2019 Tie Guo Li "Super Mini" Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake

I bought these cute mini cakes of ripe pu’erh about 2 1/2 years ago and was initially unimpressed. However, true to the promise of YS, they have improved with age! No fishiness or foul odors, but a cool fragrance of forest floor during a light snowfall on an early-winter morning. the flavor has intensified since purchase. I snapped the 8g cake in half and gave the 4g piece a 10s wash in boiling water, which loosened the compression a bit. The first steep was a minute in 8 ounces boiling alpine spring water, and 6 further infusions varied from 15s to 3 min at the end. Flavors were inoffensive, and reminiscent of freshly-sawn lumber, and assamic black tea with slight earthiness. I enjoyed every steeping, which ranged from a thick, near-black soup, to a medium brown in color. The coin-sized, wrapped cakes are convenient to carry on a journey and the leaf particles were generally over 1 cm in size, making simple decanting with a spoon or improvised gaiwan feasible. And if one is truly sturdy, the tea could be drunk grandpa style, though I would definitely suggest using only a partial cake, perhaps a fourth of one. But again, that makes them handy for travel. Still available from YS, and reasonably priced.