Liu Bao from Double Dogs tea shop (Bangkok Chinatown)

Double Dogs shop Liu Bao, 2015 version (5105)

2014 version (no additional description)

I'll have more to say separately about an outing to the local Chinatown, but one short stop was at the Double Dogs Tea Room there.  For whatever reason it's the only tea cafe in this local Chinatown, as far as I'm aware, and as far as Google and other references seem know of.  It's a nice place; a bit casual and plain, but per my limited exposure there the teas are fine, good versions that are typical for the types they're described as.  And the pricing is reasonable, around 250 baht per a tiny pot, as I recall, so not that much more than a Starbucks coffee price for a completely different type of experience. 

Since we'd been drinking tea for over an hour at my favorite local shop there, Jip Eu, more a tea take-away place, we mostly just stopped by to grab a tea, which worked out to be a Liu Bao.

street tea; poor storage but low price ($25/kilo; I should have bought some)

I did a survey of some hei cha lately, initiated by a Malaysian online friend being into Liu Bao (which they call Luk Bok instead, the Cantonese name, I think).  The version I tried from Yunnan Sourcing was a bit musty (reviewed here).  It will probably be good after airing out for another half year or so but that did throw off the full round of trying some hei cha types.  I tried a nice Liu Bao from Thailand awhile back but it's not the same; even if it was completely type-typical and a good version since it is from a different country than the original I'd need more exposure to recognize that.  So now I can check.

They had a 2015 version that per the staff they only sell by half kilogram (labeled with a product number, 5015).  As I recall it sold for 650 per 100 grams (if they had sold it that way, so 3200+ per half kilogram, or around $95).  That does turn out to be retail for the tea (with more on what it is following).  For Liu Bao it could be on the high side compared to more modest versions, but then tea sold out of physical shops generally costs a little more than that bought online, which to me is fair since their costs are higher, and having a person talk about tea and show you it can add more value.  Perhaps more importantly, inexpensive Liu Bao can taste awful, so a bargain version still may not be a good value.

The other tea is a 2014 version (not labeled in any way I kept track of; that's what the written label says).  They did sell that tea in parts, per lesser quantity, and it cost half as much.  I'm sure it is a lower quality version then, which tasting will fill in details about.  The staff wrote a 2015 date on the package but I'm sure it was labeled 2014 on the container, which really doesn't make all that much difference either way.

What those teas are

My impression is that these might just be commercial teas, so I'll try and sort out what they are through research.  This AliExpress reference lists a 500 gram commercial Liu Bao as 5105, with their description:


500g Loose China Tea GuangXi Liu Bao Tea Dark Tea China Tea Wuzhou LiuBaoCha 5105 with Jinhua

Not much of that rings a bell.  They're selling it for $85, for what that's worth.  An Ebay vendor seems to sell the same product, with the details a little clearer, in this case listing a 50 gram sample for $7.99 (so again half a kilo for $79.90, $5 less).  These price mentions aren't so much to determine if I paid online-vendor market price, more to set a range, and help indicate that they really are the same thing.  If the same tea cost $95 in a shop, $10-15 more, by the time you factor in shipping it's about the same.


There's no need to say lots about it but it's common knowledge that you may not get the tea you actually try to buy through Ebay, Amazon, or Taobao purchasing (or in a physical shop, for that matter, but I don't think that concern applies at this shop).  It's only a good deal if you actually buy the tea you think you are buying, and not something else that really should cost a lot less.


They list a description on that last Ebay page, which is interesting, if not really completely clear:

                                                                                

Name:	Liu Bao Cha 5105
Brand:	China Tea
Product Packing Year:	2013
Tea Production Year:	2013
Packing:	Loose
Weight:	Approx. 500g per piece
Category:	Liu Bao Tea - Dark Tea
Origin:	CangWu, GuangXi, China
Storage Time:	Taste improves with age

Liu Bao tea is dark tea, specialty tea of Guangxi. Quality characteristics of Liu Bao tea:

  Shape: coarse and fat
  Color: brownish auburn bloom
  Soup color: red bright, like amber
  Aroma: stale and mellow, fragrant with betel nut
  Taste: mellow and thick, sweet after taste
  Tea leafs: brownish auburn and evenly
  
Liu Bao tea produced in Liubao of Cangwu, Guangxi. Tea area is local in the mountain or canyon, vertical and horizontal streams, beautiful, sunshine short, year-round misty, fertile soil, very suitable for tea growing.

