Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

One of the intentionally aged teas, Pu-Erh has a loyal following.


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Mar 24th, '13, 11:46
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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by gingkoseto » Mar 24th, '13, 11:46

yanom wrote:Makes me profoundly jealous to read about people who live somewhere warm and humid! Unless I go the pumidor route, nice puerh will never be something I can drink daily -- too expensive to drink good, aged stuff every day, and too cold & dry to buy young puerh and wait 20 years.
(I am experimenting with cardboard boxes, tub of water inside, clingfilmed up, no mould yet (six months) -- definitely worth the risk, even if there's only a 20% chance the stuff will be drinkable in the future.)
Might make me jealous but still enjoy reading about people's experiences....
I don't know how cold and how dry your place is. But if it's really cold and really dry, I think you have two options:
1. Do temperature control and humidity control of your tea storage room. You should treat your own rooom no less than this anyway as very dry air could be harmful to health and skin :mrgreen:
2. Put $10 each month in some investment in the next 20 years, as your future tea fund :wink:
Either of the above way might be better than waiting for 20 years without enough environment control.

Mar 24th, '13, 12:21
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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by theredbaron » Mar 24th, '13, 12:21

yanom wrote:Makes me profoundly jealous to read about people who live somewhere warm and humid!

There are certain disadvantages as well though...

I don't know how cold and dry your place is, but i would still buy Pu Erh to stock. While i think that pumidors are dangerous things, as gingkoseto said already, i would just try humidity control in the room in which you plan to store the tea. I guess you will have a heater on in the winter. So just buy some room humidifier, and see how it raises the humidity in your room. It will also be better for your furniture and skin anyhow.

Look at it like this, a few cakes here and there won't cost you the world. If they turn out OK, you will be in tea heaven in ten or 15 years (there is nothing nicer than a shelf stocked with a large supply of many good teas).
If they won't turn out, you didn't lose a fortune. But at least you tried.

I am sure than within about 5 years you will find out if the teas transform enough to see if the endeavor is worth it.

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by yanom » Mar 24th, '13, 12:46

You're definitely right it's worth trying it and that's what I'm doing: some bings in a couple of cardboard boxes, with a bowl of water in each, fairly sealed up. Temperature is around 20 degrees, humidity around 70-75. Even that is far from ideal (for me): that seems to be more "Kunming" levels than anywhere more traditional (like HK/Guangzou/Bangkok!). I'll be surprised if this tea is drinkable in the future, but it's worth risking a couple of hundred quid just in case. Plus, I'd already bought a few young bings and after a year of normal "indoor" conditions they were getting very dry.

Maybe I should consider a humidifier. In the winter it's as low as 35% indoors. But I'm not sure I like the idea of leaving one of those things on while I'm away.

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by theredbaron » Mar 24th, '13, 13:23

yanom wrote:I'll be surprised if this tea is drinkable in the future, but it's worth risking a couple of hundred quid just in case. Plus, I'd already bought a few young bings and after a year of normal "indoor" conditions they were getting very dry.
Another thing which i am doing myself is buying semi-aged teas that are not too expensive. There are some around.
That cuts the aging time short, and you can already see much easier in which direction the tea is going. And you'll be sooner able to have your own good supply of aged tea,

One does not necessarily need to only go for hyped teas that cost a fortune. Some are definitely very nice. But that does not mean that lesser teas cannot be nice either.
I can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars for some real Lao Banzhang, or a Yiwu from a famous village from ancient trees. But the range is so wide that there are many teas i can afford. And some very inexpensive teas i just buy on spec, like this one recently:

http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/pro ... oduct=2323

I did not try it yet, the smell is still somewhat youngish, but it's a beautifully sweet smell coming out of the bag. With 12 US$ a bag - i can only win. I bought two bags, which is 1 Kg!

A quite inexpensive tea that i have myself bought a few cakes of, and have recommended here already a couple of times, and which is already well in its adolescence:

http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/pro ... oduct=1920

I think for its price it is very good, and it will even in a dry climate take not too much time to be more than drinkable.

I have also a few cakes on my shelf (not too many though - my means are quite limited now) which were a bit more expensive, but i did not buy them over the net.

