Pu-erh

Golden Moon sample No. 22 of 31. Fate determined Friday would be pu-erh day!

The package says it contains aged Chinese tea from the last century. Which sounds really special and exotic until you consider the last century only ended about 10 years ago. ;-P Still, 10 years is probably older than most tea I’ve tried except for the Celestial Seasonings mystery tea bags I found in the back of the pantry from years and years ago. So this should be interesting.

This is my first non-Samovar loose pu-erh, and I now know that all pu-erh leaves are not tiny and cute. These are fairly big, and chunky. They look like fragments of brown tree bark. They have a mellow, chocolate earth smell.

The tea’s aroma is really yummy, though it doesn’t have the smell I associated with pu- erhs. There’s not even a small amount of leather in this one. It smells sweet and (to me anyway) chocolatey. Like the middle-to-high chocolate notes in fresh baked brownies (just not the dark fudgy ones). The color is medium to dark brown, not as dark as the Palace Pu-erh, not as light as most black teas.

Wow, very tasty. Interestingly, it’s not like the other pu-erhs I’ve had. I really don’t get a lot of earthiness. It’s more like a very dense and flavorful black tea, smooth, sweet, some malt, and a character that verges on chewy and biscuity. Its not so much a taste as it is a connection, but I feel a strong cocoa association, maybe a little of the mocha-java as well.

I’m liking this one quite a bit. Some day when my experience has increased sufficiently I’ll have to get more scientific about my pu erh ratings. For now, I’m giving this a mark commensurate with my enjoyment from this tasting.

Very dark amber in the cup. With most teas, the bottom of the cup can be seen – not with this, it is very nearly opaque. This tea tastes exactly as most people describe, strong and earthy. This is a tea that one generally has to get used to – it will be an acquired taste for most people.

The “earthy” taste – some people just call it strange – comes from a unique ingredient that appears during the curing: fungus, bacteria, or mold. Anyone who has ever scraped out the deep blue veins from a strong Danish cheese and licked the mold off the knife is going to recognize the source of the “earthy” taste in Pu-erh immediately.

Extremely old (40-50+ years) Pu-erhs are known to have visible strands of blue mold. Even on younger Pu-erhs, the mold is still present, just not visible. It is that fungal growth that gives it the unique taste.

The age of a Pu-erh is important when thinking about the tea, Golden moon does state what year it may be from but they describe the ingredients in the tea as: Aged Chinese Tea from the Last Century. Pretty vague, but given the price, the tea probably a recent vintage from the last 2-3 years.

We brewed this for 2 minutes, 30 seconds using boiling water.

Having only put a small dent in my Golden Moon Tea sampler, I figured it was time to really get to work on here. I must confess, that though I will try anything and usually do not have any trepidations about anything, I was a little nervous trying this. You should be happy to know, that my concern was unfounded!

The leaves smell sweet yet earthy. I brewed it hot, with no additives. The aroma of the brew smells fantastic: earthy and woodsy and like early spring when you are getting all sorts of fresh nature smells that you haven’t smelled in a long while because of winter. I’m rambling, but the scent is so difficult to describe. The taste somehow combines all of these different fragrant notes into a flavor: it is earthy with a little smoke and a little sweet.

Overall, this tea played to the senses, fantastic aroma both brewed and dry and delicious flavor.

I like this tea. I am going to start with the…
Cons: A bit watery and not as earthy and rich as I would like.
Pros: Still has a great earthy flavor, a mellow sweetness, fabulous lingering taste after swallowing.

I am pretty sure I will buy this one and next time steep it longer. I know they said 2-3 mins but I think 3:30 will work for me.

Overall: Great tea and worth a try!

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #19:
This was actually my breakfast tea, but I didn’t have time to log it until now. Let me tell you about my day. Taught two discussion sections and was hard-pressed to say who won the “most people who didn’t read” award. Then I got to drive two hours to LA! Then I got to stare at microfiche/film for four hours. Then I got to drive back! In rush hour traffic! GOOD TIMES.
After a day like that, maybe you would say, you need some damn good tea. To which I would reply, after a day like that I need beer. Or possibly something stronger. The day I figure out a way to mix tea and alcohol without getting something absolutely horrific, I will probably give up beer (note: this is a total lie, beer is awesome). But that day is not today.
On a somewhat related note. Although I love beer and I love tea, I am much less willing to try new beers than I am to try new teas. Why is that I wonder?

Getting back on topic, Pu-erh! It was largely a mystery to me until my first Adagio black tea sampler a year ago. Adagio’s Pu-erh Poe, I have recently begun to suspect, however, is not really a good example of it’s breed. Or perhaps Golden Moon just really likes Pu-erh that has the funkyness factor turned up a notch. That said, the smell was actually not that weird, but as soon as I tried some, I was like GAH MUSHROOMS.

