2015 Red Star – Puer Stuffed Xinhui Mandarin

Got a sample of this tea a while ago, probably over a year now in a swap. While I don’t get the fishy note that a lot of people describe, it mostly tastes like citrus dish detergent.

Edit: Gets better with further steeps! The citrus backs off and becomes more enjoyable

Scented marker, Windex, chrysanthemum. Brewed it gongfu style with some peel. Not “bad” but definitely an acquired taste I haven’t acquired. Super strange tasting – there aren’t a lot of easy reference points. Not a particularly pleasant drinking experience though – aggressively cloying, and the flavors that come through are more household chemicals than nice mulchy earthy shou flavors I’m used to. I’m happy I tried it and white2tea’s prices are great, but it’s more of a curiosity

IM going to have to name this Earl Puerh Grey tea!

It feels like Earl Grey and a ripe puerh had a love child or something. I brewed this in my Gaiwan, giving it a very short rinse then brewing it at about 208. I got a dark clear liqour with a noticable citrus and wet wood aroma. Now if this doesnt sound appetizing, surprisingly it is…. because as soon as you sip it, a smooth sweet vanilla taste just rolls over your tongue.

What seems to make this work, is some ripe’s have that flat finish, after the wet wood and peat, and sweet smoothness you get that flat finish at the end, with this that is when the vanilla and citrus kick in… and its really impressive.

Very impressed…recommended

I let the tea rest for a few months then removed the wrapper.

The aroma was strong and I thought whoa glad this tea was inexpensive.

However, the one I received was not at all fishy, it was a pungency I can’t define other than I kept thinking of petroleum.

I broke up the ball and kept it in a stoneware jar for another month. The strong scent has mostly dissipated leaving a sense of old books.

As with my Lao Cha Tou Ripe nuggets, after rinsing the tea twice I steeped it in a Banko-Yaki Houhin. For my cakes I use Jian Shui teapots but I like experimenting with Banko.

I found the tea mellow, creamy with nice spice from the peel.

Not at all what I expected when I first unwrapped it.

Update: In my second and last session with this tea there was a lingering nutty taste.

I see a ton of mixed reviews for this tea, and they are either I love it or its bad. So, that means that this tea is not bad; it is just a preference taste tea. I mean that this is either up your alley, or “it isn’t your cup of tea”. For me, I am of the later group. So, I will list my experience, and if you are in tune with my tastes you will agree; if you are not, then you will most likely love this tea. The mandarin is pretty cool looking, and it breaks easily apart. The leaves smell citrus-y (duh) with some musk about it. I keep sniffing at it, and I get an image of a golf course for some reason (don’t know if that means anything). I warmed up my gaiwan and scooped some inside. The aroma opens up into an intense citrus aroma along with some musk and rain. This is a very jungle-y aroma (my vocab is killin it today). I washed the leaves and prepared to steep away. The taste is sweet with citrus and musk. By sweet, I mean that sort of plastic sugar sweet. By citrus, I mean some sort of cleaner. By musk, I mean jungle/gym (hahah, jungle gym). So, in conclusion I have a semi thick shu tea that tastes like a gym class floor being cleaned with pine sol. I It’s safe to say that this was not my thing, but if you are of the other group then you most certainty will enjoy this tea.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEBR8_PTGc9/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEBqnzazGR_/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

This was a very enjoyable tea. I’m going through an orange/mandarin/whatever stuffed with puerh phase right now so figured I’d get one of these and one Black Star in my last order from W2T.

Originally hesitant to purchase this due to reported ‘fishy’ flavors/aromas. I’ve had fishy puerh in the past, and not a fan at all. But I figured I’d let myself be the judge, and also doubted that W2T would actually be selling fishy (improperly processed) puerh. So it was a leap of faith and it paid off.

This tea is GOOD! The puerh is very smooth, aromatic, clean, no fermentation or wodui present. With just the right ratio of orange peel to tea you get a very rewarding experience with smooth creamy earthy puerh, slightly spiced and pungent but smooth mandarin notes in the background. They say aroma is like 80% of flavor, this tea has lots of yummy aroma from that orange.

Pro-tip…after initial 2 rinses put some of the orange peel in your chahai, it needs more time to steep/open up and is not going to turn bitter like tea. Thank me later :)

Pro-tip 2…when I initially drank this it had a papery flavor to it. So I threw away the paper and rewrapped it in foil, and a month or so later the paper flavors were gone.

