Today’s review is the 2017 Flap Jacks by White2Tea. I have both the Sheng and Shou set. This tea is sold in a mini tong of 7, with 8 grams mini puer discs.
I bought both sets of Flap Jacks with my White2Tea order around Black Friday. I actually hesitated to buy Flap Jacks as I rather buy full cakes than gimmicky prepackaged shapes, with also a slight fear of lesser quality material was used. But the Flap Jacks are around $5 each and freaking cute, so like the tea addict I am, I got them anyway.
I was having fun trying to find a teapot that would fit an intact flapjack. Likely you will need a gaiwan unless you have some pretty wide teapot lids.
I went with a gaiwan and the ratio is pretty strong 8 to 100ml (1g to 12.5ml). boiling water. You probably want a 120ml for sheng, but I prefer smaller as I don’t plan to sit with this tea for that long. Shou is pretty flexible and a 90-120ml is fine, and I often over leaf shou anyway.
They are thin enough you can break them in half…. but if you need a smaller size you should really just opt to buy a cake.
White2Tea’s 2017 Flap Jacks – Raw Puer
Steeps up cloudy early on. I’ve said this before, but I see clouds a lot when steeping these tiny cakes.
The hot leaf has a steamed rice and floral scent.
First, Second, and Third Infusion: The cake was still intact after a rinse and rest, and a couple infusions. I reached into the hot leaf and snap the cake into three pieces to speed up the infusions. Early infusions are sweet and light. It has a floral soapy sweet note with a floral aftertaste. the texture is lightly slick. Pretty mindless daily drinking here.
Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Infusion: The Raw Flap Jack has mostly broken apart. Likely this is the higher leaf, but it has a bitter note starting to stew, and astringency that is sticking to the sides of my mouth, but otherwise is a light tasting tea. It is still floral, youthful, and cutely sweet. The aftertaste lingers strong and for a while, as a grassy floral.
Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Infusion: I got quite a lot of infusions out of this tea. It certainly got stewed here with strong grassy bitter notes, but still with a sweet floral flavor floating around, with plenty of floral in the aftertaste. The final infusions are gritty dryness.
The Sheng Flap Jack is also a young sheng gut rotter. After this session, I needed a snack ASAP as my stomach was starting to suck into itself and rot.
Hilariously, I found leaf bigger than the cake itself. The leaves in Flap Jacks are actually overall pretty big. This is nice to see, these aren’t those crappy 5 gram mini touchas made out of puer dust and sticks, this is legit tea.
Comments: Despite me sitting on this tea since Black Friday, the Sheng Flap Jack is a youthful sheng. It has strong bitterness and some awesome aftertaste. As is, I put it on par around Diving Duck and Big Green Hype, but in a cute small package.
However, as of right now this tea is hella young and I’m going to leave it in the pumidor and forget about it for awhile. If you love young sheng and bitter teas, it is drinkable. I’ve been hating on young sheng for awhile as I have been drinking so much of it, but I enjoyed the floral notes.
White2Tea’s 2017 Flap Jacks – Ripe Puer
After 2 rinses, the Flap Jack cake pretty much melted into pieces. The hot leaf smells like whiskey and chocolate. Surprisingly, the Shou Flapjack steeps up a bit more clear than the Sheng.
First, Second, and Third Infusion: The flavor is sweet, dark chocolate, dirty earth, and a little whiskey. Super smooth to drink. This is easy drinking and has an inviting creamy texture. There is a slight wet pile funk note here, but it is subtle.
Fourth and Fifth Infusion: I can taste the wet pile funk here a bit more clearly as I enter into ultra dark infusions. The profile is creamy, bit caramelly and lots of earth. My stomach is also agreeing this shou is a little young for me.
Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Infusion: Now that I moved past ultra strong shou, the Shou Flap Jack chilled out. It is earthy, sweet, milky, oddly a little smokey for 6th and 7th only, and really easy daily drinker shou.
Tenth Infusion: Power steeped long infusion of like 15 minutes. The tea is light, sweet and caramelly. Pretty good stuff, I would say the later infusions are best with this flapjack… like that last scraping of pancake (sans the bursting full sugar rush).
Comments: Early on, the Shou Flap Jacks reminded me of 2016 Trap Bird sharing similar notes and fragrance leaning more earth than wood. Compared to Waffles, another easy daily drinker shou, Flapjacks is more chocolatey and earth. I like 2017 Waffles a little more for the balance of wood and earth, and it seems to be more forgiving oversteeped. These notes could change as I found Flapjacks more youthful than Waffles. Shou Flapjacks has an interesting earthy character and a fun, easy to use daily drinker tea. I am impressed with the leaf quality too.
These 2017 Flap Jacks are smart. Cute, nice packaging, photogenic, preportioned, decent quality leaf and affordable at $4.50 to $5.50 each (56 grams total, $0.08 to $0.10 a gram). These easily slip into your shopping cart as a why not, even if you are not in the market for a daily drinker. With the allure and economical quality, I can see them disappearing unless 2Dog predicted this and has a full warehouse worth in his tea dealer trenchcoat.
