pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou
Today I’m drinking the 2009 Six Famous Tea Mountain “Yunnan Moon” Pu-erh tea cake by Yunnan Sourcing
This tea holds a special place in my heart, it was the first pu erh cake I ever bought, going back a couple of years. I was looking for an organic ripe, and this was practically the only one i could find. I drank the entire contents over a period of months, western style at the time. I noticed YS had a couple cakes in stock last week, seemingly from nowhere, as I was making my last order during the recent sale. I was curious how I’d like it now that I am an experienced ripe pu drinker.
The tea is pretty good now that i try it again. Not great, but good. It is pretty smooth, though there is still some bitterness and harshness. But it lasts through many infusions. Kind of a clean lighter taste, with hints of coffee. If you insist on an organic tea, though it’s not clear what that really means in China, this is a pretty good one.
I brewed eight steepings of the 2010 Golden Needle White Lotus today in a 200ml Yixing. This is one good tea. I thought it was still in stock at Yunnan Sourcing but was wrong. I am glad I picked up three bings, one to drink, two to age. I should be buzzing from the caffeine but am strangely tired. It may have larger leaves which are supposed to have less caffeine, only a theory.
I was drinking some 2009 sunsing Yiwu, but I decided to call it a night since I’m feeling rather tired. This tea is a slow starter, and tends to get interesting around the 4th or 5th steep, which is where I stopped this time.
I’ve added the leaf to a bottle for some overnight coldbrewing, and decided to mix it with some of Teavivre’s 2014 Fengqing ancient tree that is mostly spent, that I still had sitting in a different pot from an earlier session.
I’m looking forward to drinking this tomorrow on my way to work! S’yeah, technically a ‘Pu-erh of tomorrow’ rather than a ‘Pu-erh of the day’, I hope that’s not a problem. ;)
I brewed the 2009 Six Famous Tea Mountains Yunnan Moon today. I got mine from Tuocha Tea. It is pretty good. It didn’t get the full gongfu treatment as I was busy baking gluten free bread tonight but I shall gongfu it next time.
I put a new Yixing teapot, 130ml through its paces with the 2008 Song of Chi Tse today. I steeped this tea 10 times until I just could not steep it again. This is one of my favorite puerhs as it has totally cleared. There is no fermentation flavor left to it. I found notes of chocolate and it could have been that I added a small amount of sugar cut I thought I found notes of caramel as well. There were additional complexities that I couldn’t identify.
The biggest difference between raw tea and ripe tea is the taste. Because of the manufacturing process, ripe tea has the mild flavor, and the raw one has some strong taste.
Info from http://www.orientalteastore.com/puerh-tea-c-6/
I drank some Whispering Pines shous and am getting ready to settle in with some White2 Repave. I’m super sad that this one is sold out!
Rumor has it that they may be able to get a hold of more of the same tea and press more cakes.
Lamu and I are sampling some 2013 and 2014 Xiagun sheng puerh this afternoon. It’s cold and wet in Seattle and this seems fitting. We’re finalizing the tasting notes so we can put them on the site.
They both definitely had that Xiaguan smokiness to them. I like that savoriness though. They do reward with sweetness if you stick with it.
2003 CNNP Menghai 7542 Big Zhong by Tea Classico. Bought a sample of this, but cakes are only $129. Tea Classico is getting in some aged teas, really worth checking out. I bought a few other samples and will put them to the test soon! This 7542 was wet stored in HK a few years, just a slight humid flavor. Full review and irreverent pics on my blog.
We are starting to see good aged tea appearing at prices lower than many new cakes, it seems.
I’m new to this community, and before this I hadn’t been exposed to many different teas. What is Pu-erh? how is it brewed? I take it it is an aged tea compressed into a cake form. Just curious about it and I’d rather ask a human than wiki. :-)
Hi there!
Pu’er is a fermented tea, meaning it goes through a fermentation process after (or during) it’s production process. There are other fermented teas as well that are not pu’er, and they are generally placed in the ‘heicha’ category. Some people include pu’er here, some don’t, tea classification can be a bit vague sometimes.
But let’s forget about all the (other) heicha and focus on pu!
Basically, pu’er can be divided into two categories, sheng pu’er (Aka raw, uncooked, or green pu), and shou pu’er. (aka shu, cooked, dark, or ripe pu)
Leaves can come either from plantations (taidi) or from semi-wild grown trees in the mountains. (gushu)
The leaves are fried to stop oxidation, as in lvcha, and are then rolled and sun dried. (Sundrying is ideal, but sometimes teas are oven dried if the weather is bad, or growers try to cut time/costs)
The leaves at this point are called maocha, and it can be sold and drunk this way. More often though, the maocha is compressed before sale.
The tea like this is drinkable, but in most cases tastes rather aggressive. As the tea ages, it’s flavour evolves and the astringency and bitterness often present in young sheng pu smooths out.
Shou pu’er is a bit different, the processing is similar up to the point where it’s sun dried.
Instead of compressing, or selling as maocha, the maocha used for shou pu is placed on huge piles, where it gets moistened and covered with a tarp to trap the heat and moisture.
