2015 Quanjihao Manzhuan Cha Gao

2015 Quanjihao Manzuan Cha gao 

Cha gao paste is often viewed as the Nescafe or Sanka of puerh tea. Meant as a portable form of puerh, all you need is a bit of boiling water and you can have your puerh with no messy leaves to dispose of. Usually cha gao is rather inexpensive, and just as Nescafe is not really the same as fresh brewed coffee, cha gao too falls short of the real puerh session. Nevertheless, last year I spotted this 2015 Quanjihao (tea house) Manzhuan raw puerh paste in Chawangshop and grew fixated on acquiring some. Part of my fixation is due to this product’s entirely homemade origin.

How Cha Gao is made

Cha gao is a decoction of tea leaves and sticks which are boiled, and probably mashed and strained, before cooking down the entire decoction into a syrup. With most decoctions, one cooks leaves, roots or stems til soft, strains out the tea material and sets aside the cooking water. Then, mash the material with a wood or marble pestle until pulverized, boil again in new water and strain, adding the new water to the original pot. One can repeat the boiling/mashing process, but after mashing you get cloudy water, so for a nice clear liquid either do only one mashing or you need a method of straining like slow drip rather than simple cheesecloth.

All the cutting of bamboo pieces, folding, beautiful

Cha gao often comes cut into candy-shaped pieces in candy-like wrappers which suggests an industrial conveyor belt production. This 2015 Manzhuan paste, on the other hand, is made by one man, a tea shop owner in his 60s who started cooking in his kitchen back in the early 2000s, trying to learn how to make chagao. I like the homemade part, and I can relate.

When I was a kid, my family produced maple syrup in the spring. Either we did it ourselves or relatives made it. The sap runs in maple trees when the snow is melting and daytime temperatures get above freezing. A good maple year is when the snow melts slowly, and the frozen nights are crisp with clear skies. Maple sap is clear and very watery, if we get too much rain or the ground loses frost too fast, we get a very watery sap that produces syrup with less flavor, rather like a rain on puerh leaves during harvest produces a water-logged  beeng and weaker tea, and like rain before a ganja harvest produces weaker buds. Watery maple sap means cooking far longer to get that sap into a syrup consistency.

The block takes on texture from the bamboo.

Maple syrup requires a lot of sap just to get one nice bottle of syrup. Strictly speaking, maple syrup is not a decoction in the sense of mashing and boiling plant material, because the tree provides a clear liquid on its own. We get to skip the mashing. But the boiling down part is the same. We used huge 10 gallon pots burning on woodfire stoves for days. Every morning at 5 a.m. we went out to collect sap.

The long process of making syrup inevitably led to long afternoon beer drinking sessions on the part of the adults, who got progressively drunker and consequently forgot about the syrup. We ended up with dark, slightly burnt syrup. Maple syrup is graded on color and flavor, with the lighter, more golden syrups receiving Grade A, and darker, more burnt syrups getting B or even C grade. I think my family syrup is more of a C grade, and maybe a D, but D doesn’t exist. I grew accustomed to darker syrup, and I buy B or C grade to this day. The best maple syrup I ever had was my uncle’s B grade which he kept in a massive oak barrel with a tap, and the oak imparted a lovely nuance.

Cooking Maple Syrup, by Ohiofarmgirl
photo credit

Most maple candy is cooked to a very light golden soft ball or soft crack stage. You can see how the colors vary quite a bit. I have noticed that cha gao tea paste varies in color as well, from very burnt liquid or hard crack cooked, like peanut brittle. In Chawangshop’s photo of the brewed cha gao, I see a pink color. Is the brew of this tea really pink? I wanted to find out.

 Now, some of you think I meander on and on through my memories. But the truth is maple syrup and this cha gao both are all about a man standing over a large cooking pot of sap. Cha gao requires ratios of water to leaf at minimum 1:10. Mr. Quan used 1:18 for this tea…wasn’t 2015 a wet year for puerh, or just this Manzhuan? By comparison, maple syrup is usually a 1:40 ratio, so who stands over that boiling pot longer? I meander over my memories because from one part of the world to another, boiling sap from tree products is the same activity. You need a large soup pot, a lot of time on your hands, and maybe alcohol to drink. To get the best end result, you tread a fine line between making hard candy and burning the sap, between exquisite flavor and carbon dust.

Maple syrup taffy of different colors, Canada
photo: travelbliss.com

 While we make maple candy here by pouring sap over snow, Mr. Quan poured his tea paste into folded bamboo pieces. I love the little boxes, I can see all the cutting and origami-like folding, along with the elastic “hair tie” closure, the glued-on label which says Six Big Ancient Tea Mountains, Raw Puerh Tea Paste, and the name of the tea shop which you can also see in the photos on the Chawangshop listing. We put our maple syrup in canning jars, with a label for the year, and decorate the lid with a piece of patterned cloth and tie with a ribbon.

