I am finishing up my last paper of the Spring quarter, working my way through the line edits of Shards, and simultaneously coming down with another bout of divertriculitus. You can file that last under TMI, if you like, but the initial treatment is several days of a clear liquid diet. Fortuitously, my shipment from Norbu Teas arrived just now and I'm sampling their Yiwu Mountain Bamboo Roasted Pu-Erh 2008. http://www.norbutea.com/2008_yiwu_bamboo_puerh_tea?category_id=35. I've had an earlier vintage of this tea and found it earthy and sweet but this one is harsher, with more bite and a definite ghost of the charcoal fire it was roasted over, less of the bamboo it was roasted in. The second steeping was a little less harsh, but the mouth flavor was still heavily smoke with only an undertone of stone fruit sweetness I was expecting. I'll give it a few more steepings to see what happens, but this one is not as much to my taste as the other tea. Perhaps that one was bamboo aged, rather than roasted?

**Hmm, checking my various reference books, I'm probably steeping it too long. Brewing gong fu style, so cutting the time to 15-20 seconds.