2015 If You're Reading This It's 2 Late

Broke into this cake today. I was able to easily break off small pieces off with my fingers, 7g worth. A quick rinse, starting at 185F and later going up to 205F. A bunch of 5s infusions, maybe up to 15? I just keep going and going hehe.

The cake has a grassy, hay, slightly flowery aroma. I’m not really good at aromas TBH. The liquor is medium to deep golden color. The taste at first, started off somewhat bitter and slightly astringent. The first two steepings, aside from a little bitterness and astringency, had a remarkable sweet taste, that of honey or more like sugar cane. The next few steeps, more flavors came out, layers of them. It’s not a boring tea. It has a super thick mouth feel yet a nice finish with lots of peach notes. Super creamy feeling in my mouth and throat. With each successive infusion, it kept bringing out fruity notes, more on the side of stone fruits, such as apricots and peaches, but also citrus notes, and later add in a little metallic and mineral notes here and there. Complex tea.

In the beginning, I did find it to be slightly bitter but that went away and the pleasant dryness throughout adds to it, doesn’t ruin it. Towards the middle-end, the fruity notes, such as apricots and peach notes subsided and the last layer came in, almost an umami, savory, vegetal taste along with spices, a little heat and minerals.

Throughout the infusions, it was always pleasantly sweet and gave a thick, creamy mouthfeel that won’t quit. The stone fruit notes remained even at the end. I would say that if you’re into sweet sheng and like the mouthfeel experience, I would highly recommend this one to you.

I am going to write a proper note soon, I just want to say that even though I haven’t even finished my first session with it yet, I just bought a cake. That’s how good it is.

If you haven’t yet, it’s not 2 late to get it :)

A little over a week ago, I was sitting here at my desk wondering what’s a good break-up puer? A quick search through my cupboard produced this marketing gem. I dedicate this tea to the person whose addiction to alcohol rivals my own addiction to tea. As far as I’m aware, tea is much cheaper, can get me social and buzzed, doesn’t leave me hungover and doesn’t swing me from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Nor does it make me fat, turn my eyes yellow, give me gout in the foot or an irregular heartbeat. I could keep going, oh yes, but I think you get the idea. So yeah, if you’re reading this it’s too late.

The dry leaf pries from the cake without much work using my flathead electronics screwdriver and smells excellent, soft with powdered sugar, fruitiness and young grass. Warmed leaf smells kind of medicinal like cherry, pineapple and mint. The rinsed leaf has notes of apricot, powdered sugar, red cherry, candied apple and citrus fruits. The liquor starts off fragrant with an aroma that reminds me of Christmas candles: cherry, pine and beeswax.

The liquor is nice and thick with tastes of cherry, vegetal, honey, minerals and a non-penetrating alkaline bitterness. The tea remains relatively unchanging, lightening in flavor and texture as steeps progress with metallic, medicinal and tart additions along with some moss. It picks up a little in the last few long steeps with a thick, musty honey showing up. The aftertastes range from cotton candy, red plum and faint flat spearmint to cherry-pineapple, herbs and honey butter, never very strong or long-lasting but nevertheless noticeable. At some point early on, there is a faint cooling sensation in my chest.

Unlike a lot of reviewers, I experience minimal cha qi from this tea, which makes it an excellent, slightly relaxing daily drinker for me. I also don’t experience much in the way of caffeine effects. I’m able to drink it at night and still be passed out a few hours after starting a session which doesn’t last long, maybe 12 steeps.

From what I can tell, the spent material reveals that this is not a blend. It’s getting bronzing but still looks young at the end of 2018. I’d like to put the cake under a little more humidity. As of now it’s stored in a box in the hall closet which is the most insulated area of my home. It also gets the steam from the bathroom but that’s as technical as my pu storage gets at the moment.

I bought this cake blind last year? based on reviews here at Steepster. It turns out the flavor profile is right up my alley and the honey isn’t overwhelming. I don’t experience any astringency and the bitterness stays in check. It’s pretty light in taste but I’m still able to pick out distinct notes. It’s turning out to be a good cake for the price. One that is stable in delivery and that I can count on during this grieving period, lol.

4.5g in 80ml, 100C.
The lid is like sour-sweet plums (in that order), quite an appealing smell. The dry leaf smells great too. In early steeps the tea has an unique musty honey note, like honey that has been sitting at the back of the cabinet for a long long time. The energy from this tea sits mostly behind my sinuses and a little at the back of my head which was pleasant.
Unfortunately, the taste beyond that is sort of…not there. Like weird mineral water

:(

I went 11 steepings, starting at 10s and ending at 1min. The flavors were very light, starting almost floral and getting a bit more savory/woodsy later on. More importantly, the texture started creamy fluffy early on, getting more oily towards the end. A bit of bitterness early on that faded in later steepings, as a metallic/mineral sensation grew instead. (I didn’t get any of the fruitiness other reviewers have mentioned, though.) The aftertaste was quite literally tooth-achingly sweet throughout.

I’m often a big aroma/flavor person, but here it’s the texture progression that I found fun, and how long the sweetness lingered afterwards. It feels like excellent value for the money.

Finally opening this cake up after a few weeks of being too scared and procrastinating. It’s been hanging out in my mini pumidor since it arrived in hopes of preserving its flavor and maybe seeing some change over time.

For starters, the leaf in this cake is beautiful—it falls apart quite readily with long, twisted leaves. The dry leaf has a light fruity scent, while the wet leaf is a stronger, ripe apricot smell with a hint of tartness.

Following a rinse, the first steep is just a quick flash. The liquor is a pale yellow and the flavor is very light here, imperceptible, but it’s creamy in texture—which catches me by surprise a little.

In the next steep, the viscosity is a little thicker. Definitely the first thing I’m noticing about this tea. The flavor is still quite light, but the main things I’m picking up are a very strong upfront sweetness and creaminess that coats your tongue. There’s an ever-so-slight touch of bitterness that passes over the back of your tongue and lingers in the aftertaste, but it’s enjoyably placed. So, so, creamy.

Third steep starts to look a little bit darker in color, but still a vibrant yellow. A fruitiness is beginning to appear on the tip of the tongue alongside the creamy sweetness, as well as the bitterness beginning to work its way forward up the tongue. The bitterness is a little stronger this steep, but still safely within the region of “comfortable and tasty” in my book.

In the fourth steep, the bitterness dies down a little bit more, and most of the flavor exists in a very comfortable creamy sweetness. The hint of bitterness and sharpness on the tongue keeps this feeling interesting, however, whereas something like Little Walk feels comparatively one-dimensional and easy to forget about.

I’m feeling a little bit dreamy at this point, listening to music and drifting off. The fifth steep continues in creaminess and sweetness with no particularly big changes. At the sixth steep, the flavor drops of quite strongly. There’s still a sweetness there, but the steeps could definitely be longer.

Seventh and eight steeps are longer and the flavor comes in a little stronger now. The bitterness kicks up a notch with the longer steep time (to be expected), though still quite reasonable when compared to some other sheng. The creaminess is mostly gone now, as well as the initial viscosity, and the flavor profile is more “clear”. There’s a little bit of a fruitiness at the tip of the tongue, but the main note is a strong body and a forward bitterness. With the final few longer steeps, a lot of sweetness can be pulled out, as well as some bitterness, but I would say the best steeps are long past.

This is a very smooth and sweet and creamy tea to drink. The texture and smoothness are the main selling points to me, as well as its character being a little more complex than any other “easy-drinkers” that I’ve had so far, making this both an interesting drinker and an easy one. Definitely looking forward to getting to know this tea some more!

This was my first tea to get me through a Saturday of homework this past weekend. Actually managed to get through all of my homework in just a few hours, so I really got to spend more time with the tea.

The dry leaves had that great, sweet, fruity, floral aroma that I’ve noticed in a lot of the w2t samples I’ve had. Liquor comes out a nice gold and is light in flavor to start. It’s got that fresh suntea taste I’ve mentioned before, mixed with light honey.

The flavor comes through more in the next steep and really tastes like a light, wild honey. I get that through most of the session that day. I revisit this tea the next day and it’s smooth, thick and light with an enjoyable buttery aftertaste.

Complex and powerful with a strong but relaxing energy. The leaves, nice large assamica, me thinks, flaked off the section of the xiao bing I received with great ease. In dried form, they give off a pleasant sweet mint. After the first rinse, the aroma reveals a multiplicity of textures, sensations, and flavors to come.

The qi here is great from the start that intensifies with each steep. Good mouthfeel and returning sweetness that lingers. Big flavors here—tropical fruits, forest moss, mint, peppercorns, cloves, leather, sweet hay, and Chinese traditional medicine, with steeps 5 – 7 bringing of the leather, sweet hay, TCM, and forest moss to the fore. Nice cooling and peppery/tingly sensations going on after steep 5 or 6.

For a 2015 tea, this one seems to show quite a bit of mid-aged flavors…or perhaps I am just more sensitive to them.

A little astringent, but fresh and green tasting. Not as formaldehydey as most of the shengs I have been trying—pretty mild.

It’s thick, creamy, and a little sweet, but those flavors are overpowered by the bitter green flavor. Again, this is another one of those shengs I could see people enjoying if they liked sheng.

My friend Dave always claims he has low sensitivity to delicate flavors, and demands the ultra spicy and the outrun scotch. He came to visit and I gave him a weekend of puerh. He didn’t get the first few, and I expected to have to pull out the ultra-heavy camphor and smoke bruisers to get through to his palette. But this, weirdly, is the one that converted him. It’s not a bruiser – it’s in that ultra classic w2t vein of subtle thick textured gestalt feel, with noticeable body effects. But this won Dave’s heart. And later I took him through the camphor and smoke beasties, and he did surely like him. But when the weekend was over, he decided to go full in, ordered his own tea tray and gaiwan, and the one whole cake he bought himself was this one.