A somewhat disappointing puerh

Which tea do you mean?

This one ?:

If so, then I have same which I can try and see if it has turned to blandness (I hope not). Just want to check before I start cutting into things.

Kat

Yes, this is the one.

Thanks, Gyorgy

Kat wrote:

Gyorgy

my 2 bricks of this tea have been stored in tissue paper (because they are essentially loose bricks without proper wrapping) in a cardboard box with my other raw pu-erh bricks.

The tea does not seem to have lost all its flavour to me. The brew still has the clarity noted in the eBay listing and is a bright golden yellow with a nice aroma when brewed. I would say it has a medium strength Chi, but like yourself I can't say I've noticed any ripening of this tea. It has no bitterness, but all its flavour seems concentrated in the first cup and in the first sips of subsequent cups. Oddly enough, as the tea gets cooler as you work your way to the bottom of the cup (cups 2 & 3 - only had 3 cups so far) the flavour seems to dissipate and is not as strong as when you started drinking the cup.

I'm inclined to think that is a "drink now" tea rather than one suitable for long term storage. I've had similar sorts of things happen with loose pu-erh as far as taste loss is concerned, but I had hoped not run across the same thing again in cakes and bricks. Goes to show what a gamble pu-reh tea purchases can be doesn't it when you don't have a lot of experience?

Kat

[Gyorgy]

This post caught my eye as I have about 10 bricks of this tea in my stash.

So I brewed some up, half in a panic, to see what was going on.

I did notice a change in the teas character. The tea wasn't weaker, but it wasn't as floral either. It had notes of brine, grain and/or bamboo, and astringency with hints of sweetness in the finish. I did not get as many steeps as I seem to remember though. What temp water are using? I used a full boil on this one, where on harsher greens I often use lower temps.

Whether or not you would consider this a "ripening" is in the eye of the beholder, but it did seem to be an evolution at the least.

Your storage conditions seem fine, although periods of higher humidity would probably help encourage the development of your stash. Tea ripens better in Guangzhou than in Kunming, the main reason being the higher humidity.

[Kat]

You may indeed be right but that's the thing with these new "purple leaf" varietals, nobody really knows how well they will age. Beware of anyone who claims otherwise as these varietals are simply too new for anyone to "really know". They haven't existed long enough for someone to have actually tasted a 20-30 year old specimen.

All of that being said, after only a year and a half I still don't think the jury is in. It is not unusual for a puerh to behave unpredictably during its adolescent years. I have seen teas start smooth, get harsh and bitter, then get smooth again over a period of

10 years or so. I don't recall any cakes going from strong to weak to strong though. ___________ Mike Petro Celebrating 3 years of sharing

True. Also, it points me in the direction of pleasure, and it helps me avoid some disastrous uses of my time and money. Thanks, Mike!

/Lew

Dear Kat and Mike,

Thank you both for your time and efforts to check this tea for me!

Mike Petro wrote:

I used to brew this tea with water of about 80 degrees C, but after reading your post I decided to give it one more try with fully boiling water, and it did help a bit. I did a series of eight steeps and my results corresponds very closely to yours. This time there were some more floral notes in the taste, but still much less than half a year ago. No floral notes at all in the finish (there were lots half a year ago), only astringency. Already after the third steep the taste was getting flat and I began to taste the water through the tea, while I remember getting at least eight very enjoyable steeps from this tea half a year ago. The most remarkable pecularity of this tea was, which now is completely gone and which I am missing most, that some while - about 5-10 minutes - after sipping the last cup of it, a very pronounced sweet taste of peach used to develop slowly on my palate, which could be staying for up to half an hour!

Exactly. But such a rapid weakening of taste and the loss of everything I liked in this tea I would not call "ripening", especially as the loss of the old flavors are not replaced by new different ones. But as you say, after such a short time we can not really know in which direction this tea will develop, so I still keep the hope (and the tea :-)). Besides that, it is reassuring to hear that others have similar experiences with it, and that the changes are not due to poor storing conditions.

Thanks again, Gyorgy

PS.: To make things even more complicated, I have broken up my other brick of this tea which I ordered three months after the first one, just to see if it has suffered the same fate. This one had a very week grainy taste, no floral notes at all, and a HUGE astringency! It was actually more astringent than any other puerhs I have ever tried. After three steepings I gave it up as I found the astringency nauseating. Compering to the first one, it was like a completely different tea.

I have to say that you comments on how astringent this tea is caught me by surprise. So far I haven't had any astringency at all in the cups I've brewed of the tea. I broke up one of my bricks of this tea on the weekend (well as much as I could anyway - it was a HARD brick! and didn't do my hands any good at all) and decided to drink a few more cups.

