Social Media Fu Zhuan Tastings

My 2012 CNNP Fu Zhuan kilo brick

Last month I received a packet of Fu brick samples from Oolong Owl who had completed a review of Moychay's Fu brick teas. Moychay is a Russian tea house who had sent her Fu Zhuan teas for review, and they sent not just samples but entire 800g bricks! So she reached out to a number of people via social media offering to send samples. She asked that I do some tea notes. The samples are well-timed for me because of my project to drink up my 2012 CNNP Fu Zhuan 1 kilo whopper brick this year. So I am very familiar now with that brick and can compare it to the samples. I consider my notes here to be addenda to Oolong Owl's post. I did not photograph my samples because her brick photos especially give a better idea of the product than my small samples. 

But first, an update on my CNNP brick. I have been drinking this in the a.m. since the first week of January, although I took a week to consume the samples from this social media sharing, and recently I have been drinking a bit of hongcha in the morning. You can see from the photo above that the brick now fits in my square tea tray rather than draping over the edge. So that is progress, but I still have quite a bit of tea left to go. When I break off chunks I get a lot of tea dust that cannot really be brewed so that is some loss which will mean going through the brick a bit faster. I admit that while I am chugging along fine on the brick, I feel a little bored drinking the same brick tea day after day. The CNNP is clean and pleasant, but Fu is a bit on the bland side compared to puerh tea. 

Moychay has several Anhua Fu Zhuan Teas, you can check out the bricks for yourself. The prices compare nicely with the Mojun Fu Zhuan bricks at Yunnan Sourcing. I brewed all my samples in my Teforia as I have been doing with the CNNP brick.

First I drank the 2017 sample, which comes from the 800g Anhua Fu Zhuan brick. This tea is very green with large leaves, and you can see from Owl's photo the number of thick sticks in the brick. I feel as though my CNNP brick has a better leaf quality with smaller leaves and fewer sticks. The sample is large enough for two different Teforia brewings, and I brewed each sample for two days for a total of six steepings per day, or twelve times two (24) for the full sample. The green flavor dominates the profile, like freshly cut weeds and green olive. After four days of drinking this tea, I really could not stand it anymore. It is just too green for me to enjoy. The tea has healthy golden flowers, and some warming qi but I could not get past the weedy profile. I really like my Fu teas more aged, and some tea factories age their Fu brick teas for a couple years before selling, so they are already a bit browned. 

After the 2017, I just could not bring myself to try the 2016 sample, although this one was Owl's favorite of the three Moychay samples. It is green like the 2017. So I moved on to the 2014 Shou Zhu brick. This tea has a browned appearance, with smaller leaves and fewer sticks than the 2016 and 2017. I did the same four days of 24 steepings total on the sample. This tea seems rather comparable to my 2012 CNNP brick with a nutty flavor and hints of fermented shou. I can't think of a reason to prefer either tea, except my CNNP brick at 1000g for $65 was a better value at the time when I purchased it. 

Owl included a few other samples in the package she mailed me, fortuitously one of them was the 2018 Fu Zhuan from Mojun purchased through Yunnan Sourcing. I am right out of Mojun Fu brick tea, having drunk all mine up since we met with the company at the 2017 World Tea Expo. Brilliant that she included a sample from Mojun along with the Moychay, because Mojun's Fu is still my benchmark for good Fu brick. Steeping up the Mojun sample, everything about it is a clear difference from all of the above teas. Mojun's Fu brick teas feature small leaves with the fewest sticks. The flavor is much more nutty and full bodied. Their teas are aged to a bit of brown before selling. The Mojun sample had the best qi and a sweating effect on me. 

Owl's package also included a couple of tea bags and instant powdered Fu teas. The T-85 teas are by Tea Garden, a company Owl met up with at the 2019 World Tea Expo, I believe. The teabag Fu did not contain enough tea for my Teforia steeping and came out rather weak and flavorless. The Premium Tian Jian, however, is a very nice tea. I did not realize it was not Fu tea at first because I did not look at the bag carefully, and the tea has so much flavor by comparison to Fu brick I was startled drinking it. The T-85 Tian Jian is similar to Zhu Xiang Ji bamboo-log Tian Jian teas that I notice are back in stock at Yunnan Sourcing US, also of Hunan-Anhua origin. 

Fu Zhuan is a pleasant tea on the body and probably beneficial for the digestion. It hits a bit of a wall, however, in that Fu just does not have the fine aroma and complex mouth experience that puerh tea has. However much that Fu Zhuan lacks in the flavor department, very often it can offer similar qi experiences as puerh tea for a lot less money than great qi costs in puerh. For these reasons Fu is worth considering as part of a tea diet, especially if you are not fond of shou puerh and want an alternative. 

I just do not think I have the storage set-up to handle a really green brick of Fu Zhuan, because I don't want to store it with my puerh tea. Even with my 2012, I did not use any special storage and so I cannot get the highly encrusted flowers on mine except in summer. In winter time, the drier air shrinks the flowers somewhat. Setting up storage for Fu brick just isn't worth the trouble for me and I prefer to purchase Fu tea already brown and then age it until it hits 7 years or so. The younger Moychay samples are just too unrealistically green for me to consider a purchase. 

The Mojun Fu tea tops them all including my 2012 CNNP. The leaf quality is good, the qi is great and flavor is nutty. Yunnan Sourcing just added a third Fu brick from Mojun to their offerings, I know the Yi Hao brick is good and at $51 for a half kilo, can't be beat. I hope Yunnan Sourcing is able to offer the Mojun brick teas via their US site at some point, because the shipping from China is pricey, but I cannot expect it this year with the freight issues affecting imports from China. If however, YS is able to offer them on the US site, I am sure they will sell out fast. Our encounter with Mojun Fucha representatives at the World Tea Fest has got around the tea community now, mainly because Oolong Owl has sent samples to so many people these past few years. 

My thanks to Oolong Owl for the samples! I will get around to trying the instant Fu teas one of these days. Or maybe I will save them for a sick day.