2004 Yang Qing Hao "Te Ji Pin" Raw

Gongfu Sipdown (1597)!

Thank you Togo for the sample!

Though I debated saving this aged sheng for a more special occasion, my fondness of Yiwu and curiosity clearly got the best of me! It’s no where close to brewed out yet, so I’ll have to come back to it later tonight. However these first few steeps were so sweet and captivating and the absence of astringency was notable! The rich syrupy notes of pomelo and lemon practically dominate these infusions but find balance with the slight green edge, woodier undertones and soft notes of spices and camphor in the finish. I’m excited to see what the rest of the session will hold, and also somewhat scared to see how much a full cake of this might cost – tempting as it is to check!

EDIT I did end up finishing the session during a live stream with The Rabbit of Tea on IG and it was incredible! Shifted a bit away from being more fruity and instead leaned more into the smoky/spiced and camphorous realm with that same woodiness. Still tasted somewhat of sweet pomelo throughout, though!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CY9310DOdLN/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i73eUf7SQZM&ab_channel=JasonCollett-Topic

This is my second session with this tea. I wanted to give it at least two sessions and compare my notes before I wrote up a report. This tea is outside of my normal purchasing range. One thing I wanted to know was do I have the palate to distinguish between really good tea and OK tea. This one has a wide following as being very good to excellent, so I ordered a sample.

When I smell the dry leaves, it smells nice. I like this scent profile in teas. It is rich and dark and has that dark dried fruit aroma that I find appealing in tea. There is also a little smokiness in the dry leaf aroma.

The wet leaves smell more of younger sheng camphor and the smoke comes forward more. The dark fruits retreat. Smelling the lid after the first rinse is interesting. The lid retains the dark dried fruits smell and a little smokiness, but there is also a very bright and light aroma. Some might call it citrus. It’s like a very sweet lemon/lime. OK, full disclosure, it smells a little like Sprite to me. I’ll never get to join the inner circle of tea aficionados, now. Should have said lemoncello ;-)

First infusion — flash steeped for seconds in a clay shui ping. Liquor is amber. Taste is very sweet with no bitterness. I also get no immediate astringency. There is a bit of a cooling menthol effect. Coats the mouth. My lips feel as if I have lip balm on them.

Second infusion – 6 seconds. Liquor darkens slightly. High pour produces bubbles that last for over 30 seconds. Lid of pot smells of camphor and smoke now with some leather. Wet leaves smell the same. A little bitterness in this infusion. Mouth watering effect. A little astringency. Back of throat feel – slight. In the mouth, tea feels soft and medium thickness. Mouth becomes thicker and stickier after swallowing. Aftertaste lingers slightly bitter.

Third infusion – 8 seconds. Lid smells again of dried dark fruit and light smoke and leather. Leaves less camphor and more smoke. Liquor remains a darker amber. Very slight bitterness this time compared to the second infusion; however, it is more astringent. Menthol cooling effect is pronounced. Sweet but tempered by that slight bitterness. There is a new flavor, but I can’t name it. It is kind of malty but that isn’t quite right. Mouthfeel is still thickening. First two infusions I felt a flush of warmth, but assumed that was simply from drinking the hot tea. Now I’m getting a small amount of feeling in my head like I’ve just awoken from a nap and I’m a little out of it and groggy.

Fourth infusion – flavors and aromas remain unchanged. I’m getting more head feelings.

We pause for a word from our taster — I am using a 70 ml clay pot. I’m drinking alone. That means, I’m drinking almost two shots of tea every infusion. The first one I drink hot, the second has obviously cooled. The second cooler cup often is more flavorful and intense than the first hot cup of each infusion. This also means I’m usually getting lit up faster with a strong tea. Now back to our program…

Fifth infusion (tenth cup - my God!) – smoke is almost gone from wet leaves. Lid has that bright note again. ‘Bout dropped the lid. My fingers are tingling now. Hands feel tight. For the doubters out there, cha qi is a real thing no doubt about it. I’m up to about 15 +/ seconds now. It takes me a couple of seconds to fill the clay pot with my gooseneck pot. The pour takes another 6 seconds. Tea is sweet and smooth and no bitterness present. No astringency on this infusion. Still a little bit of smokiness in this. I was given some samples of Xiaguan recently, and it reminds me of their flavor profile at this stage. This infusion is easy going tea…on the tastebuds, that is. Inside my body, it’s a party.

