The first tea I have tried from the Pubertea group buy put together by LiquidProust, pulled out of the bag at random. The leaf on this one smelled slightly leather and musty, though I wasn’t getting much of any strong aromas from it. I brewed it up in my Jianshui teapot with boiled water.
The first steep was leathery with a bit of a smoky aftertaste. Not particularly pleasant, but thankfully the leather only persisted for this single steep. Could be solved with a second rinse, but it’s still drinkable so no point there.
Steeps 2-5 are extremely thick – by the third steep I was almost chewing it. The flavors were sweet, a little hard to place, I’m thinking bamboo perhaps and slightly vegetal. Also inklings of vanilla in the middle of the sip. The smoky flavor in the aftertaste persists as well, coming through as a slight BBQ note in the finish. Sounds unpleasant, and it would have been if it were stronger, but it’s really just an echo on the end of the sip, and one of the rare times a smoky flavor has kind of added to a tea rather than subtracted from it for me. If I had to guess, I’d say this tea was a bit smokier in its youth and this is all that remains. I was feeling this tea quite a bit in my throat and the back of my mouth. Not really getting much of anything in the way of qi.
Steeps 6-8 presented a brew which I described as “cleaner.” So mostly the same flavor, but the meaty BBQ aftertaste was gone. In my first session, I had to pause it after steep 8 to go run some errands. While I was riding around in the car for around an hour, I could still feel this tea in my stomach and chest, and felt just a tiiiny teadrunk fuzziness. Not much, and I didn’t notice it while I was actually drinking the tea.
Steeps 8-11 were a little bit lighter all around. The flavor and thickness were less intense. More silky than what it was before, when it almost felt like pudding. Occasional spice notes on the front and still getting the odd hint of vanilla.
Steeps 12-19 were very soft and sweet in flavor. The texture would come and go, depending on how long I steeped it for, never returning to the crazy heights it had in the early session. The last two steeps were really all texture with little to no flavor remaining aside from maybe a sweet feeling in the mouth.
This was a good tea, and makes me excited not only for the rest of Pubertea, but also for trying more quality aged sheng. Most of my puerh exploration has been on the younger side of sheng to this point, which I certainly enjoy, but these teas promise a different and exciting experience of their own. I’m curious to see if all of the good aged sheng I try is this thick in the mouth. The only young sheng I’ve had that approach this thickness are some of the W2T productions.
Flavors: Bamboo, Leather, Meat, Smoke, Sweet, Thick, Vanilla, Vegetal
I used to think all camellia senisis teas were the same until I did a deep dive on the internet and found that ripe puerh has inulin, and your gut microbes feed on that. So not surprising that it aids digestion :)
I didn’t know about inulin in it , Michelle! That’s awesome! Inulin is in Teeccino roasted chicory drinks, too. According to webmd, puerh bacteria produce lovastatin, and the older it is and the larger the population of bacteria, the more lovastatin is produced. The lovastatin supposedly causes the system to “ignore” some of the fats by basically binding with them, and allow them to pass on through without being digested, speeding up the movement of the food and eliminating the heavy feeling. This is an explanation I saw, could be wrong. But it seems to work! Inulin is a pre-biotic, so win-win!
I seemed to have confused chicory for ripe puerh, but I thought I read somewhere that ripe produced inulin. Probably on some wiki page that is now rescinded. I think all three, ripe, raw and chicory are good for gut health!
I always wonder whether they are testing ripe or raw when we see the health claims. Often it isn’t specified. I plan to drink it anyway, and if it is good for me then that is even better!
@ashmanra, that is a good question indeed! Since (I believe) the orthodox process involves a heat-kill to dry and stop oxidation, we can assume that it has the effect of pasteurizing the leaves, which become maocha as a green tea, possibly with a further intermediate heating steps before being portioned out and compressed. Of course we don’t expect the work environment to be sterile. So, much like Belgian-process beers, further microbial activity in Sheng Pu-erhs is the result of uncontrolled environmental introduction of fungi and bacteria. I suspect some spore-forming bacteria may survive the cooking process unless it is very long — over an hour at >100°C (think of the canning process). Shou, on the other hand, is piled a meter or more deep, moistened and inoculated with a culture of (known or unknown) microbes, much like a sourdough starter. Those microbes would rapidly dominate the tea leaf microflora, outcompeting any environmental or integral species. Thus it is possible that the two processes (raw vs. ripe) could differ considerably in their probiotic content. It is also possible that the inoculum used in Shou is derived from isolates found in one or more Shengs, and thus having similar probiotic content. I do not know how the inoculum for Shou Pu-erh is prepared and/or maintained, and I suspect it is a trade secret among the various tea companies, as they are among brewers of beers. I do not know the scientific literature of tea fermenting well enough to say anything beyond this.