell of buth dry and wet leaf. It is unlike anything I have ever smelled, but it does remind me of fresh sawdust a lot. On top of that there are fermented fruits and some strawberry in the aroma. It is strong and I kind of like it, but it can be overwhelming.

The taste is sweet with some bitterness and astringency that is a little different from tea astringency. It is quite medicinal as well and not super complex, definitely much less so than the smell. Finally, the liquor is very thick and coating, especially once it cools down a bit.

Overall, I am not quite sure how I feel about it. For sure, it is different from any other drink I have had, so maybe I will change the evaluation as I drink more of it in the future.

I should definitely use less leaf though, the 6g yield a lot of liquor. I am on 3rd 300ml infusion right now and it is still very strong. Especially at night that’s too much liquid to drink before sleeping.

(gongfu). Dry, this tea has a beautiful mixed white and black appearance depending on if you’re looking at a bud or a leaf. ~80C steeping.
In early steeps, this tea is extremely thick, hydrating and refreshing, not astringent whatsoever. This was a very vibrant sweet sugarcane taste (turns out that’s what’s advertised). In later steeps, an aroma of freshly steamed green vegetables emerged, with some savoriness and astringency. This is a great-tasting sweet white tea, I highly recommend this to anyone who likes milder white teas with body

I went for a sample of this tea based on the very red color of the liquer in the pictures and the “lightly fermented” description. Both of those are common attributes of ripes that I like.

It brews a red-brown, though not as red as in the pictures. The brewed tea smells of pumpkins a earth (but not the bad kind of earth), taking me back to the time that I helped some friends from a church unload a semi-truck full of pumpkins for a pumpkin patch. I always found it sort of strange that a Christian church sold pumpkins for what is essentially a pagan holliday. :P

But back to the tea. It tastes mainly of dry earth, pumpkin, and light roast coffee. It’s has more bitterness than I’ve ever encountered in a ripe, but definitely not enough to be unpleasant. No fermentation funk to speak of. There’s a slight herbaceous greenness in the back ground, perhaps like bayleaf. There’s a light brown sugar sweetness and a fruity background. If I had to pick a fruit I would say cranberry. This tea reminds me a lot of “craft” or “third wave” type Central American coffees.

I get some qi feels from this tea, which is unusual for a ripe. Fairly complex, and it goes many infusions. This is a pretty unique tea, and the lowest fermentation ripe that I’ve tried. I’d strongly recommend it if you’re a fan of YS’s Rooster King cake or light roast specialty coffees.

Much like the 2016 Wu Liang, I’ve had a cake of this for close to a year, but this was my first time trying it out. The leaves are large and the cake loosely pressed so I was able to pry off nine grams’ worth of leaves simply by inserting my pick just below the top layer and giving it the slightest of nudges. This was enough to cause the large intertwined leaves to start unraveling and thus I was essentially able to brew this session with the equivalent of mao cha. I did my customary 5s rinse followed by a 5 min. rest before proceeding with the actual brews. The rinse itself had a luxurious mouthfeel and taste, in the same way one might describe silver needle as luxurious.

I did eleven steeps total, the timing for these being 6s, 6s, 8s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min. and 3 min. I was impressed by how effortlessly the first infusion flowed. It had one of the archetypal young raw flavor profiles I’ve seen before, but I’m not sure how to describe it in terms of actual taste. The second steep was darker in flavor and maybe a bit grainy both in terms of texture and taste.

The third steep had a very clean taste. There wasn’t anything that’s easily described in terms of concrete flavor notes. There was however a sweetness that emerged after you’d drunk the tea. Steep four was very reminiscent of a dan cong in terms of mouthfeel and taste. There was even some mild astringency that was very similar to what you’d find in a dan cong. The flavors were accompanied by a nice, very unique sweetness. The unique sweetness continued in the fifth infusion, this time being present immediately. The sweetness only got more potent as the tea cooled down. There were also hints of perhaps a vegetal character somewhere in the background.

Over the steeps the mouthfeel had gotten thinner at each step and the sixth steep was the first time I also saw a drop in flavor. The taste was predominantly mineral, nothing particularly interesting. The next steep was harsher, possibly due to the larger increase in steeping time. What was noteworthy about it was the qi. First my tongue started to swell and rise toward the roof of my mouth. Eventually my entire mouth and jaw felt numb like after being administered a local anesthetic at the dentist.

