Dr Pu'er Tea (Berylleb King Tea)

This is a nice tasting ripe from Berylleb King Tea on EBay. Bought it last year and am just getting around to trying it now. It is not bitter. There is a fair amount of fermentation flavor. This flavor was neither unpleasant or fishy. A nice sweet note developed in this tea.

I steeped this ten times in a 160ml Solid Silver Teapot with 14.4g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 minute.

This is an interesting tea. Some of the steeps were quite tasty. The first couple of steeps were quite sweet before the tea really opened up. Then I got a bit of a strange flavor note that was a cross between roasted chestnuts and a medicinal flavor. This lasted about two steeps. Then it returned to more of a sweet note. I ate an apricot before drinking this for comparison purpose. After all, how many times do we say sheng tastes like apricots. And while this tea was certainly not as sweet as an apricot, I think it did develop a note similar to that. Just some small evidence in my book that the use of the term apricot to describe sheng is reasonable sometimes. I only steeped this eight times because my insomnia has been acting up lately and I didn’t want any more caffeine.

I steeped this eight times in a 150ml gaiwan with 7.3g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec. The strange flavor note this tea had will keep me from recommending it but soome people would definitely like this tea. The note wasn’t really bad tasting, just very odd.