Puerh Tea - Taste Profile

should work for this purpose.

M.

Not towards vendors in-and-of-themselves, but towards vendors who just post their advertisement here and don't participate in any other discussions. Or, vendors who step into a discussion and mention the product that they sell, complete with a link to where it can be bought, but without mentioning that they are the vendor of said product.

I understand that there are two or three regulars here who are vendors, and they are as welcome as any of us because they *are* regulars.

Or so I've gathered from the short time that I've been reading and posting here.

stePH

-- GoogleGroups licks balls.

Try yousendit.com. You don't need to set up an account, and the files are deleted after one week.

--crymad

My first PhotoBucket image:

These are the characters lifted from my XG Tibetan Mushroom package. The first two are Bao Yan or Precious Flame but the third? Thanks too Michael who must be a geek that drinks tea and for those who know Chinese and can take pity on this lowai.

Jim

PS: SpaceCowboy was already taken, even Curmudge> >

Thanks, Crymad. That also works. The upload is fast but I thought something was wrong when it took forever to generate the webpage which contained the download link. The files are also deleted after 25 downloads but a generous 1gig in size versus 25meg for free PhotoBucket. All I can say for this group there are some sharp people. I thought I'd have to go looking elsewhere for this type of information. I came this .. close to not even posting the request.

Jim

crymad wrote:

Sorry to be anticlimactic, but the third character is Pai, as in Sign or Placard or Brand.

/Lew

Thanks, Lew. You'd think I would have come across Brand before. I just see it on one other beeng wrapped in Hong Kong which looks like a scribbled Doctor's prescription instead of a nice character font. Am I the last one to learn about free places to upload graphics? Usenet has binaries which I used in the past for graphics when I had a newsreader but Google Groups strips them. Here in the US they have to worry about charges of adult material and in China political protests.

Jim

Lewis Per>

Is it deleted after 25 downloads? That's kind of restrictive, isn't it. This might be a new rule, as some of the things I've uploaded in the past have certainly been downloaded more times than that.

--crymad

Interesting, that'll be a good place for us to view the pics.

What trailing characters are you talking of?

Danny

Ahh I see Lew has answered thy question.

:")

Danny

Here is a question for pu'er collectors and people who have drunk lots of different pu'er:

How would you define the differences in the products between Big Boys such as MG & XG, Up & Coming Medium Weighters like Chang Tai & Haiwan, and Obscure Small Fries?

Danny

If you listen to this group MG and XG is all there is. In a sense this is because that is what the Western websites carry. If you look around you notice an exception here and there but no real choice. You look at TaoBao and Ebay China and the first thing you notice is cheap and selection from other factories. I wished that was available in the West. I like variety in any genre of tea. Puer is no different than the production of other styles in the sense we change the raw material according to time tested techniques. Okay I give you the fermentation but nothing to stop someone in Ceylon doing the same thing. The history of tea is just as much about techniques spreading to new locales. The value of what you get is determined by the fickle market. Tea and oil should be cheaper than sand but sand is also expensive for it's own supply and demand reasons because basically dont want quarries,platforms or farms in their back yards. There is an article in today's NYT talking about China tea exports being more valuable than internal consumption. China wants Starbucks and the West wants cheap and choice. I'll say at this point I haven't been disappointed in any puerh that isn't one of the Big Boys and that list is about 10 items.

Jim

samarkand wrote:

Don't you mean MH (Menghai)?

I actually didn't know there were *two* tiers of smaller factories. Danny, would you like to write a post outlining who's making cakes and bricks these days?

To answer your question, sort of: I've tasted, mostly through the kindness of friends, a lot of pu'ers, but I honestly can't say I've noticed a consistent trend in tastes of big factories versus small ones.

/Lew

[...] Hey Jim, you have gone round the world, but short of answering my questions! Haha!

a. what are the differences in your list of non XG and MG products vs the XG and MG products? If you have bought so many of these items you must have drawn up a general profile of these 2 groups to match them against each other.

b. what are the general characteristics of the Big Boys, the medium weight players, and the unknown factories?

c. Your preference seemed to be partly influenced by the price factor, if that is so, why?

d. you mentioined the NYT article, but isn't this very much the same with the economy elsewhere? Clothes from GAP will be cheaper if I buy it in the US (internal consumption) than if I buy it in Japan, which is almost twice the price. Or wine bought in France over the same bottle bought in Asia. You are perhaps right about the West wanting cheap and choice, but is this a good thing?

e. I am not claiming that eBay and TaoBao are selling forgeries, but knowing the fact that there are many unscrupulous manufacturers out there cashing in on pu'er, how do you go about telling the forgery from the real thing when you buy off eBay and TaoBao? For that matter, how do you tell if the cake you bought is produced in accordance to the making of Pu'er set by the more established factories?

f. BTW, I think recently there's a post here or in Teamail about unscrupulous pu'er manufacturers who fake the ageing process by burying pu'ers in pig sty to speed up the ferment process. This apparently is a hoax, reporters and provincial officials investigated into the matter but didn't turn up with anything concrete.

