Thanks Obritten for this sample!
For more information, please visit our website.
XZH Jingmai
7.3g, simple syrup water, 212 f, 100mL gaiwan
dry leaf: light smoke, hay, tinge of medicinal
1x 10s rinse
wet leaf: light smoke, heavy on dried fruits
5s: thickened texture. light upfront w/ vegetal hint, and a crisp sweetness on aftertaste.
8s: stronger. touch of bitter, sweet aftertaste. A darker hint in background.
10s: smoky and hit of bitter. Aftertaste is slightly floral & creamy in away. Slight medicinal touch & nutty in a sort of way as well.
10s: still sort of sharp + crisp sugary aftertaste.
13s: sharp initially, with undertones of a honeyed sweetness. Lasting dried fruit in aftertaste.
16s: lighter in sharpness, with a fruity, pineapple-like note in aftertaste that lingers. A sort of medicinal hint in immediate taste.
20s. light smoky medicinal w/ slight bitter note. Aftertaste has a slight herbal component to it, ringed by edges of sweetness.
25s: lightened medicinal. slight crisp on aftertaste.
30s: similar, lightened. A slight woody note present upfront.
35s: like water but add light wood & some florals. Maybe a hint of mushroom.
45s: A sweeter medicinal.
1 min.: light w/ some fruit + an edge.
2 min.: only a light woody note remaining.
thermos overnight: light bitter & woody. Decent aftertaste, though much lightened.
a bit relaxing. Was tired when brewing, and the tea didn&#;t really add to the energy, though the caffeine is certainly present since I woke up several times throughout the night. Whatever cha qi is, chemical composition of water seems to affect it to a fair extent. Why is it that people have noted that it&#;s not always noticeable unless you pay attention? Is it that it&#;s not present in most teas, that it&#;s not getting extracted, or that it&#;s there and we&#;re confusing the effects for something else? All of the above? How does subtlety, depth, and perception of effect contribute? In my 9-5 this summer, we&#;re all heavily invested in the reproducibility of experiments (and sometimes I have nightmares about triplicate and standard error measurements). That carries over to my hobbies sometimes, so I can be overly meticulous in noting specific parameters instead of &#;going with the flow&#;, as it were. Neither approach has inherent flaws, but I wish there was better characterizing of it all, despite some inherent subjectivity involved.
Because I&#;ve never had a consistently good sleep schedule (a work in progress until who knows when), I can&#;t ever seem to totally separate calming effect of tea from just taking time to brew in detail and being tired enough from just slowing down or just really enjoying a tea (particular oolongs I&#;ve had in the past come to mind). In my memory though, the s Liu Bao from Three Bears, YQH Jinhao Chawang, and this tea are the only ones I&#;ve tried that seem to have an effect that&#;s not wholly attributable to caffeine. This tea has had the lightest effect of the three, but present nonetheless. I&#;ve been reflecting as the other day I was reading a note for the s LB wherein another reviewer noticed feeling really calm, and I realized that&#;s something I noted as well in my original review. At the time, I thought it was merely just the taste and my own quirks in preferences for silly novelties like having teas older than I am, and that was the first time I had considered that I might&#;ve experienced cha qi without knowing. The YQH Jinhao Chawang is inherently quite an interesting tea, in that my sample seemed to have preserved much of the florals despite the age, but looking back, I don&#;t think my reaction was just to the taste alone.
Since only a minority of reviews note ratios and infusion times (it&#;s tedious and clogs up the review, I get it), it&#;s hard to know if my experiences are just due to not leafing heavily enough (which seems unlikely? I&#;m not brave enough to do 1:10 quite yet, and the caffeine you&#;d get from that is borderline overboard, at least to continue sustainably without developing /too/ much tolerance), or if I&#;m just dense (which could certainly be the case, but I also reserve a healthy level of skepticism for the reviewers who experience &#;face-melting cha qi&#; in just about every single review they leave). I don&#;t have any answers, but hope that as the Western puer scene continues to expand, that we&#;ll start finding them!
If you want to learn more, please visit our website xzh.
