teakkurim

12 tevet 5781 to put the Puerh Shop dayi 7542 i tried in context, i wanted to drink a puer i know the best. this is one i bought from Yunnan Sourcing as my first bing. it was cheap and i didn’t know enough to buy a sample first to give it a try. oh well (a phrase which im sure appears many times on this blog). ive had this cake for about a year and i keep it in a plastic ziploc which i add some steam to every now and then. the dry leaves still give off a nice aroma so i don’t think it has dried out too much.   it is a better tea than the PS Dayi i tried. whether this is because of storage conditions (traditional vs dry storage), storage quality, or some other reason, i prefer the 2007 Bo Nan. but why?   the flavor is better. it is less bland, has more middle and high notes (still not many deep notes and not a lot of complexity, but more than the PS dayi). the mouth feel is better. it has a little more texture, is a little smoother, and has a lil bit of returning sweetness, and leaves

12 tevet 5781 after being disappointed with the Dayi 7542, i wanted to try other 7542 i got from Puerh Shop. was the Dayi what 7542’s taste like, was it because it was dry stored, was it because it has gotten very dried out over time, was it because its not actually a Dayi 7542? theres only one way to fid out and that is to be there for the whole process of making that cake and i cannot do that, so i will continue to try 7542’s to compare.   firstly, this 1998 CNNP 7542 brews very light. it comes out as a medium orange which seems very light for a tea from 1998 even if it is dry stored. is this really from 1998? what else is true or untrue about it? if only i could be a sleezy partner and rifle through this puer’s text messages to find out what is  really  going on…   this post will not be long. it felt a lot like the previous 7542. it was bland, not bitter, but boring. a little mushroomy, pretty mineraly, and a lil hay and dirt taste. smooth, but  not much mouthfeel. although it did n

10 tevet 5781 i wanted to spend this winter getting to know sheng puer better. i was excited, i was committed, i was intimidated, i was cheap. i am still cheap. in the past ive had a couple samples from YS, i bought a $40 cake from YS, and ive had good aged sheng at New Century Tea Gallery but didn’t buy any. that’s it. i have not had a lot of aged sheng.    i did a lot of internet research and compiled a bunch of sites that i thought would be good to buy from. for my first mini haul of samples i chose Puerh Shop. they are very cheap/affordable, have lots of options, and have puer that is at the actual aged stage (7-10 plus years). so i pulled up the pages that listed all their aged sheng samples and bought about 8. they arrived very quickly shipping from PS’s headquarters in Michigan. because they have just been stored in a room temperature setting in the Midwest, i popped the sample bags is a tupperware with a boveda pack and added steam to the tupperware and the bags every so often

8 tevet 5781 i bought 50g 2020 sheng puer from Bana . ancient trees, a reputable vendor, good price. great, i am excited to try this.   the ‘pearls’ came individually wrapped in little paper and they were sent in a gold fine mesh bag. the packaging was very nice, buuuuut, unsurprisingly, they felt pretty dry and the pearls were hard to break apart and when they did, they got crumbly. all this aside, how did it taste?   my first times drinking it i was disappointed. the ‘pearls' were very tightly compacted which was annoying for deviating from the 5g serving size. the brews taste fairly one dimensional and have an unpleasant soapy aftertaste. there is very little sweetness, floralness, or fruitiness. the main flavor is a more savory quality with touches of herbs like oregano, but there isn’t much beyond that. the leaves are also chopped up bits without any nice whole ones. but, i kept trying it and i think i like it? i am still confused. i think i prefer it with less leaves, around

  4 tevet 5781   this is the young puer my coworker bought at Uwajimaya. he gave me some to take home and im finally ready to try it. i added some moisture to the bag it was in and had it stored where im keeping my aged sheng so it now has taken on an aged smell. i am not mad about this because i like aged tea but it will be curious to see how it tastes now.   just from that small time with the aged puers, its taste has changed. even its leaves have darkened. its smell still carries that smokiness but it is now more like a hickory smoke and smells like good barbeque, including thick, sweet, and sour barbecue sauce that has been cooked on in the smoker.   the taste also has left behind a lot of the young flowery, fruity, sweetness. it is mellow with a hint of smoke, tobacco, and wood. there is some bitterness that coats the roof of the mouth, but it is not over powering. the mouth feel is pretty thin, the taste doesn’t have a lot of complexity, and the flavors didn’t hold up for that m

 

 23 kislev 5871 i have a few coworkers who are also into tea. i am a bit more o.d. than they are believe it or not. i talk to them about the teas im drinking and we keke about tea and rom coms and make puns. it’s a good time. i am very excited to pour tea for them when this pandemic is over (i really miss pouring tea for people). one coworker of mine told me about two puers he bought recently. they are both bings. i was intrigued. he said he had got one from teasource.com and he’d be happy to give me a sample. the next day, he brought in a little corner he had broken off to share with me.   hm, it smells like shou, which makes sense because i assume if your are a non-ultra-tea-nerd drinking a dark puer, theyre most likely to have access to shou. i brew some up fake gong fu style using a large tea-ball strainer and a small coffee cup to do flash steeps with the kettle in the back of the warehouse.    it tasted like bad shou. it had that bland fishy taste and was just all one note of thi

20 kislev 5781 i now knew what puer was. i watched So Han’s videos. i read some articles on the internet. i was hooked on the idea of puer. ancient, aged, wild tea leaves. aromas and tastes that rolled and turned and evolved with every cup. flavors of the forest floor, tobacco, and smoke. one of the first forms of tea. it sounded magical. so i planned a trip to seattle.    i used to live on the east side and never went into seattle enough because i hated the traffic so much it didn’t feel wroth it to me. instead i spent my free time in the woods and making weird radio dramas.   but now, i lived in a city where there was music, there was culture, there was nature, but there was no good food. especially good Chinese food which is one of my favorite things. the city i grew up in had so much good food and so much variety. some of that food is what first made me want to be a chef. and now, here i was in a quirky city with a surprisingly good free jazz scene but no good restaurants.   since

17 kislev 5781   welcome to our continued segment of getting to know the tea drinker behind the screen. scratch that.   IN the screen … i am avoiding writing a tea review because the tea i am most excited to try is some aged sheng puer i need to re-humidify. they are samples that came in a plastic bag that i want to make sure are in decent shape before i try them.    i am still new to puer and have ruined some i bought by not knowing how to store it and wondering why something that tasted good when i first got it now tastes flavorless and has no aroma. the main reason was that i was not storing my tea properly. valuable life lessons.    i lived on a converted school bus until a month ago when i upgraded to a travel trailer. believe it or not, but a school bus in the pacific northwest is a terrrribbblllle place to store tea.   right now, i have the samples in an airtight tupperware with a boveda humidity pack for 69% RH. before putting them in there, i also added a little bit of steam t