Classic factory recipes
Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2018 4:33 am
Though it might be interesting to have a thread about classic factory cakes and recipes. For those of us who haven't been so deep into Pu Erh for years when you jump into the deep end you suddenly are confronted with a sea of numbers from different production years and factories and it is hard to make heads of tails of it all. But over time you start to see the same numbers come up again and again and it starts to become obvious there are some almost universal favorites and there must be a reason why something is always sold out before others or comes up again and again. But, without the time and pockets to try everything that still doesn't tell you much about Cake 1 vs Cake 2 and why you might enjoy one more than the other, or if one needs more time than another, so on.
I'm interested in going a bit deeper on Shu and looking at factory cakes specifically. I like the idea of a more or less fixed recipe for the sake of consistency- getting to know differences from production years as well as being able to better predict how something might age in the long run if there is an older year available to compare it to, or different storage. Also while it is obviously appealing to some people I find the sort of endless stream of varied releases by some more western oriented companies kind of off-putting - marketing hype of any sort usually sends me running in the opposite direction. I suppose the downside to factory products being that you have to keep an eye out for fakes.
While I'm interested mostly in Shu I don't see why Sheng shouldn't also be covered here, or maybe even Liu Bao. Only problem I encounter so far with Liu Bao is that I have found it difficult to find different years of certain productions - Three Cranes seems to number their productions, but I don't understand the system. Each one is a different recipe with different leaf grades and to find multiple years of a particular recipe isn't something I really come across, while maybe with something like Duoteli yellow box it is possible.
For Shu CNNP's 7581 seems the classic. Dayi seems to me always one of the more sought after and budget friendly options with 7572 cakes, and V93 for tuo. Xiaguan seems to have a lot of tuo options but I am clueless on them. Any other recipes or factories which one should include in their "basic education" on factory cakes/recipes?
I'm interested in going a bit deeper on Shu and looking at factory cakes specifically. I like the idea of a more or less fixed recipe for the sake of consistency- getting to know differences from production years as well as being able to better predict how something might age in the long run if there is an older year available to compare it to, or different storage. Also while it is obviously appealing to some people I find the sort of endless stream of varied releases by some more western oriented companies kind of off-putting - marketing hype of any sort usually sends me running in the opposite direction. I suppose the downside to factory products being that you have to keep an eye out for fakes.
While I'm interested mostly in Shu I don't see why Sheng shouldn't also be covered here, or maybe even Liu Bao. Only problem I encounter so far with Liu Bao is that I have found it difficult to find different years of certain productions - Three Cranes seems to number their productions, but I don't understand the system. Each one is a different recipe with different leaf grades and to find multiple years of a particular recipe isn't something I really come across, while maybe with something like Duoteli yellow box it is possible.
For Shu CNNP's 7581 seems the classic. Dayi seems to me always one of the more sought after and budget friendly options with 7572 cakes, and V93 for tuo. Xiaguan seems to have a lot of tuo options but I am clueless on them. Any other recipes or factories which one should include in their "basic education" on factory cakes/recipes?