Two Keyixing bricks: 94 from Finepuer, 90s from thechineseteashop

The Keyxing brick from thechineseteashop has accompanied me on many a morning tea session.  No, it's not a particularly superb tea, but given its age, it is rather cheap ($60 per 235g brick) and I often treat myself with a few cups of cheap young-aged puerh in the morning. It's not the taste I seek, nor a great complexity, it's just that it makes me feel good and other kinds of tea do not. Complexity and good taste is what I want from my afternoon sessions. 

As a sample of the 94 Keyxing brick was quite cheap in Finepuer, I thought I'd try it too and do a comparison of these two bricks.

Generally, the bricks are quite similar, same sort of leaves, very similar color, very similar feeling when I drink it in the morning. They both lived a lot of their lives in HK (I can not imagine liking a HK stored tea three years ago). However, a 1:1 bowl comparison shows some differences (and, a bit surprisingly, both teas, especially the 94 brick, performed worse than in my tiny morning teapot).

Dry leaves, the 90s brick to the left, 94 brick to the right:

The 90s brick is a bit more dark brown, while the 94 is greyish.

90s:

94:

The 94 brick has more of the white coating and occasional moldy fleck, but it's not too bad.

Steeping both leaves for about five minutes in total, I sniff the cups after two minutes already:
90s aroma: rich, dark wood, some nuts and a bit of chocolate, camphor
94 aroma: lighter, more "grey", like lighter wood, more creamy

Both cups smell quite similar. And after five minutes:

The color of both liquors is quite similar, the right (94) brick has sort of caught up on darkness of wood. Still, there is a difference in the woodiness - I finally took out my small collection of woods, so now I can say that the 90s' woodiness is a mixture of cedar and padouk (padauk), while the 94's woodiness is more like zingana with a touch of a carp (a fish, not wood :)).

The taste comes next:
90s: Aromatic mixture of dark exotic woods (the cedar is pretty dominant there I guess), very light smokiness (the cedar sort), slightly nutty, with some treacle. The aftertaste is nice, plummy, with some camphor.

94: Somewhat lighter way of agedness, also woody, more nutty and chocolatey than the 90s brick. So far so slightly better than the 90s brick. However, what I do not like that much is the taste of carp which is more pronounced in the taste than in the aroma. Nevertheless, the carp does manifest itself so much in a mini-gongfu I do in the mornings. The aftertaste has more woodiness than the 90s brick, but is similar in structure.

Both teas have significant activity in mouth, but I was somewhat unpleasantly surprised by sharpness of the feeling in the 90s brick - it was never like that when I brewed the tea in a mini-gongfu way. Both teas work rather well, but I preferred the not-so-sharp feeling of the 94. 

Second steeping (another 5 or so minutes) to test the stamina of these teas shows similar color and similar (low) degree of drinkability:

Overall, I think the teas are rather similar, the 90s brick being more a mixture of woods, the 94 a  mixture of some wood, nuts and chocolate (and the unfortunate carp). For my morning sessions, both bricks are well suited - not too complicated, but nicely young-aged, "warming the insides" and both leaving me feeling good. If I had to choose from these two, I think I'd pick the 90s brick from thechineseteashop as I feel it has a bit more depth and no carp (but as I said, the carp is not really strong in a mini-gongfu). However, I'd pick the 90s Red Mark from thechineseteashop over both of these really, it's cheaper and better...