Not a Fan of Huang Pian: 2005 Yang Qing Hao Huangpian Gua Feng Zhai

Emmett sent this free sample of an interesting Huangpian with my last order from Yang Qing Hao….

Dry has a creamy sweet note to it with woods and slight earth underneath.

First has a creamy very sweet onset with a woody and juicy huangpian nuance.  The mouthfeel is chalky and taste unravels with a cooling softness and fruity creamy sweet finish.  The flavours are very sweet and nuanced and evolving.  The coating in the mouth is nice and full feeling.  This first flash infusion gets me very excited about what is to come…

The second starts with a watery broth off creamy woody sweetness.  The sweetness is less here and the woodiness has a mild astringency to it.  That pulls at the throat just slightly.  I feel a body sensation in the jaw which is an unusual one for me.  My mind is a bit floating now.  The Qi is nice and comes fast.

The third infusion has a slightly empty watery sweet onset with a woody astringent tightness to it.  There is a lingering creamy sweetness underneath.  The throat and mouth are coated in this tight slightly dry astringency.  There is faint mild smoke in the distance.  My head feels heavy and a bit spacy.  The Qi is very nice for huang pian material.

The fourth infusion I realized that this huangpian is best with less leaf, longer steeped in a one cup steeper or larger teapot than a small gong fu pot.  I really, have very little experience with Huangpian and how to best steep them.  I decide to split the leaves in the pot between a larger one cup maker and leave the rest in the pot.  The one cup in a 40 second steep gives off a slightly fruity wood slight astringent with distant smoke and a returning very faint coolness with mild barely creamy sweet with a full chalky astringent coating.

Things get pretty simple pretty quickly and this is my general experience with huang pian.  Even the leaves in the tea pot get simple fast.  In the end I decide to grandpa steep this out.  If I ever grandpa steep a puerh its basically to simple to gong fu… this one like many other huangpian are like this.  Overall this was an interesting huangpain.

I don’t think I’m being pretentious when I say that huangpian isn’t worth it.  There are cheaper and more interesting puerh that can be found for the price of huangpian.  Who knows?  It might be like me and autumn puerh and in a few years it might be worth it or I might have a change of heart?  Maybe there is something about huangpian that I don’t get.  Either way this aged Gua Feng Zhi is pretty interesting for those out there that like huangpian (looks like this one sold out).  More interesting that any Huangpain I have experience with.

Edit: A few hours after posting this, Varat posted a nice article about Huangpian: The Humble Leaf.  He has a good point that huang pian can offer an aged puerh experience or educational experience that is just too expensive to gain with Spring puerh these days... it also got me thinking that maybe I'm not humble enough these days... I definitely have to work on that...

Peace