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Ripe/Cooked Puerh of the Night

ouch

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I have a cold today, so ... it's ODB for me! First time ... rather like it, too. Can't comment on the aroma, though.

It's a tea that by all reason one should not enjoy, yet it's very tasty and effective. In fact, the worse you feel, the better it works.
 
The best thing about ripe puerh is when you get the cake. You don't even want to use it. I like the idea of having a cake of cooked puerh in a prominent place.

Somehow, though, it loses its appeal when you start breaking it apart.
 
2002 zhongcha taipai 7572 from white2tea, crumbs found in wrapper. It's supposed to be wetstored, but the tea is very clean, and ticket is nearly white and free of teastains. It's pretty good. The only real issue is that the top of the throat collects astringency (could be me, could be the original wet store astringency that needs drying out, could just be property of crumbs) and it's uncomfortable after the end of the session before I wash it with some lemonade.

The first few brews are pretty much chocolate and aromatic wood. The chocolate eventually fades, and it's more of a straight shu with more or less aromatic wood as mouth aroma. The brew is very thick and mostly smooth/comfortable to drink outside of that initially light astringency. This is a shu capable of some development in the session so I kept it going something like 14 brews or so until the throat felt too harshed to continue. I think this is capable of some qi, as I felt good drinking it, and I also felt fairly warmed. Might be very good tea for cold winter days. I felt that this offered a great deal of perspective for me, in the sense that I have more of an understanding of what chinese people wanted in aged shu. Compared to this tea, the An Xiang shu is very thin in body, even if it has a nice texture. The taste is also more delicate, rather than the kind of strong depth that this 7572 provides. I also compared it to the 2007 Star of Menghai, which is supposed to be a kind of premium 7572, but I think I need to try both teas again to make much sense of it. I also compared it to broader leaf shu, like the Tan Mei '06 7581, Tongxinghao '07 brick, and the 8592, and it seems that the bigger leaf tea tends to have more of a TCM or somewhat chinese jujube sweet note to them, when this one is more solid dark taste centered around coffee, dark chocolate, etc. 7262 tends to be like the 7572, except a breadier aroma and a bit more of a crisp dark taste. Will have to taste that one again, too. V93 is capable of the aromatic wood, but the base taste is more or less like other smaller grade tea.
 
no. 5 Liu Bao from white2tea. Has a hollow taste in the middle, like other not-properly broadleaf puerh, like Dehong stuff. Needs some years and humidity to fix that, I think. I still enjoyed it. Thick and comfortable soup, with pumpkin-nutty-chocolate element to the taste. Recognizably liu bao profile, and mild to drink with little or no bitterness but not too exciting. I think this might be a relatively good candidate to brew it very hard western style and add stuff like ginger, tumeric, fruit syrups, honey into it.

For long term storage, I think I will always strongly prefer to buy basket of good liu bao with at least five years of age in a humid climate to the vast majority of shu. Liu An as well, but good liu an seems harder to get.
 
After the jia ji tuo, I tried some of the 2013 FT 7572 sold at white2tea. Obviously still some woi dui. Basic shu taste, and doesn't have much in the way of excitement. Later infusions have a hint of that nice blueberry taste I've had in the 2010 Dehong shu from Bana tea. Moderately thick and soft soup. Not quite that much like the 2002 7572 I had a couple of days ago. Nothing too exciting. Drinkable, and will be worth tonging for daily use 5-10 years down the road. Not that there is a strong reason to pick *this* young shu over all the shu there is in the world, but pretty soon enough, for whatever reason, you'll be happy that you added a tong of decent young shu when you buy nice sheng at white2tea or anywhere else. I certainly am happy that I tonged a shu that I liked, and having plenty is a security when you can't, for whatever reason, buy more tea. The ability to permanently fix my cost of tea consumption was the primary reason I got into this stuff.
 
