white2tea

I’m really not certain if I liked this tea or not. It had definitely aged a fair bit. Very dark colored tea soup and plenty of aged taste. The problem is I don’t know how to describe the aged taste. It had no wet storage taste. It got better as I resteeped it. I guess I might hazard to say notes of hay and tobacco? Don’t know if that is an accurate description. I’m on the fence about this one in general. I have not completely decided that I like aged sheng or not. It’s nice that there were no notes of wet wood in there anyway. Usually White2Tea’s older stuff is wet stored so that is surprising.

I steeped this ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 8.2g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. The tea was starting to lose some color at ten steeps but I’m sure I could get a few more out of it if I hadn’t already had too much caffeine.

Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox – Round #5 – Tea #45
Whoa, how did I not know this was sheng rather than shu? The leaves looked like shu to me. I guess I haven’t had shu in a while. I don’t think I ruined it at all, because I could tell by the rinse color it was sheng. The flavor is just sheng to me, sadly. A decent sheng, but I never feel like I appreciate them as much as I should.
Steep #1 // rinse // 17 minutes after boiling // 45 second steep
Steep #2 // 15 minutes after boiling // 60 minute steep

In a way, puer, people and animals are alike: every one is different, sometimes unpredictable, slowly fermenting away inside… A major attraction of puer is that its ‘alive.’ So why not anthropomorphise it? Hello, Old Bear!

This bear is up-tight and refuses at first to yield when asked to leap onto the scales. 6.5g in ~90ml yixing made for a potent trip down the forest trail. I ran through it quickly, as if being chased… Yes, there’s a bit of an animal in there. We know this tea is potent and smokey. But I’m a fan of lapsang, rauchbier and Islay whisky.

As much as smoke (more peat and oak than pine or beech – so I disagree with lapsang analogies), I perceive a decent rounding from age and storage, which makes the power of the tea and its latent, but potentially aggressive bush-like flavours quite manageable. Short, cautious steeps yield an enjoyable brew with a pleasantly smooth mouth-feel. The finish is a contest between drying smokiness that reminds me of Laphroaig (a bit like piss and tweed…) and a slight trickling sweetness consistent with the tea’s age and W2T-type storage. As with some comparable whiskies, this tea has the body to back up the smoke (unlike Laphroaig, imho), and I like it.

Pros: potent, enduring and interesting; almost balanced – provided you like a smokey kick. Uplifting.

Cons: heavy on the stomach, despite its 10yrs of age. Occasional flashes of huigan contend with a slight, unpleasant constriction of the throat that reminds me this is likely particularly cheap plantation material. Then again, I’m sure its tough to tame a bear. And really, would we want to?

Opening:

When I opened this tea I thought it was very beautiful! However, it’s incredibly compressed. I stabbed myself twice while picking away at it. My partner told me to get stitches even.
Anyways, I also gathered a lot of tea dust trying to pry the damned thing open.

The Infusions:

When I started this session I started a mustiness which only points to humid storage. The rustiness has dried out since the last time I tasted this tea (this is my 3rd session) and is starting to settle down more. I first noticed that this tea tasted like tobacco in its early infusions. The wet leaves smelled like a Cigar Lounge!

In it’s middle infusions, it started to get sweeter. The tobacco started to taste sweeter; even more sweeter than the last time I had a session with Old Bear. There was a lingering aftertaste of wet wood that stayed in my mouth long after sipping the tea.

It’s later infusions started to get a spice to them, and the aftertaste of wet wood started to linger out. In the end, I never tasted ‘bitter’ in this tea. I steeped it at the oolong temp – 176 degrees F. I also noticed that this tea got a strong punch if I over steeped it, so it’s definitely on the more sensitive side.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a good brick and at a great price as well! I will buy this tea again and i’m really curious about how it’ll age!

*Note: Due to rough storage, some bricks may be 75g instead of the advertised 100g.

Brewed the whole orb in my 100ml thick walled gaiwan. Hit the ball with a medium strength off the boil pour for a little over a minute, at which point it was almost completely open. Proceeded with slow and light pours for the next few brews. The liqour was a bit darker than I expected for a 3 year old tea. Nice florality on the wet leaves with a hint of pitted fruit (apricot/ peach?), woody, with some hay and spice. This brew was medium bodied and started silky smooth and then developed a solid and persistent ku wei which went on for about 12 brews. The flavors started on the lighter end of the spectrum and around brews 7-10 hit the darker and richer end, going from floral and fruity with a woody complexity and honey sweetness to a rich woodiness with some forest floor and incense intertwined with a nutty bitterness. Mouth characteristics were great, this is definitely a mouthfeel lovers tea, it’s not overly intense but persistent and long. Wonderful sweetness and cooling sensation in the back of the throat with a lingering flavor of wood. Qi is solid.

