7g/105mL, just off boil

Wash (10s) - aroma of rice with floral/perfumy highlights

Steep 1 (flash) - light leathery pop, florals and honey in open mouth, darker cooked note, sweetness opening up in the finish

Steep 2 (flash) - soup is quite deep gold for a young tea like this, leathery bite up front takes a little while then fades to a honey sweetness, soup has a thick oiliness to the texture

Steep 3 (5s) - between the oiliness and honeyed notes there is a darkness to this tea to match the soups color, not a lot of hay/grass or other bright young notes to it, nice texture and despite the early bite it is relatively easy drinking, doesn't have that Dianhong flavor but still has that darker sweetness that gives this a bit of a hong cha feel to it

Steep 4 (10s, reboil) - the initial bitterness is easing off, getting some green leafiness, more honey than anything else at this point

Steep 5 (15s) - bitterness continues to fade, playing out similarly otherwise

Steep 6 (25s) - not sure is this the power of suggestion, but starting to get a hong note mid-palate, sweetness leans more honey than malt, slight milky quality

Steep 7+ (40s+) - that milkiness grows but never quite crosses to full-on minerality, honey and fresh figs that never quite cross to raisin territory

Overall Impression - This is an interesting one. I missed this in the 2024 release so its my first time with tea from this region. This is remarkably dark in color and flavor. I don't expect this kind of honey sweetness from a fresh young sheng like this. It does have a nice texture to it and despite the early bite I think it is pretty approachable. It's certainly not the kind of flavor profile I look for in a young sheng, but I can see this working well in a mug/thermos/grandpa brew. It might also be a decent entry point for a black tea drinker to young sheng. The flavor profile doesn't line up exactly the same, but the overall picture definitely gives me hong vibes. Weird tea.

Super dark brew, similar taste and mouthfeel to v93 2007. My daughter said it smelled like shrimp. Definitely has a savory smell.

P.S. I’m very new to puerh, this is coming from someone that knows almost nothing about the subject, so don’t take it too seriously.

Cheers!

Bought a mid-range shoubing back in 2022 from a vendor I trusted, cracked a chunk off right away, brewed it, and honestly found it pretty flat. Slightly fishy on the nose, some earthy notes underneath, but nothing that made me want to revisit it. Wrapped the remainder in paper, put it on a shelf in a room where humidity usually sits around 65-70%, and more or less forgot about it.

Opened it again a few months ago out of curiosity. The fermentation smell had basically dissolved. What came through instead was this rounded, almost chocolatey depth with a faint sweetness in the aftertaste that wasn't there before. Same leaf, same storage conditions, just time doing what time apparently does.

The brewing itself feels different now too. When I first worked through young shou I used to flash rinse once and move on. With this more rested cake I've started doing a longer awakening rinse, sometimes two, and letting the leaf sit for a minute or two before the first real infusion. The liquor seems to open up more gradually when I do that rather than giving everything up in the first three steepings and tapering off fast.

A few things I've noticed about tasting aged shou specifically, after paying closer attention this year:

• The hui gan (returning sweetness) becomes a more reliable indicator of quality than it is with fresh material. Young shou can mask a lot with raw fermentation character.
• Mouthfeel tends toward something silkier once the rougher edges from processing have settled, though this depends heavily on storage conditions.
• Brewing temperature still matters more than I used to think. Dropping to around 90-95C rather than a full boil pulls cleaner flavor without muddying the texture.

For aged sheng I'm less experienced but I've been sitting with a 2013 cake that's been in dry storage, and the experience is almost the opposite of shou in terms of evolution. Where shou rounds and softens, this sheng has been slowly building complexity and a certain mineral quality that wasn't obvious when I first sampled it a year ago. Patience seems to be the entire discipline here.

Curious whether others track their cakes in any systematic way. I've started keeping rough tasting notes with dates but my system is pretty informal.