Mar 24th, '13, 14:02
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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by yanom » Mar 24th, '13, 14:02

Yes, I've got some similar bings from YS, mainly ones where the storage is described as being more humid than the regular Kunming storage. In fact most of my bings are semi-aged. Even so, it's extremely hard for me to get puerh-pleasure from something that's not aged. So I don't look forward to drinking semi-aged puerh.

But I did recently try a bing I'd bought from Hou De, Ming-Yuan Hao "Yieh Sheng Chiao Mu", from 2005, which surprised me by being further along its journey than I expected: I wasn't expecting to enjoy it at all at the moment, and while I thought it way inferior to aged puerh it wasn't actually offensive, which was nice! :)

Even if my teas are actually nice to drink in 10-15 years time I'm not kidding myself that they'll be as good as if they were stored with a pro in an HK warehouse, or even as good as if they were in somewhere naturally hot & humid.

But there's another issue here. If I didn't do anything to the storage here, then I think my young or semi-aged tea might end up undrinkable over time simply because it would get dried out? So I've got to do something.

Given the prices, I'm realistic about knowing I'm rarely if ever going to drink top of the range aged puerh. But for me it's not about drinking the best tea, it's about regularly drinking aged puerh, with no nastiness or odd tastes. If I was in HK again I could probably find that, over time. Here in the UK it doesn't seem possible, without spending a lot.

Mar 24th, '13, 14:06
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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by yanom » Mar 24th, '13, 14:06

So basically redbaron, you're in a position where you can buy semi-aged cheapish tea and after a few years it'll deliver what puerh should deliver. I'm not in that hot and humid position and that's why, as I mentioned earlier, I'm very jealous! :D

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by theredbaron » Mar 24th, '13, 14:35

yanom wrote:So basically redbaron, you're in a position where you can buy semi-aged cheapish tea and after a few years it'll deliver what puerh should deliver. I'm not in that hot and humid position and that's why, as I mentioned earlier, I'm very jealous! :D

I would have no problem drinking that Wu Chi Dao now. I just wanna wait a bit more. But this one in particular i think is already OK.
At least for me.
Very little greenish taste left.

But trust me, there are other aspects of my life you really would not be jealous about. :? But tea does help. :wink:

Some teas i feel seem to age quicker than others. One example i found was the 2009 Yunnan Sourcing "Wu Liang Lan Xiang". When i tried it late last year during a nibble i was amazed how quickly it has begun transforming already, much quicker than most of my other teas in such a short time. And it was really nice!
Which would/could possibly make this tea a prime candidate for trying to age it in your climate. While the 2009 version seems to be sold out, the 2010 version (which i have not tried, but gathering from the description seems to come from the same area, place and source) seems to still be available. Here's a link:

http://www.yunnansourcing.com/store/pro ... oduct=1340

And it's not expensive either.

Sorry if i seem to be pushing Yunnansourcing teas, but for me Scott's company is very convenient to order from. And his site is tea-porn for me! :P

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by yanom » Mar 24th, '13, 14:46

Thanks for the advice.

One more thing, to go back to the original topic of this thread:

- There must have been a reason why HK people waited until sheng was aged before drinking it.
- There must have been a reason why people invented SHU.

The reason *must be that people preferred aged sheng or regular shu to non-aged sheng.

Unfortunately, I have the same preferences. :(


*EDIT: actually far from true: at least one other reason could be that they didn't care about taste or pleasurable effects, it was simply for medicinal reasons.

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by gingkoseto » Mar 24th, '13, 15:57

yanom wrote: - There must have been a reason why HK people waited until sheng was aged before drinking it.
- There must have been a reason why people invented SHU.

The reason *must be that people preferred aged sheng or regular shu to non-aged sheng.
I think that has a lot to do with the climate and traditional diet. I know quite a few older Cantonese people who wouldn't touch any tea that doesn't have dark red color in it. To them, dark-red color means healthy and mild to your body, and green color or green taste (even from green tea) means too "cold" or too harsh for your body. This health theory is quite true and consistent to what I know about traditional Chinese medicine - when the weather is hot and humid, the body should be guarded from any invasion of "cold" air.

