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YUGE camphor smell right away. Nice taste on the rinse actually even though I put one solid chunk into the gaiwan. Creamy taste, slightly fruity. Color of the soup is teetering on orange but is still pretty yellow. Smell is evolving to woodsier but the camphor is there still. Flavor is very mild but my chunk hasn’t finished opening yet.

3-5th steeps are gaining astringency but still nice. Flavor is starting to get where I want it, I should’ve broken up the leaf a little bit but oh well. A little chalk and earth, a little citrus, a little eggplant. 6th+ are all pretty similar, nice astringency level and decent flavors. Not intensely exciting and absolutely not worth the $50-100 that a cake is going for to me. Good though.

Woke up today craving a ripe instead of my usual raw so I pulled out this sample from mrmopar. Nice dark nuggets with a weird small bit of light colored leaf and a light twig/stem. Odd, but whatever. After the rinse there is a decent strength ripe smell that, fortunately, faded pretty quickly in following steeps. 1st steep is bright and very very sweet but not very flavorful. 2nd steep smells like old books. Very deep brown soup, lovely. Taste is still mild and sweet. It’s got a perfect astringency level for me, it’s there enough for the tea not to be flat and boring but it’s not drying me up. There’s some cooked fruit flavor deep in the throat. 3rd steep continues to please.

At this point I’m already digging around Taobao for a cake of this. It’s tremendous. It’s everything I never knew a shou could be. It’s not fishy and rank. It’s sweet and smooth and DAMN MAN. Just when I thought I was going to be able to get away with ignoring ripe puer forever and focusing my efforts on raw, you bastards make me want it all.

4-5th steeps the sweetness has backed off a bit and it’s a little earthier. I’m even picking up a hint of the grassiness of a young raw. 6th+ steeps are all similar, still sweet and smooth and rich and delicious. I’ll stretch these leaves as far as they’ll take me, I’ll end with an hour steep if I have to!

Edit: I’ve done a 2m, 3m, 5m, 7m steep and it’s still tasting good.

I don’t know if I’m just an idiot and brewed this all wrong and didn’t pay attention to the right notes or whatever but this just tasted like oxidation to me. Like a plain black tea. The first 5-6 steeps were like this. The brewing instructions provided were very odd so I ignored them (for gongfu style it recommends 5g of tea in a 500ml pot!?). I brewed it like I brew any oolong, ~200F with a rinse and then steeps starting at 5s and going up about 5s each time, 7g in a ~150ml pot. The steeps beyond 5 or 6 were a little more interesting but it was just kind of a generic oolong flavor. This one was not for me. Maybe I just don’t have the palate to taste beyond the oxidation since I don’t drink many black teas.

Fantastic. Dry and tasty. Didn’t take notes but shit it was good. Got like 12-13 steeps and it was still aight at the end.

Great value, will buy a brick.

Nothing too exciting to me. Nice flavor and aftertaste but not terribly complex. Cooling effect is there and is very nice. Astringency is verging on too high.

This stuff is amazing. Tastes like shoestring potatoes in a can (potato stix) and nuts and roasted veggies and green tea and butter. Good for many steeps. Really nice conversation tea, something unique to share with friends. Also has a nice bold flavor for your friends who aren’t into picking up on light, subtle notes of light teas.

I used 2 mini tuos in my 120ml gaiwan and they weighed in at 4g + 5g. Rinse was gross looking, lots of dust coming off. Lid smell after the first steep was kind of gross, like a sweaty gym. Watching the tuos break up, the leaf pieces are tiny, almost like the leaves were ground before being pressed rather than 6-7 whole leaves being nicely packed together. I don’t think it’s from mishandling either, dust or chunks didn’t really come off the dry tuo when I unpacked them.

Flavor on the first steep is really not bad, especially considering my brain prepared me for the worst with the visuals and smell of this tea combined with the negative reviews I read right before drinking (bad habit). Astringency is pretty high already but I’m getting the flavors I associate with sheng. Aftertaste is not very pleasant. I’ll continue to flash steep since I’m afraid of how much bitterness these tiny leaf pieces can unleash in a short amount of time.

Second steeping and the off smells are mostly gone, I’m even getting a floral hint of tempered cumin seeds (different smell from ground cumin). Astringency is starting to assault my mouth on this though. Dumping this steep. Dumping third steep. I’m done.

Would not recommend.

I am writing this a day later from memory since I didn’t write anything down at the time.

Nice hint of camphor scent on the brewed leaves and gaiwan lid. Mellow flavor, earthy and grassy. Flavor stayed strong enough that I just flash steeped for the first 5-6 brews, ended on probably the 9th or 10th brew with a full minute. Astringency was a bit higher than I usually enjoy but it didn’t ruin it for me. I enjoyed the tea but it didn’t really stand out to me.

I’m trying a sample portion of this tea and even with this small amount of leaf I am picking up a lot of that sweet smell of the dry leaf the other reviewers mentioned.

Rinse: lid smell is fresh hay and powdered sugar. 1st steep (5s): lid smell is hay and molasses. Very light yellow soup. Taste is creamy and gentle grass. Very little bitterness and practically no astringency. 2nd steep (7s): sweetness is starting to come through. Astringency rose a touch but it’s a pleasant amount. Nice aftertaste. 3rd steep (10s): Astringency still rising but not too much. Very grassy this steep, similar sweetness. Flavor is getting deeper in my throat and body is growing nicely. 4th steep (12s): About the same, astringency fading back a bit. 5th steep (15s): I need to head into longer steeps, this is pretty watery. Still getting nice grass and sweetness. 6th steep and beyond: developed really nicely. Stayed pretty light and sweet with low astringency and bitterness.

Very pleasant and inoffensive tea. I must try to stretch this tea until my partner comes home and I can prove to her that not all puer is funky fish or mouth-puckering grass clippings. At $0.15/g, this is a buy for me.

I’m trying out this tuo that matu sent me—“I didn’t like it, so now it’s your problem!” It’s a “2013 Menghai (region, not factory) raw I randomly bought on eBay.”

Dry leaf has no strong smell—I’m picking up a bit of menthol or mint lifesavers or something but that might be my nose playing tricks on me. Nice and easy to pick apart, not too dense. My crappy oyster knife did just fine.

Rinse: lid smell is pretty much neutral green tea. Soup is more amber than yellow. 1st steep (5s): lid smell is underspiced pot roast. Taste is astringent and chalky, I can barely taste through the bitterness. Dumped this steep after a few sips. 2nd steep (5s): lid smell is composting dried autumn leaves. Even though the water temp fell to ~203 for this steep it is far too astringent. The aftertaste isn’t very pleasant but it is going deep which is nice. I’m getting little teases of fruit but I can’t pin it down. Also dumped most of this steep. 3rd steep (7-8s, 195F): lid smell is a children’s playground wood chip bedding after rain and a couple kids peed their pants. I’m really smelling urine deep in the background. A little bit less bitter, not sure if it’s the water temp or it’s just chilling out. Tasting orange pith. Astringency is still there and not feeling great. 4th steep (12s, reboiled): Still getting a little bit of urine smell but mostly just wet earth/wood/grass. God, why am I still drinking this? My mouth is so dry. Bitterness is manageable at this point but it is still so astringent. Getting some cigarette ash notes.

I might do as Matu suggested and use this as pick practice.