Puerh TTB-5
I received the box today. I was shocked by how large it was, but that is in good part because I packed it so tight on the way out. My intent is to inventory the box and then just set it aside for a couple of months. I should get the PTTB+ box tomorrow, and plan to turn it around within a couple of weeks. I will probably adjust the boxes slightly and perhaps move some tea from one to the other, but don’t plan any huge changes.
I’ve finished my inventory and came up with an interesting pattern. It appears that very few people sampled any of the shou.
Of the 30 shou teas that left my house, 29 returned. Of the 30, only 6 were sampled. By contrast, of the 53 sheng teas that left, only 24 returned, and only 4 weren’t sampled by anyone.
The pattern also shows in the full inventory: the box left my home with 18 grams of sheng and returned with 20 grams, while it left with 14 grams of shou and returned with 25 grams.
I intend to relieve some of the imbalance by moving some of the shou to the Puerh Plus box, unless I detect a similar pattern there. I wonder, though, if it makes sense to convert this to a sheng-only box. I’d appreciate your comments.
You could always split the boxes in two, one shou box, one sheng box. I myself prefer shou in general but I may be in the minority.
I would join AllanK in a shou box. As the weather gets cooler, my tastes start to lean towards shou.
In terms of what you are seeing: When the majority of people get into pu’erh they find the most variance in productions to be in the raw category which also is the more expensive one to buy into which makes sense that it’s also the most sampled.
Shou is generally cheaper and from autumn material… there’s very little in differences each year for the recipes so very few ripes come out that have people’s interest at hand.
I think keeping it all together as one box is the best option though, still. It’s just a matter of getting more unique ripes and valuable ones in there. Some examples are; the half ripe cakes YS put out, laoEman ripes, chenshen ripes, bana ripes, spring material ripes, and border ripes. The reason I say this is to provide exposure to the ones that people are interested in trying. It might require a little work, but I’m pretty confident that with a few people we can boost the ripe selection to remove a lot of cheap factory ripes to compete with uniqueness and experience that the sheng can have.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback, which was strongly in favor of keeping shou as part of the mix. Part of the problem may have been that this box went out in the summer, and people were gravitating toward sheng.
Having said that, I still plan to prune the shou collection, trying to keep things that are new and/or apparent higher quality. The leftovers will probably go into the puerh plus box or else I’ll give them to Liquid Proust for his gift packages.
It’s interesting that the puerh plus box didn’t see this effect. If anything there was a bit more action in the ripe than in the sheng. This may be since so many people suggest starting with shou.
I drink shou all year round. I felt the shou selection just wasn’t good this round. Too many shous that were in the previous rounds, popular stuff everyone has had (ie Old Reliable), and some poor quality. I put in some good shous this round.
I think there’s more sheng people in the TTB too.
Would you like me to get some shous that would be unique? They are not that expensive and I know some people who would probably go in on most of them.
We could add some shou to the mix if people are in need of a little warming up. Perhaps some gong ting, maybe some aged 7581?
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