Cream

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.

I brought this along with some other ripes this week to encourage myself to drink them. And this morning in teachat, steph recommended using “boychik parameters” on this one—1g/5ml, so that’s what I’m doing!

Quick wash, let the leaves sit and then flash steep. Color is like coffee, aroma is a bit earthy and mushroomy. Mouthfeel is very smooth and rich. I don’t think creamy would be an inaccurate description. And something about the richness of it really lingers in my mouth and throat.

Second steep is darker, richer, thicker and the sweetness starts to come through. There’s almost a bit of viscosity going on. In steep three, the hint of coffee grounds pushes more into the forefront.

Since I had to go to an appointment today, I decided to take these leaves home to finish up with a few hours later. I snacked on some really spicy ghost pepper chips and then did another steep of this. And THAT was creamy. So thick and rich. I can visibly see the thickness of the tea.

Been flash steeping this all day now and it’s still going. I like this, and this experience definitely makes me want to try leafing heavier with shou more often.

Easy to drink ripe with a thin texture to it that slides right down. There isn’t an complexity to this tea which makes it great for pairing or dipping. Not sure what’ll do in the future since I’m not big on ripe, but for now this is easy to gift to someone who hasn’t ripe or pu’erh in general as it isn’t tannic or bitter while being easy to drink.

Bought this with my Black Friday order and am just trying it now. It is pretty tasty. It was very thick in the early infusions you might even say creamy. It had a lot of fermentation flavor to it but that only persisted some five or so steeps. I think you might say there were some notes of chocolate in there. There was little bitterness to this and sweet notes throughout all twelve steeps. Trying to characterize them is difficult. Not quite fruity, but almost. Whatever you end up calling it it was good.

I steeped this 12 times in a 160ml Solid Silver Teapot with 13g 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, 1 min, 1.5 min, and 2 min. This probably isn’t interesting enough for me to go back and buy more but it was good. It was dark even in the twelfth steep. I think it would have gone at least sixteen steeps.