I meander over my memories because I see myself standing over the syrup pot and wood fire just as Mr. Quan stands over his tea syrup pot. We stir and stir and stir, with patience giving way to impatience and back again. Did he turn down the heat at night to sleep and resume the next day, as we do over our syrup? Or did he really stay up for three days continuously stirring, keeping himself awake with tea and maybe the radio?

“I wish you could meet Mr. Quan, he is really a tea master,” Honza of Chawangshop writes to me.

Oh, that I could! I would bring him a gift of maple syrup and make him pancakes, and maybe he could make the tea. I would bring a box of maple sugar candy, and I would show him a picture of the sugar maple tree in my yard. I know he would see the parallels. This is crystalline structure, it is sugar, both puerh tea and maple sap. Fermented puerh tea is breaking down the leaf structure to release the sugars which change and mature via fungi, yeasts, mold and bacteria.

Cha gao is proof of sugars in the puerh tree. I meander over my memories because we all make things from the trees around us. Only later will this process become mystified, because puerh is from China, but cha gao is no more mysterious than maple sugar. Maple syrup is a good source of manganese and other trace minerals, and likewise trace minerals are found in cha gao too.

Breaking off pieces, hold the pick firmly in hand,
use a stabby-stabby motion like chopping ice.

I will admit that I licked the brick a little, which tasted like bamboo puerh and horehound candy. The next problem is how to get a piece of tea off the brick. Honza suggested 0.5g of tea for a small cup. This is a teeny, tiny piece which lends a view of the cost ratio. For puerh tea, this brick is expensive, 100g at $50. But at ½ gram per cup of this strong stuff, we have 200 sessions here, give or take, depending upon dust loss. The brick of tea is like hard candy and I use a tea pick to break off a little corner.

The tea dust on my tongue tastes like smoky puerh in bamboo and is very bitter.

How to brew Cha Gao

“Brew it by pouring boiling water over a strainer,” Honza says. His photo shows pouring the water into a fairness cup. I don’t own an actual fairness cup. I have similar vessels in my house which are made for…guess it…maple syrup.

Brewing in a vintage maple syrup pitcher,
circa early 1960s, by Syracuse "China"

This is like water dripping on a spoon with a sugar cube into a glass of absinthe. Only the sugar cube is a chunk of cha gao this time. I pour the water very slowly over the chunk into my little maple syrup pitcher. The tea dissolves leaving tiny bits of dark leaves. The tea is sweet, tasting of bamboo and…maple syrup…no I’m projecting, surely. Sticky, astringent, like dark sugar, with mineral after taste. The empty pitcher smells amazing, like syrup or dark honey. I feel like I used a bit too much water on the first go, I want more flavor.

You must use a metal strainer with fine mesh,
such as this one by teaware.house

 Unexpectedly, I get some qi or buzzing around my face and in my ears, and with summer weather now a hot tea gets me sweating fast. Fifteen minutes after finishing my little pitcher of tea, it all hits. The caffeine in this tea is very strong, as is the astringency. I guess maybe cha gao is indeed concentrated puerh in more ways than just the sugars.

I “brew” the tea again using bottled Nature’s Source spring water, which is a Wisconsin brand, rather than my tap water. The top notes of florals, horehound, incense and bamboo are a bit more noticeable this time.

 Cha Gao Storage

Honza states in the tea listing that the tea improves in flavor after several years. I notice that my tea liquor is browner than the pink brew in his photo. This cha gao is 3 years old already which may explain the differences in the photos. How can I best store this tea?  For me to determine the storage, I need to figure out how humidity/water affects this tea paste.

I found a photo on Yunnan Sourcing with the idea of using 1/2g of their Jingmai raw cha gao in a bottle of water on the go, rather clever. The idea of mineral water made with a chunk of cha gao is appealing to me. I decided to give it a go and put a chunk of this cha gao in a bottle of spring water. Unfortunately, it did not dissolve. However, rubbing the wet chunk between my fingers afterward pushed some brown liquid off of it.

I attempt to dissolve a chunk in cold water.
The tea did not dissolve, however.

The reason why this cha gao does not dissolve in cold water is because it is cooked past hard crack stage to the brown liquid stage, or 170C. When boiling candy sugars, you can test the stages by using a glass of ice water. Drop in a few drops of the liquid. When you remove the drops from the glass, a “firm ball” drop will make a caramel at room temperature. A “hard ball” can be pulled to make molasses taffy.

“Hard crack candy” is most of the clear hard candies wrapped in plastic you can buy at the store, and also peanut brittle. “Hard crack” is used for very hard candies that dissolve in water slowly and have a very long shelf life, such as jawbreakers, Inferno Jawbreakers (hot cinnamon) and Wonka’s “Everlasting Gobstoppers.” Pushing the heat past the hard crack stage, the sugar liquid will turn permanently brown, so you cannot color it red or green or whatever you want. Many cha gao like this one are brown to black.

