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This tea is just so very very nice. Today I bulk brewed up a thermos of it, starting with cooler water, because I was simultaneously drinking some Bi Lo Chun, and then ramping up the temp for the last few infusions to nearly boiling. As always, this is a lovely tea, but what was a little unusual and different is that somehow the flavor has a very strong sweet/caramel/woody note that was so strongly reminiscent of the 2008 Yi Wu bamboo aged puerh I’ve been drinking that I could have sworn it was the same tea. And since I love that Yi Wu, this was a good surprise.

This is a lovely anise-sweet young sheng that I got as a free sample with a recent order. I did a parallel tasting with another very nice young sheng, and the link below is to a version of this with photos on my tea page.

Long twisted intact-appearing leaves and a fair bit of stem. The dry leaves smell sweet and earthy.

I put 2 grams of my tiniest gaiwan, with 1.5 ounces near boiling water. After a flash rinse, they smell even stronger and more delicious.

First infusion, 205°F/96°C, 10": sweet anise

Second infusion, 205°F/96°C, 15": sweet anise, woody/earthy starting up

Third infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": sweet anise, woody/earthy

Fourth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": sweet anise, woody/earthy, still the anise is very strong, bit of bitter aftertaste

Fifth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 35": sweet anise, earthy has retreated now, bitter/sweet aftertaste

Sixth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 60" (stopped to take a picture of the leaves): sweet anise and earthy, rich and strong

Seventh infusion, 205°F/96°C, 1’: a little dilute, should have let it go longer, more sweet water with hints of anise

Eighth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 3’: oh, this is much better, my earthy flavors are back. Still delicious, yum. Young sheng star.

Losing count—10? 11? still wonderful, both of them. Troubling fact: I want to shoot the spent leaves, lay them out to show the size and pluck, but they’re just not quitting, now 15, 16 infusions in. It will be a long night.

1.5 liter later (the kettle was filled completely when I started), they’re not as rich, but still, a little better than just sweet water.

Wet leaves are are mix of light brown and green, large leaves with some more than two inches long, mostly intact.

Full review with photos:
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/LaoBanPen&YongDe11.10.html

This is a lovely smoky-earthy young sheng that I got as a free sample with a recent order. I did a parallel tasting with another very nice young sheng, and the link below is to a version of this with photos on my tea page.

This tea has long intact-appearing leaves and a fair bit of stem. The leaves smell sweet and earthy, with a bit of mushroom odor to the Lao Ban Pen.

I put 2 grams into my tiniest gaiwans, with 1.5 ounces near boiling water. After a flash rinse, the leaves smell even stronger and more delicious.

First infusion, 205°F/96°C, 10": smoky, earthy, sweet

Second infusion, 205°F/96°C, 15": sweet and earthy, woody, bit of anise and smokiness lighter already

Third infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": sweet and earthy, woody, bit of anise, smokiness almost gone

Fourth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 20": earthy, sweet, smoky

Fifth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 35": sweet and earthy, bit of herbaceous flavor

Sixth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 60" (stopped to take a picture of the leaves): sweet and earthy, deep, warm, rich

Seventh infusion, 205°F/96°C, 1’: both a little dilute, should have let them go longer, more sweet water with hints of earthy

Eighth infusion, 205°F/96°C, 3’: oh, this is much better, my anise and earthy flavors are back. Still delicious, yum. Young sheng star.

Losing count—10? 11? still wonderful. Troubling fact: I want to shoot the spent leaves, lay them out to show the size and pluck, but they’re just not quitting, now 15, 16 infusions in. It will be a long night.

1.5 liter later (the kettle was filled completely when I started), not as rich, but still, better than just sweet water. Based on the kettle volume and the gaiwan size, both of the young shengs gave me about 20 infusions. Nice teas.

Wet leaves are are mix of light brown and green, quite intact, and small to medium sized, about an inch to an inch and half long.

Full review with photos:
http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/LaoBanPen&YongDe11.10.html

A very nice oolong, quite pricey, actually, and I’m not sure yet if it’s worth the price. I’m trying to understand the buttery flavor other people have reported in Taiwanese mountain oolongs, like Da Yu Ling. Making this one in a small clay pot, about 5 grams of tea in about 100 mL of water. The water is near boiling—the Pino is keeping it between 198 and 212 degrees throughout.

First infusion was 30 seconds, not too sweet, but rich, floral, warm, a little spicy, and yes, a little buttery….I think that what I have been thinking of as a sun-warmed hay could be interpreted as buttery.