Then I took a step back. I said to myself, wait a minute, Ewa, don’t you like mushrooms? To which I replied (yes, I realize that it is only ok to talk to yourself if you don’t answer, but I’m afraid I crossed that line a while ago), well yes, but, you know, on pizza! And in pasta sauce! not in TEA. Well, I answered, why not? Isn’t there tomato flavored tea? There was a tasting note of it earlier this week! AND. There is a sweet Chinese dessert that uses fungus. Well ok, but if you recall, I rebutted, I don’t actually like that dessert…

This continued on for some time, but the end verdict ran. Ok fine, it is only the fact that I am unused to mushroom in my tea that makes me go gah, the taste itself is actually kind of neat. It certainly has more character than it’s Adagio counterpart. But I maintain that Pu-erh chai is just weird.

This moral of this story is: writing tealogs while exhausted and mildly inebriated is just not a good idea.

DUN DUN DUN….

Pu-erh. The dreaded tea with the reputation that would make you want to run for the hills. Fishy tastes and smells. Bird feathers/droppings, nail clippings. Earth and dirt.

Needless to say, I was terrified to try this one. But I mustered up the courage and cut open that packet from GM. Then I hesitantly, very carefully, took a little sniff. You know what? This doesn’t smell bad at all! I thought to myself. It’s very earthy and rich and deep, with an almost bake-y smell. It’s very difficult to describe. The overall smell is similar to a black tea, but it smelled… aged. In a good way. Like an old, leather-bound book. Friendly, almost.

So I began to feel a bit more confident about the cup that awaited me. The leaves don’t do all that much in the pot, and they’re pretty plain looking, but a bit thicker-looking than most blacks (and they are jet black with some brown intertwined). The cup that this steeps up to be is DARK. A deep, deep amber, that you can only see as transparent if you stick it in direct sunlight. Otherwise, it looks like your spoon as disappeared into the black lagoon.

With lots of trepidation, I look the sip, and I was shocked at how inoffensive this was! Then I took another sip, and I thought, mmmmm. Boy is this tea complex. Infinitely smooth, with no astringency, and ridiculously sippable. Now onto the taste, which is so layered, I’m loving it. There’s a taste of earthiness. But we’re talking about more of a savory earthiness, like you’d get from mushrooms. Not dirt outside your house. There’s a level of smokiness. In fact, it’s the smokiness that I thought lapsang souchong was going to taste like. And then, the aftertaste… it’s earthy and deliciously sweet. I mean, as sweet as a green tea tastes on the aftertaste. I was thoroughly shocked at that flavor coming through. It almost has a thick mouthfeel, but is still so smooth and wonderful. I’m still boggled at that sweet component, because it is downright addictive. It’s savory and amazing. Ricky, the resident pu-erh king, really liked this cup as well.

If you’re really afraid of pu-erh, I suggest trying this one. It has its own unique flavor, but really isn’t that frightening. No fish components, and it’s loose, so you don’t have to worry about picking foreign objects out of the cake! Yay! I’m still marveling at the depth of flavors and wonderful savory elements. And that sweetness! MMMMM.

Second Steep
It’s a bit sweeter this time around, with less nuances and complexity. It’s probably the best second steep I’ve had of any tea, ever, but it still pales in comparison to the glorious first time around. I also find myself tiring of a tea and its flavors after one cup. Maybe multiple steeping and I aren’t made to be friends.

Three minutes seems short, but it says 2 – 3 so I’m gonna give it a shot.

The dry leaves smell lovely. Earthy and smooth and a little sweet. No fish to be found so fingers crossed.

My first thought upon smelling the wet leaf was ‘seaweed’. But not exactly. Kind of like… dirt-covered, boiled wakame. The tea itself smells sweet but there is an undertone of… not quite fish but something oceanic or seafood-ish in it. But the dominant smell hits me as dried sweet hay that has been rained on. This reminds me of the fish pu-erh so I’m nervous.

The taste is better than ROT’s. No sweet smoked fish. There are similarities though. But not in the bad tastes, only in the good. This one does have a weird aftertaste, though. Not weird, just… not expected. There’s actually a little bit of dryness that kicks in within the sweet hay flavor at the tail end of the swallow.

I’m not 100% sold on this one. I definitely like it more than ROT’s but it doesn’t come together quite as happily for me as Samovar’s Maiden’s Ecstasy.

