Characteristics of Shou
So I've had enough shou that I am able to start noticing differences or at least preferences in teas. I found one I really like from Mandala, but other than knowing where it was harvested, Boulang, there isn't a lot of write up on the storage and other factors that influence the tea. Has anyone had Rama Lama Boulang? Trying to determine what factors about the tea make me appreciate it over others so I can look for other tea with similar characteristics.
I can say on my behalf. The preferences are changing and that change is happening based on few factors. Like experience , mode , age..etc. ...maybe all connected since all is lined up in some time line.
I can not help you to search particular tea taste , but can help you to "learn how to swim".
Only what you need to do is try various shu ( storage, areas, level of fermentation , tree / bush types ) so you get the "enough shou " to start to understand the differences ..not only noticing.
Big factories not much help since they mostly make a blends with Lincang tea ( because makes cost lower , not only taste variety as mistakenly believed ) and they are not stupid to reveal their processing concepts.
Also you have to eliminate as many other factors influencing taste as possible, so the storage is on of them. Means, if you keep trying old shu puerh you adding one more confusing coefficient to distinguish teas ..the storage. So do it 1 by 1 , step by step. Compare teas in most possible similar conditions ( age, storage, trees types , fermentation , areas ) ..each time focus on one of those factors to compare. Just like a car u going to test. BMW 1.8l or BMW 2.5l engine to feel the real differences ...not combining with Mercedes or something.
Some Chinese shu puerh producers / vendors divide their products into the categories / subcategories based on actual taste. There are few Chinese terms for that , but the problem is that vendor's understanding of the particular taste and their tasting buds are different from you , so the categorizing might not be relevant for you.
Besides of the classical taste sub-categorizing, there is also fermentation concept categorizing ( not only the depth like light / medium / dark fermentation ) which determines the not only taste but also color , density ( thickness ) of the shu and so the brewing style ( amount, time of steeping ) has to be adjusted in order to achieve desirable / aimed result in taste.
Also mixtures / blends of different grades , leaf types like "huang pian" makes big differences in taste.
There is also no set standard for depths ( light/medium/dark) of fermentation and each factory, or producer can have different "opinion " what is light and what is medium , so it boils down to choose vendor/s and follow their classification / categorizing in their shop.
You need to do your homework and search for vendors who do not only "sing a poetic songs about their tea"with fancy or somehow interesting packaging ( funny cartoons or whatever is cool to do these days ) , but also provide some more technical details..and by that I don't mean fancy Latin words like something something sinensis or specific location like some whatever small village , let alone some master made it.....It does make a website / vendor look more professional but in fact those details are not use to you.
The fact is , that many vendors do not have clue about such a details and those who do , consider this as a Know How which they don't share for exactly the reason you are just requesting ;-D
Be more specific with taste description and share with community so somebody can help to find you the right tea.
The most important...enjoy it!
...because the best part of it is searching & learning , not the finding ( getting to the end destination ).
Have a fun!
This. Should be pinned to the top and framed!aet wrote: ↑Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:49 pmfor vendors who do not only "sing a poetic songs about their tea"with fancy or somehow interesting packaging ( funny cartoons or whatever is cool to do these days ) , but also provide some more technical details..and by that I don't mean fancy Latin words like something something sinensis or specific location like some whatever small village , let alone some master made it.....It does make a website / vendor look more professional but in fact those details are not use to you.
The fact is , that many vendors do not have clue about such a details and those who do , consider this as a Know How which they don't share for exactly the reason you are just requesting ;-D
Good input so far. To me shu kind of just tastes like shu, as uniform for different versions as any other tea type, but still I can add how I interpret a few main variables, since I've tried a bit.
Source region: I've not really drank enough to try to isolate inputs related to area, as is more commonly discussed for sheng. This comment is just to frame that context, that to me this can sort of get lost among other concerns, or might only show up after sorting past an awful lot of examples to isolate other inputs.
