2017 Grandpa's

this tea when brewed gongfu style and with the water kept near boiling for brewing its very syrupy with slight dark chocolate bitterness and stewed fruit. i fash brew it to keep from getting too bitter. just long enough to put the filter on the gong dao bei and then decanting it quite good, the flavor is alright. not stellar not terrible. i somewhat recomend this

I’m back!!
It’s been a long time since I’ve been on Steepster (since Dec 2017 to be exact), and I’ve been re-familiarizing myself with the discussion board and a stack of messages that I need to answer. I thought the best way to get back into the motions is to start drinking and reviewing!! Therefore, I began with some Grandpa Balls!
I picked these up quite a bit ago, for they are the perfect add-on to a free-shipping promo. I know that these “should” be brewed in the true Grandpa way, but I went for the Gongfu route. They are tightly rolled and give off a light aroma of dark fruit; however, these are not overly fragrant. I warmed up the Shibo and dropped the shu inside to settle in. Once I lifted the lid, I was greeted with typical Menghai tones of soil, sweet clay, wet wood. I washed the puerh and began my brewing. This lil dude is super smooth and hardy. I played with my parameters, and there really isn’t away to over-brew this. The tea kept its smooth pace with an easy-going sweetness. The qi was comforting and relaxing with heavy warm waves and a state of ease. I still have a ton of these on hand, so I think these will be my go-to car teas. I figure I’ll grab a couple of these and throw them in my big thermos during long drives!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf3ZRVrH4Ry/

Additional note:
Sipdown. Last time I tried it grandpa style (cause the name lol) and this time I’m taking it through the full gaiwan treatment hehe. I put the 8g ball in a 110ml gaiwan and doing short infusions with boiling water. Starting at 10s, adding 10s each time.

I wanted to make an additional note for myself (and others) that the aroma that I got after the rinse was soil, dirt (not sure if I smelled the wet leaves before) but the flavor of the first 10s infusion was so clean and it has such a pleasant smooth mouth-feeling.

It is so mellow and carefree. Savory, slightly sweet. Nice cha qi, somewhat stimulating, mood lifting but relaxing. I’m certainly going to enjoy this throughout the night. I think I’ll get a few more on my next order to bring on short trips.

I had initially planned to go gong fu with this Grandpa. I undid the paper wire twisty thing, plopped the ball in a 100ml pot and turned the kettle on. But being curious ol’ me I didn’t just toss the wrapper in the wastepaper basket and, lo and behold, the crinkled little square had instructions printed on it. Eager to correct my mistake I take a water glass out of the cupboard and proceed to my first ever grandpa brewing. But this prologue is getting a bit out of hand so let’s get down to business.

I did a quick rinse and then filled the glass with water just off the boil. After a minute or two of waiting patiently for the brew to cool down a bit I had before me a glassful of unexpectedly dark liquor. One could easily have mistaken it for Coke that’s gone flat.
The nose had something sweet in it. Dark brown sugar, but not as strong as a muscovado, maybe demerara? There was some woodiness too, and old books, slightly dusty.

The taste made me think a while. At first I thought coffee, but that didn’t exactly hit the spot. So then I thought dark chocolate, it was after all slightly bitter, slightly sweet, but it lacked this roasted cocoa taste, so chocolate didn’t cut it either. And then I asked myself why do so many people associate shou pu’er with mushrooms. This is when a memory from a few years ago surfaced in my mind. You see I could never make the connection because I was thinking about the wrong kind of mushrooms. I was trying to find the aroma and taste of the most common button mushrooms and it simply wasn’t there. And then I had a revelation – the chaga and reishi tea I had back when I was in my superfood craze phase. Slightly bitter, slightly woody… Sweeten it with brown sugar to cover up the medicinal bitterness… Absolutely spot on.

It’s been some 15 minutes since I hit the leaf mark in my glass of grandpa style tea and all this time I’ve been having this lingering demerara sugar aftertaste on each out-breath. As much as I enjoy it I’d say it’s high time I went for a refill.

A nice hardy shu. Has a coffee thickness. Robust but mellow.

Tea Club – been sitting out since I got it.
Gaiwan 100ml, boiling water
rinse
10s – earthy and a little sweet, light orange color
After this steep I picked the ball apart, I probably should have waited or let it work itself apart, but I was impatient. Liquor went super shou dark on the next steep.
10s-earth, bit of dark, sweetness
10s – solid earth, hella dark
10s, 10s, sweetness getting longer
More steeps after this but I stopped recording notes. Nice accessible shou

I brewed this grandpa style in a fairly large clay pot. Initially very sweet, later steepings were more flavourful, but it never got bitter. True to its name as a grandpa style tea Liquor as dark as coffee and super smooth. It’s hard to get me to say good things about shu pu-erhs, but I’ll definitely be buying more of this one.

Had this tea again and was pleasantly reminded how good it is. This tea is very simple, dirt cheap and totally unfancy. Extremely reliable too: you can be absolutely lackadaisical about the water temperature, amount or steeping times: the result is always more or less the same. The taste is always simple, comforting and relaxing.

It is very much like interacting with an old man who is simple, at piece with himself, cordial, and full of unprepossessing life wisdom. I want to be like this tea when I am old.

Gongfu Sipdown (648)!

Yes, Gongfu – not Grandpa. It’s just what I was in the mood for.

Recently picked up a few of the 2019 version of this tea during W2T’s latest product drop, so I figured I’d finish this tea off to make some room in my stash for more tea while also giving myself a bit of a refresher on the tea and what I might expect to see from the 2019 version…

I drank it along with some pretty overripe Quebec strawberries, and the result was a highly sloppy but deeply delicious tea session – very thick and dense infusions, with a sweet and kind of molasses-y earthy note. Lots of dark, wet wood and hints of dark fruits as well, which were exaggerated slightly from my fruit pairing. Really good!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BzluF3VAepQ/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIgu46uI9XU

The last of my shu samples from W2T. Decided to brew this up last night as I came home from visiting my sister-in-law in the maternity ward.

Despite the advice and the obvious hint in the name, I put the ball in my usual teapot, rinsed and steeped. The first steeps are the usual shu dark, very smooth and quite thick. After a few infusions the thick/smooth/dark recedes and taste comes to the foreground. It’s an enjoyable tea.

Since it’s the last of my samples, I’ll summarise them here. My reference is my Dayi 7692, simply because that’s what I was drinking before. That one is pretty neutral: nothing offensive but also nothing to commend it.

Red shroom: motor oil thick. Nothing against that but a bit of taste would be nice.
Grandpa, only thick in the first few steeps. Smoother than the shroom and tastier in later infusions.
Gold melon, not much thickness, not as smooth as Grandpa but much tastier. My preference out of these three.