123 Tasting Notes

Yay, finally a sheng review from me. As a small disclaimer before we get started, even though I’m not totally new to raw pu’er, I’m still very much a novice when it comes to this wonderful tea and I still have a lot to learn and experience. My experience is mostly with young raw, under which this tea currently falls.

This was the first time I actually kept notes as I was drinking this tea, so unlike my last two reviews this time everything isn’t completely from memory. I wasn’t drinking alone, though (tea is best when shared, I hope you agree), so I was only making small, hasty notes.

The cake is loosely pressed and you could probably break off pieces with your bare fingers, but I’d still recommend a pick so that you can break it in layers and avoid breaking too many leaves. The dry leaves seem to give off a pretty typical young raw pu’er scent. As I typically do with raw pu’er, I was using a beautiful fully handmade Yixing teapot that I have dedicated to sheng. The only downside it has is its rather large size of 250ml, which is quite large if you have less than three or four people. Thankfully it has a relatively quick pour time, especially for its size, at around ten seconds. The holes can sometimes get blocked, though, which can double the pour time to twenty seconds.

As I’m still relatively new to pu’er, in the past I’ve used a rather conservative ratio of leaf to water, using typically around 9g in my pot, this to avoid excessively strong brews in the first few steeps due to the pour time of the teapot. However, this time I decided to try using more leaf than in the past, ending up at 13g, which is still a bit shy of the 1g/15ml that a lot of people use. At least with this tea this did not end up being excessive and in the future I may experiment with using perhaps a little more leaf still.

I gave the leaves one 20s rinse. The resulting liquor was quite cloudy and this was true of the first one or two infusions as well. There was barely any scent to the wash and this was true of the tea soup in general through all the infusions I did. All I could pick out was perhaps a hint of salty water scent. The wet leaves themselves had a quite nice green smell to them, like that of cooked vegetables or something of that sort. As the infusions progressed, the color of the liquid settled chiefly on a gold-ish yellow that in the middle steeps often had a green tinge to it, with the later steeps looking like sunshine in a glass.

The first infusion ended up going a bit long at around 23s due to the holes in the pot being partially blocked. The resulting tea had plenty of flavor, but thankfully wasn’t too strong. It was THICK. One of the thickest mouth feels I’ve experienced to date, if not the thickest. The taste was reminiscent of the scent of the wet leaves. It tasted green. Not grassy, but like leaves. It was like the color of the wet leaves as a taste. The taste also had something to it that evoked cooked vegetables. There wasn’t really any sweetness of any kind. I detected perhaps the tiniest hint of qi, but I can’t be sure.

Due to the holes not being blocked, the second infusion resulted in being about five seconds shorter and not nearly as strong in flavor. The body was also notably thinner. The taste is hard to describe. It was kind of salty in a way but also not. There was only a hint of the vegetables from the first infusion left.

The third steep I did about as long as the first and now the thickness was back albeit not as strong. The saltiness from the second infusion was now going down in level whilst I felt like I detected hints of a (vegetal?) sweetness emerging. There was perhaps some slight astringency and I thought I noted some interesting kind of bitterness, but I’m not sure if it was actually there as the sensations was very fleeting. The tea left a sort of tobacco aroma lingering in my mouth, which was later accompanied by some sort of sweet fruit. Later still as those aromas had faded, there was a lingering sweetness in my mouth that lasted incredibly long and felt like it just kept intensifying over time. I thought I felt a bit of qi building in my chest after this steeping.

The fourth steep I kept as long as the last one and what awaited me was a tea that had totally transformed. It was INCREDIBLY sweet, on the level of honey. It coated the roof of your mouth just like honey and the sweetness only intensified over time. It was difficult to take more than one sip because the sweetness was so intense. Once again I could feel some more qi building still.

The next infusion was maybe around 30s. It tasted very clean, still sweet, but not as sweet as before. There might’ve been the tiniest bit of bitterness. Nothing particularly noteworthy. Since the fifth steep had perhaps been a bit lacking, I decided to push the sixth one a bit harder and did maybe an around 40s steeping. I was greeted by STRONG qi. It was gripping my throat, I could feel it in my chest, I was sweating, I could feel it in my head. STRONG stuff. With a stronger brew there was again more sweetness. Not sure how I should describe this sweetness, but it was interesting. Besides the sweetness, the sixth steeping seemed to leave a citrus taste of some sort lingering in the mouth or perhaps it was even reminiscent of iron. It made me think of the taste and feeling you have in your mouth after coming home from the dentist with your gums sore.