Sixth infusion — cups 11 and 12. I have to call it here. I’ll continue using these leaves later this evening and see how far I can take it. Taste is getting a little sweeter as one would expect with leather and smoke fading. A little of the young sheng camphor is present again, but it isn’t overpowering. I do not get any hui gan sweetness with this tea. The sweetness is all in the initial taste for me. I do get back of throat sensations and some mouth watering and a thickening coating inside the mouth. I am literally getting somewhat bleary-eyed. Menthol cooling remains strong. Lips feel slightly buzzy like I’ve taken up my trombone and played after not playing for years. You old brass players know what I’m talking about.

My opinion only, but this tea is an all-star in the cha qi category. I’ve been sitting here now for about 10 minutes, and I’m floaty, relaxed, and a wet noodle. If you’re looking for a tea drunk tea, this one will fit the bill. This one also tasted “good.” Most of the young green sheng taste is gone, but not completely. It’s getting there on the aging. But is it worth around $2 a gram? For me, no. I have experienced teas that are similar for far cheaper and that actually had more complexity in the taste. I’m glad I had the opportunity to try this tea. It was a nice educational experience.

In order to learn more about aged sheng, which I know very little about, I joined one split order of YQH teas. One of them is Te Ji Pin, a tea that has had quite some reception in the community. I think I am still learning the best way to brew these teas, but now I might have settled on something that works. Today’s session was the best one I remember with this particular tea.

I find it to have quite a clean and woody taste that is definitely memorable. The qi is great and I also love the smooth, soft, and oily mouthfeel. Still, the price is probably a bit too high. I think I would be able to enjoy and appreciate it much more if I had more of a relation to the tea – which is the reason why I started aging pu’er early on in my tea exploration, even before I would know whether I even like aged tea.

The aroma is hay-like and nutty when dry. After the rinse, I can smell notes of cactus, smoke, pool, soil, fish, and garlic. It is a strong and complex aroma with a vegetal character.

The taste starts off light and creamy, but soon develops some refreshing bitterness and tartness. Second infusion has a strong herbal character like breckland thyme or lemon balm and a finish that reminds me of irn bru a little. Later steeps then show more smooth woodiness, honey sweetness, and a stronger, more rounded taste overall. I find the aftertaste to be really long and heavy throughout the session. It is sweet and spicy with notes such as nuts, cumin seeds, and cinnamon.

The body of the liquor is medium, but extremely soft and smooth. I get a numbing sensation in the mouth at times and the texture remains distinctively oily throughout. As for the qi, it is strong, but not over-powering. I get a warming feeling in the body and a defocusing effect on the mind.

Didn’t weigh this tea, just put in the “right amount” into the teapot. The teapot is ~110ml, yixing (modern, but well made from proper clay).

Used regular tap water (though the tap water is still fairly good here).

Rinsed once to wake up the tea.

My initial reaction to the first steeping was that the tea outshone the otherwise unworthy treatment of tapwater. (And i really should’ve gone get some more spring water instead of being lazy and just drinking it with tap water)

It’s an amazing teenage sheng, got that raw vitalty of a younger sheng but still a maturity to it and definitely the character of a really high quality tea.

Smooth, but with a pleasent astringency to it. Nicely smokey and woody with a camphory sort of character to it, in a way it sort of reminds me of holy wood. It has a bit of huigan

There is also a bit of sweetnes in it that is pleasant, it goes very well with the astringency and slight smokiness, making a very balanced and pleasant complexity. Yet the tea feels rather simple in the nicest of way, it’s just plain nice in a way.

The taste is faitly constant, though it also develops through the steepings, it becomes sweeter and the astringency fade off as expected but at a rather slow rate. The tea keeps on gicing for many steepings and even the sweet water taste lovely of honey with hints of the teas previous glory.

It reminds me of sitting with a friend in a cozy room enjoying the company of very relaxed and down to earth friends. The kind of friends that don’t care too much of the busy life of modern society, but just lives their life in peace and happiness.

I’m not a big fan of all the Sheng hype nor the more commonly available (young) Sheng out there nowdays. But this I can enjoy, it’s nice.

Extremely smooth, balanced, warm and thick. Lethery notes in the first steeps with becomes increasingly sweet. Very relaxing Qi.
Images and more at https://puerh.blog/teanotes/2004-tejipin-yqh

Got in on a split of this a couple months back. The bit I received isn’t particularly compressed, and after a rest and sniffing several times since then, I don’t get too much of a scent off the dry leaf. Once wet, however, the leaves give off a smoky aroma with a light sweetness.

