A Tea Addict's Journal

Back to the City of Dust… where everywhere in the apartment has gathered a
fine (or not so fine) layer of stuff.  It’s also bone dry here.  And last,
but not least, is the internet… it’s too slow.  It’s much slower than when
I left, no doubt thanks to the reduced traffic capacity thanks to the
damaged cables that are still being repaired.  I’m asking my girlfriend to
post this for me, as I simply could not get to the edit screen, and forget
about uploading pictures….

I tried the Keyixing brick I bought here again.  If you need a reminder…
it’s the one that seemed to be aged raw puerh, supposedly re-pressed from
loose maocha.  There’s this odd aroma when I first try it.  It’s not quite
typical aged puerh tasting…. similar, but not exact.  It almost reminded
me of cooked puerh, but it’s not quite that either.  The best way to
describe the aroma is that it’s crisp.  In fact, the whole tea is crisp —
and a little thin.  The aroma is shifty, and not weighty enough as a good
puerh.  I debated for a long time whether this is a really lightly fermented
cooked puerh or not, but I decided, from looking at the spent leaves, that
it can’t be.  If it is, it must be cooked with some new method, because no
cooked puerh I’ve seen ever looked like this.

The tea is a bit bitter, but the bitterness does go away and turn to
sweetness.  There’s an obvious huigan, lingering in the back of the throat.
There’s a hint of “throat feel”, but not significant.  The bitterness is
most obvious in infusions 2-4, after which it dies down and gives way to
more prominent sweetness.  I wonder if further aging will make the tea
better and less bitter.  I suspect it will, as it still tastes quite young
in many respects.  I don’t think this can be more than 10 years, although
the colour of the tea suggests it’s probably more than 5.  I’d think it’s
between 5-8 years of age.  I also think there are leaves of various age
mixed in, as the leaves don’t look too uniform in age.

Not a bad tea, certainly not too bad for the price I paid, but not great.
Another experiment, so to speak, and an interesting one.  Too bad it will be
years before I know the answer to any of these questions.