The seventh steeping I did for 50s. It tasted clean and sweet, with nothing noteworthy to mention. The eighth one I did for 75s. It ended up being a stronger brew with a super clean taste and still a nice amount of sweetness to it. I thought I could detect some of the vegetal sweetness from the very first steeps returning in the sweetness. At this point I could feel the qi starting to affect my stomach a little bit (not in a bad way), which is atypically late for sheng for me.

The ninth steeping I brewed for 90s. I could definitely taste the cooked vegetable sweetness from the early steepings coming back. This and the prior infusion both had perhaps the tiniest hint of astringency to them. I’m feeling the qi again. I can feel it at the back of my tongue, in my throat, chest, stomach, there’s some tingling on my tongue, I’m starting to feel a little warm, I could feel myself becoming a little tea drunk. While the actual taste of the tea was nice but nothing too special, the aftertaste it left in your mouth was the real highlight here. As with all the earlier infusions, the aftertaste lasted for a really long time and it consisted of multiple layers of sweet and spicy notes. Over time the taste only seemed to get stronger and keep developing. This was really interesting and really surprised me after I’d already assumed the tea had become one-dimensional. Along with steeps four and six, this was one of my favorite infusions.

As I was steeping the tenth infusion, I suddenly noticed I was actually really tea drunk. It felt like I could hardly stand straight, my thoughts weren’t fully coherent, my motoric control wasn’t at its best, I felt a bit giggly and I was having difficulty counting seconds for the infusion. The drunkenness did pass in a reasonable amount of time, though. The tenth infusion itself I did for two minutes. It had a decent amount of color, but when I tasted it the taste just wasn’t there, it was gone. Barely hints of anything. Not really a watery taste, just totally flat. I decided to stop there.

After the session I felt very listless for the rest of the evening and for a while extremely sleepy. I didn’t sleep enough so I felt tired the next day as well, but at the same time I felt quite good and relaxed and my mind was very clear. Not sure if this was an effect of the tea or not. I really enjoyed the slowly building qi in this tea.

Overall, I really liked this tea. The material is obviously very high quality and the tea session was very rewarding and satisfying. While this tea is not particularly challenging, I feel it is also one which those new to tea/pu’er may not be able to fully appreciate. The only real negatives I can think of are the somewhat simplistic flavor profile in the later steeps (which is not that uncommon, I suppose) and the way all the flavor seemed to suddenly drop off resulting in only mediocre longevity, but I will have to experiment with different ways of brewing this tea. This probably isn’t for those who don’t like sweet tea or wish for some bitterness to bring some edge to the flavor, but otherwise this is a young sheng that can most certainly be drunk now.

As someone with no experience in these matters, I have no idea how this one will age, but I hope it will improve with age as I’m likely to have at least some left a few years from now. I will be reviewing a lot more raw pu’ers in the future, so look forward to that!

Flavors: Citrus, Green, Salty, Spices, Sweet, Vegetal

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 13 g 8 OZ / 250 ML
mrmopar

Nice review! Good tea as well. A couple of things to try as leaf ratio was good from your notes. Give just a flash rinse then let the tea sit for about 30 minutes. It may brew like a different tea. I rally liked the 2013 version of this one.

TJ Elite

Thanks!

For a (more) flash rinse, I’d need to either fill up the teapot only halfway or maybe do the rinse in a gaiwan and then transfer the leaves into the teapot. I usually break up bigger chucks gently by hand when brewing raw pu’er, but this time I tried using a couple of bigger pieces and leaving them intact so that the early steeps might be less intense. This is why I wasn’t fussing too much about the lenght of the rinse. The cake is so loose though that the chuncks came nicely apart just from the rinse. :D

I’ve heard people recommending giving the tea a short rest after the rinse. I was in a social situation though, so I only let the leaves sit for maybe five minutes as we talked. I will have to experiment with giving them a longer rest when I’m drinking alone.

This was a great tea. I will likely be drinking the autumn 2014 counterpart next week.

mrmopar

You are welcome. You write a much better review than I ever could.

TJ Elite

Thank you, I try. There’s still so much for me to learn about tea and my vocabulary for describing different flavor notes is still quite limited. Forcing myself to try to put things to words helps develop my ability to appreciate tea. When I started drinking tea, I would never have imagined I could become so passionate about tea as I am now.

mrmopar

I think we all have gone through that rabbit hole. Pass the red pill please…

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

This is the second ripe pu’er I’ve drunk in my life. Why both my first and second review ever on this site have been on ripe pu’er I have no idea. While reading these tasting notes, please keep in mind that these are the impressions of someone who is still getting familiar with the flavor profile of shu pu’er. I should also note that I’ve been sick for the past few days. Usually the flu doesn’t affect my sense of taste, but this time around there were a couple of days during which I could barely taste anything. I’ve mostly recovered now, but it’s possible my taste buds aren’t quite at 100% and that could have affected my impressions in some small way.

