2004 Yang Pin Hao Kong Que Zhi Xiang

2025 sipdown no. 5

ashmanra generously sent me her last cup of this. I’ve been waiting for the right time to steep this up and there never seems to be a fully right time, but this past Sunday I submitted an application I’d been working on for weeks and although my to-do list still had plenty, Monday seemed like the perfect day for all that.

I followed her instructions carefully: rinsed with boiling water (~8-10 seconds), let the leaves steam in my mug with a wee lid for 2 minutes, then steeped with boiling water for 1 minute.

1st steep, 1 minute: The taste is very clean, wet, sandy soil. As the tea cools, there is the most subtle whisper of sweetness from mid-end of the sip.
2nd steep, 1 minute: Very similar to the first steep, just as delightful.
3rd steep, 1 minute: I stepped this up before dinner and by the time I got to it, it was cold. Nevertheless, very tasty and soil-like.
4th steep, 1 minute: Taste is starting to thin out, the next steep I’ll increase the time. Still very soil-like. The taste is remarkably similar to the first steep, with only the depth changing.
5th steep, 1 minute 30 seconds: Sweetly soil.
6th steep, 14 minutes: The tea was light in colour and thin the previous two steeps, so I let this steep until I became impatient. The soil is still quite pronounced. This has been a lovely tea!

Thanks ashmanra :)

April Sipdown Challenge – raise your cup to the tea farmers for Earth Day – bonus points for an earthy tea!

I didn’t add this to my cupboard because it is a sample that I received as a gift from Whiteantlers. Many thanks, and I miss you!

I decided to go with ripe puerh for this prompt because most of them have some earthy notes. Little did I know I was about to drink the earthiest puerh I have ever had.

Dry aroma was pure dirt, in the best way possible. I love the smell of freshly plowed fields and of petrichor. We live on the border between the Sandhills of NC and the Piedmont. Our soil is sandy and dry, and this puerh smells like when I crawl under a house into the dry, undisturbed crawlspace. (Yes, I have had to do this quite a few times as the elderly ladies on the street used to call on me to hit the reset button on their oil furnaces. Ha ha!)

There is no fishiness and no real aged manure/horse barn scent here, other than the dusty smell of a barn with an earthen floor. There is no mushroom scent. There is a strong minty or camphor tingle that builds as you drink but dissipates fairly quickly. Pleasant.

I have had four steeps thus far and will be having more throughout the day. I am glad I tried this one. It is a very enjoyable ripe pu.