Official Pu of the day

[jayinhk]

'05 Kunming dry storage 7581. This tea is much less flavorful than my Taiwanese 7581 because of the dryer storage and much less sweet. It does taste very clean and date-like, and it is relatively smooth drinking, but not as interesting as the 7581 that was stored in Taipei. Still nicer than the HK traditional storage 7581 from the 90s that I bought the other day--that tea tastes like storage and nothing else! I've since broken it up to air and we'll see how it performs in three weeks or so.

[gasninja]

80s Green Brick from Menghai tea factory. This is a blend of 70% sheng 30% shu. This tea used to have a very strong tobacco flavor that I wasn't a huge fan of. It has now mellowed out to a nice leather and agarwoods taste with bit of tobacco. The qi is very nice.

[jayinhk]

Failures too...this brick is crap. :/

[Rui]

Gotcha, that's a lot of sheng! I bought an old 7581 brick here in HK today. A little more expensive and Kunming storage apparently. Not all that pleasant (yet)!

It is only 5 to 6 gms of tea leaves drunk semi gong fu style.

One day I need to go to HK and follow you on your tea buying expeditions.

[jayinhk]

Gotcha, that's a lot of sheng! I bought an old 7581 brick here in HK today. A little more expensive and Kunming storage apparently. Not all that pleasant (yet)!

[Rui]

Rui, sorry to hear that, but be grateful you get to drink tea at all! What's the connection between dark teas and kidney stones?

With the type of kidney stones I get apparently it is a chemical called Oxalate but like in most things in life it is not a certainty. There is a positive correlation but that is about it.

To avoid it nowadays I drink is around 1 1/2 litres of sheng a day and another 1 1/2 to 2 litres of water a day to wash it out. Every couple of weeks I drink a shou or a red (black) tea as a treat.

[jayinhk]

Rui, sorry to hear that, but be grateful you get to drink tea at all! What's the connection between dark teas and kidney stones?

[Rui]

Drinking my Taipei 7581 brick again. Man, this stuff is good. I've been chasing this flavor profile/sweetness for a while. I have been obsessed with shu since I found it and I am hoping HK home aging some ripe cakes, bricks and tuos will give me similar results down the line. Traditional storage doesn't seem to result in the same sweetness, although it does make for a smooth, easy drinking product once it gets enough air to remove the storage aromas!

You make me so envious.

I wish I could drink dark coloured tea more often. Kidney stones tendency preclude me from it.

[Rui]

Sipping Bannacha's 2015 Ancient Trees gushu maocha. Surprisingly mild for such a young pu'er but very drinkable with a great aroma and beautiful unbroken tea leaves

[jayinhk]

Drinking my Taipei 7581 brick again. Man, this stuff is good. I've been chasing this flavor profile/sweetness for a while. I have been obsessed with shu since I found it and I am hoping HK home aging some ripe cakes, bricks and tuos will give me similar results down the line. Traditional storage doesn't seem to result in the same sweetness, although it does make for a smooth, easy drinking product once it gets enough air to remove the storage aromas!

[jayinhk]

A Dayi Ripe teabag I was given for free (nine assorted teabags in total) with my purchase of two tuos, a brick and a cake of ripe from Wing Ngai Tea here in HK. I was very impressed with their packaging and they are the official distributor for Dayi for HK, so I think I'll buy more tea soon!

[gasninja]

I am drinking EOT S 2000 "green Peacock" It is a really easy to like tea. It has that semi aged pu-erh taste while keeping a freshness that is quite enjoyable.
I am also on day 2 of drinking a blend of both XZH 06" Tai Chi" LBZs. I was trying to organise my horde of samples when I found four grams of the Yang cake. I mixed it with 5 grams of the Yin LBZ in a 95 ml Hong ni pot. Combing these to trees was a real treat.

[jayinhk]

Drinking this cake:

http://www.marshaln.com/2012/11/taobao- ... heshunhao/

in a Rui Kiln travel gaiwan/teapot. The lower profile of the gaiwan and the thicker clay made it seem like a good choice for this tea and it worked a treat--barely any traditional storage aroma or taste at all in the cup. This tea has improved over the last few years and is much more drinkable than it was when I first got it (it tasted too wet).

It's still bitter, but it's smooth and clean tasting, and just beginning to get really interesting. It should be even better in a few years.

[jayinhk]

The cheaper of the 7581 bricks I bought in Taipei--supposedly pre 2006, but possibly fake. Still tastes good, although some wo dui remains. It should mellow out over a few years of HK home storage and hopefully will taste as good as the other cake at some point!

[jayinhk]

Visited a massive tea market in Shenzhen yesterday. Got there later than I hoped to, but I was like a kid in a candy store when I got there as there was pu erh everywhere! My joy was short lived, however, when I started trying 7581 bricks. I went to five or six different stores, and every single store was selling absolute crap. I've read about fake pu erh from Guangxi and Hunan...well, I got to try it first hand yesterday and it was BAD.

I bought two bricks of CNNP 7581 in Taiwan. The older one is amazing and I'm going back for the rest, first chance I get. It has sweetness, jujube flavor and no unpleasantness whatsoever, even when brewed in the Yixing I use for sheng. The younger one is still quite palatable and should improve with age, and tastes better at home than the sample that was brewed for me in Taipei.

The 7581 in Shenzhen went from surprisingly bitter to burnt rubber...I'm hoping I didn't take years off my life by sampling those teas. I might go back to look at teaware at some point, but wow, that was some horrendously bad tea!