Overall this is a well balanced and flavorful tea with a surprising amount of life and a wonderful mouth feel that doesn’t give up. I want to say this is Mengku but it’s not really forward enough for me to guess that.

Brewed while listening to The Shape of Colour by intervals : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx8c3CuUxw0

Resuming notes from the Pu TTB!

Light and green with notes of sugarcane, tobacco, corn, and a slight smokey gasoline note. Later steeps get thick and sweet, slightly spicy and herbaceous. This tea was very comparable to Menghai Dayi cakes and Yunnan Sourcing’s Impressions cake; solid, quality tea for daily drinking. Comparably I’d say a 7542 is the most bitter/powerful, YS Imprressions most flavorful, while the MC&A had the best body/thickness.

2002 White Whale – White2Tea

100g brick (~98g)

Summary: A very good tea showing mature ages flavours of vibrant softened fruit with well integrated log burning smoke, Unfortunately that is only the first proper brew and even that has some bad funk like bright furniture polish. Subsequent brews are unfortunately spoiled buy this funk. Ignoring the funk, this show similarities to the 2000 Green Peacock. A 357g cake would be £82 ($117.17) vs 2000 Green Peacock £98 ($140.04). I know which one I’d choose.

Through the wrapper: Slightly beefy and a bit salty.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBvEv37oDiAa-ds0FCeQxmen9V_BC9SZOtz8uw0

Dry: Dark brown, very flat shape. Aroma is dry smoky cheese. Med high compression.

Wet: Med smoke, light furniture polish. Some initial funk like “what was that?”. Furniture polish freshly sprayed.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBvKB4cIDtxjbM2BxUAsEw_2AShfw9dV4z7SBM0

Rinse: Light golden.
Chunk is compressed: https://www.instagram.com/p/BBvJdscoDsjBezIfV97SFYUfbM8KqS_OG4OUUM0
Chunk is loose:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBvJu-9oDtFC0_l_4jwns8UvBShRFW1O3VwN-40

10s – Light golden. Chunk may need breaking up. I’m thinking 2000 Green Peacock from Essence of Tea in flavour… Mild at the moment as the chunk needs separating, but I’m getting a mature deep fruity wood g soft, well integrated smoke. 75/100

15s – Bash with fork (traditional Chinese method). Medium orange/golden. Light/medium thickness, mature aged taste which is deep fruit into softened smoke. There is a little funk. It gives a dried fruit, slightly spicy, medium tangy finish.
This reminds me of the 2000 Green Peacock. Interesting as this is much cheaper…
Price per gram:
2002 White Whale: £0.24($0.34)/g 357g would be: £82 ($117.17)
2000 Green Peacock: £0.27($0.39)/g 357g: £98 ($140.04)
So we see this is not that much cheaper than the 2000 Green Peacock. Interesting.

20s – Med golden. Leaves a pleasant soft log burning smoke in the mouth just like the 2000 Green Peacock. There is an off-putting bright furniture note which I found in the Late 1990s “Jin Gua Gong Cha” by Chawangshop. TeaDB reviewed that tea with the comment: “Not much flavour. Kinda bland, mediocre.” I disagree. See: http://teadb.org/mature-puerh-november-2014-report/ 74/100

25s – Med orange/golden. The funk is really spoiling a good tea here. A little astringent this time. Otherwise a very good aged tea with a vibrant fruit, integrated softened log burning smoke. 70/100

30s – Thinning. Old books, astringency. 65/100

40s – Thin, log burning smoke, fruit has lost its vibrancy. 64/100

Following up on my comparitive tasting from last week I wanted to drink this tea by itself. As W2T gave a pretty good sample size I decided I would brew it lightly tonight and then probably do a heavier brew and a boiling session. Tonights light sesh used about 2 grams in my 70 ml gaiwan. This tea is balanced and delicate. Early notes show signs of white flowers (white peony), honey, paper, and a clean grain/malt note. This develops into a medium bodied brew which has all of the above attributes with a nice finish of berries and a hint of dark fruit sweetness. There is an additional flavor of autumn leaves and a bookish-ness to it. Hints of baking spice fade in and out. The finish is clean and sweet and slowly goes in and out for a few minutes. The energy of this tea is very pure and uplifting. This is very clean tasting for an 11 year old tea. While it doesn’t draw mean in the way the 2008 shoumei did, this tea is a very clean and well stored aged white that requires a lot of attention but can be quite rewarding.

