Raw Bulang tea from April 2011

I roughly described this tea in an earlier entry but did not yet review the quality of the brew based on tastes and flavours yet. In the first infusion, great scents and colours despite a very weak smell of the leaves in their dried form. First sip of this tea felt really bitter followed by an overall astringency that could be felt in the mouth cavity and throat for at least half a minute. What is consoling to this overall bitter encounter was a rather prominent taste of the longan fruit, a very sweet fruit with strong woody notes.

The brewed leaves revealed very green young buds. A sight that I cannot reconcile with the harsh bitterness experienced. You can read the rest of this Bulang tea's review here from a fellow tea drinker who has been most dilligently documenting his experiences from the 2nd brew onwards.

If you have similar Bulang teas from the same year, please feel free to leave your blog review links on my page in the spirit of making objective comparisons and cross-referencing.

Raw Pu'er resurrected

The freezing winter months meant that tea storage conditions turned overly dry for my 2007 raw Pu'er cake from Lin Cang, Yunnan, China. The result? An oddly dark infusion with a heavy tobacco-like taste followed by a parched aftertaste, enough to send the most sensitive of throats into a coughing fit.

As this was a hard to come by piece of Pu'er cake that turned bad as a result of my oversight, I tried resting some of the flaked tea leaves in my trusty old seed jar in an attempt to do some damage control. I also noticed that the cake has turned so hard that regular flaking with my bare hands just wouldn't do.

The optimist in me was curious to find out for myself if any bit of accelerated tea refinement took place over night. This morning I prepared some rested tea leaves and the results spoke for themselves. I am happy to have my raw Pu'er back!

Christmas tea ceremony - drinking raw pu'er

During the shortest day of the year, we also witnessed the first serious snowfall where the entire landscape went from dull to wintery white. The cold has motivated me to prepare something heavy and good enough to keep my hands warm.

Something like a hybrid between a green tea and a cooked pu'er cake, the raw pu'er tea seems like the perfect choice to balance my preference for vibrancy and freshness with more heavy-bodied teas that exude complex, perfume-scented notes. The brew is golden in colour and beautifully transparent. The infusion smells aromatic with grassy and floral notes.

The most important lesson learnt in assessing pu'er tea for its quality is based on the level of astringency. In the case of inferior teas, there is no way that it will ever taste less bitter and astringent. This is also why in the steps leading up to a proper brew, the quality of tea leaves ranks first, followed by the teapot you use and the choice of cups.