Rice Pu-Er Tuo Cha (Shou)

Pu-er congee!! yes, that is what this reminds me of. Congee is an Asian (Chinese? Vietnamese?) porridge often consumed when one is sick or needs comforting. I usually get it with chicken and preserved egg. Yummy. So it seems natural that pu-erh, a digestive aid, should be combined with Congee!
For those who haven’t had congee before, picture cream of wheat with a ricey sortof taste.
The background is rather mild for a pu-er, I suppose the tea blender (Tao) chose that in case it overwhelmed the rice flavour.
By the time I got to my sixth steep though, I was still getting rice flavour, along with a mild sweet breadiness without the usual heft. Odd, tasting rice and bread at the same time.
Oh and the scent! a coworker of mine remarked that is smells like chicken soup. Funny, given that I likened it in my head to the Asian alternative version! ha!
Also, it must be a pu-er thing… I didn’t get hungry til more than an hour after I normally do. This happens to me every time make a cooked pu-er. Appetite control perhaps? I usually eat at 10:30am, so this could be useful for those days I need to save myself for lunch out with the girls! :P
and now I am sad that this was only a sample. One tuocha in the packet! and since I don’t own a pu-er pick I just plunked the whole thing down and went for shorter infusions. What a waste… I think it could have gone atleast three or four more times. Oh well!
Rating: 87

Darn. I was really hoping that I wouldn’t like this shou because Tao is located in Canada and takes a long while to ship to NYC. But… darnit… I love this. I am such a sucker for cute little tuo cha and I am an even bigger sucker for rice. The aroma is amazing. My entire apartment smells like sweet sticky rice. I can totally see this becoming my everyday, relaxing shou. I will have to find a place in Chinatown that sells these in bulk.
Obvious notes of sticky rice, earthiness, and cream. The body is thick and heavy. It coats the tongue with either oiliness or cream, I cannot decide. It has a nice length. The throat has a strange cooling effect that reminds me of mint. It’s a very lasting effect.
It’s a perfect, little, inexpensive tuo. :)

The last time I reviewed this tea, I was on the fence about it. sometimes I love it, and other times it’s just meh. tonight I love it. my house guest said it smells like popcorn, I see why he would think that.

Brews up nice and dark, with a weighty mouth feel. I haven’t tried rice pu’er from any other company, so I don’t how it compares. But, when the mood strikes for a starchy type tea, this one hits the spot.

I just love the little mini-cakes that pu-er occasionally comes in. They’re just cute. An adorable little pellet of yumminess.

This is a lovely, lovely tea. The creamy rice flavor blends with the warm masculinity of the pu-er to make a dark blend that is rich with complexity and vigor yet smooth and tasty. Along with the rice flavor, it has the typical leathery, woody and earthy notes of a pu-er, but blended together smoothly. Others found citrus flavors, but I’m not tasting those. And, like many pu-ers, it’s great for multiple re-steeps. I’m on steep three currently… or is it four… of my current set of leaves. And the sweet and creamy rice flavor lasts and lasts. Other literature notes people getting up to 9 steeps. I would not be surprised to get rice notes to the end.

This is really great pu-er. I recommend it to anyone.

From http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/2370/tea-review-tao-tea-leaf-rice-shou-pu-erh/ – go read more reviews!!!

New company to me, and a new type of shou pu-erh. By the title, I assumed it was made with rice, but the product had no listing on the website as of yet. That is, unless it went by a different name, and I simply didn’t see it. (I wrote the vendor to clarify.)

That said, it was perhaps the best shou pu-erh I’ve tried to date. After four infusions, I detected nutty, woody, earthy, citrus, and rice-like notes. Very nuanced for a robust drink. It also darkens pretty quickly for the steeper on the go. For a guy that usually goes for sheng first, this was a game-changer.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2011/01/08/review-tao-tea-leaf-rice-pu-er-tuo-cha-shou/

The dry tuo cha smells of a smooth, cooked pu-er, but after rinsing this mini tuo in my gaiwan, the aromas of rice start to come out. Using just-boiled water, I prepare the first steeping. Light, golden-brown, the liquor is a bit cloudy and mingles a faint hint of rice with tea. The taste of this first steeping is not a flavourful as the aroma would suggest.

The second steeping gives off a darker brown infusion. This time it is hard to distinguish whether the tea is just very smooth or whether it lacks a lot of flavour. I suspect this is on account of the intense rice flavour, which seems to camouflage a lot of the pu-er nuances. Hopefully the rice flavours will give way soon and let the tea itself shine through.

Finally, with this third steeping, I am getting more of the flavour of the shou pu on which this tea is built. It is good, though perhaps not as amazing as I had hoped. I go ahead and put this tea through a couple more infusions. It is good, but I am left with the impression that it is lacking something. On my personal enjoyment scale, I would give it a 75/100.

Now this was missing from my spreadsheet for some reason, but judging by the writing on the package I’m going to say it was from RedFennekin?! Whoever sent this my way – thank you!!

I was trying to save this for a day when I’m not so swamped by essay writing for uni and chasing references and sorting out my DBS check for the new job, because I wanted to sit down with in and have a quiet gong fu afternoon. My willpower is weak, though, and the weather is terrible and I wanted a comforting cup of sticky rice tea. I ended up making a compromise between gongfu and grandpa style steeping – steeping the mini tuo in my 4oz gaiwan like normal, taking a few sips of the steeped liquor to make a note, then pouring the remaining tea into a bigger mug. I repeated this for three steeps so that I tried each one individually, and now I have a 12oz mug full of the remaining tea from the first three steeps. I think it’s a decent compromise, haha. The first steep was mild, creamy and starchy, without much of the earthiness of the puerh, but the second and third steeps were very similar and the earthiness came through a lot more. In my combined mug, I think the starchy rice and earthy pu are well balanced. It’s earthy without tasting ‘dirty’ or damp, which I appreciate, and the rice lingers in the aftertaste. It really is as filling and comforting as I’d hoped, and I don’t regret not waiting for a proper gong fu session. For now, I’m happy with my decision and looking forward to getting a few more mugs out of my ‘grand-fu’ session.

Sipdown 214/399

Experiment time! I’m home today so i figured it would be the perfect opportunity to compare both of tao’s rice tuo’s side by side.

1st steep – this one remains largely intact versus the sheng…the brew is a light golden liquor and the aroma is slightly rice like and also slightly…sweet? This one tastes like rice at the get go…the brew is a little, almost bitter but not quite, and then mellows almost immediately in my mouth to a smooth brew…

I bought this a while back during their 50% off sale, and yesterday Stephanie was here, saw it and commanded me to drink it. So, I am!

Karsten came in right after the first rinse and said it smelled like feet. It really did! And, at that point I was a little worried because I’m not so big on feet. I ended up rinsing three times and letting the leaves rest for a while. The fourth steep was really good though! It doesn’t taste like it smells. It’s a little odd, but odd in a good way. I am always proud of myself when I try something new and then like it. It’s like all that preaching I have done to my kids wasn’t a big lie. :D

It’s noon and this is my first tea of the day, and people are lucky they haven’t died by now because I was feeling pretty beastly. But, after a couple of infusions of this I am feeling much better. I could see me restocking this.

http://instagram.com/p/v32wxDua3m/

Thank you so much boychik for the sample!

I really love rice shou. This is a particularly nice one. It may not be as fancy or have as many layers of flavor as you get in other shou, but something so satisfying about the rice essence. It’s almost like having something full of carbs, you know? Like when you are craving comfort food! It’s like a hug in a cup :)

<3