1113 Tasting Notes
First of all, the middle of this damn thing is absolutely stupid. It’s like the equivalent of an iron cake but much thicker. Whoever has broke one of these up has experienced what it is like to train in the gravity chamber… just saiyan.
Anyways: This is an easy tea to brew that provides a solid orange liquid showing that there is some age to it for sure. Depth is at the mid range, but easily appreciated. For the price it’s great, but dang… the middle of this thing turns me off of it. It’s the same reason that I don’t like iron cakes though; just losing the ability to get a nice piece off and having an easy brew session is gone once you get those chunks off that look like those pieces of blocktop that are 3×3 inches at a playground (anyone else remember those?).
I brought this tea into work expecting to taste a rather drastic change in its taste since it’s much like a jasmine white/green in the way that it is scented for its taste. Apparently the rum aspect of this tea stuck with it quite well. It was the only thing I brewed at work all day and I really enjoyed how it lighted up into a sweet liquid towards the end. This is clearly one of the best things I’ve made and I really can’t take much credit because the true hero of this tea is the barrel.
I was going to make the second batch even cheaper, but seeing that I still have leftover from the first barrel… I think it is time to open it up and test the humidity inside of it and see what kind of condition the pu’erh lives in while being in there. About to get into some serious trouble when this happens because each batch is over $500 of an investment! However, it has brought happiness and joy from the conversations, shared experiences, and drinks that it has provided so it kind of evens out.
Wonder if anyone else has tried to see if this has changed over time… I know someone is trying to ‘air’ it out, pft…. no names, no names.
Thinking about this tea for me is in regards to value and longevity. I find that this cake is rather cheap at 14cents a gram, but if you know YS well then you understand that waiting for a % off is always in the near future.
7g, 100ml, 95c
The brew is very much still in a young stage which makes it easy to compare to it’s cousins from 2011,12,13,14,15,16… whatever else you have. The liquid is still a shade of yellow, but not golden. The aroma is rather faint and like the taste, it is transitioning slowly. I believe this is the type of material that retains a sweetness over time. This is how I can see the raisin taste being associated with it; a little darker of a taste than a light one due to the autumn versus spring, but it is there.
Easy to brew. After six steeps, I started pushing the tea to find that it isn’t as pleasant as the 2015 when over steeped which is the opposite of what I was thinking. I believe this tea is a great value and one to drink over time and watch it develop, but not the best tea at the moment; by no means is it bad either, just more potential for the future than now.
Dang, I really wish I knew how much this sold for when it was around.
It has some bitterness in the first three steeps which is somewhat odd because when this stated to brew out, it seemed to be humid stored in some way. Some nice notes to it which ended up becoming sweet as I went on.
Great body heat from this one without realizing; kind of creeped up on me.
Well, Vahdam… you dropped the ball big time
I don’t know what to say… I ordered https://www.vahdamteas.com/products/antu-valley-golden-tippy-souchong-nepal-second-flush-black-tea and got this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BOutAy9AZ3X/
I can promise you that this tea is not smoked, it has no malty notes, and it 100% does not look like that.
Guess I have no idea what I’m drinking, but the package says Antu Valley Golden Tippy Souchong Nepal Summer Black Tea.
Darn.
Don’t beat around the bush, if there are thorns they will get you regardless how careful or not you are.
This tea is more or less better described as a black tea with honey notes coming through like neighbors talking at 2am and your walls are thin; you know its there and you get about 40% of what’s going on.
I think this is only the 2,3, or 4th batch… and there is much to be worked on as it tries to emulate OB; it’s not actually OB if you know the processing and all, or at least that’s my understanding (which I didn’t even describe, woooho scapegoating with my own knowledgessssssss)
I’m tired. This tea is fine and all, but go into it like the orbs… it’s pretty much 90% black and 10% OB/shoumei
.one does not drink this for taste, The first thing to know
.mind in the sky, That’s where you find the drinker
.feelings of the face, Known things start to disappear
.I’m not high, I promise you
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Yunnan Sourcing said this was a bitterfest of a tea and that’s absolutely correct. It was hard to sip through it, but it made Christmas Day very ‘light’
Random backlog I found on Microsoft Word…
2012 Hai Lang Hao
Yang Chun San Yue
8g, 92c, 120ml
S1 shows immediately that the color is no longer ‘green’. Shades of ugly green/brownish stuff with some darker leaf in there. Up front there is a soft astringency that I assume will disappear because it’s quite faint. The taste leaves a nice tartness going on as the sweetness cannot be tasted unless you lick your lips since the mouth feel kind of tingles the taste away.
S2 the tea is opening up a bit more which makes the astringency not noticeable anymore because there is a bitterness that is creeping in. Maybe this is the type of tea that will need me to ride the waves with it until I find the calm waters. The taste is appealing behind the upfront hindrance of taste though. Somewhat of a wet cigar taste… if you’ve ever experienced that, not unpleasant but unique.
S3 took some time to let the mouth feel sit. Easily last for 5 minutes. Went back into the next steep with some more thought on what I am tasting. I think the bitterness might actually be described better as ‘full of tannins’ in regards to the light tobacco taste which reminds me of roasted asparagus; yet the mouth feel gives it complexity that I cannot describe very well.
S4 to S6 still a really strong mouth feel and the bitterness/tannic aspect is very much alive. Was not expecting to still have this going on at this point.
S7 to S10 still got the mouth feels but the bitterness is either used to by my mouth or it is dying down. This is probably a tea for someone who wants that tobacco’ish feeling going on or to store away a darker sheng that will produce a nice thick cup later on down the road as the viscosity with this one will surely grow.
Brought some random samples to my parents for the xmas weekend and this the the second one I pulled out. Started it up around 2pm and it’s 7pm now.
This tea is like a ghost. There’s this reminder that this tea once had a light smokiness to it, but if you try to pay attention it’s there but at the same time it just doesn’t present itself so you have to look. The color doesn’t give an impression that it is 10 years old, but the taste comes through as a 15-20 year old dry stored Mengku with some more moist/wet notes to it. For what it is, it’s incredibly clean making it the easiest to drink YQH yet. There’s this tough tasting sweetness at the upfront notes that reminds me of that nasty fruit that it popular for looks called starfruit. At $.65/g, it provides a $3 session that last hours requiring little attention as it is an easy drinker. Not going to remark on feels because I was and am not in the environment in which I would feel heat go throughout me; unless it somehow had combustible properties and my cells began to spark fire.
Liquid is thin. Lasting taste fades over three minutes and comes through by stimulation of tongue. Leaf has a dead color but the stems show quality through the thickness and light magenta color. Easy to brew and needs pushing as you go on.
This is more of a black tea in taste regards than an oolong. It’s balled up and has that nice texture, but the tannin power and all that’s going on kind of keeps me from wanting to go back into it. Just a personal preference.
Puerh picks in a gravity chamber sound like a poor idea.