pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

2016 Fall Broken Didgeridoo from White2Tea today. Paul recommended on the slip that came with the club to wait a bit before trying, but I dug in after only a week; this tea may be better in a month or two. I also followed Paul’s advice and leafed down a bit from my normal levels.

First impressions were really good as the rinse was super thick and tasty, with a loooooong aftertaste. The obvious quality maintained throughout the steeps, but was hampered by the fact that there is some light, but rather persistent stomach distress, at least to my body anyhow. I’m going to store the rest of the mini-cake with some humidity added, in the hopes that when I try it again in a few weeks or a month the stomach distress has left. We’ll see.

Having Yunnan Sourcings 2010 “Bu Lang Jie Liang” tonight.
Brewing this up as I have been retasting a lot of stuff in storage .
I brought this one out and picked 10 grams off to start with. I warmed my Shiboridash and let the water out I tossed the dry leaf in and swirled it around. The aroma was a bit of the heavy tobacco to the nose. I gave it a rinse and let it sit a bit before brewing. The aroma is woody and sweetish in the cup.
First infusion, it has some of that thick almost bitter that belies its BuLang source. The color is a nice light amber in the cup. I sit back and let the tea rest in the mouth . The thickness and tobacco come to the front. A little mineral and a whisper of some smoke.
I have had some BuLangs that will smack you in the chops. This one is a bit more tame. It may even be one you could introduce a newer drinker to the BuLang area.
Later steeps carry through. I let this one cool a bit and it became almost sugarcane sweet.

Flavors: Bitter, Mineral, Smoke, Sweet, Thick, Wood

2014 Guang Xu Gu Feng Chadao.de

Dark leaf, dark reddish orange soup, sweet raisin, sweet feel & some other natural/woodsy Yiwu notes. Not bitter, fairly refined & elegant taste. Sweet fruit aroma. The woody note shares a similarity with Wuyi Oolong, its a really easy drinking one.

Later steeps 5+ there was a gorgeous complex fruity/natural/menthol flavour. its really good

Hi all, I’ve learned so much from steepster I decided to join in on the conversation, this is my first post!

Since the Pu-erh bubble popped in 2006, I was wondering if anyone would say pu-erh made in 2006 and a few years before is generally inferior to other years? My thought is that since pu-erh speculation was a bit out of control around 2006, and caused prices to climb every month, factories started pumping out inferior pu-erh to keep up with demand. Do you think this is true?

2014 Man Zhuan Tea Urchin.

I cant decide if I like this one or not, its certainly interesting in that regard. & much more preferable to any other boring tea as there is a nice complexity, but its such a weird taste mixed with a nice taste that parts of the sesh are great, & others arent. strong body feel also

2011 Autumn Yang Ta (greenteaguru – sold out)

A favorite tea of a good friend of mine. Spend some months in a porcelain caddy and while that has helped to pronounce the fruity (dark, dried turkish apricots) side of this tea the brothy, consommé-like and minerally, almost salty aspects still prevail.
On top of that the deeply calming effects of this tea are not too dominant and I like it that way.

Quick Note 2009 Wuliang Wild Puerh Sheng – I was rearranging my tea storage and decided to break this cake to store it in a clay pot (to open space for other cakes) and what didn’t fit I drank last night and brought to work some leaves to continue.

This is doing amazingly, smooth refreshing with dried fruits woody and even a slippery sensation on the tongue. The Huigan has definitive complexity that is hard to describe but easy to enjoy.

Today at work I’m doing gong fu on a glass tumbler “FuGuang” I bought from YS a few years back. It recommend this one done strictly on Clay pots if possible. I think it brings out more notes and respects the leaf more. However, this is a pure pleasure and I’m happy to have brought the extra leaves to work today.

Extra mini rant While breaking this cake I came across a BUNCH of junk lol, I know this cake was re-pressed years after it was produced but damn! What was next-door? A damn broom factory!? A fake Wig boutique!? I’ll post pics sometime. lol

Getting back to Pubertea again today. 2006 Xing Hai Old Tree Banzhang. I was too lazy to weigh this out, but I’m guessing I had around 10g+, which I threw into a 100mL gaiwan.

I was a bit worried at first, as I was getting some pretty strong funk, but fortunately that subsided pretty quickly, and by the third infusion I was getting some sort of chocolate with a bit of funk kinda taste, and in a good way. I suspect if you completely broke up a cake of this and tinned it, you’d soon get a tea with virtually no funk. It’s hard to believe that this is actually Banzhang (of course, and not that I’d know), but this did taste reasonably old tree, with some interesting stuff going on after the swallow, and even some sneaky qi showing up after the session, which felt harmonious in a way. I bet the ‘banzhang’ in the name makes this pretty expensive, but if the price was reasonable I’d consider picking up a cake of this.

2014 hui run shou. Was a nice shou, lasted the day. Didnt totally amaze me but didnt taste off. I enjoyed it. Not much to report but nice

2016 Kunlu Bitter Wild today from Essence of Tea. I’m at my parents, so no gaiwan or weeny teapots, and I’m brewing this in a pyrex measuring cup, with too much tea to really be western style. This tastes more grassy and dry than I’m used to from gongfu, but I’m still lov’n it. Plenty of feels, including some chesty stuff, face sensations, and a little “above the head feel”, if you know what I mean. Kinda spacey too; more calming then I would generally expect a strong young raw to be. Actually, as I’m drinking this, all I can think is, “I want another mug.” Maybe five mugs is already enough for one day though.