I’ve had this cake for a week or two now and for that time it has sat in my pumidor in a relative humidity of around 60%. This is only the second ripe pu’er cake I’ve seen in person, but I must say that the cake is quite beautiful. The compression is also not too tight at all and it was very easy to break off a couple of big chunks to put in my gaiwan. I believe I put something around 10.5g in a 150ml gaiwan. Again, I have very little experience with shu pu’er and am not an expert on tea in general, but to my eyes the material looks quite good quality for ripe material and it is fairly tippy seeming to consist of mainly buds and small leaves.

My nose is not working very well in my current state, but I’ve taken a quick whiff of the cake when I got it and the dry leaves do have a faint ripe pu’er smell to them but nothing overly strong. My mother has also had a chance to sniff the cake and she found it to be a very repulsive smell whilst I did not find it offensive personally. The wet leaves have a smell that is consistent with my prior experience with shu pu’er. I liken it in my mind to a dialed down version of a barn, but a version of that smell that I actually kind of like. The smell of the leaves weakens as the steeps go on until it becomes nonexistent.

I started my session by giving the leaves one 15–20s rinse during which I attempted to poke the leaves a little bit with the lid only to find I couldn’t quite reach the chunks resting at the bottom of the gaiwan. Due to the light compression, however, it was quite easy to pry the leaves loose by hand after the rinse. I was having a very casual session, so I didn’t pay close attention to how long I was steeping the leaves each time and how many infusions I did total, but I’d say I probably did around 10–12 steeps or perhaps even a couple more. The first several infusions were likely in the range of 15s each, while the last couple were several minutes each. The leaves could have probably gone for one more extra long infusion, but I’d say they were pretty much spent by that point.

Both the rinse and the first infusion were quite cloudy, with the liquor becoming clearer after that albeit quite dark at the same time. Even though I was using a perfectly decent amount of leaf and wasn’t even keeping the steeps as short as physically possible, the tea soup never – apart from one infusion (possibly no. 4 or 5) – really had any notable thickness in the mouth that I could speak of. It wasn’t totally water, but I found the body to be quite light. It should be noted I was using a strainer in case that has any notable effect.

As for the taste, I found this tea to be fairly dynamic, which kept it interesting enough to make you want to keep drinking it. There were never any major swings, however. The overall feel and character of the tea stayed quite similar while you got to experience some slightly different facets of it. The first couple infusions had a sweetness to them. They also evoked a reminiscence to first coffee, which then switched to something more akin to chocolate. Not dark chocolate, combined with the sweetness it evoked a mental image of something more along the lines of milk chocolate. In later steepings this developed more to a sense of cocoa powder or something of that description, although this was a note that was not consistently present in every steeping and sort of came and went.

The sweetness first developed into a more bittersweet flavor in the second steeping before dropping off after that. In the middle steepings there were some woody notes present, which were then replaced by a more mineral taste which culminated in an infusion which combined both a mineral sweetness front with a more salty mineral taste following it. Soon after this the flavors started to taper off quite quickly around the tenth infusion or so, the flavors becoming quite few in number and rather simplistic lacking notable depth. The second-to-last infusion, which I drank after it had had time to cool a bit too much, had an interesting metallic taste to it which I’ve never encountered in tea before. At no time did I encounter any bitterness of any kind, good or bad, and I find it hard to imagine it being easy to manage to make this ripe taste bitter. I will note, however, that I found this tea to have a slightly drying sensation in the mouth which makes you thirst for a sip of water.

The front on which I was somewhat let down by this shu was qi. Most of my experience with pu’er comes from drinking young raw gushu and for me taste is only part of the experience as a whole. I couldn’t detect this tea affecting me in any way, which was somewhat disappointing, I must say. It didn’t grip my throat, it didn’t make my tongue swell or tingle, it didn’t make me sweat, nor did it affect my mood or mind. I also didn’t find there to be any similarities that I could find to raw pu’er. As I recall from drinking “The New Black” by Misty Peak, which is so far the only other ripe I’ve drunk, that tea did start to reveal that it was a pu’er in the middle steeps and it also had some cha qi to speak of although not much. Perhaps this is characteristic of ripe pu’er (or aged raw pu’er, even, I wouldn’t know), but I would definitely prefer my pu’ers to have more going on for them than just taste.