Sugared candy has a storage shelf life. Humidity melts all but hard crack candy into a sticky glob. I read that temps of 35 centigrade on clear hard candy for six weeks is equivalent to six months of room temperature shelf life. I stored the cha gao on my three season porch during 30C temps and 70% RH overnight and it was not sticky in the slightest. When I put a chunk in my cold water bottle and it didn’t dissolve, I am now sure that this cha gao is probably past hard crack. This means the shelf life is pretty much indefinite, but from now on it won’t change much, it is very cooked.

By contrast, Yunnan Sourcing’s Jingmai cha gao raw is a lighter color with a taffy appearance. This is probably soft or hard crack stage cooked, and thus it will dissolve in cold water more readily. The cooking stage explains why their cha gao paste dissolves in a bottle of cold water. I also noticed the foil wrap on Yunnan Sourcing’s Jingmai. Foil is used to wrap candy with a shorter shelf life. For example, chocolate is foil wrapped. The foil will preserve candy much longer than plastic wrappers.

I am thinking that any bacteria, fungi etc. are killed off from days of boiling, and the plant juices and minerals are locked in a crystalline sugar structure. At three years henceforth since this tea was made, I do not think this tea will change much from this point. Perhaps the tea may mellow a bit more, especially the astringency which is still strong, but right now it is quite sweet and an interesting drink.

Mulling over the above, storage of this cha gao means that humidity is less useful than time in general. I am also concerned about ants or other insects chomping on my cha gao. I decided to go with a tin for these two boxes of cha gao, for dry tin storage. After a day in the tin, my two packages smelled nice when I lifted the lid. By contrast, leaving the tea out it seemed to lose scent. I expect tinning will preserve a sugar form product better than humidity will. I would like some mellowing but I don’t think I will like the tea to stale as fast as it will if I use high humidity and temps. This isn’t likely anytime soon with how cooked to nearly burnt this product is, but eventually it could go stale, unlike the decades we can expect for regular puerh leaves.

My second brewing attempt,
tea is slightly cloudy, but sweet

Reasons to try Cha Gao

After three brewings, I am now interested to compare some other cha gao products, Prior to seeing this product I really had no interest in cha gao. Why would I want a candied version of puerh tea when I can just brew the leaves? Travel is an obvious reason, several grams of cha gao fit in a tiny baggie in one’s luggage and only require boiling water and no special tea ware. This cha gao packs a caffeine punch and is better than tea bags.

Chawangshop sells an interesting selection of homemade, local craft products such as this cha gao and many of their heicha teas. Honza has a good eye for teas that local artisans produce, and I hope he will continue to feature craft teas. Chawangshop products don’t go on discount, so if you want this pick one up before it sells out. Half the production is only maybe 20 little 100g boxes or so, not much to go round. Yunnan Sourcing's Jingmai is about $10 less for 100g, if you want another option.

2016 Chawangshop Hekai

Tong Shrine

My tong of 2016 Hekai from Hanshan Tea House aka Chawangshop arrived while I was in Las Vegas for the Tea Expo. A tong of tea is a welcome sight to return home to, and yes, a whole tong because I purchased the 2015 200g cake and drank up the bulk of it in only a few short months. By the time I needed more of this tea, the 2015 production sold out. Therefore I am not messing around buying one beengcha at a time, developing a need for a tea, only to find the puerh heads have bought it up. I don’t trust none of yas, and as soon as my tax refund arrived this was first on the shopping list. After all, none of yas need this tea the way I do, except maybe a few others in the older puerh drinker category.

A gentle tea with a fierce warrior.

Chawangshop released most of their 2016 teas last December shortly after a late pressing. From what I am hearing again this year, factory pressing time is even more at a premium, perhaps this is the reason why the tea house held their spring maocha until winter. In a way, I regret missing the first six months of this Hekai tea, because the 2015 early green tea period was a lovely time in this tea’s life. Yet the green tea of the 2016 pokes through for a couple of infusions even a year later, after about five steeps or so. On the positive side, the tea has firmed up rather well and yields a mostly golden yellow brew which indicates a proper processing on the front end. In other words, this tea is one that will continue to change as a puerh should.

Hello, friend.

This tea is firmly in my gaiwan as we speak and I have just quaffed four infusions in short order for emergency purposes. As for sessions, this is my fourth session with this tea since it arrived. I do not know whether this tea is truly gushu or not, what matters for me is that the source of the leaves is the same as the 2015 production, according to the listing. 

A very nice bum.

I cannot overstate the agreeableness of this tea for medicinal purposes of treating edema and overheating within my body, which I experience on a daily basis and all the worse in the summer. Some of this is medication-related, and some is just I have had an overly warm constitution. On top of that my son made buttered popcorn for a movie we watched on DVD, and I really should not have salty popcorn which makes the edema all the worse, though to Son’s credit he used less salt and added garlic powder instead.

Tea leaf shape beengcha knife by JTTea, Inc.

