EBay ok78ok

This tea is fairly good as ripe puerh goes. I didn’t find it spectacular but it was very tasty. It was a good solid performer. It seemed like a high quality brick as bricks go. This is just an opinion. There was a fair amount of fermentation flavor. It was not of the more unpleasant sort. It lasted pretty much until the fourth steep. It was sweet with little bitterness. There were some notes of chocolate in there It developed a fruity taste in later steeps too. This is a good solid performer at a good price. At $67 for a 1 kg brick it is reasonably priced. The only problem for most people is I don’t think he sells samples. This is one I would buy again on the unlikely prospect that it it is still in stock when I finish this brick.

I steeped this tea eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 10.1 g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec. I would say this is comparable in quality to some similar bricks I have bought from Yunnan Sourcing or Puerhshop. It was very good overall.

This tea tastes pretty good in the end. It is, however a fairly low quality mini tuo cha in my opinion. I base my opinion on quality on the amount of dust I observed and the fact that it was pretty much played out at ten steeps. I think a good quality ripe will go at least fourteen or fifteen steeps. It was fairly bitter in the start. There was also a sour note in the first steep. There was a hint of this note in the second steep and it was gone by the third. The flavor of the sticky rice permeated this tea for all ten steeps. It is an interesting, sweet flavor. I don’t think there is a description of it in the flavor note catalog and I’m not sure how to describe the note anyway. In the end this was an enjoyable tea. Not as good as some other sticky rice mini tuo cha I’ve had. I need to find my sticky rice mini from Yunnan Sourcing and make a comparison. Inevitably, after my move I know where none of my tea is so this won’t happen soon. As to the year of this tea, I didn’t notice a lot of fermentation flavor but the sticky rice flavor tends to cover up the fermentation flavor so who knows. The sticky rice mini from Shanghai Story was better than this one and contained less dust.

I steeped this tea ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with two mini tuo cha or 9g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, and 2 min.

This tea would justify a very high rating, perhaps 90, it’s that good. This was among the best ripe I’ve had in at least the last few weeks. It was sweet with little in the way of bitterness. No smoke, no wet storage taste. There is just one thing I firmly believe about this tea. They lied about it’s age. The first thing I noticed in the first steep of this tea was a heavy fermentation flavor. The flavor more commonly found in a tea from 2013 or 2014, not something brand new, but certainly nothing with a lot of age on it. A tea from 1999 should have at least noticeably cleared. This one had not. If they had just told the truth about it’s age I would probably given this tea a 90 or so. As it is I will refrain from giving it a number. I will still recommend this tea. It is good and worth the price. It is only $16.99. It’s just definitely not very old. I could lodge an EBay case about it but probably won’t. If I had paid a lot I probably would. As it is I may want to order from the same seller again. In any case I gave him feedback on this tea before trying it. I fail to understand why they lied about it’s age when it is an excellent tea, well worth the price they charged. It had nice sweet notes to it, perhaps plums or dates in the end. It probably had notes of chocolate in there but I was too busy being annoyed that it wasn’t from 1999 to notice the specifics along the way. Again, I will recommend this tea, just know it’s not from 1999 unless they kept it vacuum sealed or something and it didn’t age at all in sixteen years.

I steeped this tea ten times in a 120ml gaiwan with 9.7g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, and 1 min. I could definitely get a few more steeps out of the leaves if I wanted to. They were not played out at ten steeps.