Stamp collecting in the pu&#;erh world means buying single cakes of a bunch of different teas. The appeal is obvious. A cake is a decent quantity of tea, especially for a single person, and you can chisel a little at a time to drink while it slowly ages. It&#;s also not a strategy I&#;m personally when put to its extreme and I try to avoid stamp collecting tendencies. I sometimes think of what I&#;ll be drinking in 10-15 years. Having a hundred single cakes where I&#;ve consumed 10-40 grams each feels daunting in a bad way.. It&#;s also quite easy to spend a lot of money with a little bit of this and a little bit of that and accumulate decades of pu&#;erh. Spending a lot of money and having a lot of single cakes may appeal to some people. For me it does not.
When it comes to buying more expensive tea, I think stamp collecting strategy can make more sense. At a certain point it is just not possible to buy very much of a tea due to a price. For the weekend warrior gong-fu maniacs stamp collecting may work out just fine.
The Tale of Two QB Sessions
I&#;ve had the special privilege to drink the 88 QB twice. My first experience was in the evening during a trip to Hong Kong in with my wife and a couple Hong Kong tea hobbyists. It was after a series of exceedingly strongly brewed teas from the turn of the 21st century.. Brewing it for us was exceedingly generous and the 88 QB was undoubtedly interesting and strong. I noted some of the basic profile including the huigan but if I&#;m speaking honestly I don&#;t remember a ton more. I knew what we were drinking and I&#;d been drinking for a few years, but given the context there was a lot of nuance to the tea that was lost.
My second encounter was a solo session on my own half a year latter. The tea session was prepared in advance with low TDS water and ample time. Rather than a 25 minute session, I could spend 20-30 minutes per brew. The tea&#;s qualities showed up much more. While I still noted the powerhouse huigan, it might as well have been a different tea. Is it the batch? The storage? The context? The water? It&#;s impossible to break it down with absolute percentages, but it&#;s undoubtedly some combination of all of the above.. What I do know is that this second session was extraordinarily important in establishing and understanding the tea and it&#;s appeal.
If I never had a second opportunity to try it, my opinion of this tea would&#;ve been dramatically different than what it is today. This does not mean I discount the first session entirely, just that I can recognize some of the tea&#;s qualities and characteristics that I would not have otherwise.
Single Session Stamp Collecting
I think a stamp collecting mentality can also apply to single sessions. You don&#;t acquire a neifei and a wrapper, but you are acquiring an experience. With the popularity of group buys, swaps, and traveling tea boxes I think this can present itself as a real issue. The appeal is obvious.. I want to try YQH/XZH/high-end W2T, etc. There&#;s a lot of tea being sold and people want to try them all! People understandably want a taste of something and would prefer to acquire it as cheaply as possible with the least amount of commitment.
Group buys/swaps are genuinely good things that offer an opportunity to sample widely, but the single use sample trend is not a good one, especially when put to the extreme. It&#;s also one I&#;ve been guilty of. Why is this bad? The simple answer is it&#;s not always easy to get an accurate view on a tea in one session.
Lack of Familiarity
One aspect where single sessions can be very limiting is the lack of familiarity with the tea. As my tastes have evolved and I&#;ve consumed less of certain teas I&#;ve found it increasingly difficult to evaluate young pu&#;erh, especially when brewed in a group session. I&#;ve consumed my share of young pu&#;erh, but it&#;s not a tea I drink regularly. If I were to just have a single session of it, trying to rank it or grade it would be extraordinarily difficult. I think the same could be said for a predominantly young pu&#;erh drinker who tries YQH and is simply not used to that profile, making it very difficult to pickup some of the more nuanced aspects to the tea. I do not think it is a surprise that some people need time to work through the house taste or storage. We develop a taste for the types of teas we like to drink and have most frequently and trying things that are less familiar can be jarring to the palate.
This is a major reason I do not give young pu&#;erh ratings on the show.
Brewing & Experience Matter
Brewing matters a lot. This can compound and overlap a lot with a lack of familiarity. If your primary experience is brewing young pu&#;erh at 190F, good luck trying to brew a HK traditionally stored tea for the first time. A larger sample means more sessions and repetitions. Getting an extra couple sessions under your belt with a tea won&#;t necessarily make you a master brewer, but being able to react to your prior experience is invaluable and can make a much better second session and help to form a more complete opinion.
