2005 Yang Qing Hao "Tsang Liu Gushu" (Cangliu) Raw

This tea is a rather wild blend: Youle, Yiwu, Gedeng, Yibang, Manzhuan, Mangzhi, both spring and autumn material. To the tea: Lots of leather and warm wood, accompanied by a discreet sweetness and with a nice soft heaviness. But the most striking is the typical Yang storage character, which is much more pronounced in this tea than in the 2007 Qizhong and has a slightly sour note at the beginning.
Images and more at https://puerh.blog/teanotes/2005-cangliu-yqh

I was excited to find a sample of this out of the Sheng TTB. I’ve only tried one YQH tea before, and I greatly enjoyed it. This one is quite tasty too! It’s yeasty/funky in a Belgian ale kind of way, pleasantly tart, reminding me of red apples and cranberries. It’s just lightly earthy with a bit of leather and old book smells.

I took a small sample of this tea from the Puerh TTB. I found it to be pretty enjoyable! The dry leaves had a light earthy camphor aroma. After a rinse, I smelled the camphor much more strongly, along with a sharp and slightly fruity aroma.

The taste was nice – heavy camphor, especially in the early part of the session. It really just tasted like a very nice and clean aged sheng. I picked up a bit of woody notes and sweetness, but not of the fruity variety I picked up in the aroma. I didn’t pick up much of any qi from this session.

It really isn’t fair to draw conclusions on a tea based off a small 4g session, but unfortunately that’s what I’m forced to do for this one. I found it a pleasant and enjoyable aged sheng, but not much of anything special. The camphor aroma/flavor was greater than I have experienced in most teas at least. I wish samples were available for these YQH Productions.

I’m off my face on this tea right now. It’s actually making typing difficult! Anyway, I was given a sample of this and have used half of it to brew up this afternoon. I’m pleased that I’m going to get a second pot out of the sample, because I’m really enjoying this one. Apart from the strong cha qi that has left me totally tea drunk, it is pleasingly bittersweet with dominant bark and leather notes, and a sugarcane or caramel sweet undertone. It’s sweet at the back of the throat and warming on the tongue in the aftertaste. As the tea cools, a stronger caramel flavour emerges. The only disappointment is that the aftertaste does not last very long. As a result, this tea is very good, but not quite excellent.

I’m drinking some of my best teas after coming home from the hospital with a stroke (very minor thankfully). I thought I was just adding a note to an existing review but was surprised to see I hadn’t written this one up yet.

Tsang Liu is probably my favorite YQH tea (out of 8 that I’ve tried). The tea has a core of stone fruit surrounded by a complex aura of wood, spice, and occasionally a bit of veggie that detracts from the taste for me. The feeling is the mouth is full and rich; I feel there are layers of flavor that I can barely detect that are adding to the rich complexity. I’m a sucker for complex teas, which explains why I like this tea so much.

The balance is excellent: a smooth transition from aroma, to taste, to finish, with the finish fading slowly over a few minutes. The cha qi is very powerful, though I’m not noticing it as much today as I sometimes do. All in all and excellent tea, and when I first drank this tea I finally understood why people get so excited about YQH.

Dry – Nice semi-aged Raw scent with bittersweet and sweet woody and fairly medicinal notes, dried fruit (like tamarind shell), dried wood.
Wet – Woody bittersweet notes, slight medicinal with some camphor, good aged puerh notes and richness.
Liquor – light copper to amber.

1st 3secs – Woody bittersweet yet gently and thick upfront that coats and slightly numbs the tongue. As it goes down, it has a slight floral, combined with medicinal character that is sort of muted/gentle. The huigan is gentle and lingering.

2nd 3secs – bittersweet and somewhat bitter (pleasant) aged woody note with slight fruity note that to me resembles tamarind shell up front. As it washes down a thicker medicinal and slightly floral note appears that again coats/numbs the tongue but still feels muted/gentle/subtle (just not fully opened note). The huigan is very good with some of that floral-medicinal that lingers.

3rd 4secs – Bittersweet to bitter medicinal-wood front that develops a thick/numbing body. As it goes down, it feels briefly bitter (pleasant) and transitions to a sweeter, mineral, floral note. The huigan is still lingering with medicinal-floral.

4th 6secs – Non punchy Bitter and bittersweet woody front that coats the tongue and quickly mellows to woody (pencil shavings like?) note. As it washes down, tamarind shell notes with some camphor that refreshes the the throat. Nice huigan.

5th 7secs – Non punchy bitter and bittersweet, very woody-medicinal note that develops thickness and a tongue coating sensation. As it goes down, it is smooth with some camphor, pencil shaving (woody) and a musky sweetness (like musk melon or another musky fruit) and developing more floral/fruit notes in the huigan.

6th 8secs – Non punchy bitter wood and bittersweet medicinal notes that become smoother (before thicker). As it goes down the woody/tamarind shell note appears and becomes sweeter with some camphor that refreshes.

7th 10secs – Non punchy bitter woody and medicinal notes transition to smoother and refreshing (some camphor) and not so thick tamarind shell notes. As it goes down, it becomes sweeter and wears more dried fruit note (still tamarind, just not so shell/woody like). The huigan continues to have that floral and medicinal note that lingers.

8th 12secs – Bittersweet woody and slightly thicker again with some of the numbing sensation, nice muted and musky sweetness and a dried fruit finish.

9th 16secs – Bitttersweet woody and thick/numbing front. There is a ‘pencil shaving’ woody note in the middle with tamarind shell notes that linger until the more floral/medicinal huigan appears.

