Official Pu of the day

[kuánglóng]

2014 Qing Mei Shan [YS] - 5g/80ml in a celadon gaiwan

I've taken to brewing this sheng at around 90°C to get a more balanced front end and to enhance the unique, dew like character of this tea. This has a gentle, but pretty powerful vitalizing energy and some unique, fresh mouthfeel along with a lovely, long aftertaste I find hard to describe; juicy apple skin comes fairly close. Since it's one of those shengs that I primarily like for their freshness and I'm somewhat afraid that it won't age well I will probably vacuum seal some of it 20g wise and put some of those bags in the freezer for future comparisons.

[jayinhk]

Interesting--must be something about the steaming and pressing process. I do like drinking maocha!

Must be. And perhaps because there's less breakage of the leaves with maocha.

Broken leaves = more surface area for oxidation = less volatile compounds = goodbye fragrance

Drinking cha tou I bought at a tea market in Kunming. Brewing in a 500ml F1 zisha pot. This tea appears to have mellowed in the local humidity and lost the very slightly unpleasant edge it had to it--just smooth, pleasant drinking now. Interesting that that edge dissipated with only a few months of storage here, but I'm happy it did, since I have almost a kilo of these cha tou! It'll be interesting to see how this tea evolves over the years, if I don't drink/give it all away before it gets some real age. I sure do like small cha tou!

[stevorama]

Interesting--must be something about the steaming and pressing process. I do like drinking maocha!

Must be. And perhaps because there's less breakage of the leaves with maocha.

[jayinhk]

2014 Chawangpu Jingmai Gu Shu Huang Pian. Pleasant tea. Very approachable. Using larger quantity and longer steeps. Tried both mao cha and cake of this tea. I think I prefer the mao cha as it seemed to have more fragrance. Not sure why.

Interesting--must be something about the steaming and pressing process. I do like drinking maocha!

[stevorama]

2014 Chawangpu Jingmai Gu Shu Huang Pian. Pleasant tea. Very approachable. Using larger quantity and longer steeps. Tried both mao cha and cake of this tea. I think I prefer the mao cha as it seemed to have more fragrance. Not sure why.

[kuánglóng]

2002 Yongpinhao Red Yiwu Zheng Shan - 5g/80ml in a celadon gaiwan.

Some beautiful, complex flavor in there - not much of it though. The remaining bitterness and slight adstringency appear somewhat like a last act of resistance to escape the unavoidable.
Steep after steep I feel like searching for a dried out flower bouquet in the corner of a dusty old attic in the flickering light of a candle. The rest of the story seems equally deserted, this old wood house has seen better days - thin, faint echoes instead of aftertaste, not much texture or energy left to speak of, another ghost tea, oh well ...
Can't believe this stuff sells for $260, I wouldn't accept one for free. YMMV.

[kuánglóng]

Good luck with customs and your stash!

Thanks, Steve.

[stevorama]

Sorry for another ramble - back OT.

No worries. It's true, what I said about high quality teas was overly simplistic. Good luck with customs and your stash!

[kuánglóng]

2015 Hai Lang Hao 'Gao Shan Chen Yun' - 5g/80ml in a celadon gaiwan

Allegedly pressed from mao cha that has been lying around somewhere for a while and it shows. Takes a good three soaking steeps and some time in between to slowly get these leaves out of hibernation and by the time there's something distinct happening at the front end the humble texture is gone for good and you're left with a pretty thin soup of sorts. There's a bit of adstringency and complementing bitterness but I taste more beef stock (bone marrow) than anything else and this keeps going for more than ~13 steeps. Regarding qi and other more somatic aspects there's not much to talk about other than a salivating tongue during the 3rd-5th round. I'll give this another try but there's not much hope to get much more out of these leaves even somewhere further down the road. If one of my friends should happen to like this stuff s/he can have the cake for free. 4 zzzz out of 5

[Rui]

Sipping a very nice fairly smooth and aromatic 2016 Qing Mei Shan raw pu'er from Yunnan Sourcing.

[Rui]

For the ones interested 2016 JINGMAI GULAN raw pu'er cakes are back in stock at Bannacha.com.

[kuánglóng]

I've noticed that higher quality teas come through well in most situations. Other teas require more finesse!

Not exactly my experience and besides .... how do we define quality of something as complex as tea? Anyway, there sure are teas that require (and deserve) a lot more attention to detail than others to really shine through. One reason I love those Himalayan leaves and shengs that much is exactly this: some can be finicky as hell and still challenge the living c..p out of me after all those years, especially compared to something more 'stoic' like e.g. the average el-cheapo, nuke-ish, just-add-hot-water Tie Guan Yin.
BTW, one thing that puzzled me back in the day when I still used to smoke next to drinking a casual cup of tea is that I could taste almost the entire flavor spectrum of some TGY whereas most of my Darjeelings and shengs tasted more like hot water.

Indeed carbon block filters don't remove minerals, but do remove particulate.

I have a two stage system with a prefilter that takes care of particles, ans prevents the carbon-block from premature clogging. From what I remember the carbon-block stage removes 99.xxx% of the organic compounds (agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals/antibiotics (big issue over here), bacteria, ...) and most heavy metals. It's been developed for professional applications and is used in the food industry, universities, by the Red Cross, NGOs, ... couldn't be more happy.

I notice changes with weather. My guess is that changes in temp and humidity of my storage area impact the tea. It's been 65-70% RH and 65-80'F in there, and most teas are tasting great. Of course water really impacts things too. And teaware. And my mood.

Yep, climate, water, teaware (cups, cups, cups ), mood and whatnot but looking forward to being on the road for another while I keep most of my teas in multilayer bags at more or less constant temperatures and they don't seem to mind the weather that much that way.
Can't wait to fly back home though and expose my bings to the average 25°C and 75%RH down there but that's yet another story (clearing customs with 40+ kg of strange looking leaves )

Sorry for another ramble - back OT.

[kuánglóng]

2005 Green Dayi 7542 - HK dry storage

I'm on the 5th steep now, 5g/80ml in a zhuni pot for a change. Seems to be the real thing, including the strange caffeine buzz I usually get from this stuff. No surprises taste wise, except for the fresh cucumbers from the first steep, a nice intro. The aftertaste leaves me wanting; in that regard I usually get some better results in the gaiwan. There's more sweetness in the 4th and 5th steep, the texture gets a little thicker, the mouthfeel fresher and the cooling moves deeper into the throat. Anyway, I've never cared too much for this recipe, there are ....loads more interesting and satisfying teas out there for less €€€ IMO. I'll stop the session at this point and move on with something else.

Edit: I left the tea in the pot in order to come back later and the 6th steep I had a minute ago had been my favorite so far - sweeter, some huigan and warmth in the throat that's slowly rising upwards into the head. Still no aftertaste to speak of but I got some hot ears now - unfortunately there's nothing left of this tea to last me through the coming winter.
Back to Gaiwan #2 with the jungle kryptonite ... happy tea hopping these days.

[jayinhk]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing your experience.

As with anything, trying something will tell you the truth.

[kuánglóng]

I longer use Brita-filtered water for tea, but we have relatively soft, balanced tap water here in HK, so it's no biggie. Carbon filtration seems to affect results when brewing tea, as many here have noted. I do drink the Brita water though.

I've been using this filter system for almost 20 years and ran a few tests against unfiltered water. Most of my guests, including myself preferred the filtered water and the teas prepared with it. Apart from those weird phases I've mentioned I'm pretty happy with that solution, especially with some more picky teas. Some friends, who live just a couple km away are not that lucky with their tap water, including the filtered version and at some point switched to Volvic for their tea.