The Shou Pu erh

 

The Shou pu erh cake in the picture is a 2005 Haiwan ripe pu erh cake.   I started my Chinese tea adventures 20 years ago when I first stepped into a Hong Kong Chinese tea shop.   It was shou or ripe pu erh that caught my imagination. I was simply smitten with the taste and aroma of the tea. 

I believed that it was Hong Kong that Chinese tea drinkers outside China got to know this tea. Hong Kong was the gateway to China 20-30 years ago. People from all over the world would go to Hong Kong to buy and order goods that were made in Mainland China. Hong Kong acted as an intermediary and was successful in this endeavour.  

Hong Kong started introducing kok poh in the 80s (ripe pu erh with added chrysanthemum flowers) in many Chinese eateries and later offering poh lay (ripe pu erh) outright when the Chinese tea drinkers there started to enjoy this tea. The later discovery of the famous 88 Qing (raw pu erh) had made pu erh one of famous Chinese tea today.

I love drinking ripe pu erh tea. It is a calming and very enjoyable tea. With age, ripe puerh is smooth, sweet and mellow.   I was in Hong Kong last month and I enjoyed visiting the traditional dim sum shops (daily) and ordering poh lay tea to accompany my meal. 

Wuyi Qing Yuan Cha Bing

 

I saw this tea at a local emporium.  This is a herbal Chinese tea.   This oolong tea is from the famed Wuyi region. However I suspect that the tea is low grade.  The unique point of this tea is that this is a herbal tea where herbs like liquorice, mint, orange peel, lingzhi, mulberry and other herbs are blended into the tea. 

This tea when brewed taste like a Chinese medicinal herbal tea that are sold by many Chinese medicinal shops in South East Asia. There is bitterness from the herbs and yet....there is a faint sweetness in the aftertaste.  If you enjoy Chinese herbal tea, this tea is as close as you can get without making a trip to a Chinese medicinal shop.   

This box has 8 packets of tea with each packet enclose with 4 mini tea bricks (about 8g each). 

A very unusual tea.  An enjoyable beverage. Imexpensive. 

Tips To A New Pu erh Tea Drinker

 

I am heartened to received questions from a few new pu erh tea drinkers from Europe and USA this year.  Many had asked about pu erh tea and how I brew my tea. Below are some 'tips' which I had discovered during my tea journey and adventures. Many of my readers would know these techniques I used for pu erh tea...so I apologise to the older readers if these 'tips' are familiar to you. 

1.  Breaking up your tea cake. When you have a new pu erh cake whether you got it from a shop or delivered by mail,  I would recommend (if you want to drink this tea) to break up the tea and place the broken pieces in a tea caddy.  Leave it for at least 2 weeks before you consume the tea. This aroma and taste would be much better if you open the tea cake directly when you had got the tea. This is call 'Xin cha', aka waking up the tea. I cannot explain why this works but breaking up a tea is practised by many serious tea drinkers. 

2.  Brewing the tea. You would normally need about 5-8g of tea when you have a tea brewing session. You can use a porcelain gaiwan or a teapot (approx 100-180ml).  When you use say 7g of pu erh tea. Do not put a 7g chunk of pu erh tea in your tea brewing vessel.  Some of these tea chunks are quite hard and you may still end up with a chunk of tea in your teapot after 5 infusions. Use a small tea pick or your fingers to pry the tea chunk to 6-8 pieces. This would allow the tea to infuse well throughout the tea session.   I recommend you to have about 6-8 infusions of tea from one sitting. If you want to 'rinse' the tea before you start your tea session, fill your gaiwan or teapot with the tea, add hot water to half the gaiwan and quickly discard the tea. 

3. Use boiling water for all your tea infusions. This simple trick will make sure the taste and aroma of tea is fully displayed during your tea session. There are some drinkers I know that only use boiling water for the initial infusions and continued the later infusions with the hot water in the kettle. The hot water will cool quickly and it gets cooled faster during winter. 

4.  I do not recommend you stretch a tea session for an extended time. Let me explain. If you have a tea session say in the morning, you can have 4 infusions in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. I do not recommend you 'continue' your tea session into the next day. It is my opinion that your tea leaves are damp and it may not be optimal or healthy that you overstretch a tea session. One tea drinker friend who drank a lightly roasted high mountain oolong and had accidentally left his tea in a gaiwan for 2 days, was shocked to discover a yellow/orange fungal growth on the leaves. Yes, this may not happen to pu erh tea but we are only examining the tea with our naked eyes. There may be something nasty on the tea leaves.   

