Show off your Pu!!!!!!!

[solitude]

All my cakes are stored with a piece of paper with the basic information about the tea (since I don’t speak Chinese)

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[debunix]

A few new puerhs, from the tea-stuff photo frenzy of a few weeks back:

a random-looking brick that was not too pricey on sale at Wing Hop Fung:






A not-so-cheap tuo that smelled nicely earthy through the wrapper:









And I finally shot some pics of the 2007 White Bud Sheng puerh from Norbu that I loved at the second sip (the first, from an accidental minute plus first infusion, was.....um....unpleasant). I liked this tea enough to buy several beengs, and when Greg gave me a beeng of his 2011 pressing of a similar tea, wanted to shoot the 2007 and 2011 together. I kept forgetting to bring one of the pristine whole beengs from where I had them stashed at work, and when I finally remembered, left it sitting on the counter in the evening, and the next morning found it like this:



It had to have been knocked down by the cat, but I'm not sure whether the cat or guinea pig was responsible for the larger nibbles (fortunately neither got sick from nibbling the tea!).

But eventually I got them together




(2007)


(2011)

and the comparison, which was what I was most interested in, the older tea being now paler than the new


2007 top, 2011 bottom

Still haven't tried the brick or the tuo yet, so no tea reviews, just tea views.

[shah82]

I've enjoyed that not-inexpensive tuo and it's almost gone, now...

[debunix]

Nice to hear a good report on the tuo. There is so little information provided for the teas at WHF (for those of us who do not read chinese) that I rarely buy there. But I've gotten some nice puerh from them before and occasionally I wing it with another one.

[shah82]

It's a 2003 Yiwu made for Wistaria Tea House in Taiwan.

The first couple of brews are sour, so you might want to do washes...

You also want to be careful in that it's a more sturdy Yiwu, really intended for more serious aging than many other Yiwus. That means it's on the more bitter and tannic side of Yiwus. That being said, once you get used to what it has, it's pretty good, and it can be really good deep into the session.

[debunix]

Sounds like I might want to try it and put it aside for a while?

[TIM]

It's a 2003 Yiwu made for Wistaria Tea House in Taiwan.

The first couple of brews are sour, so you might want to do washes...

You also want to be careful in that it's a more sturdy Yiwu, really intended for more serious aging than many other Yiwus. That means it's on the more bitter and tannic side of Yiwus. That being said, once you get used to what it has, it's pretty good, and it can be really good deep into the session.

One of the best tea you can get. Mind sharing your brewing parameter?

[debunix]

Another question, now that I'm online and comparing my photos, regarding the brick I posted above: googling suggests this is from Li Ming tea factory, made in 2006, but once again I am failing to find one of the characters suggested by Wiktionary for sheng or shu on the packaging.

Is it just a problem with my eyes, or are those not the right characters to use to look for sheng/shu character?

[wyardley]

It's a 2003 Yiwu made for Wistaria Tea House in Taiwan.

Are you talking about the tuo with the green writing on a white wrapper? That's what I thought at first, but I'm pretty sure not, though the wrapper style is similar. The Wistaria ones (at least the 2003 tuocha) that I've seen have fanciful names, rather than the name of the mountain (for example, the Yiwu I have, from 2003, is called "紫聘"), and don't have the QS stuff on them. The Wistaria tuos and cakes from 2003 were, I believe, pressed by 6TFM, and do seem to have the 6FTM company name (六大茶山) printed on the bottom.

I'm sure someone else can make this out better, but this one looks to be something like 天育茶厂 (which is probably wrong, since I can't find examples of this tuo, though there does seem to be a company of that name) in Simao.

[wyardley]

Is it just a problem with my eyes, or are those not the right characters to use to look for sheng/shu character?

Did you look underneath the labels that were added by the importer?

[debunix]

Is it just a problem with my eyes, or are those not the right characters to use to look for sheng/shu character?

Did you look underneath the labels that were added by the importer?

For the brick, the front of the label is unobstructed--is this something that would more likely be on the back, where the nutrition facts label might obscure it?

[shah82]

Ooops...

Tim, same as for any other sheng...

preheated stoneware gaiwan 7g/140ml 3,5,7,10,15,20,30,... no washes, and adjusted for strength of previous brew.

I simply don't have enough of any one sheng to really experiment with times, waters, vessels.

[Drax]

The tuo wrapper has 2006 on the back, as debunix mentions....

In any case, I see a 生茶 on the front and the back, which I would take to mean raw tea...

Either way, sounds like an interesting find! I have yet to stumble across pu'erh in any sort of physical shop, though maybe that's not so surprising given my locale

[wyardley]

For the brick, the front of the label is unobstructed--is this something that would more likely be on the back, where the nutrition facts label might obscure it?

Is this book from the same tea:


The first underlined part on the front ends '青砖' (qīng zhuān, i.e., green brick), which would be another way of saying it's sheng.

[debunix]

Yes, that's from the same tea.

I need to memorize these characters....

青砖

or find/make a simple reference guide for characters for the basics like this, raw, ripe, etc.