Fermentation level: this isn't hard to pick up, so the opposite. I've wondered to what degree relatively lightly fermented shu might have more aging potential, but it takes a lot of exposure to piece together individual causes and effects, so I don't know. The effect is what you would expect, highly fermented shu is much earthier, more prone to aspect range that might improve with some settling, and lightly fermented is much more subtle.
Whole leaf versus chopped material: again what you'd expect, whole leaf is more subtle, less intense, probably a little cleaner in flavor aspect, and chopped material comes across as stronger, but not always in a good way. To me the difference related to this factor is more clearly tilted towards whole leaf being much more positive for sheng, because of how aspect range for both plays out. Shu that is made from relatively ground material tends to be bad though. I think some tuochas and mini-tuochas tend to be bad to awful in relation to a convention of those being lower quality, not related to there being any necessary connection.
Bud content: high bud level shu is often sweeter, lighter in tone, with a flavor that can even trail towards tasting like cocoa. A couple of references might help place that, a Yunnan Sourcing sampler that lets you click through to their take on grades, and a review I did of a version that seemed typical enough:
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/cus ... ea-sampler
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... ip-eu.html
I've tried and reviewed better versions of high bud content shu than that before, but it's probably a relatively typical above average quality example. If the idea here is to only be concerned with really good shu I'm not the person to be passing on any input; everything I tried was probably in the bad to upper medium quality range.
Age: odd to mention this so late in the list, isn't it? To me shu doesn't change all that much over time, compared to how many other people see that as critical, and making a lot of difference. I've tried a decent number of versions that were over a decade old (just not a decade earlier, then again after that aging), and they seem to just mellow out and deepen in character, and round off any rough edges. More issues come up with the tea needing some time to rest earlier in it's life-cycle, most often within the first two years of being produced (or so). All of this is probably already familiar.
Huang pian: I only mention this because I have a shu cake made from yellow leaves (huang pian material), and it's really unusual, very mellow, but with a cool feel. I guess this is the opposite of the input related to high bud content. Having tried one version of this I have absolutely nothing to say related to generalities; it takes a number of examples to know how other version range probably goes, versus just trying a few.
Source region: I've not really drank enough to try to isolate inputs related to area, as is more commonly discussed for sheng. This comment is just to frame that context, that to me this can sort of get lost among other concerns, or might only show up after sorting past an awful lot of examples to isolate other inputs.
Fermentation level: this isn't hard to pick up, so the opposite. I've wondered to what degree relatively lightly fermented shu might have more aging potential, but it takes a lot of exposure to piece together individual causes and effects, so I don't know. The effect is what you would expect, highly fermented shu is much earthier, more prone to aspect range that might improve with some settling, and lightly fermented is much more subtle.
Whole leaf versus chopped material: again what you'd expect, whole leaf is more subtle, less intense, probably a little cleaner in flavor aspect, and chopped material comes across as stronger, but not always in a good way. To me the difference related to this factor is more clearly tilted towards whole leaf being much more positive for sheng, because of how aspect range for both plays out. Shu that is made from relatively ground material tends to be bad though. I think some tuochas and mini-tuochas tend to be bad to awful in relation to a convention of those being lower quality, not related to there being any necessary connection.
Bud content: high bud level shu is often sweeter, lighter in tone, with a flavor that can even trail towards tasting like cocoa. A couple of references might help place that, a Yunnan Sourcing sampler that lets you click through to their take on grades, and a review I did of a version that seemed typical enough:
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/cus ... ea-sampler
http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... ip-eu.html
I've tried and reviewed better versions of high bud content shu than that before, but it's probably a relatively typical above average quality example. If the idea here is to only be concerned with really good shu I'm not the person to be passing on any input; everything I tried was probably in the bad to upper medium quality range.