Overall, I find it hard to say if I’d recommend this tea or not, or in fact if I like this tea or not. I don’t dislike it, but right now I’m still trying to familiarize myself with shu pu’er and figure out what I think of it in general. I certainly find it fun to explore these type of teas every now and then, but the quite dark flavor profile is something I find hard to see myself wanting to drink on a regular basis. My current understanding of shu pu’er is that most of them share a fairly similar flavor profile and there isn’t a terrible amount of variety within this category. Perhaps I’m misinformed, but if that is indeed the case, I don’t see there being a big likelihood of me falling in love with it.

I will most definitely have to session this tea again in the future and see how it changes depending on how you brew it. My current impressions of the tea are fairly neutral, leaning lightly towards positive with nothing negative to really point out besides the apparent lack of qi and maybe mediocre longevity (compared to sheng that I’ve drunk). For ripe at least, the tea seems fairly high quality, but again I have very limited experience with this type of tea. Someone who has tried out various ripe pu’ers already and has come to the conclusion ripe isn’t for them probably isn’t going to change their mind because of this tea. People who enjoy shu may like this one, but honestly I have no reference point for what is good ripe and what is not. Even after the recent annual price increase, this tea is still quite affordable (as is most shu pu’er), but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend buying a cake of this blind unless you are fairly confident the chances of this being a ripe pu’er you might not enjoy are fairly low. 250g can be a large amount of tea if you find that you can’t stand the sight of it.

For now I will say that this is an interesting tea.

Flavors: Chocolate, Cocoa, Coffee, Dark Bittersweet, Metallic, Mineral, Salty, Sweet, Wood

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 10 g 5 OZ / 150 ML

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

The first shu pu’er I’ve tried (also my first tasting note on Steepster). I’ve been drinking loose leaf tea for a few years now, but only become truly passionate about it in the last six months and been brewing my tea gong fu style since the beginning of 2017. I’m also still fairly new to pu’er, but I’ve tried about half a dozen raw pu’ers so far (mostly young sheng). This as some background to my notes.

Even in a warm gaiwan, the dry leaves don’t have a particularly strong aroma. I didn’t really spend time trying to figure out what the smell reminded me of. I was drinking this tea together with my mother and fumbled a bit with the gaiwan I’d given her as a present that same day, so what I’d intended to be a quick 10s rinse ended up being more like a 20s rinse. The smell of the wet leaves after the rinse was somewhat reminiscent of chicken poop, but said smell dissipated rather quickly. As someone new to ripe pu’er, this made me a bit anxious about what to expect from how the actual tea would taste like, but I try not to have too many expectations and let the taste speak for itself.

I brew all my sheng in a beautiful 250ml fully handmade Yixing clay teapot, which kind of forces me to use less leaf to water than many others do in order to avoid making the first few steeps too strong because of the minimum pour time it imposes. Therefore I’m not used to brewing pu’er in a gaiwan and furthermore this was my first time steeping shu so I wasn’t sure what kind of ratio would be appropriate for achieving the strength I want. I’ve heard a lot of people using 1g per 15ml, but I estimated a more conservative figure of 7-7.5g being a safer staring point for me personally. I ended up putting around 7.6g in the 150ml gaiwan and this turned out to result in a strength that was about the right level for the first couple steepings, with me pouring the tea out as fast as I could (around ten seconds total from the moment I start pouring the water in the gaiwan to the gaiwan being empty). I could have probably used a bit more leaf, say 8g or maybe even 9g, as at least this particular ripe seems very forgiving in terms of how much you put in.

As for the actual taste, describing this tea is very hard as it tastes completely different from any other tea I’ve tried, even raw pu’ers. I don’t know if this is representative of all ripes, but the language in which this shu speaks is totally different from what I’m used to. Contrary to the messy appearance (and possibly smell), this tea tastes very smooth and clean. The only word I can think of to sum up the general vocabulary of flavors it contains is earthy, but I don’t think it does a good job of conveying how the tea actually tastes like. The tea has darkish, mature earthy notes, which are often accompanied by a sweetness of some sort. The first proper steeping had a very dark liquor characteristic of ripe pu’er and a quite thick, almost syrupy texture. This very first infusion also was the only one where you could perhaps taste a hint of a medicinal quality to the tea and it had an actual mouth refreshing effect which you could feel as coolness when you inhaled through your mouth.

