2015 What-Cha 'Lao Shu Bai Cha' Raw Puerh Cake

I got this as a Christmas gift – a very well chosen one!
Fantastic sheng pu erh (also beautiful). Quite light and very delicate but still very fragrant. As with many sheng’s, it can take a lot of brews in the gaiwan – and for the price on what-cha, it is very economical for a pu erh.

The mushroom taste (found in a lot of light sheng’s, I think) make the tea a bit fragrant/umami also, which I love. Overall a fantastic pu erh

Drinking this one on a warm Saturday morning. I finally cracked into my new cake, and it’s probably one of the prettiest cakes I’ve seen so far. Lots of light and white leaves mixed in with the dark colored ones, it reminds me of some white tea cakes I’ve seen.

The wet leaf has a really unique smell. It doesn’t have the same ripe date or apricot smell—still fruity and strong, but something different.

The first steep is quite light overall in flavor, with a little bit of body-centered bitterness. There’s a sort of buttery note in there, almost popcorn-like. It’s a little weird to describe, but different from the creamy feeling I’ve been getting from other sheng. Maybe like caramel corn? It definitely tastes better than caramel corn tea sounds, though.

The second steep picks up on the viscosity and rounds out the smooth body. The bitterness protrudes a little, but not uncomfortably. It does persist into the aftertaste a little ways, though.

Third steep has a little bit of spice to it. At least, that’s my guess, it’s kind of a sharp, almost tingliness. Very faint though. I might be looking at the wrong thing.

Need to head out so cutting this session short!

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.

Starting to identify some Steepster links to Liquid Proust’s puerh samples, so here’s another one.

The dry leaves smell pretty similar to the Misty Peaks I tried the day before—like raisins—but the flavored of the brewed tea is much deeper tasting. The cake sample was much looser, so maybe the extra space between the leaves allowed the flavor to develop faster? Anyway, it was a perfect tea to break in my new tea pets, Bessie and Fred.

Same deal as last time: alternated 190º and 170º with different steeping times from 30 seconds down to a straight pour through. Unlike the Misty Peaks, the flavor didn’t seem to change with the steepings; it just got stronger or weaker.

The flavor of the tea was grassy with a little astringency and bitterness, slightly sweet, and a flavor I can’t really identify. Something savory—the word “sausage” keeps popping into my head, but it doesn’t really taste like a sausage, so I don’t know where THAT’s coming from. Perhaps that’s best left to the psychologists to figure out. Maybe this is umami? I lack the experience to know for sure. Anyway, it’s nice and enjoyable.

I enjoyed this tea best at its first and strongest steeping.

Wow.

I really want to mention how fragrant this tea was. It was so sweet smelling that it knocked me down! I had three sessions wit this tea and I can honestly say that it was amazing. It was very complex and has a lot of potential for aging amazingly.

You can read the full review here on my blog,

[http://coolcodyc.wix.com/theoolongdrunk#!Whatchya-Up-to-WhatChas-new-Sheng/c21kp/56c5266e0cf2d76542b21c01]