Golden Needle Ripe Puerh Tea of Yong De

This is strong and hearty, malty and rich, barnyard forest mountain dirt pu erh!

Brewed gong-fu near boiling. Rinse gives smell of earth, slightly like old book/must, with an edge of what some might call “fishy”, but it smells right- not like a cheap pu’er fish/shrimp smell, but just a fermentation smell, like korean food or something good. Anyways, I’m pretty new to ripe pu’ers and this is my favorite so far. Has the flavors of other teas I’ve had but just better. Also, I feel like I can taste the characteristics of the pre-fermented tea in way- it has nice fruity undertones like a good black tea.
Nice stuff.

This is a very tasty but bittersweet puerh tea. There were strong bitter notes in the first two steeps. There were some notes of chocolate in there but more like dark chocolate than milk chocolate. It did develop some fruity notes in the last couple of steeps too. This was a tea I really enjoyed. I stopped at eight steeps but I might go back for two more. At only $4 for 50g this is cheap. I bought 250g . Didn’t seem like the thing to do to buy only 50g when it was so inexpensive. I’ve had good luck in general with loose ripes from Yunnan Sourcing so I wasn’t too worried in ordering a large quantity. I wish I didn’t have time for this review and gongfu session. Normally I would be working Saturdays but not any more. My company went bankrupt and they let us go the other day. So I find myself with time on my hands. At least I have plenty of tea to drink. Planning to stop at a local tea shop called the Clipper Ship Tea Company later on today. If anyone lives on Long Island they are an excellent source of quality tea.

I steeped this eight times in a 120ml gaiwan with 9.3g 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, and 30 sec. Judging by the strength of the brew I’m sure I could have gotten four or five more steeps out of the leaves.