Presumably 2012 Dayi Hong Yun. It was okay, but I didn't really approve of it due to a weak taste in the center. It does have the character I remember from the 2009 cake, with wood, cola, and caramel notes. However, the basic shu density isn't there, and the wood notes have some woi dui still attached to it. After a few brews, it does have a sometimes sweet and sometimes fruity finish that was pleasant. FT 7572 is a substantially more sound tea though, and this tea doesn't have the strength of character from the 2009 mini-round discusses I remember. Or the '09 gong tuo shu.
 
2009 Dayi v93. I had heard that this was a little funkier than the '08 version way back when. It's definitely still so now. It has more flavor, but it's not so much to the advantage of what is a cleaner and more crisp '08. The soup thickness may be more, and it could be considered closer to a 7572 in a way.
 
2002 zhongcha taipai 7572 brewed western in a big pot. Very successful. Where other shu often develop this not entirely medicinal-metallic-fermentation funk shu edge and an uncomplex soup, this shu was pretty close to how it is when you gongfu it, with wood notes and some shu flavors underneath it, with just a little shu edge. It was sweet, the body was okay, but not as nice as when you gongfu, but the qi is very strong with this tea, definitely will knock me back a bit. Cut greasy stir fry better than the peach I ate before. Shared it with someone else and gained some approval, too. I really like how clean the tea was, which meant that washing isn't quite that necessary. Pretty close to firmly recommending this tea to others.
 
The evening drink of the shu yesterday meant that my eyes were wide open at 5AM. When I drank my share of the second brew, which was refrigerated overnight, and delicious as well, I was definitely awake. Seriously potent shu.
 
worth noting for my purposes that an xiang had a very light, thin taste and viscosity, intense sweetness, long taste, aftertaste. Qi is as normal.
 
2007 Chen Yuan Hao Yiwu shu. 7572/7581 style blend. Very red and clear soup for those that like it. Not a whole lot of fireworks, though, normal decent shu with a bit of tarry-floral-bark edge to it, and some extra sweet notes. Decent body, like 7572 usually does.

I had 2009 Dayi Dragon Pole before that, taste is a bit lighter, delicate aroma, has more of a plummy finish than usual, and in general, it had a good lasting taste in the mouth from the finish. Very light qi.

Starting a nine-day sample fest with lettered sheng samples technically today...
 
Not feeling my best today, reaching for shu. Menghai 7572:
$7572.jpg

Head being a little fussy, and attempting to make tea for my wife at the same time, resulted in my second mug being milky shu pu:
$shu&milk.jpg
 
It's pretty fun to try tea you haven't had for years. It looks like it's been roughly four to five years since I last had the '09 XZH gift set shu. Looking back at the early descriptions, it still seems to be the same, with the major difference being camphor being more emphasized.

It behaves like a gongting shu in taste and aroma, even though it's really made of fannings. The tastes are a little muddy as well. There is a combination of very strong qi and high amounts of caffeine, so there was something of a conflicting sense of being wired and also calm--speedball, perhaps? Certainly not in the nice way of the Xishangmeishao! Viscosity is good, and there are some aftertastes in the mouth and a little in the throat. The flavor mostly gives out by brew eight, but the tea still brewed a pleasant and sweet water and the qi, without the caffeine, was still present, so I kept drinking quite a few infusions afterwards. Gave me a nasty case of the munchies, though.

I think this needs a lot of time for that caffeine to mellow. The '09 Dayi Dragon Pole is the same year, and that tea's strong caffeine has mellowed by now, why not this...
 
Before football yesterday, I had the '08 XZH loose gongting shu. It was more of a pleasant experience with a slightly woody, soily aroma. The soup taste tended to be a sort of milk chocolate, and also tended to have sensate sweetness. This lasted well in the mouth. The viscosity is okay to a bit better, and the qi was mild, milder than I expected. It does last a long time, longer than I wanted to drink it, due to low dynamicism.
 
