A Tea Addict's Journal

My girlfriend arrived today, so I pulled out something a little different from the parade of young teas to drink. It’s a loose puerh from Jabbok Tea House in Hong Kong, which I last blogged about here.

The dry leaves look normal, if a bit broken (bottom of the pile stuff)

I said it tasted bitter. I have to say that it is still quite bitter, but at some point, the tea sort of turns a corner and turns sweeter. The aroma is still quite alluring. My girlfriend described it as “sweet potato”, which I suppose is not a bad smell to have in a tea. There’s also a bit of talcum in it. I definitely still don’t think it’s 30 years. It’s at most… 10-15? It’s dry stored though, for sure, given the colour of the tea and the leaves, as well as the flexibility of the leaves and the aroma given out. There’s no “storage” smell to it, which is not a bad thing. Somehow, I can’t recapture the nice aroma I got the first time I drank it.

One little thing I noticed is that because this little bag has been stored next to the Mengku cakes… it has taken on a little bit of the Mengku taste/smell in the early infusions. Interesting how that happens.

The colour of the liquor is a nice orangy/brown colour.

And the wet leaves look good

Compare this to the somewhat mouldy, supposedly 1998 tea from a few days ago

You can see the differences easily. The Jabbok teas open up a lot more, and look more lively. The stems also look softer (and are indeed softer).

The cups I used are actually what the owner of Jabbok recommends for older puerh — flat cups with a big surface.

I’m not exactly sure why he thinks they’re good for older puerh. Other than allowing you to gulp them in big gulps… I can’t think of a good reason. One test I can do at some point, I suppose, is to try the same tea from the same infusion in two different cups and see. Somehow, my suspicion is that I won’t see much of a difference…