Danny

Hey Lew,

Thanks for pointing MG out! Yes, you are right - I mean MH, Meng Hai...sorry.

I remember there was a post or two of someone entering the world of pu'er asking for advice on what to buy, with some expendable cash too. I still maintain what I've said then - to try as many pu'er as one can instead of splurging the full money on one or two expensive cake which one might find that one dislike later. Also, that one should follow one's tastebuds instead of what others prefer.

However after two days of sitting through sessions of sampling teas from different factories over the weekend, I realize that there is a need to explain further.

The questions that I find difficult to answer, if I were a newbie, are:

1. how do I know the pu'ers I buy are good and not forgeries (applicable to all factories)?

1. in my tasting of so many pu'ers, how do I know what I'm tasting is a good pu'er?

From the posts I have been reading, I gather the opinion that there are 2 pu'er camps here: one who favours MH and XG, and one who favours the small unknown factories. In the latter camp, price seems to be a considering factor in choosing small unknown factories over the rising prices of MH and XG products, the other main factor is that eBay and TaoBao seem to offer these products cheaper, and, we mustn't exclude the 'exotic' factor - that these unknown cakes seem more attractive over the regular products from MH and XG.

But how does one know if these products are not poorly manufactured products? How does one know if these products will age well over time? How does one know if these products are produced within safety regulations?

Is there a way I can measure these products against?

Hence my question posted earlier.

Prior to 1999, it is easy to outline who's who in pu'er producing factories. After that, things got more complicated, new factories are sprouting up like mushrooms after the rain, I can attempt to outline the Big Boys and Medium Weight Players, but I don't think I have much info on the smaller factories.

Danny

Really? Where?

Thanks, X

Jim

'Sadcat' K guertsenberg wrote:

a. I drink tea for the variety. I never wonder who is best. I don't do taste tests. I rather have it on my shelf than not. Your taste in tea will wax and wane over time. I can say I like some teas at any moment in time better than others. I don't fret about it. I like green puerh. The quandry is cooked so is it just a matter of finding something you like based on fermented raw material or does something like wet and dry storage play a part? I don't want to wait 30 years to find out it was neither. b. I like Puer for what I call 'architectural' elements like logs,bamboo,smoked,melons,teals. Nobody carries them all so you have to shop around. c. I'll give anybody $5 for 300g of tea sight unseen. I'll take my chances with the taste. MH it seems to me expensive even for recent stuff. XG might be a good cheap bargain if you can find something you like. d. The rest of the world tea producing economies are worried about China dumping tea on the world market. Most of the stuff I buy in Walmart is made in China. I seriously don't know what our economy is good for anymore. We run up the national debt hoping for better days ahead. One of these days the Full Faith and Credit of the US Government will be relegated to junk bonds. There is the cold war legacy where we do what we want in the world because we have the bunker buster. Has anyone ever noticed the look on Putin's face when he is with Bush? Even that supremacy will be challenged by genetic research in other countries where situational ethics provides better returns on the bets than ecclesiastical religion. If you can't wait for the conclusion watch The Blade Runner with Harrison Ford. e. I don't worry too much about purity of food products except it shouldn't kill me. I know it is important and hope that there are some check and balances. The discussion of what is Puerh is like the discussion of what is Darjeeling. Hopefully the industry can work it out if it is important. f. I'm no biochemist but all you'd have to do is look at tobacco,wine, and diary to learn some tricks of the fermenting trade. I worked in food processing factories. It's enough to make you sick some of the time. I shouldn't eat meat. I almost don't because who can afford it?

Jim

samarkand wrote:

Famous isn't obvious here when used with 6FTM. It should be MING2 PAI2 as in famous brand but instead DA4 when used with mountain. It took most of the day to figure out why famous was leading to a deadend.

Jim

Lewis Per>