2/25 update
Been drinking this a lot this week as I’ve been very tired upon getting home from work and this has a good hit of caffiene/ uplifting qi. I tried brewing it heavier today, about 5g in my 70ml gaiwan. While the aroma was heavily amplified I found the character of the brew to be completely different. It was wood with a lot of foliage flavors and some vanilla and cinnamon here and there, but the berry like fruit notes turned into more of an oxidized fruit flavor in the vein of what you find in some Oriental Beauty oolongs. The body was much thicker as well, which I expected. The finish was less sweet but was longer and more pronounced with a hint of fruity acidity. No bitterness or astringency. I tried a few brews at a lower temp as well, these came out with a more pronounced acidity and a more forward fruitiness – really enjoyable.

I think my original 2g to 70ml produced a more nuanced and balanced brew, but the 5g/70ml was a full bodied brew that fits the winter season. The lower temp brews provided some interesting insight into how much this tea can change by adjusting a parameter or two.

brewing this side by side with the 2008 shoumei white from last months tea club so this isn’t exactly a review, just a comparison. The 2005 Zhenghe is uncompressed and comprised of what basically looks like a pile of leaves in early fall. the tea liqour is very clean and floral with hints of soft woods and honey, hints of pilsner malt here and there as well. Very much so bright and clean tasting. The 2008 in comparison is much more packed with dark fruits (red dates) darker honey notes and a dank/damp earthiness (damp leaves?). While they both have a nice cooling mouthfeel and a long lingering sweet finish, I’d have to give personal preference to the 2008, but I feel the 2005 is of higher quality.

I definitely need to brew this tea in a few different ways before giving it a real review! the 2008 can basically be brewed however but the 2005 is a bit more delicate.
Edit (2 hours later): OMG THE CAFFEINE.

Thanks to Stephanie for sending me a mini tuocha in her swap!

Had a gongfu session with my ceramic gaiwan. I pried the tuocha apart. About half went in the bowl. Gave it a ten-second rinse. Let it sit for ten minutes. Steeping times: 10 seconds, 10, 15, 20, 30, 60; 6 minutes.

After sitting in the heated bowl, the dry leaf smells of earth, then leather, then chocolate. The rinse aroma is delicious: chocolate-covered coffee beans! I mostly smell leather thereafter.

The soup is dark, clear and full-bodied. Flavor fills the mouth. The texture is creamy most of the time (smooth in the middle of the session). It begins with sweet earth and a hint of chocolate. From the second infusion to the last, I taste black coffee and a bit of old leather. The bitterness from the coffee is not off-putting – it reminds me of higher quality coffee. In the back of the throat, during the aftertaste, there are notes of dark fruit (raisins, acai berry) and dark chocolate.

I thought this was alright. I enjoyed the creamy texture and the intense flavor, but I learned I’m not keen on black coffee in my shou. Glad I got an opportunity to sample this!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBz6TZMQNnB/

Spent the day drinking this one. It was part of the W2T club box that OMGsrsly and I shared. We decided to drink this one today, and I had high hopes for it as this is probably one of the most expensive teas that I’ve tried.

12 steeps later and I’m totally indifferent to this. It’s not bad – it’s not good. It’s not worth the price.
The first few steeps a little bitter (with steep 3 being the most) – a little sheng – a little sweet – but mostly just boring. There was a little creaminess about steep 5 and it thickened on the mouth feel. Basically though this didn’t really change that much through the steeps.
Always nice to share a tea with a friend – just wish this had been a better tea.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBx4dxnuE7p/?taken-by=dex3657
https://www.instagram.com/p/BBx9L1tuE38/?taken-by=dex3657
https://www.instagram.com/p/BByO2nDOE07/?taken-by=dex3657

Drank this a few nights ago, will do a full review at a later date but this was a very lovely, warming, Qi heavy session. I spent about an hour and a half just doing about 8 brews with this tea. I think the amount of time this tea made me spend with it really speaks volumes about its quality.

