Sunday, November 2, 2014

2006 Haiwan Mavin Imperial Tea Brick






I gave a loud hoot when I discovered this carton of 2006 Haiwan Imperial Brick ripe pu erh in my tea stash.  This carton held 10 of these bricks of 100g each.  I had already consumed one brick a few years back (link).  

You will notice that Haiwan had dated this tea on the bottom flap of the box.  As far as I know, this imperial brick came out in 2006 and 2007.  Why the label 'Mavin' on the box?  I wish I know the answer but Haiwan distributors I know in Guangzhou and Malaysia do not know this 'Mavin' mystery too.  


Anyway, I would like to apologize to my readers that the last pix of the brick was a copy of the brick I blogged in 2010.  I had forgotten to take a pix of the pu erh brick when I opened it 2 weeks ago.


This tea brick is highly compressed.  Moreover, this brick uses the 'gong ting' grade leaves.  These leaves are supposedly to be of better grade of pu erh and they are made of small tea leaves with some shades of amber.    I liked the complex aromas and flavors of this brew.  I could detect nice scented wood and a nice mix of dried herbs flavor in the tea. I finished this brick within 2 weeks.


One drawback of the tea is that the smaller tea leaves used in this tea clogged up my filter in my teapot while brewing and I do get a much stronger tea as a result. (I find that washing the teapot after the brewing session and putting the teapot in the hot sun will naturally dislodge the clogged leaves in the filter).  Perhaps using less tea leaves will be a good idea as well.

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