Steep eight presented even more harshness, but also more sweetness in the finish. The lasting aftertaste that was present in practically every steep in this session was particularly prominent here. Thankfully the harshness decreased in the ninth steep, although there was still some. The taste was mineral and sweet with a quite nice mouthfeel.

The second-to-last infusion wasn’t thick, but just for this one steep the mouthfeel returned back to being really luxurious and lubricating. The harshness was gone and the tea had become gentler and decently sweet. The mouthfeel was oh so nice. At this point I found myself starting to feel a bit silly and slightly tea drunk. Unfortunately the session was cut short quite abruptly as the eleventh steep produced hardly any taste while having a very nasty character to it. There was color, but to me the tea came across as dead.

Overall this is definitely a quality tea. It’s a shame I reviewed it right after the 2017 He Tao Di as that tea was so spectacular it would’ve been hard to get excited about anything short of awe-inspiring. The attribute that stood out most about this tea was the long-lasting aftertaste which you could expect consistently from each steep. Although the qi was ultimately nothing massive, its presence really helped lift this tea above some of the less noteworthy competition. There’s quite a bit of cumulative sweetness already and I would expect this to only enhance as the years go by. Although not very consistent during this session, at its best the mouthfeel of this tea was very good and just like the sweetness I hope it will improve over time. During the middle steeps there were times when I wouldn’t have been able to tell this apart from a dan cong, which might make this an interesting one to try for fans of dan cong teas.

An amazing tea. Flavors of flowers, honey, chocolate, and a whisper of cream. It is delicious with cashew milk or on its own.

(Gongfu style)
My first ripe puerh so I don’t want to assign a numerical value. Unsure of my numerical rating for this until I try more puerhs. 100C brewing, 2 washes.
Steep1-2 :flash steep(1), 10s(2), cool appearance as the black comes off the leaves like syrup. Nose of dead, wet wood and earth. Goes down smooth, and though tasting burnt/bitter, is quite “wet” and not drying at all. An almost soda-like finish: root beer, maybe coke? There is some early funkiness to this.
3-5 : 15s, 30s, 45s. Sweetness has been cranked up, earth subsides but re-emerges by #5. Root beer/cola predominate. Liquor continues to lighten with each steep.
6-10: 1.5m, 2m, 3.5 m, 3.5m, 5m, 10m and then it falls flat. Had a good run while it lasted! Maybe this is just my first puerh, but it has left me feeling sort of loose in a good way :)

Sampled this one among a few other Hai Lang Haos. Good value semi-aged cake. Seems to have been stored relatively dryly, but doesn’t have some of the sour off-notes that can sometimes be associated with that – good dry storage in other words. Still has some of its youthful bulang bitter punchiness, but tempered by a honey-sweet, woody finish. A good value buy for people looking for a daily drinker with some age on it.

Strong, heavy body with a very smooth texture and complex composition of bitter, astringent, woody, sweet, discreetly moist and a subtle acidity, all in all a very nice spicy flavour, which remindes me of the 2008 Bulang Ancient by EoT. In addition, there is an intensely relaxing Qi and surprisingly good leaves for a Factory Sheng. However, the storage was anything but “clean” and in spite of the age, the tea is still a little aggressive, which together gives some deduction regarding the rating.

Images and more at https://puerh.blog/teanotes/2006-pasha-mountain-gu-shu

Very strong leather note with present bitterness and a medically woody note. The rather humid storage is clearly noticeable, but is not at all musty but the good type of humid storage. Surprisingly intense, mainly awakening Qi and a very long lasting tea. Leaves range from very beautiful to catastrophic, though.
Images and more at: https://puerh.blog/teanotes/2006-changtai-tian-xia-tong-an

I bought a cake of this primarily for aging as younger versions of this tea are among my very favorite in the under $.50 a gram category and at 7 years old is rapidly approaching adolescence. As expected, the fruity, spicy notes of youth have faded and the woody, mushroomy decaying foliage flavors are just beginning to emerge, primarily in later steeps. The body is super oily and there is big time cooling effect typical of old arbor teas of this area. The qi is pretty intense but not as aggressively stimulating as younger pressings. This tea is on its way to greatness and I bought a cake to age a few years. I would recommend doing the same.

