2017 Big Green Hype

First impressions: strong honey, hay, smokey, sweet.

1
Fruity honey, some sweet hay, little flowers, camomile tea?

2
Fruity, herbal, smokey, honey. Mouthcoating sweet honey. Little astringency. I don’t know why it reminds me of camomille tea. Hay.

3
Cooling, smoke, sweet roots, honey. Liquor is very sugary with a nice body and some black pepper spicyness. Satisfying.
Astringency in the throat.

Aroma of some kind of shampoo. Also white tea.

4
More white tea aroma (I can’t be more specific…)
Body like Liquid jelly. Relaxing /paralyzing head feeling, body less relaxed.
Heart racing.
Flowers in the aftertaste.
I think “A solid experience”.

5
Rich and astringent in a pleasant way. Grips in the throat with an honey like feel. Flowers.

6
More herbs, roots. Liquor has a good presence, a light bitterness that feels pleasant to me.
Super long lasting spicy flowery aftertaste. Rough texture in the mouth.

7 8
losing something. More bitterness.

9
Less interesting, I stop.

All the Pu-erh #3
This one was weird after the first two.
7.2g, 100ml shibo, 212F
Time: rinse, 5s/10/12/20/27/30/20/20/25/30
I tasted the rinse – little bitter, thick, but not much taste.
In the first few steeps, I had a bit of musty hay and a whole lot of fruit in the aftertaste. 12s steep gave me the 1st hint of citrus, but also a metal mineral taste. Citrus and fruit continued on the two following steeps. The 30s steep was too bitter and drying so I backed off to 20s again, where the steeps returned to smooth, thick and fruity. I only got sweetness on the very last steep once my water had cooled down.
I’ll need to try this tea at a lower temperature to see if I can coax out more sweetness. This tea made me very hungry! I’ll need to store this away for a while and try it later.

Procedure for drinking Big Green Hype:
1. Break off a 6-7g chunk.
2. Brew gongfu style at 200 degrees.
3. Immediately remember why you originally stuck this in the bottom of your tea collection, instructing yourself not to bother with it until 2025. After 6-7 steeps, arrive at all the sweet floral notes that remind you why you’re keeping it around until then.
4. Put back where you found it.

Old written note.

Sample is sawed, very tight compression but not the center. Lots of struggle to break off a chunk with my improvised pick (flathead electronics screwdriver). 6g, glass gaiwan, 205F, 20s rinse. First few steeps were just ok. Aroma light stonefruit, very thin liquor, taste lightly sweet, dandelion and cement. After that, pure brass later accented by a very un-good bitterness. Got a terrible headache. Has the claimed endurance, though.

—

I finished this sample with varying leaf amounts, water temperature and used a different gaiwan. Same results every time, including the headache. At least it’s consistent :P Something about this tea just didn’t jive with me physically.

Sun dried fruit aroma of dry leaves. First steeps are strongly floral, orchid, oolong, and cedar. Body has strong astringency, no bitterness, and no huigan. Green tea qualities throughout, which are unappealing. Uninteresting to me. A surficial tea, without much depth or body. I can’t imagine this aging well.

I was HYPED for this one! (you see what I did there?)

Dry aroma and initial steeps are herbaceous, hoppy, and honeyed with pine, mineral, and dried flower notes. Soft and warm in the mouth, moderate bitterness and astringency. The profile shifts toward peppercorn and green vegetables. Starts to give me the brain tingles and in the cheeks as well. Later steeps become less interesting; milder with a citrusy note.

Good tea, if it stayed as good as the first couple steeps it would be excellent.

This tea came with the June/July? 2017 issue of the W2T subscription (which is a great tea subscription), and is also sold on their site. I first had this tea a lovely day, when i was feeling like having some sheng but not sure what exactly.

The scale showed around 5.7 grams if i reacll correctly. The pot is a 110ml Yixing that I use for various teas.

Double rinse, ~5 second first steeping, then a bit more with time. (about +5 each time perhaps, it wasn’t exactly messured or timed)

Some bitterness and astringency in the begining, but alright even for me that is not all to fond of too much bitterness or astringency. Behind that a hint of floral note, some mineralness and some smokiness. Perhaps a bit of sourness that is near undetectable but with more albeit very little sweetness and an somewhat oily soup that makes it all delightfull. For being this young it’s certainly very drinkable even in earlier steepings if you are just a little attuned to young shengs, but I suspect with my very limited experience that this will age very well aswell.

The bitterness disappears faster than the astringency with the steepings. Leaving a sandy, somewhat metallic mineralness alongside floral notes and a honey like sweetness. The soup is still oily in a way that gives a very full mouthfeel that is lovely.

Not many steepings after the bitterness disappears, the astringency mostly fades away, merely lingering to give an interesting dynamic with the sweetness and giving more way for letting out the mellow floralness that I can’t place or should I say plantyness, not sure exactly what it is but i like it. Either way it’s a really good young sheng. And it has an amazing Huigan that lingeres in the mouth for some time.

After that it has a taste the somehow reminds me of rhizome of the common polypody, which for those that haven’t tasted it is somehwat similar to licorice, yet not. And this taste is not quite like that of of polypody, and even further from licorice. But it has a certain rhizomic taste to it if that makes sense.

It reminds me of laying down and reading a nice book on a sandy beach at a small lake in scandinavian high summer. With the wind blowing slightly making sure the sun isn’t too hot.

I really like it, and I look forward to see how it ages, but will probably be impatient and it along the way many times – simply because it’s so good even without aging.