DaHongPao Oolong Brick

Here’s a secret: Don’t cut the bricks. Don’t try it. You will end up with stitches and weak tea.

You’re welcome.

So, here’s the scoop: These bricks make Xiaguan compression look like sissy stuff. Honestly, when I broke up one brick I used a meat mallet and a steak knife. A saw probably would have worked too. They are too small and too dense to fiddle around with without resulting in some sort of embarrassing self-injury.

The other reason is that the resulting half-bricks just didn’t have enough oomph to make me very happy with the session. Now, I like strong brews, so this may not be the case for everyone. But, really, these half-brick sessions just didn’t have any decent flavor.

So, I chucked an entire brick (~10g) in a 150ml gaiwan. The difference was night and day. Great flavor, great staying power; very dynamic in-mouth.

So, why get DHP compressed as a brick? I guess if you were going to age it, the compression makes sense. Beyond that, I can’t really say it’s a great medium for your daily oolong drinking. But, that said, this is a great session. Don’t cut the bricks, don’t get stitches, don’t break your cheap steak knives, and you will have a good time.
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Dry leaf: cocoa powder, peanut shell, hints of licorice/anise. In preheated vessel – some sweet/sour notes.

Smell: roasted nuts, sweet/sour, hints of dark caramel. Sweet, pungent herbal like anise or sassafras.

Taste: roasted nuts, cocoa powder, baking spices, nice woodiness, mineral, sweet/sour. Aftertaste of citrus and tart raspberry, sweet minerality.

I received this tea through LiquidProuest’s Oolong Group Buy. I have to say this is delicious. I have been drinking this tea for hours now and it is relentless. The tea took quite a bit in order for it to fully loosen up but once it did it didn’t want to stop. I did a whole tab which ended up weighing around 12g in a 150mL gaiwan. The first steeps came out surprisingly strong despite the fact that the brick itself had not loosened up one bit. I think this is a really interesting and nice tea to have around especially to break out if you have any friends that are also into tea.

I received this from the 2017 Regional Oolong Group Buy Put Together by LiquidProust.

I woke up early to finish proofing my sourdough cinnamon buns, and wanted a nice savory roasted oolong as a breakfast replacement, this seemed perfect.

The dry brick smells very pleasantly roasty, like roasted malt used in brewing beer. It weighs in at 11 grams so I cut it in half, though I wish I cut it into a thin “top and bottom” instead of just chopping it in two, I think that will leave more leaves intact next time. I brewed up the 5g half brick in my 200ml glass teapot with 190F water for 30 second infusions. Due to the compressed nature of this tea I gave it a 10 second rinse and left it to steam in the teapot for 10 minutes or so. The rinse had a great roasted peat moss aroma, and was a bit too weak to drink but carried the same lovely scotch like notes.

After steaming and resting the brick started to break apart nicely with a bit of a high pour from the kettle. The liquor from this infusion is a nice transparent copper with an aroma of squash blossoms, roasted edamame, and maybe a hint of miso. The Chinese origin of this oolong becomes clear upon the first sip with a bracing rock oolong flavor balanced masterfully by the smooth roast that brings both sweetness and umami. The tea is very clean with not much lingering flavor besides some roasty smoothness, it has the mouth-feel of a heavily clarified broth, this makes it quite refreshing despite its savory taste.

The second infusion steeps a shade redder than the copper first steep and the aroma picks up a notable mineral quality (I keep thinking copper but is it just the color?). The roast dies down slightly as the umami flavor takes center stage, it reminds me so much of roasted edamame I can almost taste the salt, and the rock oolong flavor is still there accented by the increased mineral note in the taste.

The third infusion is a similar color with the roast aroma dying off further and again increased mineral notes. This is the most balanced tasting infusion yet, I still get all the flavors from previous brews yet no individual flavor stands out over the others. I would say this is the “natural state” of the tea as it is now fully opened up and infusions 4-7 (~1.5L H2O) were very similar, getting weaker as the tea gives out more and more of itself in later brews.

This flavors in this tea remind me of Verdant’s DHP, but with a clarity and cleanness that is unique to this tea. You can tell it’s a rock oolong, but the bracing flavor does not overpower; it’s well roasted but maintains delicacy. It has a good bit of finer tea pieces but it does not brew up too strong or tannin heavy. This and the Gold Rose from YS are both wonderful examples of oolongs, while showcasing the flavors unique to Chinese oolongs in particular.

Ah…. This is the stuff! Like whiskey in my cup. I love this style, dark, vanilla, oak barrel oolong. Leaves are chop and black as night. This is a great tea if you enjoy these roasty dhp bricks.

These are absolutely huge pieces! I have to break mine into fourths to use some at work. With that being said, I get four different session out of each pieces which last me a nice 8 roasty steeps at work. Oolong is probably best when in loose form, but these cake are fun. As long as you use something that will catch the extra material that breaks off: This
provides a nice strong cup or a lighter one if you only go 15s on it.
The size alone makes me something to purchase and have on hand as it will last quite awhile.

This is a highly tasty roasted oolong. Thank you Marcus Reed for this tea. This is quite good. The roast profile is just right on this tea. Sometimes a roasted Da Hong Pao is noticeably over roasted, not this one. I would describe this as perfectly roasted and I am a hard person to please when it comes to roasted tea, I don’t like many of them. There was also a sweet note behind the roasted note, but it is on the back burner to the roast profile. This is one I would definitely buy myself if I hadn’t received it in a swap.

I brewed this tea six times in a 120ml gaiwan with 5.7g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 10 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec. This tea was not technically finished at six steeps but I am at my caffeine limit so am stopping. I think an Da Hong Pao enthusiast would get at least ten steeps or more out of this tea. It is available at www.chaceremony.com. Thank you again Marcus Reed for this tea.