Is Simple Sheng by Crimson Lotus Tea Really That Simple?

Hello hello!

The Crimson Lotus Tea exploration continues this week with their 2017 Simple Sheng. Simple Sheng is a 50g mini tea cake that’s iron pressed (which means that it’s extra compacted) and sold as a sheng that’s fantastic for first-time sheng drinkers. Along with Simple Sheng, Crimson Lotus Tea released a 50g mini beeng of the same style with shou puer instead (which I will cover later on). So I must ask, is Simple Sheng really that simple? Or is there more to it than meets the eye? Let’s dive in!

Steeps 1 - 4

For this session, 4g of tea was used in a 60ml gaiwan, and water heated at a temperature of 185ºf. Anyways, Simple Sheng opened up to a light medicinal tasting note, which left behind the notes of freshly cut grass. After a few more steeps, the tasting notes of green grass became more noticeable and sweeter than before.

Steeps 5 - 8

Simple Sheng’s grass-like tasting notes became deeper and richer. It started to transform into a more green tasting tea, and heavily resembled fresh spinach on the base of the tongue. With the spinach tasting notes, a light floral hint became noticeable on the sides of the cheeks — which humbly resembled a flower petal.

Steeps 9 - 12

The floral tasting notes kept opening up, as it became clearer and more detectable. The grass tasting notes began to fade behind the notes of flower petals, and the tasting notes of spinach lingered in the throat. After a few more steeps though, Simple Sheng began to mellow out and was ready to be finished….

Conclusion

Simple Sheng is a 50g mini beeng by Crimson Lotus Tea that heavily gave off green tasting notes, such as notes of spinach and freshly cut grass. Surprisingly, there was a light floral note behind all of the green tasting notes which helped tie this tea in all together. One aspect about this tea I liked was its cleanliness and clarity. Another cool thing about Simple Sheng is that the mini beeng is divided up into 6 pizza-slice like part: easy for breaking apart. However, one drawback is that each pizza slice is around 8g. By the time I broke off a pizza slice and broke it apart further to fit my vessel, I was left with around 2g of tea dust.

Simple Sheng is made of high quality material and is exceptionally clean and clear for what you receive. I would highly recommend this tea for someone who is new to sheng puer because honesty, when it comes to Crimson Lotus Tea, you are guaranteed to have a high-quality product. This is when you need an experienced tea drinker’s/blogger’s opinion, because I’ve had a lot of teas across many different tea companies and I believe that Crimson Lotus Tea is one of the safest bets for buying a high-quality product. So while Simple Sheng is a called 'simple', you are for sure getting a clean and quality product — which is essential for having a great first experience with sheng puer…