10th 24secs – Matching the previous notes but slightly weaker. This is the first decline which made me adjust steep times.

Additional notes I was able to get 13 steeps after adjusting the steep times. I feel like I could have gotten 14 and just MAYBE 15 if I had be more patient (I wasn’t).

Final Notes
I liked this one quite a bit, It has complexity and changes along the way or at least it is playful with which characteristics shine. I’m not sure if it is more related to the blend having the opportunity to open up at different times but it offers different notes and I’m sure my next session will have different results. Thanks to the friend who shared this with me so I wouldn’t miss out on the YQH wave. :D

Here’s to my third YQH sample. I will admit that receiving these as gifts make it so much easier to review because if I had paid for them I would feel more obligated to make myself enjoy the tea rather then go through 16 to 20 steeps and just spill my thoughts on here with no regret.

Knowing that this is a blend, I know that I won’t be getting 100% of what someone else got but I do know that I will still be tasting the majority of the same notes. Leaf was easy to separate after a quick rinse (I do this so it is all opened within 8 minutes of sitting). Since this isn’t in the middle range of color, I have to assign a number for a darkness: I would say this is around a 7 to 8 out of 10 concerning darkness of a raw pu’erh That to me normally means levels of depth within the liquid as well as a more syrupy lingering in my mouth. Most of the raw I’ve had from the 80s, 90s, and 00s follow this assumption I assigned. Unfortunately, this tea only has the longevity of around 27 seconds after a sip. However, after the fifth steep it stays rather consistent which is nice because at steep 10 you are not losing the flavor profile that steep 6 had.

I was really hoping for a stronger feel as well as a lingering taste or tingle in my mouth. It has the taste of a 00s tea for sure, but I’ve had better and I don’t really want to compare prices because I feel as if this tea would only improve over a decent 5+ years according to my taste preference; which leans towards young rather than old. As this was my Easter treat, it kind of let me down because it went down and its mark was gone before 30 seconds had passed. Wait about a minute of a decent sip and you notice a bit of flatness to it that you wouldn’t get from a tea that has tingle feel or syrup like layer left in your mouth.

This tea is perhaps the smoothest semi aged sheng I have drank. It was smooth with little bitterness from the start. Oddly in the first infusion I got the definite note of peppermint, for just a few sips, but it was there. I drink a lot of peppermint tea so I am familiar with the taste. This was a sweet tasting tea pretty much from the start. There were no unpleasant aged tastes and no wet storage taste. The qi was not quite as strong as it was with the other two Yangqinghao teas I have drank but it was there, very energizing. I have to give this tea a high mark even if I’m not all together sure it was worth the price I paid. It is good but I think it should have cost a little less in as far as how good it is. Ah well I can’t control the prices of the tea I drink. Luckily for me I still prefer ripe over raw in general and it is much cheaper.

I brewed this tea fourteen times in a 60mlg gaiwan with 4.3g 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, 1 min, 1.5 min, 2 min, 2.5 min, and 3 min. I might save the leaves for tomorrow, have not decided yet.

Gushu blend of material from the original six famous mountains (Yiwu, Mangzhi, Yibang, Youle, Manzhuan, Gedeng). With a mix of both autumn and spring leaf, it seems to have a thicker body and heavier brew than many of the YQH productions. Nice complexity during the tea session – I found both tobacco and old book leather (particularly in earlier infusions) as well as herbs, sweetness and fruitness. Active mouthfeel throughout the session. Never turned to bitterness. Very good YQH value found in this tea – premium 6 mountain blend; 10 years of age; great longevity and endurance; 500g cake ($0.39/gram). Dare I say a bargain YQH tea?

I’m starting to pull out all the good stuff from storage, and this was on the list. I’m going to be getting a little more of this, so I decided to try this, so I know what I’ll be getting. The leaves are massive, dark, and I can spot some lengthy stems. They carry a dry wood and some spicy aroma. I warmed up my jianshui and placed them inside. I gave the pot a shake and took in this unique aroma. The scent was very light and subtle. I was picking up some slight fruit mixed with tobacco. The background scents were of decayed wood and some peat moss. The aromas were so subtle that I had to sit for a bit and try to pick them up. I washed the leaves once and prepared for brewing. The steeped leaves gave off some much more prominent notes of tobacco, leather, fruit, and some cherry wood. The first taste was intense, yet it was also incredibly light bodied. The initial sip was syrupy sweet and juicy with some underlying oak tone. The brew gave a gummy feeling in the mouth. The brew develops to a maple candy succulency (east coast people and Canadians might know about these candies). The aftertaste consists of a brown sugar sweetness. I detected no astringency in the brew, and I only tasted a very slight bitterness. I pushed the brew after a little bit to try and extract some more intense flavors. The brew was a nice bright orange, and I was getting more leather tastes in the later steeping sessions. The sweet tones faded for most of the session and were replaced by maple wood and leather. The taste also drift towards the pleasant sour side. However, in the final steeping session, the brew came back with a sugarcane sweetness mixed with the maple wood. The huigan is very delayed, but is extremely thick. The back of my throat had nice maple syrup taste that followed after the session was finished. The leaves are mostly intact and massive. The qi is not all that powerful, but it is intensely warming. I had to change out of my sweater in the middle of session, for I began to feel like a furnace. This is a very nice tea, but isn’t my favorite offering from YGH. I think this needs a little more storage, but it’s still really tasty.

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