Tag Archives: wet storage

Ox, 6FTM Follow Up

Posted on by Yang-chu
14 Aug

Ox, 6FTM Follow Up finds the Puerh Junky serving it up for a visitor impressed by the neifei image posted on Instagram.  If you’re asking yourself, “What?!!! Ox, 6FKNTM again?!!”  Don’t worry.  This post won’t be long.

Huge neifei

Just two days ago, the official Puerh Junky Visits Report (PJVR) noted a few things that make the Ox different from the past.  These were sweetness, flawless clarity, and no qi of note.  Hmmm.  Hold the presses.  After two or three days of sitting out of storage, all three of these variables changed.  Still, 5.5g in slow-pour zisha, 150ml.

The rinse.  Sparkling clarity and lively taste.  Light liquor colour.  I took one cup and saved the rest to cool, splitting it when the guest arrived.  She didn’t taste much, but I could sense the qi already.

The next infusion went strait to my head and our visitor poured sweat: head, arms, and legs.  “I feel like I’m in Miami,” she said.  I hand her the box of kleenex.  She’s not impressed with the taste which she feels is mottled compared to say the BZ Peacock (coffee) or the Fujin Green.  To me it’s great and the huigan is bangin’.  Clear broth, about a four out of five.

About 3.5 clarity

Next infusion is more intense and she warms up to the taste.  All infusions are “flashed” but again, it’s the slow-pour pot.  The huigan excels.  Mouth full of roses.  The ole Fengqing attribute stands out as it has customarily.  There is zero sweetness to speak of.  Clarity about the same.  The qi is working full force in my head, though it is sedating the guest.

The next infusion is a catastrophe in terms of clarity, a one.  Guest appreciates the building intensity, but her eyes are starting to roll to the back of her head.  I’m holding my head very still to keep by brains from rattling in the noggin.  Again zero sweetness but explosive huigan that those craving tippy productions seek.

Tap out.

The difference two days out of storage makes. . .   Puerh Junky preferred the experience earlier in the week, but the contrast is quite instructive.  On this 13 Aug ’22, it tasted every bit its age, whereas earlier it tasted about seven years older.

Puerh Clay Storage

Posted on by Yang-chu
07 Mar

Yesterday one of my chief drinking buddies came by for a shesh.  We had some leftovers, a ’18 Bingdao and ’07 Yiwu both huangpian.  He was very myeh regarding the latter, saying, “I’ve had it with the fruity and floral and want more like your ’98 Red Mark.”  What’s a proper Puerh Junky to do?

Yeah, I have a few late 90s raw puerhs in the stash.  One is a “Red Mark.”  It is one of those aged raws that have been punished with a good deal of heat and a dash of humidity imparting that detestable dry old-book newspaper vibe.  That bugger has been placed in the detention container with the rest of the cardboard-stored creations that have lost their pizazz due to my own dunderheadedness.  That Red Mark, however, was none of my doing.  The hope is that I can work a little PJ magic on it and something jucier and complex can emerge.  Of course, the reader knows that that taste is highly regarded in some circles but in the eyes of the Puerh Junky such storage is deeply flawed.  But I digress. . .

I was talking about my tea compadre’s request for that humid aged taste.  What better chance to try out the recently “tinned” Lucky 7542  DQZ, but minding my junky etiquette I gave him an option.  “Well, I have a wet-stored ’06 Mengku that is aggressive and floral or we can try the wet-stored 7542 from tea meistra Du Qiong-zhi.”

Lucky 4524, DQZ

“Oh, 7542?  I’ll definitely take that,” trying to restrain his enthusiasm.  “Now, you do know that this isn’t a Menghai TF?  It’s from someone who worked her self through the ranks of Menghai TF before breaking out on her own in the late 90s during the restructuring,” I warned.  “I’ll have that,” he assured me.

The Lucky 7542 got transferred to a clay caddy around mid-Feb 2021 as part of the tinning project initiated after the fabulous findings from Fu.  Whereas most of the productions thus transferred reside in metal, the Lucky got clay.  Since I had previously moved a hideously wet late 80s Tulin tuo to a clay caddy with a glazed exterior to great result, Lucky’s humidity informed placing it in clay.

Now the Puerh Junky could regale you with all the details about that ’89 Tulin tuo, but the focus here is regarding the findings from Lucky after only three weeks.  For starters, the wet storage smell is evident in the clay itself.  My compadre upon one whiff went into a reverie about his childhood, memories of his grandfather.  I personally detected a note of cinnamon which is a very good sign in light of storage and age.

Recently, the floral-designated pot (150ml) has been getting quite the work out.  It pours slowly, so I only used 4.5g.  Far be it from the Puerh Junky to be at a loss for words, but suffice it to say that a production that I found unsatisfactorily stored is now close to perfect.  The layers of complexity to the tea are now much more evident.  Even the floral notes are more precise.  The overall effect results in what tastes like the ideal 7542, the archetypical 7542.  Are there better 7542?  Well duh, but this captures everything that the 7542 is supposed to be including the humidity.

