edit: on further reflection, the mold may have just been tea dust. Oh well. Doesn’t hurt to be safe.

Thanks Kar for the sample!

I drank part of the sample some time ago grandpa’d in a mug and I don’t remember much other than that it was okay. I’m pretty sure I didn’t rinse, and it looked fine. Tasted like aged sheng mushroominess, nothing special.

I’ve kept the rest of the sample with a Boveda pack in a Mylar with some other to-drink-soon samples and so you can imagine my horror upon taking the rest of it out to brew and seeing small yellow mold spores. Did I do the smart thing and toss it? No, I just gave it two 20s rinses instead of one and hoped for the best.

I didn’t take notes for it, but it was a bit over 8g in a 90mL gaiwan, steeped like I usually do. Smell had sour, leather, and mushroom-y aged sheng notes. Broadly, tastes were pretty strongly bitter (not LME level, but still bitter) and mushroom-y, sometimes sour and lingered for a while in mouth and sometimes throat, which I know is a good marker of quality, but in terms of personal preference for what constitutes pleasantness/enjoyment is a different story. Sometimes cooling on tongue. Some shifting woody herbaceous notes along with hints of dark fruitiness and smoke. I didn’t particularly like this and would not purchase a cake, but it was interesting to try.

mrmopar

Lots of hype on this one. I have wondered about this one myself.

m2193

Yeah, the hype is always interesting. Since I knew it was Bulang material, it never tempted me to blind a cake. And for per gram price and given that shipping from TW is rather expensive, I’d rather pay a little extra and get YQH teas that are more in line with my preferences.

I did buy a 2005 sample from Kar too, so curious to see how that compares. Although I believe it just sold out recently on the site.

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mrmopar

Lots of hype on this one. I have wondered about this one myself.

m2193

Yeah, the hype is always interesting. Since I knew it was Bulang material, it never tempted me to blind a cake. And for per gram price and given that shipping from TW is rather expensive, I’d rather pay a little extra and get YQH teas that are more in line with my preferences.

I did buy a 2005 sample from Kar too, so curious to see how that compares. Although I believe it just sold out recently on the site.

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Just a chronicle of a stranger’s tea journey. Keeping old notes up to see progression, but no longer really believe in all of them. Trying to learn!!

As of 4/21/21, I will no longer assign numerical ratings to a tea unless it is terrible enough to warrant one. There are a fair amount of solid teas out there, and reading mildly subjective reviews from others > very subjective numerical rating that gets skewed by Steepster’s calculating system anyway.

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