So this Hekai production is very much like a water pill for me, and does the job faster than the actual water pill I take in the morning. In fact, when I feel my legs stiff and full of water just two cups of this tea will relieve the leg pressure within fifteen minutes, and then I start my trips to the bathroom within an hour or so. Maybe green tea in general works this way for most people, but none of my considerable and really obscene number of puerh teas has as much of a diuretic effect as this tea.

Knife with sheath on a hinge.

I am not the only person to feel this. Since my review of the 2015, several people in my age group emailed to report they have the same diuretic effect and need this for their own physical condition. So we commiserated when the 2016 production arrived at the tea shop and I can report more than one of us bought the full tong right away. Really every tasting note I read on the 2015 was positive, and unless you don’t want a mild and sweet tea with low bitterness I cannot find anything to complain about on the drinker side. While this tea may certainly age and change, my purchase is very much about drinking up starting right now.

Ready for surgery.

Cracking open the tong and opening up a cake gave me the opportunity to try out a new puerh knife I bought at the World Tea Expo from JTTea, Inc. for $10. The company is working on a retail website, but right now has only a wholesale catalog for vendors. The knife is shaped like a tea leaf but opens up in a Persian knife shape. This knife is meant to easily slide through a beengcha to lift up a perfect half. It looks very sharp, but in fact the blade is about 2 mm thick and rather dull so I won’t cut my fingers very easily.

A perfect split.

I felt a little crazy buying this because I had to Fed Ex mail it to myself. I considered buying a leather thong to use the bael and wear like a necklace “hey it’s a tea leaf” but did not dare risk losing it at airport security, as if yes I plan to cut up people with a very blunt tool. Now I am glad to have it because it works better than a regular pick at prying up large pieces of a puerh pie.

I also bought a teeny, tiny clay teapot from JTTea, Inc.
The coin for reference is a small American dime.
Teapot made in Taiwan.

Other than the sweet and mild nature of this tea, with just a bit of bitterness, the experience is straightforward overall until the diuretic effect kicks in. Honza said to me he doesn’t know why a number of us find this tea a particularly nice diuretic and so none of us can explain it. As with any green puerh, one needs at least something in the stomach beforehand to protect the lining even though the tea is mild for a puerh. I do not taste or see much char, the processing is very clean. The tea fades at about ten steepings, which is just fine. In a taller vessel like my milk creamer I can smell a nice floral scent which gets lost in a wider cup. The mix of leaves include buds, and overall the leaves are smaller than many other teas. Supposedly the tea is a single origin which is nice to know but hardly important to me given how agreeable the brew is.

Relief is at hand. After about eight brews, some green shows
in the mostly golden liquid.

I am glad the tea is back in stock, and hope for a 2017 production. This 2016 costs $38/200g and is $2 more than in 2015. At 19 cents a gram, a tong of five cakes rings up at $190 which is less than many single teas I have purchased. Chawangshop continues to excel in finding high quality teas in the easy drinking price range, a characteristic of this vendor I very much appreciate. I have my eye on a few other teas from the 2016 line up for later this year assuming they don’t sell out on me first. No, I will not tell you what those are. ;)

2016 Yibang

I wasn’t planning on buying this 200g cake of Yibang from Chawangshop this spring when I ordered a bunch of teas. Yibang is a small area in eastern Xishuangbanna that quite frankly I find confusing amongst tea vendors selling puerh. You can read quite a bit of information online about Yibang using Google, because a number of tea vendors have ventured there in the past. But it is difficult to sort out these teas. Despite the small area, the teas vary vastly in price between vendors and production years. I can find a 357g 2010 spring harvest Yibang from one vendor for 18 Euros, and then a 200g Autumn harvest cake from the same year from another vendor for $82. What accounts for such discrepancies in pricing?

Yibang hillside, by puerh.hu

Yibang has several types of tea, one is from scrubby, “untended” tea bushes on the hillsides, and then there are cultivated tea gardens as well. I’ve seen “small leaf” varietals here and there for sale, which are supposedly the more “wild” tea. Puerh hoarders kvetching on forums have hinted at some difficulties in aging Yibang cakes, but again I don’t know whether they are referring to the cultivated tea or the uncultivated tea. So with many confusing factors to consider, I’ve steered clear of Yibang area tea in the past. I hit the Buy button this year, however, after a photo on Instagram caught my eye.

I follow about 75 people on Instagram, and a few of these tea friends bought the $700 tea subscription from Essence of Tea this year. A photo of the EoT spring club shipment showed a 200g cake of Yibang. The person posting the photo typed out information about the tea that said the tea was "limited." Chawangshop wrote that Yibang suffered a drought this year in April, and by the end of April the tea in Yibang had all dried up and died. The area produced very little tea, and what got harvested early escalated in price. So a vendor is fortunate this year to get any tea at all from Yibang.