2011 Haiwan Zi Yun Raw Pu erh

When I sampled this tea more than 10 years ago, I liked it so much that I purchased a carton of this tea and followed up with another carton one year later.  

This is the 2011 Haiwan Ziyun raw pu erh brick.  I had also found out that this was a special order by a Guangzhou tea dealer.  This 250g tea brick came packed in a presentation cardboard box. This tea was made from the purple varietal leaves of the pu erh tree and blended with pu erh from the Yiwu region. 

I do not recommend this tea to a new pu erh drinker. There is hardly any sweetness from this tea.   This tea is strong.  Bitter notes dominate this tea with a very complex woody, herbal and floral profile in the tea. I enjoyed the salivating sensation after drinking a cup.   A nice warm kick emerged after a session of this tea.  I like.  

2008 Awazon ManJin Raw Pu erh Cake

  

I had visited Awazon tea shop in Kunming in 2009 and had purchased some tea from them. This is their ManJin raw cake. This tea is harvested near the Jingmai region and has many nice characteristics of Jingmai pu erh.  

The tea when brewed has a very nice snd long aftertaste. Very mouth watering and the tea has a nice complexity in terms of taste and aroma.  Awazon described the tea as "a very good sweet aftertaste in deep throat and full mouth with lingering orchid aroma".  

Though this producer is relatively unknown, this tea is surprisingly good. Smooth, mellow and sweet and easily brews up to 10 good infusions. 

Liu An Tea

 

Liu an tea are normally sold in small baskets with the tea wrapped in bamboo leaves.  These baskets normally come in 100g, 250g and 500g. Liu an tea are actually fermented tea that are produced in Qimen in Anhui China. 

Liu An tea is considered a medicinal tea and many Chinese medical halls in South East Asia would incorporate this tea with Chinese herbs. A customer would buy a pack of these pre mixed concoction and bring home to brew up a bowl of tea to brink.  

Today, liu an tea are now drank on its own. Some of my friends even added a small piece of the bamboo leaf to the tea for added flavour.  Sun Yi Shun tea factory is one of the biggest factory that produces Liu An tea.   Old tea from this factory are very expensive and can be very hard to find. 

I had been looking and sampling Liu An tea these past two years. Newer Liu An (about 10 years old) has a light herbal and dried fruit aroma in the tea. Very enjoyable. Older Liu An tend to be more medicinal and herbal. I had also came across a heavier fermented liu an (may be for a specific market). This tea has the characteristics of a shou pu erh tea but it has an extremely long and faintly sweet aftertaste.  I will put up study packs of Liu An tea in my store so you can further explore this tea yourself.        

Porcelain Gaiwan vs Porcelain Teapot

 

Many Chinese teashops use porcelain gaiwans to brew their tea when a customer wants to sample their products.   Porcelain are a neutral material and using porcelain to brew tea will not affect the tea in terms of taste and aroma. Using clay teapots may affect the tea as seasoned clay teapots can  change or amplify the taste of the tea. 

I had noticed when teashops use a gaiwan to brew tea, the tea 'brewer' would sometimes use fancy moves when he or she brews the tea. He would open the gaiwan and used the cover to stir the surface of the tea or even perform some visual moves like using the lid to go round the rim of the tea bowl. All these moves would not improve the sampling of the tea. In fact, the tea would cool down much faster and would not infuse well. I believed that pu erh or  high roast oolongs should use boiling water (as hot as possible) to bring out the full flavours of the tea.  

Many tea drinkers I know are using gaiwans to brew their tea.  A gaiwan is inexpensive. Likewise, a porcelain teapot is also inexpensive. I prefer using a porcelain teapot when I am trying out tea samples at home.  I would also use porcelain when brewing tea like white tea or liu an.  There is a higher chance of an accidental slip when I use a gaiwan (yes, I had a few accidents) than using a teapot.  I believed teapots keep the heat better than gaiwans (especially more so in winter). 

One last tip; continue to put your kettle on a boil before you pour the water into your teapot or gaiwan at each infusion. It will make your tea session better.