Floating Leaves Tea Home ---Shiuwen's Blog!

Monday, October 07, 2013

Comparing Menghai Factory Puer #7542



In our previous tea club meeting, we tasted seven 7542 puer cakes. As usual, we had a great time drinking tea together. Here are some tasting notes:

We started with a 2011 #7542 puer cake. Overall, the tea is a good daily drinker. The tea broth has a medium amount of body.

Then we proceeded to brew two 2008 cakes side by side. One of the 2008 cakes is from a drier environment. Both teas still taste green and young. At this stage, we prefer the cake from the drier storage, because the tea has more aftertaste. Between 2011 to 2008, we noticed the liquid of the 20098 teas are a bit thicker.







We finalized our tasting with 4 different years of 7542: a 2003, 1997, 1991, and a 1988. The 1991 cake has clearly been in wet storage. Both of the 1991 and 1988 tea broths have changed into that beautiful, dark amber color, and have a much richer mouthfeel, too. Amazingly, we all like the wet storage cake the best. The bad "wet storage" taste is not in the broth at all and it turned out to be the richest and roundest tea among these 4 teas.







Our impression of the 7542 cake recipe is that it's a good tea to have on a daily basis. If one stores the cake long enough, it will turn into a nice warm, sweet, and thick cup of tea.

*photos provided by Jason Gift.


2 comments:

Jeb said...

7542 is the first Green Pu-erh I ever tried and I lucked out with a good one. What a treat to have such a variety of a single recipe. Wish I could have drank with you all.

Shiuwen said...

To Jeb, Thank you. It will be fun to have you here, too!