2/27/16 update
7g in 100ml gaiwan. This will be brief: great aroma of fragrant wood, incense, tobacco, and some stewed fruit on the wet leaves. The brew is a dark amber, lovely balance of bitterness and sweetness. Full in the mouth with good characteristics i.e. long finish, causes salivation, long cooling sesnation. The qi is very warming and relaxing. I should have thrown a few more grams in, 8-9 grams next time. This brewed pretty consistently for 8 brews before slowly loosing some steam. dry leather finish and hints of mushroom in later brews. Nice honey sweetness creeps in as well with a floral complexity. Overall a very nice full flavored aged sheng, doing well at the 10 /11 year mark.

Lost my note as my browser crashed. Whee.

To sum up: This tea bored me. I got 5 steeps and now it’s just sitting there. Not sure if I’ll go any further.

Not worth it.

5s, 5s, 15s, 20s, 30s.

This is a tea from the White2Tea subscription box. It is to say the least an interesting tea. It is by no means the best tea I have had nor is it the worst. It is the only aged white tea I have tried. It was very smooth. There was no bitterness or astringency to it. I am not entirely sure how to describe the main note of this tea. It was somewhat sweet. The thing that comes to mind is if you could take whiskey and remove all the kick from it and the alcohol too it might taste like this. That is the best description I can think of. I didn’t add sugar to this tea but was thinking about it. Next time I drink it I may try western brewing it and adding sugar. It does not matter if I recommend this tea or not as you can’t buy it anyway.

I steeped this tea ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 5.3g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. If this tea was available for sale I don’t think I would be impressed enough to buy more of it. It did last well through ten steeps. And it was darker i color than any white tea I have had.

Shou and I are not exactly on the best of terms. It’s too earthy. It’s too fishy. I hear people say they like it, that it’s so rich, but when I make it, the results just leave me….flat.

I gotta admit, when I took the tea out of the bag to measure it and start steeping, it looked… dubious. The nuggets were small, matte, dark brown, and just in general highly suggestive of some other type of substance.

I took 5.25 grams of these nuggets and made sure to give them a good, thorough rinsing before drinking: two rinses of 30 seconds each with just-boiled water.

After that, I did a first steep of 20 seconds. The resulting liquid was a deep reddish-brown, like beef broth. The flavour was light, but overall it was earthy, slightly fishy, somewhat salty and savoury. Kinda like soup broth.

The second, third and fourth steeps were all for 30 seconds, and they were pretty similar in taste to the first, if only a bit more intense in colour and flavour. The smell was savoury, brothy, and earthy, with notes of spices like cinnamon, star anise and clove. The mouthfeel here was also pretty thick, like soup broth.

Over time, I also noticed grainy notes that reminded me of popcorn. However, I’m not getting the chocolate or caramel notes the description above promised. Where is my chocolate, White2Tea??

On the fourth steep, I started to notice a cool sensation creeping across my mouth and throat, like menthol or camphor. My lips also started tingling.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh steeps were 40-50 seconds long. The flavour still hadn’t developed those chocolate notes I was told to expect but when I smelled the lid of the gaiwan after the sixth steep, I noticed scents of tobacco and a sweetness that reminded me of red bean past. The second steep was a bit lighter in colour, but by that point I had pretty much used up the water in the teapot so I wasn’t interested in drinking anymore.

At least I didn’t get any caffeine rush this time.

What’s amazing is that even after seven or so steeps, these nuggets still hadn’t unfurled. They were still compact, dark, and tightly packed.

Full review at: http://booksandtea.ca/2016/02/lao-cha-tou-ripe-puerh-white2tea/

I’ve had this for quite some time, and I finally got around to brewing it. The brick is teeny tiny, but it packs a lot leaf. I warmed my gaiwan up and popped this sucker in. I could only pick up a fruity pipe tobacco scent along with a deep roast, but the scent faded very quickly. I had to wash this about four times until it finally began yielding some good liquor. The brew was a thick red color. The weird thing about this tea is an odd freshwater or lakewater fish scent that kept creeping in. Then, it would quickly be covered by roast and some sweet fruit. The brew itself was full bodied and smooth. This was not an overly roasted flavor, for it went down without any bitterness. The brew followed this pattern consistently, and it ended each sip with a nice crisp sweetness. I liked this brew, and the nice texture helped me overlook the odd fishy scent. The best part was the qi. This brew packed a heavy hitter that went straight for the head. This drink gave a deep pulsing head high with some warming of the temples. I had to take a break and eat some bread to return to the table. I was able to pull a fairly good amount of steeping from this, especially for being a yancha. I liked this tea, but this is not something I’d get more of.