From the second steeping onward the liquor still looks very much like a cola drink or brown cough syrup from many angles, but when viewed horizontally in a clear vessel the liquid is actually a stunning shade of ruby red or even crimson red – almost like blood in a vial or a liquefied ruby. I wouldn’t say that there is a lot of development in flavor from one steeping to the next, but there are certainly many distinct different flavors present in this tea, they are just so close to one another that without paying close attention they may seem like the one same flavor over and over again. The differences are subtle, but they are they. Around the fifth infusion I also detected some underlying perhaps even floral notes peeking their head, but they seemed to go away again after that.

The earthy notes that are predominant for the first half a dozen steeps or so finally start weakening somewhere around the seventh or eight infusion, making way for a sweetness that is a different kind from the one that has accompanied the earthy notes in previous steeps in one way or another. I ended the session at the tenth steep at which point the flavor was clearly starting to taper out, even though the sweetness was actually still stronger than in other teas at a similar point when the infusions start to taste increasingly watery and you know the leaves are getting close to the point of being spent. As I have no experience on this matter, I don’t know if this is typical of shu pu’er, but I’m used to raw pu’ers having notably more longevity than this ripe at least. Not that ten steeps or slightly more depending on what you still count as tea and not simply water you’ve soaked some leaves in is disappointing, but I’m used to most pu’ers outlasting me instead of me outlasting them.

As far as bodily effects and tea drunkenness goes (as still a tea novice I dare not use the term cha qi as I’m not sure if it is the same thing), to again use sheng pu’er as a reference point (young gushu in particular), I’m used to suddenly noticing the effects of the tea around the fourth or fifth infusion. With this tea, the effect was a bit delayed, suddenly kicking in somewhere around the seventh infusion or so (I don’t keep tasting notes as I drink, not yet anyway). I noticed it first in my head with a slight lightheadedness perhaps and then in my chest and stomach. Not too long after I did feel a bit tea drunk for a while, but overall the effects were somewhat mild compared to my typical pu’er sessions with sheng. I’d just had a meal before the session, so I’m not sure if this had any impact on this. But aside from the more noticeable effects, the tea made both me and my mother much more quiet than usual. Not really tired but it just puts you in a state where you kind of forget you could be talking to others. You just end up sitting there forgotten in your own thoughts.

While drinking the first infusion and then again a couple hours after the session I noticed that the tea kind of coats your tongue with its taste that stays there for a long time, but you won’t actually taste it unless you wet your tongue a little, which is when you’ll be able to keep extracting the taste as long as you keep salivating.

All in all, fortunately this first exposure I had with shu pu’er ended up being a positive one. I honestly can’t say if I’d recommend this tea or not or say if I think it’s good or bad. I only really have positive things to say about it with nothing negative coming to mind. That being said, I don’t really have anything I could compare this tea to as it is so radically different from anything else I’ve tried before. I’ll have to drink it more to determine if I like it or only find it a pleasant tea to drink from time to time. This is not a tea I would recommend for those new to tea, but for those who already have some familiarity with raw pu’er this might be a safe ripe to try out as your first shu. Being relatively inexpensive and a quite small cake at only 100g, even if you end up not liking it very much at least you won’t feel too bad about your investment.

I’ve already ordered the popular 2015 Yunnan Sourcing Green Miracle (along with a few other YS cakes) and look forward to tasting it as my second shu pu’er. I will also have to try a Menghai ripe at some point as they are considered a benchmark of sorts when it comes to ripe pu’er. Will I become a shu drinker or stick with raw? Time will tell.

Flavors: Earth, Sweet

Preparation
Boiling 0 min, 15 sec 7 g 5 OZ / 150 ML

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

Profile

Bio

I’ve been drinking loose leaf tea since around 2014 if I remember correctly, but the summer of 2016 is when I really became passionate about tea and I started brewing gong fu style at the start of 2017. While oolongs were my first love, I drink mostly pu’er these days. I do drink other types of tea with varying degrees of regularity as well, so I don’t discriminate.

I only review pu’er and don’t designate scores to any of the teas to encourage people to actually read the reviews and not just look at the scores. I tend to be thorough, so my reviews can run quite long, but I do try to always gather my thoughts at the end. These tasting notes are as much a record for myself for future reference as they are a review of the tea, so the format is something that’s geared to satisfy both.

You can follow my adventures on Instagram as tujukki.

Location

Finland

Following These People

Moderator Tools

Mark as Spammer