Having read the Chawangshop listing already, I was rather surprised when I saw a similar "limited tea" story from a club member belonging to Essence of Tea for their club cake. Now, Essence of Tea is a vendor who has been around for a number of years and in the past sold some rather pricey cakes. As a company they enjoy a good reputation among puerh collectors. The $700 club is certainly no small investment. But here is Chawangshop selling their own 2016 Yibang for $28 for 200g. And both teas share a common thread of "limited" availability.

2016 Yibang by Chawangshop

Essence of Tea is not selling their Yibang tea outside of their club membership, as of this writing. Perhaps they plan to add it to their site or maybe they just got enough tea for those who bought into the yearly club offering. Also, I have no idea whether EoT’s cake is the same tea as that of Chawangshop. But now you can understand why I might be interested in trying Chawangshop’s tea, even though I am unable myself to do a direct comparison with EoT’s club cake.

The cake is a bit greener than my photo.

Chawangshop house teas are firmly in the $12-$50 price range for 200g. As a whole this teashop vendor tends to search out the best flavor within this price range. I also find that their puerh teas offer a contrast from one another. That is, each tea is a very different flavor profile from every other tea offered (Lao Yun repeat productions aside). Chawangshop teas are single-origin as well, and are not usually blended from a variety of regions. Some vendors who do a lot of blending end up with teas that are difficult to distinguish one from the other. If Chawangshop offers loose maocha from a pressed production, the listing will say that the tea is the same as the pressing.

200g cake

So I’m never left wondering what I’m getting, and for the most part the teas are decent drinkers rather than collector teas. When I order a $28 tea from them, I expect it will be drinkable, and I might get a pleasant surprise if I’m lucky but I won’t be out a chunk of change if the tea is just okay. 

Chawangshop also offers farm/craft teas, like the Lao Yun cakes and some of the heicha teas that I like because I am a rural woman, and I enjoy a bit of rougher tea produced by farmers themselves. Just so you know that I can appreciate tea products on the high end and the low end too!  

In fact, I’ll brew up my low-end tea here in high-end Korean tea ware and hope for all things equal, a blend of contrasts which says more about me as a ridiculous and insane person than I want to admit. Back in the convent when I was young, a much older Sister Pauline laughed at me one day. She said, “You know, you can be so very elegant when you want to, and then all of a sudden you rip a celery stalk apart with your teeth.” I suppose my blog is full of such contrasts, and Sister Pauline might feel either amused or appalled, maybe both, at how little I have changed. But I am aware of the blessings of the nuns completely dissecting me at a young age and pointing out absolutely everything, no matter how small, in their dear effort to instill in me some sort of mature humanity. Sister Pauline made wine in the basement, by the way. And she shared the exact same birthday as my son and his father too, calculate the probability of that. She also sewed me a zafu meditation cushion for no reason other than she loved me. I can tell a hundred stories like this, and oh, I’m spoiled beyond imagining when now I sheepishly brew my tea.

Zafu meditation cushion
 聖方濟各永久朝拜聖體修女會

Where was I? I need 8g after all that nostalgia.

8g, is it just me, or the drought? Wiry leaves

Boiling rinses, I did two only because the tea hadn’t opened on the second boiling steep so I began drinking on third steep. A bit of acrid smoke and hay before the tea opens, a few bits of char in the gaiwan to explain all that. These are gone after a couple steeps. This tea is straight up Yiwu on the floral and honey top notes, with some Menghai strength underneath. I like the punchier bitter Menghai base notes and these last about three or four steeps, giving me a nice strong cup. Thickness is rather good for this tier.

Teapot by Lee Chi-Heon
Gallery Daunjae, South Korea

Later steeps are dominated by the sweet floral Yiwu. Unlike many of the Yiwu teas I’ve seen over the past year affected by a wet season, the drought shows in this leaf. It doesn’t cook up in the hot water, but is stronger and a little wiry. I found several bud plus two leaves combinations in the teapot, and a few larger and dark green leaves. Tea brews out a pleasant 10-12 steeps.

Chawangshop also offers loose Yibang “gushu” maocha from this production that I’m now more interested in trying. It would lack the pressed-in char, which actually isn’t a whole lot of char at all, but if I can avoid it in young tea I try to because I can taste it all the way through the aging process. This Yibang tea doesn’t disappoint in the Chawangshop line-up, yet another little shiny gem of a tea for this price tier, and yet another instance in which this vendor gives the most flavor for not a whole lot of money. I don't know if I've cleared up any of the confusion for myself about whether Yibang is a good one for aging, this seems like a drinker to me. If you like Yiwu teas and want this profile without the expense, this is definitely one to consider. I’ll be interested to see if any other shops offer Yibang for sale, and to compare the price because I doubt you can find better in the western online market.

Cha Hai by the incomparable Hong Seong-Il
No-san Clay Studios, Korea

Next time I’ll feature a few of the loose maocha teas I’ve ordered this year, a few for Old Cwyn’s crocks!

