Give me the low down on Hei Cha?
I absolutely LOVE the Gao Jia Shan “Ben Se Ju” Tian Jian from YS.. so whats the story with hei cha?
the complexity, the slight sourness, oolong-like aromatics.. great stuff. I can see there are different types & I dont know anything about this type of tea (apart from this weird golden mold thing)
Hei Cha is usually a post fermented tea with similarities to ripe puerh but it is not always fermented. It is usually what they call dark tea. It is other provinces’ take on puerh tea basically. They always do it differently than puerh though and there are a bunch of different hei cha. Tian Jian is one Liu Bau is another as is Fuzhuan. That is not a complete list either.
I haven’t drank enough of them to describe the flavor profiles. They are different from ripe puerh even if that is what they are trying to imitate.
I’m far from an expert on the subject but the Ben Se Ju is wonderful IMO. After trying it in the dark matter buy, I bought a bag of it from YS. It’s very yancha-like. I liked the other Tian Jians in the group buy as well. I have had several Liubao teas, even well aged ones, and hated them all. I found them to taste like dirt, some like smokey dirt. Tian Jian and Liubao might both be classified as Heicha, but they are absolutely nothing alike IMO. That’s the extent of my Heicha knowledge/experience, lol.
yeah I love the Ben Se Ju… if there is any others like this I want to try them!
its like good purple oolong imo, has a sourness that is really lovely to my tastebuds, along with some processing that adds to that. I love how the taste changes, is always a bit different
Yeah. The great thing is that it’s hard to oversteep. I accidentally left a steep sitting in my gaiwan for a really long time (like more than 10 or 15 minutes) and it was fine.
what number steep was that? I dont think ive tried it western or just sticking some leaves in a cup… that will be tomorrow morning then
I don’t remember honestly. I was gongfu-ing, and I was several steeps in by then. It has great longevity. I like it for work because it doesn’t require a whole lot of focus.
have you tried the Zi Hong Pao from YS or what-cha? similar but a bit more DHP roasty, really nice sourness & complexity
Might have been, I didnt go for that one because I already have drank more than half of them
Liu Bao is definitely an acquired taste. I dislike some of them but didn’t mind others. I was told by someone from Singapore that they usually rinse Liu Bao in ripe puerh. I have yet to try this.
The Xiang Yi I just tried was a really interesting taste, fruity throughout with a sour if pushed.
‘a bit one sided in its taste’ I think I said, but its only 10c/1g. I dont know much about the pricing of these & where this falls on the quality spectrum. Im guessing ‘good but not great’ ?
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