This process is known as wodui, and is done to create a tea that in some ways mimics the qualities of a well aged sheng pu in a much shorter time frame. A true aged sheng is still vastly different from any shou, though, but that doesn’t mean shou is no good! Shou and aged sheng are both unique drinks in their own right, and I adore both!
The wodui process is something that requires a lot of care and know how, and for that reason it can truly make or break a tea. Carelessly wet piled shou can be absolutely horrendous, but it can be a real treat if it’s done right.
For brewing I like to fill a pre warmed gaiwan or teapot with a generous amount of leaf (1 gram per 2ml to 1 gram per 1 ml, depending on the tea. Usually less leaf for young sheng, and more for shou or older sheng.)
I rinse it at least once, to clean off any dust and other impurities it may have collected over the years, and to open up the leaf. At this point, it starts smelling divine.
I use the rinse water to further preheat my tea cup, and satisfy my teapet’s unquenchable thirst for pu’er.
Depending on the tea I may go for a second rinse, I sometimes do this with some of the stronger cooked teas, and very tightly compress teas.
If a tea is heavily compressed I rinse it once, let the leaf sit for a minute or two so the heat and steam can do it’s work, and then rinse again to further open it up and get all my tea ware back up to temperature.
After that I usually start out with a flash brew, water in, water out. Based on that first infusion, I determine the steeping times I’ll use for later infusions.
If the taste eventually starts waning, usually many infusions later, I either clean up my tea ware, or I fill the brewing vessel with hot water again for a lengthy (sometimes overnight) steep to squeeze out every last bit of goodness the leaf has.
Hopefully other people will come by to share their insights, but for now this might be good enough for a basic introduction to pu’er!
PS; If you’re looking to get into pu, invest in LOTS of samples! Try to get different types of tea, and taste a lot of stuff to get an idea of how vast the range of pu can be. Enjoy!
Wow, That was thorough! And very good. Thank you for this. I will have to invest some of this tea at some point! Is there anyplace You would suggest I should look for good samples?
I’m not a very big fan of recommending particular vendors, because there’s so many good ones, and you can’t simply name them all! I always feel like I’m doing some of them injustice by leaving them out, but I’ll name you a few.
Chawangshop.com, and Yunnansourcing.com are two vendors that ship from China with a huge selection. This is both a good and a bad thing, there’s a lot too choose from, but not everything is necessarily a great choice. This can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re looking for yet.
Vendors like white2tea.com (China), CrimsonLotusTea.com (US), and Bannacha.com (France), have already narrowed down the choice for you too a much smaller selection of quality pu.
If you are unsure what to get, read around here in this thread, see what teas sound interesting to you, and get a sample of that.
Another option would be to contact the vendors directly and explain your situation. They’re probably all mellowed out from drinking good pu’er, and are generally a very friendly and helpful bunch. ;)
Personally, I’d recommend getting at least a sample of some (somewhat)aged raw, young raw, and a cooked tea.
The older raw can give you an idea of what pu was originally intended to be, the young one shows you what it’s like before it undergoes the transformation to become like that, and the cooked tea can then show you the alternative route to the smoothness of an aged tea.
There is however still a lot of diversity among each of those groups, so it’s just a start point, you will never be done exploring the puniverse.
More reading on various online pu’er vendors: http://teadb.org/puerh-vendor-guide/
If there’s any specialists near you, go visit them in person and ask for a tasting! That’s even better than sampling! :D
Mandala and Berylleb do samples and Fine Puerh is a good one also. Check out Butiki they have an excellent Suncha blend and sample sizes also.
Ah, of course! I haven’t personally tried mandala yet, but they get good reviews, and at only $5 the promotional sampler pack they currently offer seems like a great way to get into the cooked teas at least.
https://shopmandalatea.com/ripe-pu-er/special-packaging/ripe-puerh-sampler-pack.html
Thanks everyone for educating the newbie! I’m really glad I joined the Steepster Community. You guys are great.:-)
I have to say that the Tangerine stored ones seem very interesting. :-)
for now I’ve gone with the Mandala sampler..you can’t beat 5 bucks. They currently are basically giving you the sample if you just buy that and pay shipping. :-) I found this site (http://www.teavivre.com/pu-erh-tea/) that has a sampler with both raw and ripe. I may have to try that soon!
Again, thanks for educating the Newbie!
I think you made a good decision there.
Mandarin aged pu’er might be interesting, but it might be a better idea to have some, ahem, ‘plain’ shou pu’er first so you have a baseline to eventually compare mandarin aged shou against. No need to further obscure things from the get go, huh?
Teavivre is a nice company, the pu’s I’ve tasted from them have mostly been alright, but I’d vouch for Teavivre any day for their magnificent customer service alone.
That said, I really like their ‘05 Fengqing zhuan. (It’s also a gentle, mellow brick I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to someone new to sheng. Heck, even my mother* liked that one!) The sampler doesn’t include that though, but I wonder how close the ‘06 Fengqing tuo might be. (Which I haven’t tasted.)
*She’s not a tea-person.
Yeah I figured I would start with regular stuff and grow from there. Mandala is going to be offering a raw sampler in September, so I will probably pick that up as well. I will look into finding some of the Fengqing Zhuan since you recommend it so highly. :-)
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