Addendum to this Post 4 August 2016

As you can see from the comments below, David C. of Essence of Tea stated that he did not send any information to his club members about the Yibang Tea cakes. However, the Yibang tea he has was very "limited," such that some club members only got a sample of "ancient" tea, and got other tea instead. These were members who mainly joined up "late," presumably there was no more tea left from the EoT Yibang buy at that point. Club members who did get Yibang cakes got two of them, one "ancient" and the other "regular," or tea garden cultivated tea, in order to compare the two types of tea grown on the same land.

I'm still left with some questions about Yibang and tea pricing, however. Honza from Chawangshop states fairly clearly on his $28/200g cake listing that I reviewed here, and on his $1/gram Yibang "gushu" maocha listing that the prices he paid for his tea are drought prices, or price impacts from a longer drought, not just April. Presumably, this means that the prices he paid for his supply are higher because A) Yibang tea is limited to begin with, and B) long term drought pushes prices even higher. Based on the listing for the $28 tea cake, Chawangshop reported that this tea was purchased in early April, before yet another month of no rain killed off Yibang tea leaves by the end of April.

I looked up the square miles of Yibang, and found an article stating that together Yibang, Manzhuan, Mang Zhi and Gedeng are an area of about 386 square miles (1000 km). This doesn't give a precise size for only Yibang, but presumably it is a smaller chunk of this area overall. Certainly this area is similar in size to a county in my part of the world, and it is not unheard of here that part of a county gets adequate rain showers, while another part gets missed entirely. I find it reasonable that two tea vendors buying tea from different farms might find one farm adequately watered while another farm is dry.

But returning to the issue of pricing: Chawangshop's $28/200g cake is a retail price. Presumably, Chawangshop adds a reasonable mark up for this tea and for their $1/gram Yibang "gushu." But I have to say, if $28/200g cake is a retail on top of direct price, this price is still pretty damn low. In fact, Honza reported he felt the price he paid was a bit high, and he hung around Yibang hoping for a lower price, but by the end of April the tea was "gone" in Yibang due to drought, driving the prices up even more.

I can accept it if a vendor like EoT wants to say "our tea is better quality" or "our tea cost us more." We don't have any information, because these teas were part of a larger club buy for people who have it, and not available for regular retail. I was offered the opportunity to try a sample of EoT, and I have to give some credit to the vendor at EoT for offering, even though the suggestion is that I don't "compare" the two. But I can hardly see how to avoid the comparison. And I know people will ask me. I'm just not sure if I want to accept a sample under these conditions, and I'm not out to make a shop look bad. For the sake of transparency, EoT surely gains buyer cred for offering samples publicly.

However, I'm not sure I want to make a comparison I can hardly avoid. The point of my blog post here is to showcase a less expensive option for a nice tea, for people on a budget who cannot afford to join a $700 tea club, or even for people who can afford other options. I think anyone who chooses to purchase either the club or go with budget teas have their reasons and different issues around tea buying. My intention is to show that buyers need not feel left out because they cannot afford tea clubs or high priced teas. I'm aware that I've already written about higher priced teas for 2016, and hope that I can focus attention on teas that are more in the budget range.

I simply cannot help doing the numbers though. If Chawangshop's pricing is drought pricing, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, then either EoT also paid drought pricing or they didn't. If EoT paid drought prices, then I am not wrong in my post suggesting that drought did indeed affect Yibang, even if club members were not explicitly informed. And if EoT paid drought prices, based on Chawangshop's $1/gram Yibang Gushu which makes a 200g cake retail at $200 minimum, then EoT club members spent nearly 1/3 of their membership, at a minimum, on Yibang tea. If EoT did not pay drought prices, because there was no drought where they bought their tea, then I wonder if their price should be even lower than Chawangshop's, and for a $28 cake starting price, this might a little disturbing. Either there was a drought or there wasn't.

Whether or not I try Essence of Tea's Yibang isn't important to me, necessarily. But I have a feeling other bloggers are going to take up this topic of what's going on with Yibang. Someone is likely to do a comparison, even if I don't. Someone will flush this out, even if I am not the one to do so. As we've see written on another cake this spring, the "tea don't lie." I'm happy to continue updating this blog if more information gets posted, or if any of these issues are clarified.

Cwyn

2015 Chawangpu Lao Yun

Could be this year's.

Although I've finished up testing my new 2015 Chawangpu cakes, a sample of the Lao Yun was included in my package. I can't quite make out the date on the bag, it looks like 2013, or 2015? Not sure. But I wanted to give this a try because Chawangshop has 2013-2015 versions of this cake available. Ringing in this year at a mere $12 for a 200g beeng, this is the lowest priced budget cake of the house label teas. That means just $60 a tong for this one. The Lao Yun has been reviewed elsewhere on other tea review and blog sites so definitely take a look around at other reviews if you are considering a purchase. I initially passed on this cake because from the photo I thought I could see some uneven processing and decided that perhaps some burnt leaves might be the cause of the low price tag.