Age: odd to mention this so late in the list, isn't it? To me shu doesn't change all that much over time, compared to how many other people see that as critical, and making a lot of difference. I've tried a decent number of versions that were over a decade old (just not a decade earlier, then again after that aging), and they seem to just mellow out and deepen in character, and round off any rough edges. More issues come up with the tea needing some time to rest earlier in it's life-cycle, most often within the first two years of being produced (or so). All of this is probably already familiar.
Huang pian: I only mention this because I have a shu cake made from yellow leaves (huang pian material), and it's really unusual, very mellow, but with a cool feel. I guess this is the opposite of the input related to high bud content. Having tried one version of this I have absolutely nothing to say related to generalities; it takes a number of examples to know how other version range probably goes, versus just trying a few.
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polezaivsani
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I tried to dig into a paper on the pu'ers posted recently by @klepto (thanks, btw) and it has some facts that corroborate the lack of effect ageing has on ripes.John_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:09 amAge: odd to mention this so late in the list, isn't it? To me shu doesn't change all that much over time, compared to how many other people see that as critical, and making a lot of difference. I've tried a decent number of versions that were over a decade old (just not a decade earlier, then again after that aging), and they seem to just mellow out and deepen in character, and round off any rough edges. More issues come up with the tea needing some time to rest earlier in it's life-cycle, most often within the first two years of being produced (or so). All of this is probably already familiar.
From the paper:
Age of tea is identified as a significant variable affecting microbial community of raw tea, but not of ripened tea.
To aging shu , if I may to add my personal observation: There is not much aging happening in there , is more than likely the tea absorbing the surrounding storage environment characteristics.
For example , If compare 2 identical shu cakes :
1) In KM after few years when "dui wei" pile ferm. scent fades off , we try to preserve the moisture in leafs ( cake ) so brewed tea leafs give the rich creamy thick and tasty tea soup without any sand throat scratchy feeling which happens a lot with old shu here ( KM)..especially the loose leaf.
2) in GZ / HK the tea leafs absorb moisture and as side effect also the odor from cardboard boxes , painted walls , dust from ground , mice excrement ...or any other odor can occur in storage. That's why the storage there , although is good for aging , also very "difficult" ..can't find right Eng. expression now for that. Basically harder to keep tea out of any **it, than when stored in KM.
In both cases the tea changes the taste but as I observed , that's not the aging factor ...not in Kunming at least. In GZ / HK there is probably some microbial action happening in pressed tea which also adds to taste change aside with mentioned "storage flavor" absorption. That's why Cantonese mostly go for light fermented shu , so the "microbe show " is not that aggressive and doesn't turn tea to pungent alcohol sour liquid. I had few shu with very strong acid / alcohol taste which was already behind the line of my liking or tolerance. Of course , everybody's taste not same , but in this stage I'm bit doubtful about safety of such a tea.
To sum this up : In my opinion , the shu is made for drinking Now , not for storing and aging. Only advantage compare to other short life shelf teas is that it has much longer "life spam" than green, black or other teas without any special storage care ( depends on environment of course ). I had loose leaf from 90's KM stored since beginning , it was very woody had a sweet touch but not thick-creamy and after few cups also not pleasant in throat. Also had 15 y old shu cake which had similar harsh taste, yet was sold for high price because famous brand and counted as Aged tea. I have got an offer from agent half price than it's officially sold by their TB agent ( that's how TF works btw. ) but still didn't convince me to go for that.
What I'm trying to point out here, that I see many foreigners chasing old teas on TB believing getting some good deal by bypassing westerners who ( if good and experienced vendor ) filtering the rubbish out.
Sorry for swing away with this to probably separate topic / thread
For example , If compare 2 identical shu cakes :
1) In KM after few years when "dui wei" pile ferm. scent fades off , we try to preserve the moisture in leafs ( cake ) so brewed tea leafs give the rich creamy thick and tasty tea soup without any sand throat scratchy feeling which happens a lot with old shu here ( KM)..especially the loose leaf.