The Puerh Junky’s wife is keen on the humid productions and just happened upon the scene of the crime to join us right when the first pot was being poured.  Both mi amigo and mi wife remarked upon the sweetness.  What stood out for moi was the volume in terms of breadth imparted by the clay storage.  Imagine Miss Brown Eyes Blue Crystal Gale and her long strait locks getting a good dose of 80s hair mousse. Pour some sugar on me, baby. . . sans the spandex.  The interplay between flowers, minerals, and humidity could not be detected in previous sessions with Lucky but with clay storage, I detected such complexity causing me to completely revise my assessment of the material’s underlying quality.

 

 

 

 

 

Puer Rating: Female Teamaster

Posted on by Yang-chu
24 Sep

The Puerh Junky Rating System (PJRS) takes on the renowned female teamaster Du Qiong-zhi.  Let’s say she’s no slouch.  Coming through the ranks of the vaunted Menghai TF since the 70s, she’s had a hand in numerous next generation factories of great repute.  This is her production of the famous 7542 in ’05.

After three rounds the total was as follows:

  • Aroma          12
  • Clarity            8
  • Sweetness     9
  • Viscosity        9
  • Astringency  15
  • Huigan         15
  • Qi                 12

Reflections

Stacked infusions 7, 8, 9. Less than 10 sec.

There’s no getting around the wetness of this storage.  Du Qiongzhi’s 7542 received perfect scores in astringency and huigan, as the dank humidity smothered the sharp green notes.  At the same time, this puerh cake did not lose much of its punch in terms of qi or aroma.  The picture above shows intense copper at a phase where typical productions either fade in colour or intensity.  This kept going, but never in a ferocious or discourteous manner.

Old Taste and Funk make this puerh reminiscent of an older style of puerh storage, when HK and others of the Chinese diaspora comprised the overwhelming share of the puerh market.  The dank style is not agreeable to the big bucks in Beijing and Shanghai, but is highly favoured among a handful of old-school puerh drinkers in the non-Chinese world.

The Puerh Junky associates “old taste” with musty books and newspapers.  It bears no resemblance to root beer because there is no fizz and little sweetness.  In the few days of drinking this production, couldn’t come away not feeling that the storage ruined the tea.  Nevertheless, the PJRS allowed my to focus squarely on the relevant parameters and not my taste preferences.  As far as humid storage is concerned, this.

Conclusions

There’s no doubt that the ’05 Du Qiong-zhi 7542 is a serious tea.  The dank storage has not damaged its qi while greatly throttling the astringency, making this a very smooth, some would say “earthy” experience.  It bears old taste traits similar to Taiwan stored productions of a roughly similar age.  It’s currently not for sale, but you can hit me up for a sample.  Puerh Rating: Female Teamaster

79/105, B

 

Puerh Rating: AMT

Posted on by Yang-chu
20 Sep

The Puerh Junky Rating System (PJRS) takes on the ’07 AMT, TL 100g tuo.  In my puerh junkocity, “one Tulin rating deserves another.”  The Acutal Mushroom Taste (hence AMT) tuo has been on hand since at the latest early ’16.  In contrast to the other two tuo from Tulin offered, it stands out for the absence of floral notes.  Though its notes are lower in the range, it has shown nothing of the transformative capacity of the White Tips.

After three rounds the total was as follows:

  • Aroma          10
  • Clarity            8
  • Sweetness     7
  • Viscosity         9
  • Astringency   11
  • Huigan          11
  • Qi                    7

Reflections

The words I wrote were “bitter, vegetal, floral.”  I clearly hated this experience.  It performs well in terms of viscosity and astringency, and there is no single category in which it doesn’t perform solidly.  Hence, it is a very well rounded everyday drinker. But I didn’t taste any mushroom.

The following day I had three very solid rounds from AMT and tasted the mushroom.  Interesting.  My reaction from a day earlier contradicts the introduction regarding lack of floral taste.  I generally do not associate the AMT with being floral.  Obviously, tastes change by the day affected by diet, climate, and context.  That’s why several sessions afford a much more accurate assessment than just one or two.

Conclusions

The PJRS surprises me.  By weighing the seven variables evenly, productions with a better all around performance will score higher relative much “better” puerh productions.  Such is the case for the AMT.  “Better” might be something purely subjective, so the rating scale helps to strip away subjective preferences around taste to simply see how the tea performs in terms of attributes that have some objective basis.

The AMT is a low risk, high reward introduction to semi-aged, semi-humid raw puerh tea.  Some have found its “qi-appeal” much higher than myself.  Puerh Rating RMT:

73/105, B

Wet-Stored Zhongcha Puerh

Posted on by Yang-chu
07 Peacock 9611, CNNP
14 Jan

Two shots of the same production from ’07 brewed in different vessels. It’s been wet stored, so it’s much darker than usual. The gaiwan shot was taken at night, the clay pot shot in day. The latter is much sudsier and sweeter, with some cooling camphor notes that can be felt at the end of each sip.

Night shot

When I first got it I couldn’t drink it, so I stuffed it away for six months, a fairly short spell actually. A friend recently sent me a sample of the Global Tea Hut “tea of the month,” which was a Blue Mark, same factory as below, from 2000, stored in Taiwan for 18yrs. It smelled like it too.

Day shot

Anyway, one wet stored production begets another. This ’07 production is better than the Blue Mark. It’s thicker, sweeter, and more complex, even though both are very much in the Zen vein of puerh, either Lincang or Yiwu material.