Among all of the YS 2017 presses, this was my favorite for several reasons.

1. It has an intriguing complexity that reminds me of some Yiwu teas, yet it’s distinctively Jinggu. That complexity is well described in the tea’s description, but I would add that there’s good depth and a mellow qi. There’s a brothy richness that reminds me of truffles and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it, but that doesn’t matter since the tea is less than 1 year old at the time of this writing and flavors change most rapidly during the first few years. I expect this will develop very nicely.

2. The price is right. I think this was $74, which will go up in a week or so as YS gets ready to welcome 2018 teas. It’s not cheap tea, but it’s very reasonable considering the current market.

3. I don’t have other teas like this in my collection.

I finished this sample quickly and ordered a cake.

Very complex. Can’t wait to try a spring version.

Love this style of tea. It doesn’t seem similar to other yellow teas but love it all the same. Green black non-oolong might better describe it. The unique character of bitterness, astringency and florality is what attracts me to this tea.

Yunnan Sourcing is doing their annual price increase for spring harvest raw pu’ers in a week’s time, so I’ve been going through my Yunnan Sourcing samples to see if there are any teas I want to buy a bing of. My 25g sample of this one is almost entirely in loose form. I used 9g in my trusty 130ml gaiwan and gave the leaves a brief five second rinse followed by a five minute rest. I performed the wash with a very small amount of water and it turned out really strong! The taste was nutty, kind of like nut milk. The color was surprisingly dark too for such a young tea and this was true for all the infusions.

I proceeded to do a total of fourteen infusions. The timing for these was 5s, 5s, 7s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 30s, 45s, 75s, 2 min., 3 min., 4 min., 5 min. and 6 min. The tea soup in the first infusion was incredibly viscous both in the cup and in the mouth. The mouthfeel was really, really thick. The tea was strong, but the flavors themselves light in nature making them difficult to discern. The taste was sweet and milky. The tea became more flavorful once it cooled down. It was really aromatic in the mouth and coated your mouth leaving a long aftertaste.

The second steep was really full in the mouth. It coated literally everything like some sort of lubricant. The flavors were still light, but quite irrelevant to the overall experience at that point in time. The taste was milky with a whisper of an edge to it and the tea felt satisfying. The mouthfeel continued to change with each steep and in the third brew the tea soup flowed really effortlessly. Despite the flavors still being light, the tea was strong and the flavor the most full-bodied it had been up to that point. It was really nice. The taste was a tad sweet, with a hint of a metallic edge to it in the finish, but surprisingly not in a bad way. Damn it was good.

In the fourth steep the flavor finally started coming. The taste was quite divine. It’s hard to describe, but it was a really special kind of sweet mineral taste with a metallic finish. It did get a bit rougher once the tea cooled down, however. The tea was so good, so satisfying. The next steep continued to be thick with a nice mouthfeel. The flavor was milky with the taste of astringency without the physical sensation. It was less enjoyable at first, but turned out surprisingly good in the end.

In the sixth steeping the tea was STILL really coating. On the flavor front, it felt like a lot of the base notes had suddenly dropped off, making the tea feel a lot brighter. The taste had returned back to being sweet and milky, with the astringency mostly gone with only a hint of it present in the finish. The following infusion was pretty much a repeat of this, although with the finish now more metallic and mineral. The minerals were amped up in steep number eight where the minerals pretty much dominated the taste. What set this steep apart from all the other teas I’ve had is how full the mineral flavor was. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. After consuming enough of the tea, it left a lasting sweetness on your tongue.

To my surprise the tea still had flavor in the ninth steep. The taste hadn’t changed much, having returned to being sweet and milky, but it was incredibly strong and full for steep nine. Steep ten was mineral and sweet. Rather simple, but strong and full. Honestly the tea was quite good even at that point. Holy cow was steep eleven sweet though. It was really, really sweet, with such exemplary strength still as well. And even this far into the session the mouthfeel continued to be quite nice.

