2017 Lily Flower Pressed Shu Pu'er

Thank you so much for passing this along, derk!  derk wasn’t thrilled with this one and we had a swap we were building, so I requested this one.  I love these types of pu-erh that look like a candy bar that you break a piece from.  This one just happened to have lilies in it.  By the time the fourth steep had unraveled in the basket, there was an entire big lily blossom floating at the top, not to mention the smaller petals throughout.  Wow!  It’s amazing how tea unravels sometimes.  The flavor was very consistent throughout all four steeps.  A very dark shu — I couldn’t really taste anything floral per se, but the pu-erh is very delicious on it’s own.  The main note being starchy and bakey like a good rye bread.  Nothing offensive here at all. But also not terribly distinct.  I do like how dark it is though! Now that it’s cooler weather… let the great chai avalanche commence!
Steep #1  // 1 square for full mug // 20 minutes after boiling  // rinse // 2 minute steep
Steep #2  // 18 minutes after boiling //  2 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 5 min steep
Steep #4 // just boiled // 11 min steep

This was likely never intended to be brewed Western-style, but yet, owing to my gaiwan-less state, that’s how I made it. The strangest things happen when you put things through what they weren’t meant to be; this was the most confounding thing I’ve found in a cup.
The tea is pressed into a candy bar style brick, which gives easily along the score lines, and smells like dark molasses. The lily petals plump up as soon as water hits them. Another thing that happens as soon as water hits these leaves is the smell of fresh buttered popcorn immediately permeates the air. It caught me entirely off guard and I back stepped away from my teapot. With trepidation I took it upstairs to drink it, hoping the popcorn note would fade away, as I can’t say I was in the mood for it. Fortunately it left, and by the time my cup was cool enough to put to my lips the scent coming off of the water was molasses again, and brown sugar.

It tastes of that. It tastes of other things, too. Before the deep sweet flavor settled in something else hit me, something I still can’t quite place. Summer. Automobile, my memory put to me bluntly, and elaborated no more. It might be hot leather, or spilled gasoline on still-warm evening asphalt, or the vinyl interior of my mother’s long-gone El Camino. It swam in and out of the sugar alongside a simple and almost out of place tea note. It felt like it and I were meandering through a field of fog.
This tea leaves a syrupy residue on your lips and the rim of your cup. After long enough in the mouth, it produces a cooling sensation not uncommon to tea, but it changes to an anesthetic prickle. There is a hint of smoke in that crackle.

Disorienting. Memories of summer nights spent sitting by the roadside, trips to the dentist for molar sealant, baking brownies and visits to movie theatres vied for dominance in my mind. Disorienting. Time felt lax.
At the same time, invigorating. While mentally dislodged, corporeally I was keen.

All in all, a strange tea with evocative effects, and likely all because I brewed it wrong. It sounds much more straightforwards served as it’s meant to be, and is reusable then too. Unfortunately, a second steep my way yielded a toast-and-molasses brew that lacked the fireworks of the first. This tea is thus on my list of things to retry when I get a gaiwan, but I think I will do it the ‘wrong’ way at least once more. There’s something about the wild, walloping strike against the senses Western steeping brings out of some aged teas I find myself helplessly addicted to.

Another longer morning day, so I picked up something to gaiwan again. Derk, you wanted another opinion so here it is and TY for sample.

Unfortunately, I had to make it stronger than usual, 8 grams for 85 ml gaiwan. Maybe has got my gaiwan bigger volume, but this is usual volume I get when it tea is broken. Preheated gaiwan, 15 seconds rinse with freshly boiled water.

1st steep; 20 seconds:
Dry tea reminds me dates, while wet leaf smell familiar, though I am not sure what is it. Maybe bit birch wood in Finnish sauna. It is broking quite quickly. Colour of the liquor is quite brown with red notes. Lily flowers, as they are light are coming to mug too. Taste is some generic pu-erh, maybe bit salty? But it is smooth.

2nd steep, 15 seconds:
The tea is dark, opaque, thick. Aroma is soil. I am not good in naming different soils so just soil :). In taste it became bit alkaline, metalic. Unfortunately not tasty for me. Let´s see another steeps.

3rd, 20 seconds:
Still dark and opaque. Aroma did not changed at all. I like more the wet leaf aroma than liquor aroma. Wet leaf really reminds me birch wood. It tastes really metallic, though now it is bit weaker and hopefully smoother. I think I prefer more sweet ones. Or fruity.

4th, 30 seconds.
Colour still same, aroma changes bit to wet leaf (so birch), but still some metallic and/or soil. Taste changed to more chocolate, wood. Definitely sweeter than previous. Much better now. I tried to search something about the taro flavour, but I am not much clever from descriptions, so I am keeping it simple.

5th, 30 seconds.
The liquor is clearing, red notes of colour are starting to dominate.
Aroma of birch is again bit stronger, and it starts to appear in taste. More woody flavours, with metallic aftertaste. But certainly better than first few steeps. No signs of dying.

6th, 40 seconds.
Colour is really clear (compared to first brews), dark red as some hibiscus teas. Aroma is strongly woody, pleasant. Flavour is wet wood with bit of soil aftertaste.

7th, 50 seconds
Yup, it is clear. And red. Maybe dark copper. Certainly woody in matter of scents and flavours. Those last brews are certainly more lovely than first ones. Still somehow not so perfect.

8th, 1 minute
My thermos is running out. Maybe I will make another. Anyway, one minute steep!
Okay, this is running weak. So no another thermos. Colour is red-brown. Taste is same, but quite weak. I will try 1 minute 15 seconds next steep. Or 30 seconds extra? I dunno.

9th, 1 minute 30 seconds.
Quite light liquor, bit more orange. Somehow reasonable, but it is gone I guess. In thermos I have water for last cup. Just in time I guess. It is really like branches brew. Really woody, I do not recognize anything else.

10th, probably over 2 minutes.
The lily flowers are very pretty. Some of them are expanded fully, maybe they are making the flavour notes? Who knows; I do not. Liquor is light orange, clear. Aroma is more floral, so does taste. But somehow boring.

So, 10 steeps, while it changed from very soil taste to floral through wooden notes. Generally, I do not liked it so much, it was really muddy and alkaline. Then it changes to wood; but still it was not so pleasant. I enjoyed much more the wet leaf aromas than taste of all 10 steeps. Anyway, it was nice to try, but it does not became my favourite tea. Maybe it is hard to compare with puerh I had from Crimson Lotus Tea last time; as this is not just pu-erh vendor. There were not any really unpleasant flavours and aromas; but not my cup of tea. Maybe too “dirty” for me.

At this point, I’ve given away most of the brick, leaving myself with only 3 pieces.

Dropped a 9g chunk into my shou stein and am sipping before I join my first class in a few years — Mandarin 1.

Before, when this shou was utterly too fresh to be drinking, it was a thick, soily emulsion. Now it’s thinner in body and taste with a lot of leather and a combination flavor of petrichor, baked bread and fake-buttered popcorn. Peppery undertone and an underlying thin brown sugar sweetness. Spicy, catching tannins in the throat later reveal a menthol sensation. A little tangy metallic in the aftertaste (iron?).

Not upset I gave most of this away but I’m kinda digging it. No longer worthy of the 60 rating, probably a 70 these days.

How this tea and myself have both mellowed in 3 years.