I decided to bite the bullet and try my second-ever pu-erh after having such a negative first experience. I read the little blurb on the sample packet and immediately my imagination took off for the whole duration of the steep. It’s “aged in secret caves?” Visions of the opening scene from Indiana Jones & the Raiders of the Lost Ark played in my mind. But this time the handsome adventurer is trying to steal a bag of this tea instead of an idol. And then my mind shifted gears and I thought of Batman sipping a cup of this tea. Yeah. I have issues.

Back to reality!

The packet smelled kinda musky/earthy. When I was adding the hot water I got an unexpected whiff of french fries. No, not fries, but of the hot oil used. Like when my brother used to work at a fast food chain in high school he’d come home with that greasy smell – that’s the smell I’m talking about. I put the teapot’s lid on and said a little prayer for my palate.

The aroma from the cup was like a barnyard after a light rain. Still not the greatest fragrance, but eons better than the Adagio sample I had that was “dirty fishtank.” It’s the taste that sort of took me aback. It’s so different than what I was expecting. Still not my favorite, but it was much more interesting to me. I spent the first half of the cup just totally absorbed in trying to figure out how to put this taste into words. Like licking a cave’s wall? Making some black tea out of water dripping from a stalactite? Licking a shag carpeting from the ’70s? And where on earth was that sweetness coming from?

Halfway through the cup I sort of got distracted by other things and so came back to it where it’s almost completely cooled off. This is where it really gets weird for me. I have trouble drinking Bigelow’s Constant Comment because it reminds me of my maternal grandmother who passed away when I was a young girl. My mom assures me that she drank it even though I can’t recall her drinking any tea, but in my mind that tea is part of my grandmother. This tea reminds me of my maternal grandfather. He lived much longer and never drank tea. But my lord. I’m drinking this and it’s rather unsettling. This tea is part of my grandfather. I can’t explain it further than that.

I’m actually looking forward to trying a second steep. I never thought that I’d say that about a pu-erh. I will edit to add something if I feel that it affects my initial note. I really don’t know if I’ll purchase this tea. I have a newfound curiosity regarding pu-erhs as a result of it so it gets a surprising NE from me.

ETA: Second steep was more earthy and less…mineraly than the first. I just added a minute to the steep. I’ll probably sample some more pu-erhs, but this one is a possible future purchase.

Oh, so this is pu-erh. I just realised that I haven’t had it before, and that I probably should’ve tried this before drinking Golden Moon’s Pu-erh Chai¹. After tasting this, I have a much better understanding of all the different flavours swirling around in that pu-erh chai.

I didn’t know what to expect here, but the packet says “earthy.” From the dry leaves what I got is a fragrance that I’d describe as more fruity than earthy. The tea itself is a different story: I definitely got earthy from the first whiff, but upon exhaling and inhaling again, my first thought was, “sandalwood.” Sandalwood! I am mad about sandalwood. I have incense. I have soap. I have talcum powder. And I’m very, very picky about my sandalwood, too, much like I am about my rose². And what I got from this tea was the hint of some really lovely sandalwood.

These earthy, incense-y, sandalwood-y, very slightly smoky traits all carried over from the fragrance to the flavour, and the end result is really nice. If this is what pu-erh is usually like, I’m a fan. I quite like its flavour and find it second only to rooibos (my favourite since I first tried it in 2009).

¹ http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/128501

² http://steepster.com/bleepnik/posts/128096

In general, I’m afraid of Pu-erh. I have tried it a few times in the past, and I still own one, but I rarely drink it. When I randomly grabbed one from my sample box, I ended up with pu-erh. Hesitantly, I opened it and put the leaves into the gaiwan. The scent was familiar and earthy but light.

Upon steeping, it brewed a medium-dark red brown. It smells familiar too. The taste was unexpected. It was light and smooth; sweet and malty; earthy but not overwhelmingly so. CHOCOLATE. WOW. I was pleasantly surprised. I steeped this again and again, and it still held up. The brew became lighter and sweeter.

Very good tea :) I got to enjoy my favorite little fish tea cups with them too!

From my GM sampler—I used 5oz water to 2tsp tea (the whole packet). I’m not sure how to describe this, a hint of smoke with a sweet finish? I didn’t put anything in this I am just enjoying the flavor unadulterated :) It’s really good, smooth with a little tiny bit of tannin right before the sweetness at the end. Daughter does not like this one…called it weird :)

The second infusion sort of smells like smoked fish…

First pu-erh I’ve tried that was in loose leaves shape. It’s deffinitelly better than those I’ve ordered from China on eBay. Way more drinkable. The pu-erh note is the same but this one is less bitter and well just way more drinkable. I actually like it. First pu-erh I would drink just for the sake of drinking it (not tasting it). I’ll rate it well simply because I didn’t try better yet…
It’s earty, kinda sweetish but not too sweet. Dark colored like it’s supossed to be. Nice one…

I’ve been really avoiding this sample. But I figured i need to get it out of the way. I’ve never had a pu-erh before, so this will be interesting.

