This is my first puerh from Teavivre. It’s relatively new tea territory for me having tasted half a dozen or so puerhs so far. I picked this up because I wanted to try an aged sheng. . My first few cups were delicious, but later on I had to fight through some serious bitterness.
I used just under 8g of tea in a 120ml shibo for this. The dry leaf had a faint smell of sweet earth and incense. It was noticeably less intense than other sheng puerhs I’ve tried. Wet leaf smelled of wet wood and tobacco. Normally I use very short steeping times for puerh, but increased my steep times as recommended by some reviewers.
After a rinse, I steeped it for about 30 seconds using just under boiling water. It tasted of sweet leather with slightly smokey undertones. A second 30s steep was a nice woodsy and wet forest like flavor. The third infusion was for 35s at boiling. Earthy sweet with a little bitterness beginning to creep in.
The next 4 infusions were pretty rough. Encountered lots of bitterness forcing me to reach for some sweets to cleanse my palette. I had to chuck the 7th steep and call it a day because the bitterness became just too much.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the sweet, complex taste of the early steeps but wished the flavor had carried over to the later infusions.
Flavors: Earth, Fruity, Smoke, Wet Wood
Preparation
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Lower the temp 10 degrees, and take 5 seconds off the brew time. Even at 10 years its still kinda green and bitterness can creep in.
This is interesting, I always thought puerhs needed hotter water. I’ll tweak my brewing parameters next time and see how it goes. Thanks for the tip.
The older it is the more it needs the heat, a young raw is still pretty green, and you can get away with lower heat. I had to do this with the immortal monkey raw min tou from yunnan sourcing, it was small very green leaves and the first time I brewed it, bitterfest, I lowered the temp to about 190-195 and shortened the steep a little and it was much better.
Lower the temp 10 degrees, and take 5 seconds off the brew time. Even at 10 years its still kinda green and bitterness can creep in.
This is interesting, I always thought puerhs needed hotter water. I’ll tweak my brewing parameters next time and see how it goes. Thanks for the tip.
The older it is the more it needs the heat, a young raw is still pretty green, and you can get away with lower heat. I had to do this with the immortal monkey raw min tou from yunnan sourcing, it was small very green leaves and the first time I brewed it, bitterfest, I lowered the temp to about 190-195 and shortened the steep a little and it was much better.