Cream

This has become my go-to special occasion shou, I should probably order more. Worth leafing hard because the flavor is subtle but delicious: very little bitterness, some hazelnut-vanilla kind of sweetness. As promised, the texture is impressively thick and creamy. I think it’s often the texture that elevates a fancier shou above a cheap one. This tea makes for a great session in a small teapot but is washed-out and underwhelming in a thermos.

One hour sleep last night bleh.

It’s very clean, no fermentation notes, earthy. It was mellow and somewhat light until the 5th infusion then it became rich, thick and creamy buttery mouthfeel. The dark liquor smells of apple cinnamon and earth. Throughout the infusions, there were no particular notes that really stood out, it’s like they said, it’s pretty balanced. With the earth, there is some dried fruit. I didn’t get the bananas but got a little citrus and apple. I noticed some cinnamon and spice notes but they are subtle as well. Towards the end, it did get more peppery. It’s good and I can’t call it ordinary nor can I say extraordinary. I think it would be a good daily tea, during work when you want something tasty but do not need the focus.

Yixing gaiwan, 6g, 110ml, 212°F, rinse, 12 steeps, 5s, 10s, 15s, 20s, 25s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 1m, 1m30s, 2m, 3m

5g in 500mL tea thermos, grandpa style. Strong honey, orange, fermenting bread dough, and earth aromas. I like this one, it’s rich, smooth, silky, and has lots of good well-fermented flavors going on. The energy is even, focusing, and balancing. My one quibble might be that it doesn’t have a lot of endurance. Usually, I can get two respectable grandpa-style steepings out of a shu and this one didn’t have much to offer in the second steep. Otherwise, enjoyable.

This ripe pu-erh has medium body and is super easy to drink with little to no fermentation notes. Its highlights are the nuanced aroma and thick creamy mouthfeel.

The smell is quite light but has a lot going on. At first, it is sweet and woody with some hints of dried cranberries. I imagine sitting in a clean mountain cottage in the midst of the winter with dry wood burning in the fireplace. Later on throughout the session, other notes like brazil nuts, banana, chicken broth, cinnamon, black pepper and licorice appear in moderation.

Taste-wise, it is mellow and quite well balanced. There are some slightly unusual flavours, like citrus, wheat, roasted sunflower seeds and walnut skins. Overall, it has decent sweetness and medicinal qualities.

The aftertaste is somewhat spicy, slimy and not astringent at all. It is somehow muted but actually quite long. Mouthfeel is creamy and slightly oily, thick and a little dry in the finish.

I just love this, so thick you can almost chew it. Cream? It certainly has a creamy mouthfeel but tastewise I can find no dairy products present. For me the taste is sweet and syrupy with lots of stewed fruits like apples and plums. But what about the traditional wet soil and wood and mushrooms and all that funky stuff you might be asking? Well, either I’ve suddenly become accustomed to the quirks of shou pu’er, or, and this certainly sounds more plausible, this is just some damn fine tea. I know it took me only 4 steeps to add it to my wishlist so make of that what you will.

This is a nice ripe with a creamy mouthfeel and a reasonable amount of sweetness. I enjoy it.

So I and my friend are tried this tea for the first time. After the first couple of steeps she asked me what is the name of this puerh. I told her that it was Cream and that it is supposed to be creamy. We looked at each other perplexed because it was anything but: this tea had a pronounced mineral, metallic and tangy taste. Not a bad taste but no hint of creaminess present.

After the third steep my friend started claiming that she felt a hint of creaminess but I was certain that she was imagining things. But the fourth and all the subsequent steeps – OMG, so smooth and so creamy with a looong creamy aftertaste! A bit of earth too.

All in all, I liked it, especially since I like creaminess and I did not have any other tea that creamy. And it is fun to observe the change from the metallic tanginess to the all-encompassing creamy goodness.

This fellow walks hand in hand its tasty path when it comes to its taste and scent. Both express themselves in a very woodsy flair which really reminds me of the following components – Old Indian furniture like teak or mango wood, wet tree bark, a deep dense rainy day forest flair with a thick layer of mushrooms to it like shiitake and those brown mushrooms (we call them Creme Champignon). Beside that there is an unknown secret sweet accent to it and a very nice mineral / stony fusion. This fellow is definitely a worshiper of the dark side as you can see. Already the first infusion near lead into a deep sinister bloody red and transformed very quick into its final nearly blackish zone. Typical for a good little devil this fellow keeps going for many following rounds.

This tea has some very familiar shou notes, but the progression of this tea over a session is quite different from what I’m used to.

I’ve been paying less attention to my exact brewing lately, so I couldn’t say what it was, but my general pattern for shou is 20 second rinse, 10 second brew once it starts to open up, slowly progressing from there.

The wet leaf aroma of this tea didn’t wow me — fairly common wet leaf pile smell. The liquor has a fruity aroma with light hints of spice and earth. It’s brews up a very clean amber red color and never gets dark like a highly fermented shou, although is does darken halfway through the session. The body matches the look, being light and crisp — contrary to other reviewers I did not find it at all thick or creamy (despite the tea’s name).

However, the taste very much lives up to the name. Right off the bat I’m hit with notes of raspberry and sweet cream. As the session progresses the raspberry gives way to other fruits, first peach and then fresh apple cider, always with that sweet and creamy backing. Having too much of this tea too quickly is almost overwhelmingly sweet, like gorging on peach pie covered in whipped cream.

However, halfway through the session the tea does the opposite of maybe every shou I’ve had and gets less fruity and sweet. At this point I get a respite from the unending sweetness and can enjoy some balance. There’s a fresh, loamy earth flavor that replaces the sweet cream and calms the sweetness of the apple cider flavor. It’s joined by some added depth from minerality and a tingling on the tongue.

Overall a very solid tea for those that like a sweet shou. I didn’t get any qi from it, but the flavor was quite enjoyable (especially once the sweetness toned down slightly). I do wish it had a bit more body since that would have complimented the creamy flavor quite nicely.

I’ve recently been rediscovering an appreciation for shou, which I’ve put on the back-burner since I started getting really into sheng shortly into my tea journey. It seems to be coinciding with my coming around to more dankly stored aged sheng. This is a sample I bought around Black Friday or so I believe. I smelled a bit of fermentation on the dry leaf, but I didn’t get much of any in the flavor, though that is likely aided by the fact that I generally double-rinse shou.

I have heard some tea-friends mentioning that this tea tastes like almost nothing, or that they found it difficult to illicit strong flavor from it using more conventional parameters. I would certainly agree with that. I used about 8g:100mL in my sessions, which is pretty standard for what I do with shou. The flavor was lighter than I would expect with those parameters, but I think that’s kind of just how this tea is. For me, this one is much more about texture than flavor. It had a thickness which did remind me a bit of cream. The flavor was pleasant and unintrusive – a light chocolatey sweetness with a bit of a deeper earthy flavor just slightly present. It was good, but didn’t ever really take precedence over the thick and creamy texture.

Another teafriend told me that this one does well with super-high brewing parameters, that it comes out like brownies. I can definitely see that considering the chocolatey notes I got here and the creamy texture.