2) in GZ / HK the tea leafs absorb moisture and as side effect also the odor from cardboard boxes , painted walls , dust from ground , mice excrement ...or any other odor can occur in storage. That's why the storage there , although is good for aging , also very "difficult" ..can't find right Eng. expression now for that. Basically harder to keep tea out of any **it, than when stored in KM.
In both cases the tea changes the taste but as I observed , that's not the aging factor ...not in Kunming at least. In GZ / HK there is probably some microbial action happening in pressed tea which also adds to taste change aside with mentioned "storage flavor" absorption. That's why Cantonese mostly go for light fermented shu , so the "microbe show " is not that aggressive and doesn't turn tea to pungent alcohol sour liquid. I had few shu with very strong acid / alcohol taste which was already behind the line of my liking or tolerance. Of course , everybody's taste not same , but in this stage I'm bit doubtful about safety of such a tea.
To sum this up : In my opinion , the shu is made for drinking Now , not for storing and aging. Only advantage compare to other short life shelf teas is that it has much longer "life spam" than green, black or other teas without any special storage care ( depends on environment of course ). I had loose leaf from 90's KM stored since beginning , it was very woody had a sweet touch but not thick-creamy and after few cups also not pleasant in throat. Also had 15 y old shu cake which had similar harsh taste, yet was sold for high price because famous brand and counted as Aged tea. I have got an offer from agent half price than it's officially sold by their TB agent ( that's how TF works btw. ) but still didn't convince me to go for that.
What I'm trying to point out here, that I see many foreigners chasing old teas on TB believing getting some good deal by bypassing westerners who ( if good and experienced vendor ) filtering the rubbish out.
Sorry for swing away with this to probably separate topic / thread
The flavor fades. It puzzled me for a while because fresh shou already tastes like tea that has had milk added to it, and seems impossible to oversteep. Also whenever I had "aged" shou it was always either bland or tasted like packaging or shelving, so I really didn't understand the appeal. I think my breakthrough was when I kept seeing people talking about all these steps needed to avoid fishiness in their shou; I'd noticed that if you smell wet shou right after adding water, it does smell fishy, but after brewing for 10 minutes the fish smell completely disappears and does not show up in the flavor. Then it dawned on me that if someone was doing flash steeps of a bunch of shou at once maybe this wasn't true.
On the one hand I can't really relate to the regularity with which people mention shu tasting like fish, since I seem to not drink that much below average quality level shu to pick that up.
On the other hand as you say an early steep can often be a little like that, fairly often, but it's the kind of thing that could be interpreted in different ways, that clears up after a couple of fast infusions. It might just be a matter of interpretation.
I've tried some relatively older shu that I liked, as the range goes. I suspect that suitability for aging is a factor, as it is with sheng, just much less critical and different in the case of shu. Intuitively lightly fermented shu might have more of the original compounds present yet to transition, but I've not sorted out cause and effect related to that factor, at all.
To be more specific I've tried a number of versions over a decade old, and one around 20 years old, and results don't seem to change much after that first 5-10 years of aging. That set of experiences was so limited that it wasn't meaningful though; most of the shu I've tried was only a few years old. It's not unusual to try 4 or 5 examples of a tea and for all of those to not be completely type-typical, or related to the best results.
On the other hand as you say an early steep can often be a little like that, fairly often, but it's the kind of thing that could be interpreted in different ways, that clears up after a couple of fast infusions. It might just be a matter of interpretation.
I've tried some relatively older shu that I liked, as the range goes. I suspect that suitability for aging is a factor, as it is with sheng, just much less critical and different in the case of shu. Intuitively lightly fermented shu might have more of the original compounds present yet to transition, but I've not sorted out cause and effect related to that factor, at all.
To be more specific I've tried a number of versions over a decade old, and one around 20 years old, and results don't seem to change much after that first 5-10 years of aging. That set of experiences was so limited that it wasn't meaningful though; most of the shu I've tried was only a few years old. It's not unusual to try 4 or 5 examples of a tea and for all of those to not be completely type-typical, or related to the best results.