Liu Bao tea leaf picking a bud and two, the beginning of the system by sharing green, low-temperature fixing, rolling, and steep heap, dry made. Replication process, including screening shaping, pick stems pick films, fight heap, cold fermentation, drying, steaming on, step baskets, and cool set aging.

Whatever automatic translation they were using was breaking down towards the end, not doing processing steps justice, but the rest of that is clear enough.  It's not made from older leaves, per that description, or with a lot of stems, and of course it's a pre-fermented hei cha, not all that different than a shou pu'er.  Per my understanding--per some hearsay--shou processing was derived mostly from Liu Bao.  I'd need to try betel nut to really relate to that part.  And I was probably just in the right place for that, too, in that Chinatown.


It's odd that I didn't snap a picture of a label for the other tea, and the sample didn't say what it was, aside from the year (2014).  In a sense it doesn't matter; it's some version of Liu Bao.  It seems quite possible it's a common type, not impossible to look up, but this was never intended as that sort of reference post, a definitive review of these teas, more just a further impression of the type.

I also didn't snap a single shot of Double Dogs, due to the context of us rushing in and out of there, with the place just a little busy right then.  Here are a couple from a visit and post two years ago:

It didn't seem to have changed.  I kind of like that basic vibe, really, I'm just not exactly the tea cafe type, and I don't get down to Chinatown as much as I'd like.  And when I do I'm grabbing some tea and moving on, maybe pausing to drink some tiny cups over at the Jip Eu shop, but not really even hanging out long there.


Here's a shot of that friend I went to visit with.  He has a cool look (waiting on his girlfriend to pray, in this shot, maybe feeling just a little impatient right then).  I do want to say more about the Chinatown outing, but this is going long as it is just talking about Liu Bao, so next time I will.

Review:

The 2014 version is nice enough.  I'll just go by year for this writing, with the "5105" version from the other year, the 2015 tea, per my understanding.  I tasted the rinse and threw it out, but I won't start on that, and a fast rinse really should be discarded for fermented tea types. 

On the first infusion it tastes a good bit like an old blackboard smells, so mineral-like in the range of slate.  There is a hint of a charcoal element to it, and a trace of mustiness, but in general the flavor is clean and sweet (as a tea that tastes mostly like slate goes).  It's not really complex in the sense of some other tea types, but it does have a richness to it.  The flavor complexity is fine, there just isn't that much going on beyond those elements, nothing towards fruit or spice or other range, at least not yet.

2015 left (5015), 2014 right.  Some dark teas.

The 2015 version is a good bit better tea.  It's sweeter, and more complex, with a good bit more going on.  It also tastes a little like slate, with hints of charcoal behind that, but without much at all for mustiness, and some other sweet and complex range folding in.  It strikes your palate as one element that's standing out but after focusing on it that's really a range of different flavors.  I would guess it does resemble just one type of thing that I'm not familiar with (betel nut?); sorry that's not more helpful. 

It comes across a little like a sweet, warm, darker wood, with a bit of that mildly fruity and sweet element in some chewing tobacco.  That's better than it sounds; chewing tobacco can smell great, the taste and overall experience just tends to let you down.  I don't mean the ground-up snuff version (like Skoal), the other loose leaf type instead (like Levi Garret, or Red Man).  Those products are sweet and distinctive, which makes me wonder what else is even in them.  Per this reference those are fermented and sweetened, some with a high sugar content, and some sweetened with licorice.  I looked this up after the actual tasting but maybe that tea did taste a little like licorice.