Can't quite make out the year.

This tea is made by a group of old women for their own consumption. When looking at the leaves I couldn't help but think a few of those gals might need reading glasses but just don't want to wear them. My own grandmother refused to get her own set of readers, and instead borrowed my grandfather's pair for 30 years. My grandfather continued to work well into his 80s, so that meant my grandmother waited all day until he got home to borrow his glasses. I needed bifocals when I hit 46 or so, but since I already had worn glasses since age 10, this change in my eye sight didn't bother me so much. When you see resistance to reader lenses, it's always in people who had perfect eyesight all along, and perhaps still have perfect distance vision. They are proud of their eyesight and don't want to break down and admit they can't see up close any longer. As for me, I didn't want to break down and sell the handheld video games.

Turns out those ladies might see just fine, and at the same time I wasn't too far off about the tea. As soon as the hot water hit the tea, the straight up smell of campfire hits my nose. When we taste smoke in a sheng puerh, very often it is referred to as a tobacco flavor or scent. Or we see a lot of char in the strainer. In this case, I don't see much if any char, rather the whole cake has been infused with wood smoke. So I guess those old ladies can see just fine, but they are doing a kill green just over a very smoky wood fire. Some of this dissipates within a few steeps, but I can definitely smell it within what is otherwise a good quality champagne grape start to the tea and then the descent into straight up bitterness.

I kept my brew temps at a 208F, just off the boil. Going lower on the temps might have mellowed the bitter flavor in later steeps, but honestly this is a tea for aging and it's too much for me to drink this young. One reviewer at We Rate Teas reported a stomach ache from this, well that's what you get drinking a bitter young tea like this. No, this is one for the crocks.

Might be interesting to see how the campfire smoke integrates or dissipates. I am reminded of the wood furnace my dad bought, stoking it in the middle of the night with more wood. At home I never really noticed much of the wood smoke, but outside the house my clothes certainly smelled like it. Although I enjoyed the fireplaces and wood furnace, in my early adulthood whenever I got a cold, I'd end up with bronchitis every time. This tendency disappeared eventually, but I read someplace that problems like this are common when you grow up with wood fires in the house. And that big furnace was in the room right next to where I slept. The scent on this tea takes me back to that basement bedroom of mine near the wood furnace.

Second Steep

The tea soup is a really bright yellow, and has a bit of body by the third steep. Leaves are a nice mix of small and large, a few buds, and some older brown leaves indicating some age. I made it through three steeps and then stopped drinking for the sake of my system. Overall the tea has a high quality taste that is infused with the wood smoke, and this justifies Chawangshop's classification of the cake as a "Craft" or farm product tea, and the price tier. The cakes start at $12 and then go up by $2-3 after a year.

Bifocals, anyone?

Personally I appreciate the classification of "craft" tea, and I like some of the craft Heicha teas that Chawangshop also sells which are much easier to drink. I've seen plenty of sheng out there that really should be classified as "craft" due to the rough processing, but all too often the tea is sold for premium prices. I don't think sellers should shy away from offering a tea like this in their shop. The low price and unique experience justify picking up a cake. If you're into tea aging experiments, this cake is worth tossing into your cart to learn whatever you can, while you can.

2015 Chawangpu Mengsong Old Tree and 2015 Menghai Cheng Shuang

Oh yeah, more tea.

This posting will conclude my round up of reviews of Chawangshop's 2015 collection that I chose to try. The last two new 2015 Chawangpu cakes I ordered recently represent the more budget end of the price spectrum compared to the finer 2015 Hekai Gushu and aged 2015 (2005) Bulang Old Tree. With the better Chawangpu cakes at already crazy low prices in the $30-odd range, the budget side ends up at half that again, just in case you're buying tea from your penny jar instead of your credit card.

200g cake

I've had Mengsong tea before, and in fact one of the teas used for my fermentation experiment last winter was a Mengsong gushu, and I found the straight up spring bud rather on the light side, taste-wise. So here in this 2015 Mengsong Old Tree I welcome a blend of larger and older leaves from the tea tree to round out the cake with a bit more flavor, and am not disappointed. I brewed this up on the strong side at 10 grams per 100 ml and the tea kept going after 10 steeps. I think I went 12 before I gave out on it, and the tea still had more to give. Brewing this heavy on the leaf side gave the tea more body as well, the tea isn't exactly thin but I like the thicker body when I can get it. Some teas will never get thicker when you add more leaf, and some, like this one, will offer a bit more reward by going heavy. I could still taste the long kuwei nearly two hours after a cup. Again, we're talking about a budget offering.

Leaf variety visible here.

The tea cup is light yellow and pleasantly bitter, and more so than I expected. This is a healthy blend for aging, and while the fruity Hekai gushu is more enjoyable fresh, the Mengsong is a choice for storing away. I find myself wanting a bit of humidity in this. The processing is impressive again with very little char and no smokiness in the tea. In fact, both of the budget teas I'm trying here have much better processing than similar priced teas that many of my tea buddies are buying on EBay.