A little longer 2nd infusion is spicier, vegetal, still a little of the ‘buttery’, but the floral/sweet elements are a bit overwhelmed because of the overlong infusion. Third infusion, down again to about 40", better, the buttery is more prominent, but the sweet/floral is not as strong as the first infusion. 4th at 45 seconds is spicy, sweet, floral, but the buttery has receded this time. By the 8th infusion it’s getting pretty much to slightly sweet or spicy water.

In the end, this one presently lacks the very strong sweet and floral notes I expect in the best Alishan oolongs, and I suspect the difference is not the nature of the tea, but the storage conditions with the tea in a large jar instead of tiny vacuum sealed bags.

This lovely tea continues to make friends and influence people. Today Lisa said, “this is the first time I haven’t added anything—no honey or lemon or sugar—to my tea!”

And this was a cup from an admittedly inferior brewing—fit in around some crazy fast-paced work that went right through lunch—a 30 minute first infusion (not a typo, yes, 30 MINUTES!), several more almost as insane infusions, mixed in the thermos, and the end result was not only drinkable, but charmed someone new to my teas. Good job, dear puerh!

Drank this in a gongfu session yesterday. Best yet brewing of this tea—mellow, sweet, a little fruity. Mmm.

Can’t be sure what made it better—didn’t measure the tea quantity beforehand, used cool water per usual, bit longer first infusion, maybe?

First time drinking this tea in a while. Like most bricks, it is challengingly compressed, and one of the teas that inspired me to buy some particularly pointed letter openers. Success! several grams of tea have just soaked up their ‘flash’ rinse quickly in my gaiwan. Earthy, sweet, fruity, plummy scents arise—makes me want to eat it as much as drink it.

Greg warns about overly long steeps at first—suggesting a possibility of off flavors. I find nothing like, but perhaps this is in part due to letting it ‘air out’ loosely wrapped in my puerh drawer. The first two steeps—no more than 30 seconds between the—are combined in my small yunomi, and deep red-brown liquor, and I want to drink fast but am waiting….tap, tap, tapping impatient feet—for it to cool. And the first sip is rewarding—deep, sweet, lovely, all the things promised in the smell of the wet leaf. And nothing whatsoever ‘off’ about it.

The leaves are still swelling and will eventually fill a good part of the gaiwan, so this should have a lot of steeps in it.

10 or so steeps in, the gaiwan is at least 1/3 full with very broken up leaves. It still requires a bit of care to avoid oversteeping—and responds well to a little dilution if I overdo it. Earthy, sweet, fruity, plummy. Rich body. Compared to the Norbu private label Lao Tou Cha nugget brick, this is an earthier tea, but equally delicious in a different way. And like that tea, it is very potent due to the density—a little goes long way. I really thought it was such a thin little sliver when I dropped it in the cup….

Many infusions later—certainly more than 20, maybe closer to 30—it is getting on towards sweet water, that gentle ending, but this with what are still very short infusions. Will give it longer to see if I can coax more out of it before we’re done. …… 1.5 L into it, the kettle is empty, but the tea leaves still have some sweet & spicy scent left.

Finished my sample of this tea, and it was most impressive. I underestimated the quantity of leaf and ended up with my gaiwan jam-packed with leaf, and got 20-30 infusions out of it. By the very end, it was mostly sweet water, but still pleasant.

I hope to be vacationing in Hawaii in the not-too-distant future, and will try to score some of this while I’m there.

Breakfast sencha this morning, a particularly sweet and delicious brewing: 5 grams tea in the 5 oz kyusu, water 150 degrees to start, up to 170 by the 4th infusion, so nice in my blue Hagi.

Entering this note on my phone, can’t seem to use the sliders.

I brewed up a fabulous batch of this tea a few days ago—thick bodied, rich, sweet, earthy, spicy, with that deep caramel undertone that is so silky smooth—and it was so well received by everyone else in the clinic workroom that I didn’t get enough of it. I’d hoped that maybe I had enough life left in the leaves to do a few more brewings when I got back to the quiet of my office that evening, but while I did get a little more tea, it was not the same.

This was a bulk brewed batch, 2 pieces of the tea cylinder, about one and a half inches long, brief flash rinse, infusion water 195-212 degrees (started as the kettle was still heating up, and kept up as it cooled down a little), total infusion volume just over one quart (filled my thermos and I got a bonus cuppa). Wow. This infusion was pretty close to perfect.