My first time...

It is often said that one you truly experience puerh, nothing else will do.

Mike

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 01:14:54 GMT, "Alex Chaihorsky" cast caution to the wind and posted:

Alex Chaihorskyiaq3d.17536$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com9/19/04

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Anyway, now that you put it that way, I'll re-examine my position.

Really nice tea. When the moment strikes, report please.

Well said, to be sure. I love it. It's complexity enthrawled me. I'm ordering some today. Wonder if it would be a good saver tea. That's the impresion it gives me.

I enjoy mine, but against the Menhai Beengcha 1999, it seems a bit weak. Haven't tried it in months. I'll have another go.

What about soil, loam, peaty earth? Anything in there? Did you try a Liu An? Not Pu-erh per se, but Pu-erh like, and from Guangxi.

Near?

Picasso *is* rude, but so then is Pound. Now, I'm not that fond of Gold Bud myself, but again, I compared it to the Meng Hai, which is special. Perhaps, not fair to the Gold Bud.

Good.

By the way, in answer to your "how to brew" post, I have two suggestions: First, the Perin Params: 175F, half as many grams of dry tea as ounces of water, four minutes. Also, try at 195-200F,beginning with near instant pours and increasing according to taste. Use small pots and somewhat more leaf to water.. Neither method will be Gung-fu True, but you can pretend. That is what I do. Oversteeping will harshen the tea.

Michael

If I am right, the word "menghai" is a geographical location. The "Gold bud" tea also has "Minghai" on its wrapper and I start to wonder if all these westernized tea names are just "marketing names. That would be a warning for us not to buy a tea without seeing the pic of its wrapper. I would gladly just show you the characters here but for some reason it seems to me that USENET chops-off some bits off UNICODE.

I need more time. See, my nose was broken when I was young and somehow my sense of smell may be very sensitive in one part of the "spectra" and not so much in another. I have trouble naming puerh scents.

Mike, I envy you :)

Yes. It's the location of a Puerh factory. I think this factory has produced much (most?) of the Puerh grown in Xishuangbanna (the canonical area for growing the leaf) west of the Mekong. Mike Petro will probably correct me if I'm wrong.

You have a point there, but isn't the wrapper yet another marketing tool, just with a different intended audience?

/Lew

What a great description! Puerh descriptions are always such a turn off, they sound so unappealing. Whenever I get the urge to try some I just read any description from a tea company and change my mind. But after reading this post....

The moment came today. Dai bamboo 1996 is a good tea but nothing special., if you ask me. May be it requires a more experienced drinker, may be cooler than 180 water. may be longer wash (I did 2 washed 15-20 sec each) I have not noticed anything bamboo in it. It may as well be kept in a PVC pipe. But I did noticed it's bitter aftertaste. Just plain bitter, no under-over-tones.

So, among the teas listed in teh thread, I lean more towars Mini menghai Beencha 1999. Of course my dissapointment with it that it does not say "Menghai" anywhere on therapper, so unless I am willing to buy it exclusively from Dave, I have no chance of buying it. That botheres me. Teas should be like wine - "appellacion d' origine controlee", name and a year. Otherwise - too much fraud possibilities. I need to call We Jia Bao about this. he is a former field geologist himself, he will understand :)

Sasha.

Yes, this is a problem with the whole puer industry. You pretty much have to develop a relationship with a vendor whom you trust. Don't assume that because you recognize the outer tissue paper wrapper that you know the tea inside. These wrappers are not sealed in any way and there is nothing to prevent someone from unwrapping a cake and putting their own wrapper on it. This is actually a fairly common practice. Also, in China a given factory will often use whatever paper wrappers that may be handy meaning that there is often no real link between the wrapper and the tea inside. This is why you see the larger factories imbed a label or piece of ribbon into the cake itself during the manufacturing process, to help prevent forgeries. There is a move lately to imbed logo impressions into the tea cakes directly.

But another thing you must realize is that there can be significant variation within a single year from a single factory. Many factories will process the leaves from the farmers as they are brought in and wrap them all in the same paper. Consequently cakes made from leaf of farmer #1 and cakes made from leaf of farmer #2 may taste very different but have the exact same wrapper. Some years are more repeatable than others. Product coming from the factory's own farms is often more repeatable.

Puer production in the minority villages is also very much like a folk craft where individual skill and tribal tradition dictate the process. Repeatability is not highly sought after.

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

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Alex ChaihorskyuWa4d.218$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com9/22/04

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The problem lies with you, Sasha, not with the Dai Bamboo. I'm going to brew up some right now. Seriously, there is the issue of great differences from batch to batch and cake to cake as Mike described in a previous post. You might be the victim of that kind of thing. Mine piece really is lovely. (Don't even go there.)

Clever, those merchants.

I'm not sure about this. Control could bring the whole industry into the middling range. That is, you can't get great unless you're willing to sometimes get lousy. Know what I mean? It's the thrill of the hunt.

Yes, I think it prefers cooler water: 170, maybe even 160F.

/Lew

Can you, please, give me more advice on how to brew Dai bamboo? Just more detailed instructions?

As a true Conservative of a "paleo" persuasion that would firmly vote Democratic this year I have to be ashamed of my calls for control of tea labelling. But some time ago I studied the history of French wine labelling and found it to be the very reason how small French vineyards were able to survive and preserve their quality standards. If a farmer or a small factory will have law protect their unique logo or name of the product, they have an interest to maintain the quality. If not - all bets are off and the largest shark wins the markets with mediocre products. That would also allow them to resist the pressure of traders who treat the producers like cattle and allow producers to get better share of the profits. making a producer rich is more in our, consumer, interests than making a trader rich.

