barzel bvarzel yachad- 90s iron cake

28 cheshvan 5782

i am happy to say i still have plenty to write about for this blog. this includes a backlog of posts ive written that i keep saved on a word document on my laptop. i don’t live with wifi (by choice. yeah… im one of those). after i write something i have to be motivated and in the mood to use my internet time to post it to this blog. in addition to the languishing collection of posts adrift in the word document is a collection of tea notes that i write on scraps of paper and in a composition notebook that i keep next to me as i drink. and yes, i keep the notes in a journal so i can keep my tea time free of screens. its like my blog is caught up in some dysfunctional and inefficient bureaucracy of tea publishing. first, notebook, then word document, then send it to the presses once wifi is within reach and the article has been proof read enough, more or less, and then ‘click.’

still to come in the future is me talking about me beginning my journey into searching for the kind of shou i want to own and sharing my notes on various yang qing hao and wisteria teas. oooh fancy. i want to write about these in relation to multiple offerings to compare and contrast and to not waste posts as ‘tea reviews’ because there are more nuanced tea reviews on these out there already and i don’t think my chops are up there just yet.

what has me inspired to write tonight is a tea i had just the other day and i cant stop thinking about it. why was it so special? first off, it’s 90s tea. oooh yes, the elusive puer from the 90s. old school, rare, and well aged by transcontinental vibrations of house music and the canned laughter of a ‘live studio audience’ from tv sitcoms. the second great thing about this tea is its qi. yes, this very subjective term that carries many opinions including that qi is all to some part placebo. if you know me, i am someone who really seeks out qi and thinks it is present in teas (while acknowledging that it is not some solely metaphysical force but is something brought into occurrence through phytochemicals in addition to a person’s mindset as well as bodily reactions). this tea may not have 'qi'n the strict sense, but it does provide some very dynamic feelings. not only does this tea make some interesting feelings, but it is very psychedelic compared to other teas ive had. it’s not gonna make you hallucinate, but for me, it created very noticeable body affects that were expansive and a bit dissociative. this is a feeling i relate to other aged factory cakes. im guessing it might be the aging process and how it tonifies and directs the caffeine and other qi adjacent properties.

does this tea have qi? one could say the only reason i would think it’s strong qi is because ive never truly experienced tea with true qi and everything i thought that qi was before this was some fool miscomprehension. i do not believe this, i believe ‘qi’ is present in everything and just presents itself differently and in different magnitudes depending on what/where it is coming from (in addition to the human and how they perceive and interact with qi let alone the world). all that to say, i really enjoyed the feelings i was getting while drinking this tea. third, and lastly, this tea is VERY affordable. $125/357g for sheng puer from the 90s with bangin' feels. what?! the only other 90s tea i had, which i loved, is $0.70/g and that has way less stamina and more basic qi.

this tea is an iron cake. this means it is very strongly compressed. why would someone do this? one reason is to enhance its long term aging. like bbq and braises, low and slow is the way to go. it is the same reason pressed bings are more sought after than aged maocha. the slower aging of the tea allows it to develop more nuances and depth. another reason factories do iron cakes, is because it makes it more attractive to some for storage. it’s denser, more stackable, and takes up less space if one wants to buy tongs and tongs of it to age. personally, with the little experience ive had with iron cakes and tightly compressed tea, i do not like iron cakes. they are annoying to work with, they can be annoying to brew, and the leaf material is either choppy to begin with or gets choppy when trying to break it up and you get a lot of dust. an upside to iron cakes, which was the case with this tea, is that it can give the tea some real vigor and thus many brews.

after getting the leaves to open up, i started my journey unknowingly into a whole swirling staircase voyage of a tea. the first 4 steeps had an underlying acrid taste that did not last long but was the forward flavor. once that left, the huigan of the tea came through and that is where the ‘taste’ presented itself. it was quiet whispers of mushroom, antique, sour, attic (not the gross too hot summer kind. the temperate one filled with winter coats and family relics), and that mustiness that i like (that old tea taste). the storage on this tea seems dry. im guessing it was stored in Taiwan because it certainly tastes like it has been aging all these years even though it carries that lighter, dry stored, grassy profile. it make me long for an imagined version of this tea with some danker storage, but oh well (now that ive had some yqh, it makes me wonder what everything would taste like with yqh storage. mmmm…).

steep 5 is where it smoothed out and lost much of the astringency. up until now the mouthfeel is fine. interesting shifting over the roof of the mouth and teeth with some oiliness coating the throat but on the thinner side. steep 5 is also where i needed to take a break from the qi.

the qi was noticeable from the first steep. i felt lighter in my body and more specifically in my head like it was a slowly expanding balloon. then the qi started to move downward. my body felt grounded except for my head which still had that light balloon feeling. the qi was also fun to track because it kept shifting in very dynamic ways. the same held true for the mouthfeel and huigan. the steeps felt like they had discernible differences in all of these categories which made it very engaging and fun.

at steep 7 i wrote ‘tasty!’ because the acridness and astringency were gone. at 8 the tea leaf taste started to present itself, but it remained a background layer while other tastes were newly emerging as it transitioned into an aged hay taste with a huigan that kept up until steep 13. by steep 10, the calming and psychoactive qi transitioned into the alert wakeful kind. i finally ended it on steep 16. wow. that’s pretty long.

for me, this tea checks the boxes for my top four things i look for in a tea. 1. good qi/body feelings 2. stamina and longevity 3. good on my body and stomach 4. in my price range for an upper end tea.

this makes me wonder what 90s puer was/is like. is this normal for a 90s tea? is what im feeling normal in most teas 20+ years old? whether it is or isn’t, i am very thankful to be able to drink and have this tea. i am very excited to share it with people because it is something interesting (and very unique for people who don’t drink tea like this), plus it is so affordable for what it is which gives me no hesitation in sharing it. and if youre wondering, i bought it from that same rad internet stranger mentioned before :p (aka: mrmopar)

xoxo,

atzei besamim