Bamboo Pu erh

 

I happened to have a bamboo-tube pu erh in my collection.  I had purchased it from my earliest trip to Guangzhou tea market. This tea had been in my collection for more than 15 years.  

You can see from the pix that this 500g tea was 'stored in this bamboo tube.  I had seen pictures that .....tea was actually stuffed into the bamboo tube and some pressure was applied  (by hand) to compress the tea into the tube. In some instances, some of these producers even placed these tea filled tubes over a fire to 'roast' the tea. 

This tubed pu erh I had opened was a ripe or shou pu erh. It had 'Yong Ming" brand on its label. The tea was moderately compressed. The quality was not high grade.... broken tea leaves and stems.  When I brewed up the tea, the tea was clean with a good taste and aroma. 

I had tried a few bamboo pu erh during my travels.....one was smoky while another one was quite woody in taste. My thoughts are that if you are a pu erh tea drinker, you should get a bamboo pu erh just for its novelty.     

Xiang Mu Hai Black Tea Ball

This is the Xiang Mu Hai black tea ball.  There are 500g of black tea in the box.  More specifically, there are 120 black tea balls in the box with 6 balls packed in a small self sealing pack. This would worked out to about 4.1g per ball. 

This tea was designed for convenience and all you need was to pop the tea ball into a mug of boiling water.  I found that I could refill my mug with boiling water to get another round of tea as well. Good for 2 infusions. 

The regular teabag from supermarkets has about 2g of tea. This black tea ball instead has 4.1g of tea.  The tea when brewed is strong and aromatic. I am not a fan of tea balls but this tea was very good and very appropriate for use in a busy office or while travelling. 

However, I felt that Xiang Mu Hai that produced this tea could had made a marketing error in naming this tea 'little black men'.   This label is not appropriate if this tea was marketed internationally.  I hope the tea factory would change the name for this tea.