Sasha.

I just looked over my notes, and it turns out I've enjoyed this tea brewed over an *extremely* wide range of temperatures: from 140F to boiling. In my experience, it does well big-pot, not gongfu, style, say 4g of leaf to 8 ounces water. I had very good results at 160F, with the first steep at 4 minutes and increasing steep times by 50% each successive steep. I also had good results with boiling water, starting at 2 minutes and increasing as above.

/Lew

I got back to Fangcha recently and I have to say that lowering the temperature and tasting it constantly did the trick. It awoke my army experiences in my memory, so I called it a "soldier's tea" - it is straightforward with a threat to get violent if you step over the line, as a true soldier should. It also has that "tank" smell - the smell of squashed grass, sap from splintered tree trunks, raw earth clinging to the tracks and sharp scent of used shells seeping from inside. I think I should try the older Fangcha - I think Dave has one from 1991 for the same price.

I bought some 10 years old green puerh "Yunnan toucha" from Imperial Court in SF and Roy showed me a good way to brew it in gaiwan rather than in chahu. I like this method because you can easily see the color saturation and aquire the feeling for the brewing process rather fast. This tea is very subtle in taste, but quite a symphony of the aftertaste, that lasted for hours. I was very surprised how well it agrees with Marlboro. I do not smoke often, but once in a while enjoy a cigarette or two. I had a smoke an hour after the tea and it was pleasant and strong experience. 120 g, $7.00

Another tea I bought this time was 15 years old green puerh "Bamboo tea" - paper-wrapped tablets in bamboo cylinder. It was nice but I think Dave's Dai Bamboo tea is way better. Approx. 250g $20.00 This tea also has a "black" puerh variety.

Sasha.

Alex Chaihorsky5Za7d.3544$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com10/1/04

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snip snip snip

Would you kindly elaborate further on the taste and style of the ITC bamboo cylindered green pu-erh tablets. Some of us will be quite curious. Thanks, Sasha.

On the 1999 Feng you mentioned from Silk Road Teas, the 1991 is not as consistantly good. You bought well.

Michael

Michael,

This weekend I am planning to brew Dai Nationality Bamboo, Mini Menghai and ITC green "Bamboo tea" at once to compare them and to better map them inside my brain. As of now I still have trouble "recalling" them in my RAM. That means to me that I have not tasted them well enough. And it also means that these are very complex teas because I can easily recall almost any oolong I tasted in the past two-three years.

One thing I can say right away about ITC green "Bamboo Tea" its a wonderful tea to travel with. The bamboo cylinder is large enough to hold 250g of tea tablets and small enough to be easily put in a briefcase or even a jacket pocket. Each tablet has a half-break-off groove and is very easy to handle. The bamboo cylinder closes very tight and should provide enough of protection against external smells without stopping the fermentation process.

Sasha.

One thing I have to say - it is much more difficult to distinguish between green puerhs than between black puerhs, let alone oolongs. My overall feeling - one cannot really go wrong with green puerhs if one brews them right. Among the ones I tasted, Dai Nationality Bamboo appears to be ahead of others, but not at all by a large margin. Fangcha probably follows and Menghai takes the third place. ITC Bamboo and another ITC green tablet tuocha are right behind. But in general - the difference is much more settle than between other types of tea including black puerhs. I think that this is because the tastes of green puerhs are not as strong. The way I brew them is using 160 progressing by the 6-7th brew to 190 temperatures and 1-2 minutes steep time. The taste is very complex, the aftertaste is even more, but the "obvious", superficial taste that is so pronounced in black teas and "obvious", scent that is so bright in oolongs are not as obvious with green puerhs.

Fangcha, that I did not like at first (I overcooked it badly) is probably the most pronounced in terms of taste. I also think that it may be brewed many different ways with quite different results. I was told that Fangcha

1991 is not as consistently good as the one I tasted - 1999, so can anyone tell me where can I get more different Fangchas?

Sasha

Sashsa,

Just a note, I know that many here in the group brew green puer using lower temperatures similar to what you would use with a regular green tea. Even Roy recommends it as it is more pleasing to the American palette. However, and I have confirmed this repeatedly, in China they do use boiling water for Greens. I think it stems from using boiling water for safety reasons, nonetheless they use it still. Water just off the boil for greens and a full rolling boil for blacks.

I too started with lower temps, but then as I learned a bit I started using boiling water. The trick is very short steeps. Once you fill your pot it is done by the time you set down your kettle. Maybe 3-6 seconds for the first few steeps.

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 06:27:38 GMT, "Alex Chaihorsky" cast caution to the wind and posted:

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

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I think you have an unexamined assumption: that if you like one fangcha you'll tend to like all fangchas. I don't see any reason to think fangchas have any family resemblances that separate them from, say, bingchas. Seems to me that the differences *among* different teas within one style of packaging swamp the differences *between* different styles.

/Lew

Lew, Mike -

Thanks for you advice. Mike - I will be interested in your experience with the Nai Xiang I sent you. Temps, steep exposure times and all.]

Another matter - on Sept 29th I sent both of you and Michael a private message and get no answer from any of you. Have you got it? It had a "Confidential" in its subject.

Sasha.

I have enough left for one pot. Experimentation so far yielded the best results around 165 and steeps starting around 35 seconds. Flavor was creamy, vegetal, and somewhat nutty yet very smooth.

Never received said message,,,,,,,

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

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