2004 puer.sk shu tuo. Obviously the same recipe as the late '90s white tuo sold by white2tea, though the leaves are smaller/more broken. Same basic character anyways. The differences are that this tuo delivers a cleaner, deeper taste, thicker, smoother soup, and is a bit more durable. The white2tea had some qi, a more interesting powdery texture, and is sweeter. Might be more aromatic. In any event, this was a pretty uneventful shu session as that there is zero complexity, so don't expect to use it for much other than refreshment and grease cleaning. A tad on the expensive side of things at fifteen euros/100g. I can easily find shu I like better at lower prices.
 
Yesterday, I drank the 2006 w2t gongting xiaobing. I was a little disappointed, unfairly so, because I was primarily thinking about it in terms of the XZH gift set shu, when it is more like the puerh.sk 2004 tuo or the 2009 Dayi gongting shu tuo, with that sort of caramel sweetness. The viscosity is thinner than the 2004 tuo, and a flavor is, as well. The xiaobing also had an issue with slight roughness in the throat on occassion. On the flip side, the flavor was a little more dynamic and interesting than either the '04 or '09 shu, and it had some qi. I didn't feel wired, like I could for intensely caffeinated shu like the XZH shu is now. Durability is okay. On balance, the xiaobing is the best deal of the three similar teas.
 
2006 taipei Memorial Shu from Houde. Very lightly fermented, with resulting thin taste (shu is shallow and insubstantial, fermentation gives is a solid color and taste--so light fermentation often can be the worst of both worlds, shallow like most shu, but without a solid shu flavor of soil, chocolate, woods). This shu is also intensely peppery, to the point that I considered whether it has a lot of pesticide. There is some resulting light astringency from pepper feeling in mouth and throat. The taste is pretty complex for a shu, with TCM, dried fruit like jujube (where the only sweetness comes from), light woods and very light soil. The flavors do change a little from brew to brew, showing an advantage to light fermentation. There is a slight tendency for Menghai floral mouth aroma as an aftertaste, but no other aftertastes. This has a fairly high quality qi for a shu, clearly being more about good leaves than the 2006 gongting shu which is more retired caffeine based. The aroma is like the taste and is only present in earlier brews. I'd guess that durability is decent, but taste gets really light. Viscosity is generally enough for a shu to slightly better. I'd say that the price is fair, but this is probably a long term storage deal, presuming that pepper isn't from pesticide or something else wrong.
 
2009 ChenGuangHeTang Yiwu is another shu with lots of pepper from obvious low fermentation. Unlike the Taipei, it has much more of the generic shu taste and behavior, being similar to the likes of the Dayi Yun Ding, Longzhu, and I suspect the recipe blend is similar to the Dayi 7452 (but I've never tried that shu). Anyways, it starts off with a dark and cola sensibility (with a few light fruit tones thrown in), and after a few brews, becomes a bit more shallow with a fairly strong cream like taste that you find in the likes of GNWL (well, at least the '08). This does have good mouthfeel, with good viscosity and a texture with a robust juiciness to it. There is a little lingering sweetness to it, but nothing remarkable in terms of aftertaste. There's also some qi, but less than that of the Taipei. Durability is about normal for a decent shu. Drank about twelve brews.

This tea and the taipei are both considerably better than the '07 ChenYuanHao that I have. That tea, though, does have some nice wood tastes here and there. It's just not a nice ride through the whole session like the two I just tried, nor does it have the qi. Both of these two samples indicates that more time for mellowing out will be rewarded, whereas the CYH seems about done until you hit the 25-30 year mark.
 
I started the day with white2tea Old Reliable. Has a notable, if light and unusual qi. Otherwise, it seems to be a pretty normal shu, that isn't very sweet in the caramel or sarsaparilla sense, but is a touch austere with bark, wood, cedar, cola notes. It can also have a nice floral aspect to aroma and taste, but that didn't happen that much in the session. Late end of the brew, there is some sweet fruit tones to the exhausted shu flavors. Viscosity is pretty decent for a shu. No real aftertaste to this. All and all, it really is meant for very casual drinking. Very clean, and with a couple of nice things, it's still just shu in a way that's not true of the immediately preceding shus in this sample drive.
 
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