I continued to be confounded by how good this tea is as I was sipping the twelfth steep. The tea was still sweet and satisfying with a nice mouthfeel to boot. I’m not sure if this is true of the other infusions, but at this point I realized the taste reminded me a lot of the taste of soy milk. This may have actually been one of the best infusions, and believe me this tea offered many great infusions.

Steep thirteen was RIDICULOUSLY sweet. Absolutely insane. It was pure sweetness, like someone had just saturated the liquid with sugar. Steep fourteen was finally the last one I did. This was the first time the tea brewed lighter both in color and strength. This could have possibly been countered to some degree by extending the steeping time even more, but I think it’s safe to say at this point the tea was finally past its prime.

This tea is unreal, just unreal. I ordered a cake immediately after the session. The strength, the mouthfeel, the longevity, the flavor – all are exemplary. This tea is perfectly ready to drink now, but I’m really curious to see what kind of a gem it will age into.

The smell upon the water first meeting the tea elicits the smell of roast and char but not in a smokey way, as unlikely as that may seem.

First steep in the gaiwan, 15 seconds, produces a surprisingly sweet, almost tart, fruit with only a faint hint of roast. Second steep, 20 seconds, is more of the same with maybe a little more roast flavor. It feels simultaneously juicy and drying in the mouth.

The subsequent steeps were taking down while caring for a 4 month old but what I will say is that it stays fairly consistent in terms of quality with slightly varying levels of that fruity and char flavor until it fades near the 7th steep.

I haven’t had any jasmine tea at home in a while, and after many, many rounds of having the low grade stuff in a pot before meals at various restaurants, I decided it was time to order some. There was only one I’ve ever bought that was incredible to me, and it was the Steepster Select one many years ago, no longer available. I went out on a limb with Yunnan Sourcing because of their generally great reputation and because the pictures showed such beautiful downy white pearls that look just like good quality leaves should look.

I’m glad I trusted my instincts because this tea is as good as that Steepster Select one I remember. It has a certain jasmine quality that I love, a sort of pink bubblegum note in the fragrance and flavor. Otherwise the usual floral jasmine scent and maybe a hint of grape.

I’m brewing this in a gaiwan. The first infusion has a wonderful light sweet jasmine flavor, the green tea itself doesn’t have a strong flavor. It’s a subtle umami that really compliments the jasmine well. I don’t taste the usual vegetal notes of green tea here.

My second infusion was even sweeter and more rich, again with the floral notes, umami undertone, and hints of pink bubblegum, reminds me of the old Dubble Bubble gum I used to buy at the High School football game concessions stand as a kid.

The third infusion is a bit more umami rich and more floral. Definitely more heady and upfront on the Jasmine. Some people think strong jasmine is “soapy”, and while that’s usually meant as a negative, I definitely understand the correlation with soaps and perfumes. This infusion tasted a bit more perfumey to me, but not by any means too strongly or offensively.

As far as I’m concerned, this is going to be my go-to jasmine tea unless something changes or someone introduces me to a better one. I think the quality and price were on point, and I love that the green tea takes a backseat to the floral without adding any bitterness or muddling the flower notes with vegetal ones. This tea surprisingly gets even better on 4th and 5th infusions.

If you’ve read this far, I’ll share my secret to brewing perfect tea pearls in Gongfu style. Use 185F/85C water, which is a bit hotter than the usual recommendation for green tea. It helps the pearls to unfurl for a more full flavor and isn’t hot enough to bring out any bitterness in good quality green teas like this one. I’ve found that using the usual 176F/80C green tea temps on pearls like this often results in them never fully opening up, giving weaker and less nuanced flavor.

As for amounts, I used 2.5g pearls per 100ml of gaiwan capacity. No rinse. First infusion 45 seconds, then 30 for the second, then add 15 seconds for subsequent infusions.

After letting the cake rest from traveling, recommendation was for a couple of weeks, I opened the wrapper for a preliminary session.

It was very fresh so I decided to break up the piece I’d split off and let it rest in a jar for about 6 weeks after which it relaxed and gave up a nice aroma and taste.

This tea seems more complex than one might expect from a ripe. I have been ordering more sheng lately but a shu like Rooster King and the now sold out Green Miracle draw me back for a comforting brew.