One thing I did notice was that the newly broken up brick seemed more floral in taste that than the pieces I had broken off around the edges for my previous tasting. Also, I brewed the second lots in my Yixing teapot, where my previous brew had been in my glass infusion cup, and I didn't notice the dramatic taste loss at the bottom of the cup I'd seen in the glass cup, though you still only get about 4 cups of tasty tea if you are lucky out of the leaves.

My guess is that the "fresher" tea from closer to the centre of the brick retained more of its "new" taste. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the broken - up tea over the next few months as I work my way through it (its in a ceramic tea container now).

Kat

Reading all this... it makes me think that this tea is indeed not suitable for aging. I mean, while a puerh will definitely lose whatever character it has initially after a certain amount of aging, it should still taste like tea -- some kind of tea. Astringency is not a real problem. Bitterness is not a real problem. The most important thing is that it still retains something -- anything. If it's starting to taste less strong and more watery over time.... then it's probably not good.

MarshalN

Exactly my thoughts.

Gyorgy

Interesting. Do you use full boiling water? On the other hand, my experience with my two bricks shows that two seemingly identical bricks can make some very different brews, so who knows, you might have a third subspecies of this puerh, where the leaves give off much less astringency...

Interesting again: both of my bricks have a very loose texture, I can almost break off pieces with my bare fingers. But don't you have an oyster knife or a puerh knife?

Gyorgy

Yes, I do use boiling water. I'm pretty simple with how I make my teas. I just boil the water, rinse the pu-erh on the first cup and then pour over for the first drinking cup and keep going till the leaves run out of taste. So far, this hasn't been an astringent tea for me at all. There seems to be quite a bit of variety (and not all of it good) coming out of these bricks. So far, I've been reasonably lucky with the one I've tried I think.

I do have a pu-erh knife and I had to grind away at this brick with it to get it to break up at all- and I still have a chunk of it that hasn't broken yet because it is so hard. I try to be careful with my pu-erh knife as I've stabbed myself with it in the past on bricks (not nice at all) and if I use any other sort of knife (which I do at times, like a butter knife for instance) I still have the same don't-stab-yourself issues on a hard brick like this.

I haven't tried breaking up my second brick of this tea yet. I have to try and get through the first yet as there is quite a lot of tea in these bricks.

Kat

I have a similar experience with this tea, got one brick, it was great and got a second one several months later and second one didn't have the same strength, recently tried it again and the first brick is loosing its character too but not as much as the second one, still a very good tea, didn't noticed any significant astringency either.

Have tried it on one on my friends and he hated it then, will try again and he might like it now. Can't think of anything better than to keep it in Ziploc bag to prevent from becoming just an average tea.

The moral of this story is that if you want to make a major tea purchase try it on one of your friends preferably not a heavy tea drinker, you will get completely different perspective on the tea, at least in my case it helped me to restrict myself to only one additional brick.

Oleg

KM wrote:

Gyorgy, I bought a couple of these bricks too, just got them the other day. I have to agree with the others, I was really disappointed (especially given the price of the bricks) with this tea. My first taste was today, I used boiling water in a yixing. The first steep was a normal 5-10 seconds, but the second one I let go almost 30 because there was such a weak taste in the first. It isn't astrigent at all for me, it isn't much of...anything actually. It's got a faint (to me) medicinal or iodine-ish taste to it that I don't care for. No camphor or floral or even nutty green taste. My brick was fairly loose, I didn't need to pry hard, just went in from the side and flaked off a bit from the top. The liquer is clear, that's fine, but if it doesn't have much of a taste or character it doesn't make me want to drink it now either, lol!

Usually for me a sheng can be hard to drink, bitter, astringent, whatever, but there's still character that promises to develop. I don't know about this puerh though, if there's not much there now is tehre hope taht there will be much in the future? I tried to place whether I thought it hadn't been "mulched" enough or whether I thought it was the original material that might have been lacking. Anyone have thoughts on that? I thought maybe if it was the mulching it might help to store it in a more humid environment.

Melinda

Me too, unfortunately. I really liked this brick when it came out, and bought a couple. Drank it a number of times, most recently about half a year ago, getting consistent good results.

Just tried it, found what you found. I first made a gaiwanful (2.7g/40ml) of loose bits and dust. Then tried again with a freshly flaked chunk, which may have been a little better (or not).

I've been warned that a lot of the good-young Pu-erhs don't age well, especially the big old wild-leaf stuff. Also been told that many cakes fade early but then generate new flavor as the years pass. Hope the latter applies here; it's early days yet.

-DM

Maybe that is where some of the "watery" aged pu-erhs come from that I've occasionally ran across. They taste ok, but only last a couple of cups - and really aren't a patch on a good quality aged pu-erh that had obvious strength to start with.

Kat