I believe people's tastes also have to do with their inner body "climate". I sort of enjoy the taste of young sheng but my body refuses to take too much of it.

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by HifideliTea » Mar 24th, '13, 20:56

Another one: seaweed.
Someone who reads chinese and saw a label of a Purple Cane ripe told me about this... :shock:

Maybe it's fishy and they market is as seaweed.

lordsbm wrote:Actually shu can developed into a lot of different flavors.

枣香 - Jujube
梅香 - Plum
桂圆香 - Longan
参香 - Herbal
樟香 - Camphor
荷香 - Mint/Peppermint (some refer it as lotus also)
陈香 - Aged (To my understanding like semi-wet stored)
糯香 - Glutinous Rice
米香 - Rice
竹香 - Bamboo

I think there's a few more which I can't recall.

edit: added bamboo and lotus :lol:

edit:
蜜香 - Honey
蔘香 - Ginseng (similar to herbal)
栗香 - Roasted chestnut (similar to jujube)
古香 - same as aged
果香 - Fruity
花香 - Flora
原木香 - Similar to camphor

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by lordsbm » Mar 24th, '13, 21:48

HifideliTea wrote:Another one: seaweed.
Someone who reads chinese and saw a label of a Purple Cane ripe told me about this... :shock:

Maybe it's fishy and they market is as seaweed.
:lol: Maybe it's a new flavor to market wet stored shu? :roll:

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by lordsbm » Mar 24th, '13, 21:52

gingkoseto wrote:I think that has a lot to do with the climate and traditional diet. I know quite a few older Cantonese people who wouldn't touch any tea that doesn't have dark red color in it. To them, dark-red color means healthy and mild to your body, and green color or green taste (even from green tea) means too "cold" or too harsh for your body. This health theory is quite true and consistent to what I know about traditional Chinese medicine - when the weather is hot and humid, the body should be guarded from any invasion of "cold" air.

I believe people's tastes also have to do with their inner body "climate". I sort of enjoy the taste of young sheng but my body refuses to take too much of it.
I can agree to this. Young sheng is often too stimulative for those with gastric problem.

What I can't figure, my body type is supposed to be han (cold), but I'm doing ok with young sheng :roll: Maybe it's due to Singapore climate. :lol:

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by Tead Off » Mar 24th, '13, 23:24

theredbaron wrote:
yanom wrote:So basically redbaron, you're in a position where you can buy semi-aged cheapish tea and after a few years it'll deliver what puerh should deliver. I'm not in that hot and humid position and that's why, as I mentioned earlier, I'm very jealous! :D

I would have no problem drinking that Wu Chi Dao now. I just wanna wait a bit more. But this one in particular i think is already OK.
At least for me.
Very little greenish taste left.

But trust me, there are other aspects of my life you really would not be jealous about. :? But tea does help. :wink:
I also like the Wu Chi Dao. A little smoky but not offensive.

I thought you were moving back to Europe?

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by theredbaron » Mar 25th, '13, 01:28

Tead Off wrote:
I also like the Wu Chi Dao. A little smoky but not offensive.

I thought you were moving back to Europe?

That's the plan.
But it's not easy in our situation, and it will take at least one more year before we are able to do that. There is a mountain of bureaucracy which we have to climb before i can get my family to Europe legally. And then it's building a new life from scratch... :?

Oh, well, on the plus side - more time for my Pu Erh in perfect aging conditions. :wink:

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Re: Puehr Fave flavor notes...seeking your personal ultimate tea

by Tead Off » Mar 25th, '13, 06:48

theredbaron wrote:
Tead Off wrote:
I also like the Wu Chi Dao. A little smoky but not offensive.

I thought you were moving back to Europe?

That's the plan.
But it's not easy in our situation, and it will take at least one more year before we are able to do that. There is a mountain of bureaucracy which we have to climb before i can get my family to Europe legally. And then it's building a new life from scratch... :?

Oh, well, on the plus side - more time for my Pu Erh in perfect aging conditions. :wink:
I think I understand. Good luck with it.

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