Context and (In)Consistency
Context also matters. If you are having the tea in a group session or in a series of teas, these will impact your perception. Try brewing any young pu&#;erh after a session with traditionally stored tea. It won&#;t taste the same if you just had a solo session with it. Maybe you&#;re sick or you just ate some strong food. Having multiple sessions is not a 100% guarantee, but it helps even if it is just reaffirming your original thoughts.
Tea is sometimes inconsistent. Maybe part of your sample is the binghole. Or your post man sat on your package.. Some cakes are just blended unevenly. Or you have one session that has twice as many crumbs.. Oh, and there&#;s also water. Tetsubin. Clay. Gaiwan. Tea jetlag (yes it&#;s a real thing). Etc. Etc. Etc.
Practical Advice
My own preference is to get at least two or three sessions of a tea and drink them in the span of a week or less. The first one will always be an acclimation to some degree, and the second can firm up impressions. I may switch up the brewing device or simply change up how I&#;m brewing. I&#;ve found the second session can often be fairly different from the first. While it&#;s possible to get a pretty good take from one session, it&#;s almost always better to have two.. If it&#;s a tea type I don&#;t drink that often (say black tea), having a session with a more frequent drinker like Denny can also be informative.
If your goal is evaluating teas and learning, grouping similar teas together and drinking them within a couple days of each is good. Your tastes will acclimate more and you can pickup on differences between the teas. For instance, if I were sent a blind sampling of aged oolongs from Taiwan. I would wait a week for the teas to settle, and then consume a couple aged oolongs I already own and know. Then I&#;ll brew a tea per day, taking notes until I&#;m through with the sampling. If there&#;s enough samples for a second session, I won&#;t wait for a month before retrying the tea.
Don&#;t Be a Experiential Stamp Collector If You Can Help It
A less positive view of those seeking to try several single sessions would be comparing them to someone trying to fill up their passport with stamps for the sake of filling it rather than a genuine desire to travel, experience, and explore.
I&#;ve noticed more experienced tea folks will almost always send at least 15-25 grams. I don&#;t think this is coincidence. A single session is sometimes necessary to try a tea, but I&#;d say it&#;s best to avoid it if possible. And if you do end up with a single session, please don&#;t overreach in your conclusions and overly praise or dismiss a tea or an entire brand off of a measly 5 grams.
Thanks Obritten for this sample!
XZH Jingmai
7.3g, simple syrup water, 212 f, 100mL gaiwan
dry leaf: light smoke, hay, tinge of medicinal
1x 10s rinse
wet leaf: light smoke, heavy on dried fruits
5s: thickened texture. light upfront w/ vegetal hint, and a crisp sweetness on aftertaste.
8s: stronger. touch of bitter, sweet aftertaste. A darker hint in background.
10s: smoky and hit of bitter. Aftertaste is slightly floral & creamy in away. Slight medicinal touch & nutty in a sort of way as well.
10s: still sort of sharp + crisp sugary aftertaste.
13s: sharp initially, with undertones of a honeyed sweetness. Lasting dried fruit in aftertaste.
16s: lighter in sharpness, with a fruity, pineapple-like note in aftertaste that lingers. A sort of medicinal hint in immediate taste.
20s. light smoky medicinal w/ slight bitter note. Aftertaste has a slight herbal component to it, ringed by edges of sweetness.
25s: lightened medicinal. slight crisp on aftertaste.
30s: similar, lightened. A slight woody note present upfront.
35s: like water but add light wood & some florals. Maybe a hint of mushroom.
45s: A sweeter medicinal.
1 min.: light w/ some fruit + an edge.
2 min.: only a light woody note remaining.
thermos overnight: light bitter & woody. Decent aftertaste, though much lightened.
a bit relaxing. Was tired when brewing, and the tea didn&#;t really add to the energy, though the caffeine is certainly present since I woke up several times throughout the night. Whatever cha qi is, chemical composition of water seems to affect it to a fair extent. Why is it that people have noted that it&#;s not always noticeable unless you pay attention? Is it that it&#;s not present in most teas, that it&#;s not getting extracted, or that it&#;s there and we&#;re confusing the effects for something else? All of the above? How does subtlety, depth, and perception of effect contribute? In my 9-5 this summer, we&#;re all heavily invested in the reproducibility of experiments (and sometimes I have nightmares about triplicate and standard error measurements). That carries over to my hobbies sometimes, so I can be overly meticulous in noting specific parameters instead of &#;going with the flow&#;, as it were. Neither approach has inherent flaws, but I wish there was better characterizing of it all, despite some inherent subjectivity involved.
