LWXLJMJZC－Raw Puerh Tea - (150 cups)2010year Aged sheng (uncook) Pu-erh Tea Cake-357g/12.6oz

Ok, Saw this neato program on the "lifestyles you would like to live if you were REALLY rich" channel. Inspired me to try some. Sothen watched the youtube videos on how to brew the stuff (sheesh)...Then went to this site and bought some.. Came in a nice cake, wellwrapped, really nifty paper wrapper on the tea itself (cool am now going to be drinking the Rolls Royce of tea -Starbucks beware!!)..Well the youtube video shows a pretty darn complex process for brewing the tea. It is not just boil your water and dunk the tea bag in it fora few minutes and drink.. nah.. What you have to do to this stuff makes the formal Japanese tea ceremony look like making instant coffee.So to get the FULL benefit I followed the instructions. Broke off just the right amount from the cake (really really carefully with a dull butter knife)Put it in one of those 1 1/2 cup heavy ceramic tea pots you used to get in cafes when you ordered tea. Brought the water to a boil. Let it standfor a bit to cool from the fast boil, poured some in the pot, let it stand for about 20 seconds (did that nifty doop de doo with the lid of the tea potthat the youtube lady was doing) and poured it into a clean white tea cup. Then quickly poured this 'washing liquid' out.. Then poured some ofthe water that was JUST THE RIGHT temperature on the leaves. Let stand for like 30 more seconds (did not time it super carefully so it might have been more and less)... Drank..Ok, was nice, not particularly dark color, tasty, decent. Well there was still half a cup left in the pot. SO beinga frugal kind of guy I just poured THAT tea in my cup. Now it had sat for a GOOD 5 minutes.. OOOOOOOO by the standards of the demonstrations and ALL instructions this liquid should have been good only for cleaning silverware. Was dark color looked like... well looked likeTEA....Full of trepidation I drank it. Hmmmmm not bad, nice aroma, full flavor, great mouth feel, and a very pleasant aftertaste...Boy maybe im just a unsophisticated boorish tea wannabee.So the question is ... Is it worth going through the elaborate process of making several iterations of varying lengths of time etc etc to derive the full benefit of Puerh. Or do you have to be Chinese with several generations of tea gourmets to appreciate it..And is it REALLY necessary to gothrough the entire elaborate process to make a cup of Pureh tea??? The folks who sold me this included a packet of some really nice white tea.Is the Puerh tea THAT much better than the nice quality white tea? Is it worth the trouble and expense, and trouble, to properly brew the stuff?Well this tea after all IS only 8 years old. Maybe I should have waited for another 15 0r 20 years for it to age to get the full benefit..Frankly I think in the future I will just do the 'washing' part and brew the tea pretty much like I have done for the past 50 years with(gasp) Lipton or if in a spendy mood Celestial Seasonings lose tea....Guess the take away here is if you enjoy the mystique and mythos of brewing the tea 'correctly' go for it. However I expect one can derive pretty much the full benefit by a somewhat truncated brewing process.I would not go so far as to advocate treating it as casually as 'store bought' tea leaves. But spending half an hour to get a 'cupa' seems likemore than is needed.As to a review of the product itself. Yeah. If you want to try it, or if you are a real tea coniiseeor am sure this Lida raw Purea Tea Cake is a very good choice. I might just buy some more when this one is gone. MAYBE will spring for some 1980's vintage see what it is REALLY all about...Yours in tea hickdomjim in gold bar

Wow. Just Wow. This was exactly what I was hoping for, but not expecting.I'd recently ordered some rather good looking cakes from another vendor on Amazon. The were aged, had good leaf appearance, and were from a pu-erh region I enjoy very much. Every one of those cakes had been stored and shipped in paper wrapping -- although they still looked good they tasted terrible, like there was bad scent contamination. Except the infused leaf also looked odd, and the base flavors were more like poorly-processed greens than any kind of raw pu-erh I've ever had. I almost stopped ordering puerh from Amazon.However I decided to give this cake from Lida a try, simply because the pictures showed leaf that stretched almost all the way across the cake and I have nothing quite like that in my collection.I was really pleased to see that the cake was wrapped in multiple layers of bubble-wrap envelope, with the cake itself wrapped in both the original cotton wrapper and a plastic wrap to prevent scent contamination. When that plastic bag was opened there was a very strong and very pu-erh-like aroma coming from it. The leaf was even better looking than in the pictures -- although mine are not quite as long, they are not bright green as in the photos but instead well-darkened and aged, appropriate for an 8 year-old cake.Of course the true test is in the infusion! The leaf flaked off whole with little effort (love those stone-pressed cakes!) and the scent of the infusion was wonderfully smokey in the kind of way that wild grown tea leaf often is. The flavor was even better, deeply rich with both sweetness and smokiness even on the first infusions. The liquor mouthfeel is thick and silky. The sweet/smokey aftertaste lingers and I experienced no dryness in the mouth with additional infusions.In short, if I'd come across this cake in my local tea store for $75 I would have bought it. At the current $25 price it's a no-brainer. I just ordered some more.

You don't get to taste mellow honey or caramel type flavor because it doesn't exist.

I bought this on a whim, after several good experiences with puerh cakes from Li Da Tea. At the price I was only hoping for a palatable raw mini cake that might age into something better with time. Instead I was pleasantly impressed.The cake is more attractive than it appears in the photos, with nicely defined leaf, dark with just a few years of age, and not too-tightly compressed so that it can age more effectively. The leaf can be flaked off with minimum breakage, a rarity in a 100g cake.The infusion has a pleasant and interesting sheng smell, even immediately after shipping (no rest required). The liquor was still very green, but darker than expected for a cake this young. The taste was strongly sweet with no astringency, but it has enough of a bite in the sheng taste that it's both pleasant to drink now and hints at very nice changes in the future as it ages. The notes are more smokey than weedy, which suggests that the base material is from mature tea leaf, if not wild grown then arboreal, but the leaf itself is tender and young.I liked it well enough to immediately place and order for more. I'll keep most to age and give the others as gifts.

Good moderate bitterness, pungency and green tea satisfaction. Color deepens as steeped. Little is needed to produce a fabulous pot. A nice, dense cake for raw puerh. One of my favorites now. Now second/third time around its true that there are many stems and it breaks apart easily not near as dense as first cake and I use more per infusion, but the smoky taste is just right not near a Lapsong. Am almost 'addicted' to this tea despite the stems and need for more quantity per infusion!

I liked this tea. While taste is highly subjective, I think this tea is clean/fresh enough for most people to try. Not too strong and not too dark, I think this is just about right for me.

It's not what I expected from the quality perspective, but it's huge.

The tea is fairly light in flavour, likely due to the fact that this was a harvest of lesser quality, non - bud leaf with much stem attached. Not in itself a deal breaker as this was not an expensive cake, however it also has a distinct smoky flavour similar to Lapsang Souchong. It's not clear if this smokiness was intended or the result of storing in a smoky location but the smoke is definitely there.Smoky Puerh tea can sometimes mean that the tea was stored in a smoky location and was not intended. Puerh tea takes on flavours from the storage environment, this seems to have happened with this cake.Not the worst cake I've tried, but my search for the 'perfect puerh' continues ...

This is not a very high quality tea. It was very Smokey, quite astringent, dryness. Taste best on its 4 to 5 brew. Not overly strong. Lots of stems in the cake. and the Cake itself wasn't well pressed as it was falling apart upon receiving, although hat might have been shipping. Affordable, drinkable. don't put high expectations on this tea.