This tea steeps out to a golden color and—again, since I had nowhere for wash water (and this tea is one of the pricier ones I’ve tried)—I drank the wash. There wasn’t much flavor there but it didn’t give a distinct huigan, smoothness and a light hint of dustiness.

This ended up being a very easy to drink tea for me, with a flavor profile that remained fairly consistent. I didn’t get much qi from it, but I will look forward to exploring this one further, for sure!

So. Tea. Drunk. HYPER!!! This tea is nicely mellow and smoky, smooth camphor feel on the swallow, good aged orange color and taste. Very easy to brew, friendly in taste, no real bitterness or astringency really to speak of. The qi on this though has got me buzzing around on epileptic party parrots while laughing hysterically and waving my arms around like the party degenerate that just don’t care because it’s 19NINETY NIIIIIINE!!!!

I’d characterize it like weed brownies, you don’t eat it for the taste, but it’s not like the brownie taste is getting in the way, ya get my drift? And now I need to go. Go zoom around my house and jump off walls and such. yeah. Thanks for sample, phiiii!

Dry leaves smell of a minty camphor and autumn leaves. Really interesting, unique and wonderful smell. The wet leaves lose some of the mintiness, but the smell of camphor and autumn leaves remain and there’s and added note of sweet tobacco and prunes. If this teas is as good as it smells this should be a lovely experience. I have a new digital scale so now I can be more actuate when measuring how much tea I use in each pot.
10s rinse/10m rest.

Steep/Time: Notes
1/15s: The taste of autumn leaves is most prominitent to me, but as usual the first pot is quite light. Very soft finish (not particulary crisp/dry). I am picking up a slight camphorous note.

2/10s: Camphorus, woody with a touch of sweetness. Still has a soft finish. So far good, but not really impressive.

3/10s: Woody with that light touch of sweetness. Finish is a little more crisp. The camphorus note is light and detected in the aftertaste more than anything else. The flavor profile definitely reminds me of shou puerh.

4/15s: About the same, but a mildly bitter note also apparent in this cup.

5/15s: A little more sweetness this time around. Still woody and pleasant.

6/20s: Drier finish. I like it. Sweetness about the same as the last steeping.

7/30s: Good tea, but I don’t think this is one I’ll buy more of. Maybe I just needed more leaf in the pot with this one.

Thank You Boychik for this sample. This was one good tea. easily the best of the Yangqinghao teas I have tried. There were some notes of tobacco early one, for about the first two steep. Then it was nice and smooth. With a subdued sweetness to it that I don’t know how to properly describe. The tea soup had a fairly dark color but perhaps a little less dark than some of the other Yangqinghao teas I’ve tried. This tea had a strong qi. There was an energizing qi to it. I can’t say that I became tea drunk but am really feeling it after sixteen steeps. The tea was not finished at sixteen either. I will save the leaves for later or tomorrow and hopefully get back to them. Now I want to try the tea I bought from Hawaii. That was even more expensive than this if you can believe it but I only bought 18g of it.

I steeped this tea sixteen times in a 50 ml gaiwan with 3.6g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse and a 10 minute rest. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 1 min, 1.5 min, 2 min, 2.5 min, 3 min, 3.5 min, and 4 min. I think that this tea would go another ten steeps or so with longer infusion times.

I decided to bust this out from storage for the after Thanksgiving celebration. The dry cake has some massive dark leaves. They carry a dry camphor and pipe tobacco. I placed a good sized chunk in my warmed Jianshui and gave it a shake. The pipe tobacco scent deepened and notes of pine resin and wet wood came up. I washed the leaves once and prepared for brewing. The steeped leaves gave off a whiskey, menthol, dark wood, and pipe tobacco scent. The liquor was a deep dark bronze. The taste was fantastic! This is a beautiful tea. The leaves are massive and whole and yield a delicious brew. The flavor is very slight and tasteful. The prominent notes of pipe tobacco, leather, and an underlying sweetness follow the drinker throughout the entire session. The leaves are unbelievably durable! I was able to pull over fifteen long steeping sessions. The taste is not a full heavy body, but its light, airy, and smooth. The best part about this brew is the qi. It is so good! The qi begins quickly within the first couple steeps. The feeling begins with a warming body and a nice head buzz. This feeling follows throughout the entire body and gets you zinging. My eyes blurred, and I became very talkative. This brew makes my body and mind feel really good and happy. I loved the feeling I received from this incredible session. I didn’t notice any huigan and zero astringency. This would make a perfect tea to serve to guests and get a gathering talking. I really like this, and I will definitely be sharing some with my guests.

https://www.instagram.com/p/-mFdFOzGbd/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel