pu-erh of the day. Sheng or Shou

As I drink more and more puerh that tea just keeps getting better

it is something almost perfect. I can really appreciate it :)

400+ for a cake!!! I don’t see myself ever spending more than $100 for one cake.

I used to think that, but now I can definitely see (have seen) myself investing quite a bit of money into sheng ;)

I’ve been moving up the quality ladder. When you compare the cost of expensive tea to something like wine, it comes off as a bargain. I’ve spent more than $50 on a bottle of wine fairly often, and the appropriate comparison would be one pot of tea, since we get so many steeps. I also bought a sample of last thoughts, telling myself that it is only about $8 per quart of tea. Maybe less if it’s long-lasting.

Yeah some teas I feel are just worth it at any price. Just very few of them are and usually there isn’t much of it around. I’ll be kicking myself over those lbz cakes that were at houde for a while before I’m fully over missing out on them

I usually price tea per gram, so I can justify its usage. I price my gongfu sessions as well. There are very few teas that Ive found that are worth the high price, but I see this price as a bargain. I know sometimes that I can’t get any better of tea unless I was actually in Yunnan. I don’t plan on traveling east, so I guess I’ll pay the high price :)

my limit is usually $1/g if I know the tea is good. There have been a few that push that limit, but I also do the math.. If I get 64oz of tea for a $1/g tea at 6g/session.. $6 for 64oz of tea.. 9.375 cents per oz.

Compared to the price for:
Starbucks brewed tea (teavana) – $2.45 for a 24oz drink: 10.20 cents/oz
Most sodas – $1.75 for a 20oz drink: 8.75 cents/oz

Based on that, which would you rather have? We just tend to gawk at the sticker price of a 200g or 357g cake. I’d take some really good puerh over a poorly brewed (and not always the best quality) tea at starbucks.

Where I come from, commercial sodas, coffees, teas etc. cost less than 2 cents an oz and I suppose you need more than 20 steeps to extract 64oz from 6g (possible I suppose but the upper limits). So anyway I tend to view things differently. In any case, I’m still new to Puerh, and to teas for that matter, and I suppose one day I could be splurging like you guys :-)

I love how calculated a tea lover can get hahah xD I can relate…

I have a good excuse. I’m an engineer. That also “explains” why my tea spreadsheet has 17 worksheets.

I’d love to set up someone sort of spreadsheet to keep track of my tea since it starting to get tough mentally. This last round of purchases added to what i already have is proving to be a challenge lol

I’d get the spreadsheet started sooner than later. I started mine in January and entering 500 teas took a month! Now I can’t live without it and use it every day.

I used to do order history, and just copy and paste the receipts to keep track, but all my swaps/freebies and reviews started to slip through the cracks. Today I just started to try and organize a little, but it didn’t get too far…

I need to take a class for spreadsheets. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to using them other than some really basic formulas

I’ve used them for years at work, but I find that I often wind up learning features for my home spreadsheets (financial and tea). Start slow, using the spreadsheet as just a simple table and learn one new function at a time.

My spreadsheet skillz are pretty basic. Admittedly, my husband did the math and graphs for me, but otherwise it wasn’t hard to set up.

Here’s what mine looks like http://oolongowl.com/oolong-owl-tea-stash-count-march-2015-update/ (back in march)

To me, there is the issue of risk with spending so much on a young cake. I’m not confident enough in knowing how a tea like this will age, especially in my home. It would be great if such teas were pressed into small cakes, like 100g, to lower the upfront cost (and risk).

excellent point Rich.

This year’s tea appears to have some Chinese medicine effects on me, I can only take maybe 3g at a time. So my usual price per gram doesn’t apply, since I’m drinking less per session. That is my justification.

and…

I’m still working on the review hahah

Is this the tea?

http://yunnansourcing.com/en/rawpu-erh/816-2009yunnansourcingyoulezhichunrawpu-erhtea.html

That’s the one. I am not sure that this is on the US site though. Jaseta had it much cheaper.

About 5 steeps in now and this is quite the tea. Taste and smell is a honey bomb. Touch of astringency in the fifth steep but the full mouth flavor persists. Started to “feel” the tea after the second steep. Not as strong as the xzh chawang or w2t last thoughts but at half the price I wouldn’t expect it to be. The body is of medium thickness with a silky mouth feel. More updates to come as I continue this session

Do you still have your 2009 Mengku Jade Dew? Or did you drink it all ;P

Oh yeah, I still have most of it. I take out a few grams every month or so for a session, but it’s one I like to savor. Another excellent Mengku! I’m excited to see how it changes over the years!

Mine in crock storage now for a year and I haven’t tried it lately.

My experience with it have been OK.

I have a tea friend that really likes that tea and said that if you can inject a little bit of humidity into the tea (i.e. Cwyn and her crocks) it improves dramatically.

I’ll try that. I loved this tea first time I had it, but it seems to have fared poorly in storage. I’ll try getting it a bit more humid (if that is possible here!) and see what happens. My other teas are doing well in storage so this is the exception, rather than the rule, which is why I think it has turned into a teenager.

Just made a second pot. Less leaf, shorter steeps, cooler temperature water, much improved.

For your reference. I think he just tosses a small amount in a crock for a couple weeks and adds broken wet terracotta shards or something like that.

I’ll check that out and see what I could do.

I am very fond of this tea (and other Big Snow Mountains). I often break off enough for a session or two and leave it in one of my small tea crocks for a week or two (no extra humidity added) and this seems to yield a very enjoyable tea session (typicaly 195F water).

I usually break off a bit and leave it in a container for a while before use, and I brew at about the same temperature as you. I think it is more me than the tea today, but we’ll see when I try it again in a week or two. In the meantime, any more suggestions would be appreciated. I’ll experiment with what I broke off this time around and then see how the tea fares in a year’s time too.