TeaChat

gasninja wrote:Today I had a 90's Traditional stored Xiaguan Tuo from Henry Trading co.. It is hard to believe but Trad. storage actually removes alot of fermentation funkyness , making the tea lighter. while nothing really mind blowing did have an interesting berry flavor.

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Sorry

shah82 wrote:gasninja, traditional storage removes a lot of?

I have had great experience with dry stored 80's shu. Tastes like what piano keys smell. Monster qi. Not durable at.all.

Your piano keys smell pretty funny

I wasn't the original person to describe it like that, but I do have a baby grand in the living room, and yeah, the tea does sorta taste like piano keys. Sorta like the temple wood that some sheng does, but... Anyways, it's a very nice taste in actuality, and I wish it lasted longer.

shah82 wrote:I wasn't the original person to describe it like that, but I do have a baby grand in the living room, and yeah, the tea does sorta taste like piano keys. Sorta like the temple wood that some sheng does, but... Anyways, it's a very nice taste in actuality, and I wish it lasted longer.

Gee, how many keys does your piano have left?

Don't worry, I only ate the ones that get stuck after being keyed.

Old pianos do have a very distinct aroma. Sniff it out next time you are around one.

Mystery Taiwan cake today it's either a 7582 8582 8592. The website from the company where this tea was obtained ( unfortunately they won't ship out of Taiwan. I found this out after cyber bombing them with email using google translate ) says that this is a cnnp "knockoff" 8582. Either way good stuff. It still caries allot of Storage taste which which kinda threw me off the first couple brews. But it caries through with a strong herbaceous after taste and a flavor that expands to fill your whole mouth. I wish there where more outlets for tea like this online. This is not the best traditional stored tea. In fact it is the cheapest one this shop sells in this age range. Yet setting aside the storage taste( that I'm sure wasn't helped by keeping this tea in a sealed plastic bag for the past six months)' this is better than 95% of the traditional stored tea available online.

96 purple DaYi . This is the first Dayi cake made and they set it off right. I don't think this cake saw much if any traditional storage. I would not be surprised if there was LBZ present in the blend of this cake. I'm not big with flavor descriptors but this cake was loaded with layers of different tastes . It leaves your throat tingling with an icy sensation for a long time after drinking. My only complaint would be the thinness of the soup.

Where did you get it?

I've been on vacation for the last two months (moving, and catching up on having too much vacation -- I know, it's a terrible burden), and I had a spectacular last day. The weather is absolutely gorgeous here in DC (just approaching 70F). I walked to Georgetown to have lunch with an old friend. After downing two very greasy slices of pepperoni pizza and saying goodbye to my friend, I went right around the corner to Ching Ching Cha.

It was my first visit to this tea house -- it appears to be one of very few tea houses in the area. I ordered the 10-year aged pu'erh, which was a typical loose leaf sheng. Nice woodiness and such. I think I went about 15+ cups with it. By the end, I was really feeling a nice calm buzz. Here's a picture of the setup.

Wow that place looks great Drax. I looked up there web site and that tea seems like its the oldest but also the cheapest. Did you check out any of there other Puerh.

I enjoyed it a lot. It was my first tea house experience, so I have nothing to compare it. Next time, if going alone, I would remember to bring a book.

They only seemed to serve three kinds of pu'erh. I went with the middle one, but they did have a more expensive, 20 year aged pu. I think I'd try that one out with somebody else.

I was a little unsure at first anyway, because I asked the server whether the pu'erh was raw or cooked, and he didn't know. In his defense, he just started there (and sounded like he was newly arrived in the States), so I decided to go w/ the "middle" pu. And it was definitely an aged sheng.

I get a sneaky suspicion that there's a mass-produced loose leaf aged sheng. I bought some pu'erh from a place down in Virginia Beach, and she scooped it out of a massive 5-lb bag, but I couldn't catch any markings on it. This tea is probably similar.

I thought about buying some of the 20-year stuff to take home, but I ended up getting a gaiwan and some bai cha instead. Their current selection of teapots and gaiwans is much fewer than in those pictures; still a nice selection, though. They had about 5-10 pots that were of the 80mL or smaller size, each about $25-30. I can't say that the clay was spectacular on them, though one looked interesting.

They had a lot of other tea-related stuff for sale, which was nice. While I was there, a number of people ordered food, and it smelled spectacular.

I'll definitely be going back, but I will likely reserve it as a place to meet people and such (it's also about a 40 minute walk from my place, so not exactly next door ).

Today I finished my session with the 2002 Xiaguan Bao Yan mushroom tuo. Started off brewing this in half in my gaiwan and half in my new zini shui ping from EoT to compare. I've always brewed my puerhs in gaiwans, so the experience of using zini was eye-opening and pleasant.

After the second brew, I added all the leaves from the gaiwan into the yixing to push it further. This tea has interested me since I bought a sample from YS, and I'm glad I managed to find some after someone ransacked all of remaining YS' remaining stock.

My pu week.



"80's TongQingHao" / 7532 Orange in Orange / 2006 Yiwu by Mandarin

Sounds allot like my week
70's tong Qing hao/ 86 yiwu spring buds / orange in orange/
90's traditional characters 8653 (today)