While I was at the recent World Tea Expo, I was super happy to find a seller there that carried lots of Pu’er – LongRun Tea! I walked away with 2 pu’er cakes. Looking at their website, I couldn’t find a store front. After more poking around, it appears they sell on Amazon! Hey guys, there’s pu’er on Amazon!
Today, I’ll be reviewing LongRun Tea’s 2011 Chunhui Unfermented Sheng Pu’er. It’s a 357g cake, priced at $28.99 as I write this. I scored my cake for $20 at WTE, nice! The tea in this pu’er cake is Lingcang, Yunnan spring material from 100 year old wild arbor trees.
Unwrapping and Dry Leaf
As I unwrapped the cake and I was blasted with that young raw scent of sweet smokey earth and leaf.
The cake came with English instructions – you don’t see that very often.
Breaking off a piece to steep was easy, which was less work for the Tea Owls.
Steeping Instructions
I’m still in my gaiwan rut, so I steeped the 2011 Chunhui in an easy gaiwan ~100ml with 6 grams of leaf. I decided to go teaballs out and steep my raw pu’er with boiling water. I started with short 10 second infusions, building time as I went.
Tasting of LongRun Tea’s 2011 Chunhui Unfermented Sheng Pu’er
The raw pu’er steeps up with a strong smokey sweet scent with a clear golden hue lovely clear.
First and Second Infusion: 2011 Chunhui raw sips in with wisps of smokey incense. The flavor is light with a hint of buttery sweetness. There is also a light dryness at the back of the throat. We must press on!
Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Infusion: 2011 Chunhui raw’s flavor is getting intense. I’m thinking a lower steep temperature would of been better but I like to live dangerously. Dangerously cheesy!
For these infusions I’m getting a bit of sourness, kind of like an unripe star fruit with singed tips. The pu’er has a vibe of fruity tart and smokey amber incense aftertaste. The aftertaste is fruity smoke. After these sessions I got squirrelly dry cheeks, 4/10 Astringency meter. Putting together the flavor notes I described and I sound pretty crazy, like this is some foodie new age camping trip menu. doesn’t make too much sense. It sounds like some sort of weird new age exotic foodie camping trip with Bigfoot crashing in with gypsy scarves and sous vide pate.
I am ripping tea drunk by the way. I have great ideas – one involves crocheting mini Bigfoot and another is having a pu’er cake named “Dangerously Cheesy”.
Seventh and Eighth Infusion: The pu’er texture is quite dry with the flavor starting to slip. My teeth feel dry. The flavor has almost lost all tart. All I taste is light smoke, a bit of peach and amber with a sweet finish.
In my tea drunk state I made a horrible mess on the tea table.
Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Infusion: Oh yeah, this is what I sampled at the WTE! 2011 Chuhui raw is sweet peachy astringency with a hint of amber incense in the background. It is amazingly sweet in contrast to the early sour unripe-fruit with dancing Bigfoots. With these last infusions each steeping gets sweeter and clear until the flavor is gone.
Comments
LongRun Tea’s 2011 Chunhui Unfermented Sheng Pu’er has a smokey, fruity and sour flavor that develops nicely in later infusions with lots of the cha qi tea drunk times. I think the next time I steep this pu’er I will use a lower temperature as I think that would help with the dryness. I would also like to stash this raw cake for later, maybe time will tame the sour.
If you want a pu’er source off Amazon, be sure to check out LongRun tea! LongRun also sells a two pu’er cake pack with both Fermented and Unfermented 2011 Chunhui.
(amazon affiliate links)