It's the type of flavor range that has enough going on that it really could be a few different aspects, but they're integrated together.  It's also unusual enough that I'd expect lots of people to describe it in completely different sets.  Going back to the first lower cost version (the 2014) and trying the same infusion the flavor range makes more sense after trying the other, as if I see how it fits together better.  I think it might also clean up a little over an infusion or two.

Second infusion

The 2014 version did transition a little.  The slate-mineral effect is still most pronounced, with the same touch of charcoal char behind that, but the mustiness did ease up.  It gains some complexity too, in a really earthy range, I guess along the lines of peat.  Peat always sounds a bit more negative than I mean it; "spring forest floor" isn't far off that.  With that in mind it reminds me of that rich vegetal scent of moss too, which is also better than it sounds, to me.  That might even be a bit like a dried wild mushroom, close enough to shitake.  It comes across as cleaner than it would sound.  This tea wouldn't be for everyone but it's nice, to me, just in a different kind of range.

The 2015 version cleans up a bit too, with that nice earthy-range aspect moving a little towards spice, similar to root beer.  The char more or less drops out, at least most of it, and there wasn't much mustiness to contend with before anyway.

I tend to let feel and aftertaste range aspects drop out when I'm doing comparison posts, focusing on flavor instead, but I'll say a little about that.  This better version is full and rich, just in a different sense than for other tea types.  It's toward how some teas come across as oily in feel; maybe actually oily or maybe not.  The aftertaste doesn't linger to the extent as for nicer sheng pu'er and high mountain oolong but it doesn't vanish immediately after tasting either.  Again even this tea--even the better version--wouldn't be for everyone, but it's that little bit easier to relate to than the other, with more positive aspects range making it approachable.

2015 left, 2014 right.  Some dark broken up leaf teas.

Third infusion

Both teas have shifted just a little further in those directions but essentially aren't changing much, so I'll wrap this up.  The teas are nice.  They're not all that far from shou pu'er, really.  I suppose the range is a bit different, and distinctive, but also with plenty of overlap.  I could imagine drinking a half kilogram of that better version, and at a price range of 640 or so baht per 100 grams ($18) it seems fine for the tea type, a little more than I would have expected, but then better versions of teas are priced higher for a good reason.  I actually did buy 100 grams of the lower priced tea, which cost 320 (or so) baht per that quantity, around $9.   They just gave me the sample of the other, which is much appreciated, and added a lot to this review.  It would be nicer to get the shop to agree to sell 100 grams of both versions, and then to take up Liu Bao as a daily drinker if it really does ring a bell.

Per that Malaysian friend people there do drink this as a main tea type, as the one type of tea they always drink.  I keep running across references to people drinking basic versions of shou in Chinese restaurants, and some of that really could be Liu Bao (or Luk Bok, the other name).


There was a discussion about Liu Bao in a Steepster thread, with the post claiming what they tried tasted like dirt.  I can relate to that.  The Yunnan Sourcing version I reviewed tastes like a musty root cellar, and this more modest version tastes like slate.  Dirt sounds worse, but those are all in an earthier range.  This reference of a higher end supplier of teas was mentioned in that thread, Essence of Tea, a vendor I've been inclined to not even try out since almost all the teas on their site sell for a dollar a gram.  Some teas are definitely worth that, of course, some tea quality levels keep on extending to higher levels, it's just outside my tea budget.  The Liu Bao section is more reasonable, of course, and interesting to review related to the range it spans.


Per the standard take this type of tea does improve with age (with lots of those EOT versions from the 90s; probably a good source for checking on that).  It would work to set aside most of a half a kilogram of it and drink only a part instead, to keep coming back to it over a period of years.  That Malaysian friend (the one that gave input about "gan / kam," by the way), buys it by kilogram and just keeps sticking with that type, drinking it with food, or as a breakfast tea.

In relation to how pu'er is aged it wouldn't even need to be carefully sealed; some limited degree of air contact would be fine.  I don't know that it's going to continue to ferment though.  My understanding is that shou really doesn't, but per the typical take both would mellow further, clean up, and become more complex with more age.

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