https://www.instagram.com/p/70KRO2zGbz/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel

Overall I liked this tea. It was bittersweet at the start. There was a bitterness for about the first three steeps. There was a sweet note along with it. There was a fair amount of fermentation flavor. I’d say it lasted until around the fourth or fifth steep, about average for a young ripe puerh. There was also a bit of a sour note that briefly crept it. I’d say around the sixth steep. This didn’t seem to last and was replaced with another sweet note. Chestnuts come to mind, but that is just an opinion. If an unpleasant note hadn’t crept in for a while I would give this a stellar review. As it is it is just a little above average.

I steeped this ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 9.7g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. I’d guess there were about two more steeps to this tea. It does not seem like a tea that will last twenty steeps. It was fairly light colored in the tenth steep. The price makes this one I will still recommend. At $25 this is a good price.

Lovely roasty nose with floral and fruity undertones. Brews a smooth lightly roast cup with a present florality, nice mineral notes build alongside the sweetness with each brew. The key attribute of this tea is its lingering, soft, and sweet aftertaste which lasts long after the last brew. At times the tea was a bit nutty/oily and had a nice thick mouthfeel. Unfortunately I just ran out of my 20 gram sample from tea club :(.

So I got this tea right when it came out. The wrapper design and the contents of the cake really grabbed my attention.

When I got it I tried it. I remember that it was bitter so I stored it away. Now 2 months later I got it back out to give it another round!

It was very spicy with a grassy/floral note to it. Overall, I liked it and thought it was a great experience. However, i probably wouldn’t buy it again.

One of the the things I love about being a tea club member is that it isn’t just about new teas, but also new experiences, and this tea is definitely an experience.

First off, I don’t know about this tea as being a “puerh/white tea blend” as per the description, b/c as far as I know, the description from w2t says nothing about puerh. Anyway, this is my first time drinking white tea and it’s baffling. Does white tea always look like a pile of decomposing leaves, but taste like honey? It smells like honey too. Seriously, this is one of the most wonderfully aromatic teas I’ve ever had. I gongfu’d for a few steeps (the first, aka “the rinse” was the best IMO), then I decided to just grandpa drink it from my gaiwan for awhile, and that was also quite nice. What a lovely lingering sweet aftertaste.

I tried boiling the spent leaves and I might have overboiled; at one point I tasted the tea and it was nice. I was going to take it off the stove but got distracted by having to pee, and when I came back it was too late. Like, “I should have eaten that avocado yesterday” too late. Still drinkable, but disappointing nonetheless because I knew I had screwed up. Luckily, I have more of this tea and next time I’ll be more careful.

Overall, I loved it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBf9Mt8GgBB/?taken-by=curlygc

I’m not sure if this is one of the W2T shengs I’m supposed to review for the pu ttb, or if it was from a swap. Anyway, 4g into my 75ml yixing. Water just off boil. It starts out incredibly light, bordering on weak, but then the bitter, gut busting florals crash the party and by steep seven I am done. I did try water at a full boil to see if it would make a difference, and it didn’t seem to… the tea just got more bitter and mouth-puckering with each successive steep. I’ll take Little Walk over MCA for an easy drinking, affordable everyday young sheng any day. This one is just not my cuppa.

This was a really interesting tea. The leaves look pretty dark and when brewed they turn a dark brown. I didn’t use quite enough leaves so the first infusion was a bit light. I could taste the typical hay I get from whites and and honey sweetness.

The instructions said after a couple of gongful sessions ( I did one in the mug only) to boil the leaves in 1 litre of water until the water was red. I did this ( except I used a bit less water since I had less leaves) and the first cup from that tea was excellent.

It was much more robust than the first cup. It actually brewed up almost as dark as a ripe puerh. I still got the hay and honey notes but added to it this time was sweet dates and an earthiness. Yum! That was the best cup. Once the leaves sat in the water too long the tea just became too earthy and I couldn’t pick up the other notes as much.

Definitely an interesting tea.