Because I&#;ve never had a consistently good sleep schedule (a work in progress until who knows when), I can&#;t ever seem to totally separate calming effect of tea from just taking time to brew in detail and being tired enough from just slowing down or just really enjoying a tea (particular oolongs I&#;ve had in the past come to mind). In my memory though, the s Liu Bao from Three Bears, YQH Jinhao Chawang, and this tea are the only ones I&#;ve tried that seem to have an effect that&#;s not wholly attributable to caffeine. This tea has had the lightest effect of the three, but present nonetheless. I&#;ve been reflecting as the other day I was reading a note for the s LB wherein another reviewer noticed feeling really calm, and I realized that&#;s something I noted as well in my original review. At the time, I thought it was merely just the taste and my own quirks in preferences for silly novelties like having teas older than I am, and that was the first time I had considered that I might&#;ve experienced cha qi without knowing. The YQH Jinhao Chawang is inherently quite an interesting tea, in that my sample seemed to have preserved much of the florals despite the age, but looking back, I don&#;t think my reaction was just to the taste alone.
Since only a minority of reviews note ratios and infusion times (it&#;s tedious and clogs up the review, I get it), it&#;s hard to know if my experiences are just due to not leafing heavily enough (which seems unlikely? I&#;m not brave enough to do 1:10 quite yet, and the caffeine you&#;d get from that is borderline overboard, at least to continue sustainably without developing /too/ much tolerance), or if I&#;m just dense (which could certainly be the case, but I also reserve a healthy level of skepticism for the reviewers who experience &#;face-melting cha qi&#; in just about every single review they leave). I don&#;t have any answers, but hope that as the Western puer scene continues to expand, that we&#;ll start finding them!
Stamp collecting in the pu&#;erh world means buying single cakes of a bunch of different teas. The appeal is obvious. A cake is a decent quantity of tea, especially for a single person, and you can chisel a little at a time to drink while it slowly ages. It&#;s also not a strategy I&#;m personally when put to its extreme and I try to avoid stamp collecting tendencies. I sometimes think of what I&#;ll be drinking in 10-15 years. Having a hundred single cakes where I&#;ve consumed 10-40 grams each feels daunting in a bad way.. It&#;s also quite easy to spend a lot of money with a little bit of this and a little bit of that and accumulate decades of pu&#;erh. Spending a lot of money and having a lot of single cakes may appeal to some people. For me it does not.
When it comes to buying more expensive tea, I think stamp collecting strategy can make more sense. At a certain point it is just not possible to buy very much of a tea due to a price. For the weekend warrior gong-fu maniacs stamp collecting may work out just fine.
The Tale of Two QB Sessions
I&#;ve had the special privilege to drink the 88 QB twice. My first experience was in the evening during a trip to Hong Kong in with my wife and a couple Hong Kong tea hobbyists. It was after a series of exceedingly strongly brewed teas from the turn of the 21st century.. Brewing it for us was exceedingly generous and the 88 QB was undoubtedly interesting and strong. I noted some of the basic profile including the huigan but if I&#;m speaking honestly I don&#;t remember a ton more. I knew what we were drinking and I&#;d been drinking for a few years, but given the context there was a lot of nuance to the tea that was lost.
My second encounter was a solo session on my own half a year latter. The tea session was prepared in advance with low TDS water and ample time. Rather than a 25 minute session, I could spend 20-30 minutes per brew. The tea&#;s qualities showed up much more. While I still noted the powerhouse huigan, it might as well have been a different tea. Is it the batch? The storage? The context? The water? It&#;s impossible to break it down with absolute percentages, but it&#;s undoubtedly some combination of all of the above.. What I do know is that this second session was extraordinarily important in establishing and understanding the tea and it&#;s appeal.
If I never had a second opportunity to try it, my opinion of this tea would&#;ve been dramatically different than what it is today. This does not mean I discount the first session entirely, just that I can recognize some of the tea&#;s qualities and characteristics that I would not have otherwise.