Second steep.

Seriously people, I know... "good" stuff on EBay, or at least so you might believe, but take a step up. I can understand budget issues that mean you can't get into the real expensive puerh but the good news here is you don't have to.

A few buds, combos and big leaf picked out on the left.

This isn't tea that will knock your socks off and leave you wondering where you put your shoes, but it is quality leaf and deft hands at the wok, and the steam can wasn't left to sit on the heat too long. What you get on EBay, in general, is poor processing more than anything else. Or bad storage that you have to hope you can fix. Why gamble when you can spend your budget right the first time and control the aging yourself?

Not convinced? Okay. So you don't want the $22 cake I just mentioned?? Which comes in at just over $100 a tong? How about this $18 cake which only totals $90 for a tong. One full kg of tea for under a hundred bucks, and that's what this 2015 Menghai Cheng Shuang gives you. 

Menghai the Old Standby

You can fit 5 of these cakes into a $5 stoneware bean pot from the thrift store and have an entire tong of tea plus a fully portable aging set-up for under $100. At $18 per cake, this Menghai area tea is exactly half the cost of the Hekai gushu and again another one for aging.

Blend of two villages.

The tea is described as a combined two village harvest prior to the first week of April 2015. The cake is certainly pretty enough. But when the hot water hits the gaiwan, I can smell some dry storage and wonder if a handful of autumn leaves are in here. Some of them seem to be puckered and dried out just a little. 

Maybe at two months post harvest, it's conceivable the villages might have picked some older leaves in March and kept them on hand for buyers and that explains the dry storage I need 3 rinses to pour off. After that, the leaves are opened back up to their fresh appearance. I notice some older reddish leaf, and I like the leaf combination here, big leaves, buds, 1 bud and two leaf combinations, all different colors of leaf. The tea has more fruity and floral aroma than the other teas I've tried so far, and the usual Menghai bitterness. 9 grams is plenty per 100 ml.

Third steep.

I sort of am getting that regular ordinary Menghai taste, and if I bought this from Dayi I can certainly get the same experience, but instead of getting these pretty leaves I'd have a pile of chop to celebrate my 2015 spring. And that brings me back to my point earlier. I started drinking puerh in 2009, and I own exactly one Xiaguan that I bought for myself, and one Dayi. I also own a massive pile of samples of these factories, samples sent to me from tea buddies either to test their storage or just as part of a simple exchange. None of my Chawangpu teas were provided free for my review, I receive no samples from Chawangshop aside from the usual one in the box. I don't know Honza and I've never exchanged any correspondence with him.

I enjoy picking out a full variety of leaf.

The only real criticism I have of Chawangpu's house teas is the wrapper. I love the design, of course, but again this year the entire collection has the same wrapper, varying only with the couple of Chinese characters. I'm not suggesting at all to design separate wrappers for each tea, but if an online merchant is selling worldwide, it helps if the wrapper is friendly to people all over the world. In my tea storage I've been struggling with small pieces of paper to try and distinguish one Chawangpu cake from another and I'm sitting here again this year feeling like I can't throw away the plastic baggie or I have to cut out the sticker. Do I tape it to the cake? I could buy my own separate rubber stamps, I suppose, to try and differentiate the cakes, but then I worry about choosing ink, and ink bleeding into my teas. I could try and keep track of pieces of paper yet again. But other vendors create different wrappers for each cake which is the easiest way for me to differentiate my teas. Often vendors also label teas with the year in Arabic numerals someplace on the wrapper front or on the back flap. Why not just make it easy for the customer to enjoy the product year after year, and use a different color of stamp for each tea when the wrapper must be the same for each cake.

Otherwise, all I can say right now is that I can't see any reason to invest any of my money into regular factory label teas. I've put thousands of my dollars into house teas from excellent curators, taking full advantage of the palates of the people at Chawangshop, Yunnan Sourcing, white2tea, Crimson Lotus Tea and yes even Misty Peaks, and there are several others I could certainly choose to try in Europe if my dollar held up better against the currencies than it does. But my conclusion is that the house teas from the companies I've mentioned above are superior, by far, to anything I can buy from any regular factory. And if I really must buy aged factory teas, those chosen by the above companies are superior to those I can choose for myself.

While I might be a tea blogger with a little experience in puerh, I have no trouble proudly acknowledging that the palates of good tea vendors are so much better than mine. I can't see the need to waste my money, and what's left of my time, trying to figure out which teas to buy on my own. Chawangshop's 2015 collection demonstrates yet again that budget is no excuse to order factory teas anymore. I'm not trying to criticize my friends who choose to do so, and I enjoy the fun of blind tea shopping as much as anyone. But look at the photos, see the leaf quality and processing. Make up your own mind. I'm fairly certain that once you try even the most low budget of cakes from one of the curators above, they will surpass anything you can find on your own.