August32nd Send Message

This is not a bold, tippy, chocolatey Yunnan gold bud tea; it’s much more floral and fruity and complex. I have to say, steeps 2-5 are great. It kind of tapers off pretty quickly to where I wonder why I’m continuing to steep the leaves. I’ve also found it a bit difficult to truly dial in the perfect protocol for steeping this tea, as brewing it too hot or too long brings out some unpleasant notes, and it can easily be brewed too weak by overcorrecting for this. I wouldn’t view this as a straight black tea, but should be approached as one would with an oolong, taking care to brew it at the right temperature and appreciating the lighter notes rather than waiting and expecting a big punch of chocolatey sweetness.

I’ve given this tea all the patience I could give, but I’m left disappointed. First of all, I found what I assume are multiple long strands of hair in the cake. Secondly, I’ve brewed this about as strongly as my little 60mL gaiwan can make it (as well as my 150mL gaiwan), even upping the dosage to 5 grams when 3g is usually plenty, and I keep getting weak liquor from it, even with boiling water and longer than average brewing times, which I attribute to a high proportion of twigs/stems. Even when it’s acceptably strong, it just takes an unnecessary amount of coaxing for a tea that’s fairly one-dimensional. Sure, there’s no pile fermentation detectable here, but aging hasn’t appeared to have done much for this tea here. I’ve found cheap year-old or two year-old ripe puerhs from Yunnan Sourcing and White2Tea to be much more interesting and cost-effective. It’s substantially better than what you might find at a supermarket (except for maybe some Asian grocery stores like Uwajimaya in Seattle where I got a surprisingly pleasing and tippy Yongde for less money than this tea), but there’s better stuff out there.

This tea has made quite the turnaround since I first tried it a few months ago. I first received it and was incredibly disappointed by the pungent and quite off-putting medicinal aroma that emanated from the sample bag, such that I was terrified that the 2012 Qi Sheng Gu cake I had bought would turn into this after a couple years. Thankfully, after giving this a second chance and placing my sample of it into a little cup in the open air for a few days to mellow whatever was left of that medicinal character from being in the sample bag, I’m almost able to drink this with an unbiased palate. This tea is a nice and pleasant semi-aged sheng It’s now nicely brothy and a little bit dry and earthy with a bit of fruit and floral character.

This is one sweet tea, and it’s full-bodied and complex. I found myself taking my time drinking it because of the building sweetness and thickness that stays in the mouth in the way that bitterness builds in the mouth when drinking successive cups of sheng puerh. The lack of pile fermentation in this relatively new production is such that the tea might be described as semi-dry or something. It definitely reminded me of a nice, tippy, sweet, and chocolatey Yunnan gold bud black tea.

Instantly became one of my favorite shou chas in my cupboard. It’s in league with Green Miracle by Yunnan Sourcing and Brown Sugar by White2Tea, for sure, but it cuts differently in flavor profile, being a bit more mellow and hanging on just a bit to the fermented character, being a bit woody and earthy but certainly sweet and clean. This tea produces many steepings out past a dozen. I find it a bit hard to fairly classify specific flavor notes, but if I had to select an ideal weather for this tea, it’d be 50-60ºF and raining while the other shous I listed might be more well suited to more wintry weather. Great value for money, possibly besting the cost effectiveness of the aforementioned YS and W2T puerhs.

Some of the reviews on this said that there was a meat flavor note to it, and this was certainly true initially, and it wasn’t the best flavor note, but after a couple of months, it’s effectively disappeared, or at least my palate has gotten used to it. I could drink it all day for many days straight. Nice and malty and sweet and fruity, and it’ll produce a respectable number of steepings for a black tea. It’s also interesting to see the variations in the tea it produces at different temperatures. For later steepings, however, cooler water as low as 170F is best for preventing the brew from tasting sour. I’d recommend all YS Bi Luo Chun teas based off of this one.

As far as black teas go, this one is just so deep in complexity. Based on this, I would strongly recommend all old arbor black teas from Yunnan Sourcing. It’s so well balanced with dark fruit notes, appropriate sweetness coupled with a perfect amount of bitterness and full body. It also held up well to many steepings, and just continued to develop and produce good tea. I’d be really interested to see if this ages well, but unfortunately I don’t think I can wait long enough to see!

I mean, it was good, but I didn’t see the point of buying this brick when I could’ve gotten better quality loose black tea material that didn’t have to be broken apart. Meh.