Crimson Lotus 2006 Yunnan Shou Puer

Today’s review is on Yunnan Puer Special Tea Factory - 2006 Shou/Ripe Puerh. I’m still very new to Puerh tea so this is a sample that I bought. Crimson Lotus Tea has amazing customer service and is very active on reddit.com/r/tea if you ever have any questions about diving into Puerh tea or gongfu brewing!

2006 Yunnan Puer smells very very vegetal. It almost has a faint seaweed smell. Puerh tea is aged like wine, the older it is, the more astringent and rich the flavor profile is. 

Get your water temperature to near boiling and then rinse the leaves twice for 3 seconds each. Then start your first steep for 10 seconds. After that adjust your steeping time to taste! I prefer a lighter taste with Puerh so I almost always try and steep it for less than 15 seconds.

For such a short steeping time this tea comes out with a dark cherry wood color. 

Yunnan Puer tea tastes amazing. I was secretly worried that it would be too much for me and I wouldn’t like it but I was proven wrong! The first steep comes out with hearty/malty and earthy tones. Second steep at 10 seconds again brought out more vegetal tones with a noticeable thickness about the flavor profile. Usually when you steep gongfu you get to enjoy every flavor individually with each steep but the complexity of this puerh keeps each steep rich in flavor. The third steep was my favorite. The puerh wasn’t over whelming but kind of reminded me of a roasted oolong, vegetal, with slight malty tones and a hint of sweetness at the end. After the third infusion I would have started adding seconds to my steep each time and you could get anywhere from 15-20 infusions out of it! That’s a LOT of tea. If you want to try out any amazing Puerh tea’s I definitely recommend Crimson Lotus, they sell by the cake and also have samples if you don’t know what you like yet!

If you have any questions or suggestions for future tea reviews, send me a PM! :)

xoxo

Jordan

P.S. I've been posting reviews from my tumblr from the dawn of my tea journey so a lot of things have changed, at the time I was brand new to my puerh journey but I've become more seasoned now!