The smell is pretty strong, but it’s hard to place what exactly it smells like.

Hmmm, not sure how i feel about this. It’s got some smoky flavor, but it kind of tastes like dirt. seriously, like dirt. It has some sweetness to it that reminds me of badly flavored bubble gum… which is leaving an aftertaste in my mouth. I think i’ll somehow manage to finish this cup but I don’t know if i’ll even bother with a second infusion—can pu-erh be steeped multiple times anyway? I’m assuming it can be…

My first Pu-erh! I was looking forward to this one coming out of the grab bag (ok, I helped it…). I had no idea what to expect. The leaves were ugly, that’s the only description that comes to mind. I followed the directions, 3minutes with boiling water. I got the darkest tea I’ve seen, excepting the obvious brewing mistakes. It was very smooth, earthy, woodsy. Had a bit of weight to it in the mouth, almost like coffee. It is not a tea I would describe as “bright and sparkly” in the cup. I don’t know if I liked it. I didn’t dislike it…I need to do more pu-erh’s. different, definetly different.

I’ve tried a couple different pu-erhs, and some I’ve really loved, but don’t have a whole lot of experience with this tea, so I’m looking forward to see how this compares. I’ll definitely be doing more than one steep with this one. The loose leaves are dark, dark brown and have a fruity/spicy aroma to them. Promising!

1st steep: 3 minutes, 200 degrees. Dark brown, coffee-colored liquor. Not super strong taste-wise, but interesting. I’m getting spices (cinnamon and clove) and the telltale fermented flavor of pu-erh; not sour or yeasty, just earthy. So far, so good.

2nd steep: 5 minutes, 200 degrees. Just about as dark the second time around, but the aroma has really been toned down. The flavor is mild but still earthy, and retains some sweet/fruity/spicy notes. The combination of them all is a little like chocolate – an interesting effect.

WOW! I’m speechless on this tea! This is my very first Pu-erh experience and honestly I have been intentionally avoiding this tea for some time now… something about being “aged in a cave” and the word “fermented” had me pretty freaked out. Anyways, the aroma of this tea is intoxicating, I’ve smelled this smell somewhere before but for the life of me I can not place it nor can I describe it. It is pungent, musky, strong and… I LOVE IT! This may sound very odd, but it tastes like a very good piece of earthy tree bark with some really rich soil covering it… not that I know what that tastes like, but it is what I think of while I am sipping on this treasure. Hmmm I think I need to take a moment and zen out while I finish my cup! I’m going to place an order for this right after I get done zenning out with my new treasure :-D

Sample 12/31
I’ve never had Pu-erh. So when I randomly pulled this out and got a little scared. There is a lot of scary sounding descriptions (FISH! in a tea?), but I worked up the courage to try it.
Tea brews VERY dark. I’ve never seen a tea this dark before. Almost looks like hersey’s syrup. Surprisingly the tea smells like the ocean, I wouldn’t say fish more like and ocean breeze with like dirt undertones. Smells faintly of coffee too.
I hesitently took a sip. First off it doesn’t taste like Fish. At first it tasted almost like chocolate, or what i imagine a chocolate tea should taste like. There is a slight smokey finish the the chocolate. Then a dirt aftertaste, not as strong as coffee though (thankfully)
Overall not as bad as i expected, but not something i would drink all the time. Was too busy trying to figure out exactly what i was tasting to enjoy the tea personally.

As with most of my tea reviews… this is the first of this kind. Welcome to my teapot, pu-erh!

I, of course, let this sit a little too long before drinking. I usually like my tea right out of the kettle, and I got a little sidetracked. (Once you start organizing something, you just can’t stop.) But despite that, I’m not complaining about this cup. I stuck my nose in the leaves beforehand and it was a pleasant, dark, woodsy kind of smell. Apparently [judging by other reviews here, yes I cheat] it has a mossy, fungus-like quality. Like this scares me. I eat mushrooms raw.

The tea itself has that same earthy quality to it. I’m not quite bold enough to go over a 2-minute steep right now, but this seems about right for me. It doesn’t smell like much in the cup, but has that sharp, almost spicy taste going down. Again with that “spicy but not really” adjective. What else did I use that for? Oolong? Perhaps.

I do not like puerh.

Very interesting, I bought it in a sample size when exploring new teas from Golden Moon. It tastes like a mild black tea, steep 2-3 minutes. Earthy, cinnamon hints, like a non-sticky, less sweet cinnamon roll. Good breakfast tea, no bitterness. The dry tea smells a little like enriched potting soil, a rare aged tea. It goes down smooth. It’s listed as a green fermented tea.