Single Session Stamp Collecting
I think a stamp collecting mentality can also apply to single sessions. You don&#;t acquire a neifei and a wrapper, but you are acquiring an experience. With the popularity of group buys, swaps, and traveling tea boxes I think this can present itself as a real issue. The appeal is obvious.. I want to try YQH/XZH/high-end W2T, etc. There&#;s a lot of tea being sold and people want to try them all! People understandably want a taste of something and would prefer to acquire it as cheaply as possible with the least amount of commitment.
Group buys/swaps are genuinely good things that offer an opportunity to sample widely, but the single use sample trend is not a good one, especially when put to the extreme. It&#;s also one I&#;ve been guilty of. Why is this bad? The simple answer is it&#;s not always easy to get an accurate view on a tea in one session.
Lack of Familiarity
One aspect where single sessions can be very limiting is the lack of familiarity with the tea. As my tastes have evolved and I&#;ve consumed less of certain teas I&#;ve found it increasingly difficult to evaluate young pu&#;erh, especially when brewed in a group session. I&#;ve consumed my share of young pu&#;erh, but it&#;s not a tea I drink regularly. If I were to just have a single session of it, trying to rank it or grade it would be extraordinarily difficult. I think the same could be said for a predominantly young pu&#;erh drinker who tries YQH and is simply not used to that profile, making it very difficult to pickup some of the more nuanced aspects to the tea. I do not think it is a surprise that some people need time to work through the house taste or storage. We develop a taste for the types of teas we like to drink and have most frequently and trying things that are less familiar can be jarring to the palate.
This is a major reason I do not give young pu&#;erh ratings on the show.
Brewing & Experience Matter
Brewing matters a lot. This can compound and overlap a lot with a lack of familiarity. If your primary experience is brewing young pu&#;erh at 190F, good luck trying to brew a HK traditionally stored tea for the first time. A larger sample means more sessions and repetitions. Getting an extra couple sessions under your belt with a tea won&#;t necessarily make you a master brewer, but being able to react to your prior experience is invaluable and can make a much better second session and help to form a more complete opinion.
Context and (In)Consistency
Context also matters. If you are having the tea in a group session or in a series of teas, these will impact your perception. Try brewing any young pu&#;erh after a session with traditionally stored tea. It won&#;t taste the same if you just had a solo session with it. Maybe you&#;re sick or you just ate some strong food. Having multiple sessions is not a 100% guarantee, but it helps even if it is just reaffirming your original thoughts.
Tea is sometimes inconsistent. Maybe part of your sample is the binghole. Or your post man sat on your package.. Some cakes are just blended unevenly. Or you have one session that has twice as many crumbs.. Oh, and there&#;s also water. Tetsubin. Clay. Gaiwan. Tea jetlag (yes it&#;s a real thing). Etc. Etc. Etc.
Practical Advice
My own preference is to get at least two or three sessions of a tea and drink them in the span of a week or less. The first one will always be an acclimation to some degree, and the second can firm up impressions. I may switch up the brewing device or simply change up how I&#;m brewing. I&#;ve found the second session can often be fairly different from the first. While it&#;s possible to get a pretty good take from one session, it&#;s almost always better to have two.. If it&#;s a tea type I don&#;t drink that often (say black tea), having a session with a more frequent drinker like Denny can also be informative.
If your goal is evaluating teas and learning, grouping similar teas together and drinking them within a couple days of each is good. Your tastes will acclimate more and you can pickup on differences between the teas. For instance, if I were sent a blind sampling of aged oolongs from Taiwan. I would wait a week for the teas to settle, and then consume a couple aged oolongs I already own and know. Then I&#;ll brew a tea per day, taking notes until I&#;m through with the sampling. If there&#;s enough samples for a second session, I won&#;t wait for a month before retrying the tea.
Don&#;t Be a Experiential Stamp Collector If You Can Help It
A less positive view of those seeking to try several single sessions would be comparing them to someone trying to fill up their passport with stamps for the sake of filling it rather than a genuine desire to travel, experience, and explore.
I&#;ve noticed more experienced tea folks will almost always send at least 15-25 grams. I don&#;t think this is coincidence. A single session is sometimes necessary to try a tea, but I&#;d say it&#;s best to avoid it if possible. And if you do end up with a single session, please don&#;t overreach in your conclusions and overly praise or dismiss a tea or an entire brand off of a measly 5 grams.