1113 Tasting Notes
17g 200ml
Rather easy to brew to be honest. Nice undertone of wood and fleeting moments of old fermentation. No unique notes to set it apart, but the aspect that this brews out cleanly for multiple infusions without changing drastically makes it a worthy shou if one drinks shou frequently.
Clean. Semi mountainous taste. Medium body. After notes of old fruit. All around great tea.
Easy to drink ripe with a thin texture to it that slides right down. There isn’t an complexity to this tea which makes it great for pairing or dipping. Not sure what’ll do in the future since I’m not big on ripe, but for now this is easy to gift to someone who hasn’t ripe or pu’erh in general as it isn’t tannic or bitter while being easy to drink.
I have drank this tea around 10 different times at this point because I have a friend who came over with another moonlight and told me that this one was odd.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BOWjklcAqED/
I have recently found out that this particular one does not provide a great result at 90c. It might be good, but not great. Ramp that temperature to 100c and the strength comes out for sure. The taste is much bolder and more enjoyable. Generally I am gentle on moonlight white so I can find the soft aspect to it, but this one seems to need some real heat to get it going.
$16/100g is a pretty solid deal to be honest. Really liking this stuff and the value is great.
Today I tasted what I didn’t know what possible: Pu’erh can go stale people and here is a great example of that.
How do you even explain this odd taste/experience…?
All the flavour is gone?
After just 4-5 years?
Like… Flat. Imagine going to a bakery and you order a donut and on your plate when it arrives is a poptart with no frosting. That is this tea.
That’s the first I’ve heard of it happening with pu-erh. I wonder if it was stored in too dry conditions.
Every time I go to brew a puershop.com tea… I think about Marvel tv shows. Then when I go to drinking something from say Bana Tea, I think of DC tv shows. You know what I mean?
This was like a sour sweet mushroom… like, imagine a blueberry decided to mutate into something nasty and it did it well. It’s still part blueberry, regardless of what it is now, but you dislike the new sour aspect; and maybe those weird puss like explosions going on because it’s probably molding and all.
Was an odd session. Went 8 steeps and I gave up.
A rather nice tea with some balanced roast to the undertone of floral notes. Not sure that I found any fruit notes that Verdant says are there, but I tend to differ on tasting notes when it comes to most companies anyways. Overall I liked this tea and I brewed it for two days. 50g for $12 seems to be just right.
2004 Yi Cheng ‘Haw’ round tea gifted to me by Life in Teacup
This is probably the least enjoyable session I’ve had with an older sheng, but that’s okay with LITC has given me some of the best session to date with their competition aged oolongs.
This tea literally turned into a one dimensional tea after the third steep. I’ve yet to experience a ‘flat’ tasting pu’erh, but here it is. The exact same taste over and over with nothing to notice or describe.
I tried brewing another tea just to see if it was me and it ends up being this tea in the end. Somewhat odd, but at least I experienced it so I know what others are referring to when they talk about flat puerh or one dimensional ones.
I started drinking this and thought to myself: Dangit, another one of the $90 cakes that I really like.
Then I looked at YS’s website and saw this is $37/400g… WHAT? You want to talk about a steal, wait for YS production sale and buy a full cake. This stuff is getting viscous and it leaves a trail of sweetness which is different than its toddler aged raw puerh taste going in.
Daily drinking material for sure!!!
On par with the 2016 Jingmai black that I got from Farmer Leaf.
I will say, high quality black teas can be amazing.
Probably going to be one of the best three teas I have this month for sure. Smooth cinnamon like tingle with a floral taste in the back while sweetness comes through…. different from the sip to the breathing out after drinking it. Wonderful stuff.