Specificity is good, it's sometimes hard to understand what people mean when they talk about "aged" shu.
"Wodui sensitivity" seems to vary quite a bit from person to person. I personally don't mind it all that much, but find that I usually prefer shu with at least a couple years of age. Storage matters a lot for shu too, imo, especially when it comes to "flattening" and drying out. When it comes to the flattening, I'm not sure less fermented always means higher sensitivity to climate.
Personally I drink much less shu than sheng, but from my limited experience I seem to prefer those shus that have had around 10 years of storage in a warm and humid environment, which are not that easy to access here. And at the prices they are available, I'd go for a similarly priced sheng 10 out of 10 times (I'm just not that into shu).
For those interested in trying shu with HK storage, tealifehk is a good place to seek out samples. I'd recommend trying some of the natural HK stuff with at least 5+ years of storage and comparing to the same factory recipes (and same vintage) from a vendor with a drier and cooler storage profile (i.e. almost all "western facing" vendors).
"Wodui sensitivity" seems to vary quite a bit from person to person. I personally don't mind it all that much, but find that I usually prefer shu with at least a couple years of age. Storage matters a lot for shu too, imo, especially when it comes to "flattening" and drying out. When it comes to the flattening, I'm not sure less fermented always means higher sensitivity to climate.
Personally I drink much less shu than sheng, but from my limited experience I seem to prefer those shus that have had around 10 years of storage in a warm and humid environment, which are not that easy to access here. And at the prices they are available, I'd go for a similarly priced sheng 10 out of 10 times (I'm just not that into shu).
For those interested in trying shu with HK storage, tealifehk is a good place to seek out samples. I'd recommend trying some of the natural HK stuff with at least 5+ years of storage and comparing to the same factory recipes (and same vintage) from a vendor with a drier and cooler storage profile (i.e. almost all "western facing" vendors).
For better or for worse I've found that quite a few shous I enjoy, as well as darker liu baos, that need more sustained heat to get everything out of them do really shine once they cool down considerably. To me a lot more sweetness and other more subtle flavors emerge that get masked by high temperature. I don't know if that is just because maybe my mouth is a little heat sensitive.
I recently got some older (for me) Lucky Brand shu, and I'm curious what I'll make of it. I know there have been some more recent batches but I don't have anything to benchmark it against or really know how consistent such a tea would be recipe wise. The only shu I've had where there was noticeable pile taste was probably not of very high quality and/or very fresh out of fermentation and on the heavier side. I have had some though that tasted like they needed time to mellow out for sure, but as others have pointed out I wouldn't expect some sort of drastic change or evolution in the tea, just overall smoothing out - granted that alone can make a big improvement or impact on a tea.
Speaking generally though, I've been looking more at picking up some Haiwan cakes- do I understand correctly that generally as far as factory cakes go a lot of their shu recipes tend toward the lighter/sweeter side of things compared to say a V93?
I recently got some older (for me) Lucky Brand shu, and I'm curious what I'll make of it. I know there have been some more recent batches but I don't have anything to benchmark it against or really know how consistent such a tea would be recipe wise. The only shu I've had where there was noticeable pile taste was probably not of very high quality and/or very fresh out of fermentation and on the heavier side. I have had some though that tasted like they needed time to mellow out for sure, but as others have pointed out I wouldn't expect some sort of drastic change or evolution in the tea, just overall smoothing out - granted that alone can make a big improvement or impact on a tea.
Speaking generally though, I've been looking more at picking up some Haiwan cakes- do I understand correctly that generally as far as factory cakes go a lot of their shu recipes tend toward the lighter/sweeter side of things compared to say a V93?
Not exactly what you're looking for, I suppose, but Yunnan Sourcing has a decent selection of single-origin shou. Could be a good place to start. Since they're under the YS brand, there's also a chance Scott can tell you more about them.