So I was talking to Andrew on Facebook about the Dark Matter and he tells me to “Beware of the Fish Ball”
I won’t lie I kinda got excited and I was like which one is that(I hadn’t read the reviews yet) he says it’s This Red Star so I was like Hells Yeah! I’m bout to try that shit! So I read the reviews and all and everybody says it’s fishy and such and that made me want to try it even more. I know that “Fishy” in a tea is NOT something you want I even heard it was bad storage bad process and lots of other things that makes one “Fishy” I’m not sure myself but i know that it’s not something most people want or get excited over.

Well if you know me from Steepster or on Facebook and have talked to me or followed my reviews here for the past few years then You already know that I AM WEIRD and I like weird tasting things, So I never really much mined a Fishy Puerh.
Anyways I read all the reviews on here for this one and was like Yeah! I can drink this and was looking forward to it and I THOUGHT I was prepared for it and for the most part I was, I WAS totally prepared for a nasty FishyPu But I wasn’t prepared for a “Tea Drunk” effect lol.
I’m Pretty BUZZED at the moment and not sure if its a good thing or a bad thing, I also probably drank too much of this one.

First the Aroma, Pretty nice aroma when dry but OMG bad really bad like Oranges and Spice mixed with Shrimp extremely fishy when wet, the fishy smell just got worse and worse.

Now the Taste, I couldn’t really taste much of the orange peel at first and the fishy was not too bad in the flavor as it was in the aroma, not at all offensive to me(I enjoyed it), After a few steeps I got some mushroomy flavors in there and some spicy and fruity notes from the orange peel, the fishy taste seem to get stronger and stronger with each steep but still not too bad to me,to be kinda fishy it still tasted rather clean to me actually. Tho still fishy in taste I think a lot of that may come from the aroma playing a part on the taste buds perhaps because the aroma is SUPER fishy and funky, the tea is actually tasty and had a good Qi to me and gave me a really nice buzz. It was very strange and different but I enjoyed it a lot, I think it just needs some air or to be aged a bit. Reminds me of back when I first started drinking Puerh, I had lots of fishy ones at first lol.

And the Buzz, Damn the buzz was really good, I quite sure I drank way too much of this one because I enjoyed it so much, I could feel the energy from it within the first 3 steeps, it made feel all warm and fuzzy inside and even made me sweat a bit, It reminded me of some of my very first Tea Highs(I miss those). After a while I turn my head and get the tracer kinda effect, yeah! :) It’s kinda like smoking a doobie and kinda like something I never felt before, I enjoyed it.

I actually enjoyed this one a good bit, tho I’m not going to give it a rating until i air it out a bit because I’m quite sure it will be better next time(If I don’t drink it all up already). I know I drank too much of this one too, Partly because it was tasty and Partly because it made me feel good, I loves the tea high.

Okay this is actually kind of amusing. I tried this tea from my group-buy stash today and I was like “Well, the orange flavor is fun but what the heck is THAT?” so I went and read other people’s reviews and discovered that the weird flavor is called “fishy” and now I’m back to tasting the tea and going “yeah, I can see why you would call it that.” I guess now I know what a “fishy” flavor in tea tastes like, which may be useful for warning people away if I ever come across it again. Really disappointed though because fish and orange aren’t the best flavor combination lol. Although, what with the number of recipes that call for lemon on fish, you’d think they’d have a good chance of tasting okay together (oranges are basically like sweeter lemons right?) but no. I’d really hate to just throw this tea out though, now that I’ve steeped it, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

I tried this today because of other people reporting it fishy and undrinkable.
For the record my mandarin pu came not thru Dark Matter group buy but thru W2T club or Black friday, i dont recall exactly. i just know i have it since November-December 2015.

Took 10g for 140ml Jian Shui pot. double rinse (i usually do once,but because of “fishy” reports i decided to rinse it twice)
212F and short steeps
This pu has fermentation flavor as any young shou does. i couldnt find anything fishy or off putting. around 3rd-4th steep it became spicy. i believe its mandarin peel. it wasnt unpleasant, peppery-cinnamon y spice. creamy, some minty cool notes,not strong. I think its Bulang shou but i might be wrong.

This tea is perfectly drinkable if you drink young shou.
my only guess it might be different batch.

https://instagram.com/p/BEJlImthwn5/

https://instagram.com/p/BEJlfbyBwoq/

https://instagram.com/p/BEJmaJOBwql/

I was pretty skeptical about trying this. I thought that there wouldn’t be any way that something stuffed inside an orange could become so fishy. I made sure to give the tea a couple of extra rinses before consuming the third steep; however, the fishy smell increases and the taste is similar to old socks (I’m assuming) and anchovies. I’m sorry to those individuals who I questioned, but I’ve been skeptical about trying a tea before, to which everyone claimed that it was pungent, yet, I enjoyed it (actually, it was my first time having a cup of pu-erh at Teavana, that every employee, excluding me, hated).

Anyway, it’s true. This is quite fishy.