Sunday, December 4, 2011

2006 Yang Ji Tian Ripe Pu erh Cake









This is my first Hong Kong pu erh cake that I had purchased in 2007.  This is a 2006 Yang Ji Tian ripe pu erh cake.  One of the nice things about buying from pu erh teashops in Hong Kong, was that you could, most of the time, sample a tea before you part with your money for that tea.  As I drink quite a fair bit of tea, I try to sample the tea before a purchase. Yes, you are unable to sample a tea when you buy from the internet or at certain teashops....... but if its a small amount, its fine but if its expensive, I suggest you buy only from a reputable seller or just buy a sample.  I would advise you not to plonk down your money if you cannot do the above as you may regret the purchase when the tea is not up to your liking.

Back to this tea; this 357g cake feels and look thicker and bigger, but this simply means that the compression of the tea leaves is low.  I could break up the tea cake gently with just my hands and this resulted in less tea dust and fannings.  I like tea cakes with low compression as it is less dangerous for my hands (I accidentally poke myself with a tea pick when I tried to pry open a tuo last week - thats another story).    

The aroma of the tea is very strong and fragrant.  It has a earthy and a 'chinese herbal soup' scent.  This tea has similar taste characteristics of the 2004 Xiaguan ripe (see blog 6 Feb 2012)  but with a milder sweet aftertaste.  A brew can make 10 very good infusions.    This is a nice cake and I had consumed half the cake within 3 weeks.  

But I digress - I have, in the past couple months, encountered great difficulties uploading pictures on blogger.  It sometimes take more than half an hour for one picture to upload. It is doubly frustrating to see an upload error after waiting for a long time. Posting the pictures for this blog entry was very excruciating this time, and I hope readers can recommend me a solution if this problem continue to persist. 


No comments: