The Full Guide to Pu-Erh Tea World
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Who loves and knows Pu-erh tea, he is well acquainted with the special «Pu-erh» altered state of consciousness. It feels like a surge of vitality against a background of light euphoria.
Special long fermentation and mountain origin of raw materials from large wild tea trees give Pu-erh unusual amazing properties. High-quality varieties of Pu-erh powerfully tone the body and clear the mind.
Good Pu-erh has a dense meaty (Oh, the vegans, not what I had in mind!) rich taste without bitterness. It can be simpler, but there are also very wide range of tastes. High-grade Pu-erh gives itself a long and often sweet aftertaste.
Shen (green) Pu-erh – energetically powerful and very biologically active, and its taste contains a characteristic sourness. You need a strong healthy stomach to drink Shen Pu-erh on an empty stomach.
Shu Pu-erh (black) has a deeper velvety taste, there is no acidity and it can be drunk on an empty stomach. Both are sold as loose tea or pressed.
The most potent and expensive is Pu-erh from the wild trees of Yunnan province, it is significantly superior in properties to the production of plantation tea.
Plants of the wild species occur not only in the mountainous tropical jungle, but they are cultured. In total, there are about 8 thousand of such trees.
There are rare varieties of Shen Pu-erh. Bai Hao or white Pu-erh is made only from unopened buds. It tastes like both Shen Pu-erh and white tea at the same time. This is the softest kind of Pu-erh to taste.
Bai-Hao is also used to make blended Pu-erh, mixing it with other varieties. When pressed together, the light buds and dark leaves give the Pu-erh a mottled appearance.
Distinguish and purple Pu-erh zy-ya, called by the color of the reddish variety of tea leaves. When fermented, they acquire a dark green color.
For the manufacture of Pu-erh use sun-dried tea leaves, they can be steamed, fried or simply dried. Shu Pu-erh is then subjected to accelerated post-fermentation, and Shen Pu-erh matures naturally.
The fermentation process in it is not stopped thermally, so it continues to change its properties over time.
Over time, green Pu-erh darkens, but does not turn into Shu Pu-erh, although it becomes more difficult to distinguish it from Shu.
Therefore, chinese manufacturers came up with artificially aged Shu Pu-erh to imitate Mature aged Shen Pu-erh, which is much more expensive.
PU-Erh accelerated technology
According to the new technology, Pu-erh is fermented in the open air-it was invented in the 70s of the 20th century. Green tea leaves are harvested in a flat stacks height at the knee and above.
They can be tens of meters long and wide. The workers put them right under the canopy or on the floor in the factory. Then the tea is plentifully watered and covered with an opaque technical cloth.
The quality of water strongly affects the taste of the future Pu-erh, and therefore valued tea from some factories – they have very good water.
Tea is periodically stirred with a pitchfork, each time spilled from a hose with water and again covered. It resembles a silo or compost pit, hence the earthy taste of Shu Puer.
Under the influence of the activity of mold fungi and bacteria, tea leaves are heated to 60-700C – this is a signal to turn the stack of tea leaves and again fill it with cold water. Depending on the weather and the time of year, waiting longer or less, on average about 60 days, but it happens that up to a year.
Then the Pu-erh is dried without covering it. Sometimes manufacturers use bamboo containers for expensive varieties, and ordinary tea is dried right on the floor.
After drying, the raw material is divided: tea “heads” are selected. A small dark brown leaf is expensive. It is sold separately in bulk. Medium and large tea is pressed. The spring harvest is more expensive, the autumn harvest is cheaper, so it is better suited for Shu Pu-erh. Pressed tea is made in the factories.
How not to buy bad Pu-erh
Yunnan is a special climate mountainous province in southern China. Six months in it is dry and very much sun, and six months wet as in a greenhouse, but there is no seasonal jump in temperature between these seasons. It is there and only there that the raw material for Pu-erh tea grows.
In ancient times, people went to the mountains for tea harvesting, and tea gardens began to appear only in the 16th century. Nowadays, the leaves of these plants are made of expensive and refined Pu-erh of the highest varieties.
In the days of the Great moguls the Yunnan pressed tea have become a common commodity on the territory of modern China. It was sold under the name Yin-Shen-Cha (silver-green tea), and the trading place was the town Pu-erh where manufacturers set up factories and pressed tea into bricks.
Until the early 2000s, Pu-erh was not fashionable. It was gathering dust on the shelves in the tea chops. By 2005 in China swelled and burst bubble, when it was sold more of Pu-erh than all previous years combined.
This immediately affected the quality – under the Pu-erh brand began to sell anything, and still a significant part of the offer is represented by fakes. As a result, in 2008, the authorities in China established the national product standard "Product of Geographical Indication Pu-erh Tea". So Pu-erh can only be from Yunnan, this is the name of a type of tea not only produced by a special technology, but also a specific geographical origin.
There are some markers by which you can immediately understand that customers are being fooled. A classic fraud about how many years this tea was buried in the ground. In fact, no one buries Pu-erh, this operation is not provided for by the technological process. The earthy taste of Shu Pu-erh is not from the earth, but from fermentation in wet piles.
The term “elite tea" should cause big questions, because nothing is hidden behind it, it's just a word that does not convey any meaning in this case. The highest grade of Pu-erh consists of 70% or more of soft upper part of a young shoots with one bud and one leaf and shoots with a bud and two leaves make up no more than 30% of its content.
The first grade consists of 70% or more of shoots with a bud and two leaves. The second grade is 60% with a bud and two or three leaves. In total, there are six varieties of Pu-erh, but let's focus on the higher ones. Raw materials from old trees do not have a grade, it is a kind of rare goods that can not be standardized.
Pressed or loose Pu-erh?
As a rule, it is easier to assess the quality of loose tea – it is difficult to mix something in it, and the uniformity is simply checked. Usually loose Pu-erh is of higher grades, it is less common and relatively expensive.
Pressed Pu-erh often contains a mixture of leaves of different degrees of maturity and size and types (buds, not yet opened leaves), which gives the tea a more diverse range of sensations taste compared to each of its components. In addition, the blend allows you to fix approximately the same taste properties for the same brands of tea made from mixtures of different origins of different ages in different years.
Blended Pu-ers have their own markings. Sometimes they are indicated on the label as a number of four digits. The first two digits usually mean the year, but not the release, but the invention of the blend, for example, 95 is 1995, followed by the grade of raw materials, and the final one is the plant code, for example, (1 – Kunming , 2 – Menghai , 3 – Xiaguan, 4 – Fengqing, 5 – Pu-erh city, 6 – Liu Da Cha Shan, 7 – Guan Zi Zai, 8 – Heiwan, 9 – Lange). Nowadays, the number of Pu-erh tea manufacturers has reached tens of thousands, and most of them do not meet the accepted standards of such labeling, but these factories with numbers are the most famous. The year of production is usually marked in a separate number of three digits, for example, 501 is 2005, the first collection, do not confuse with 357! This is the mass in grams, the Chinese tea standard.
There are nine numbers for varieties of raw material of Pu-erh – from the ninth (the largest leaf) to the first, above it «Te-zi» – «the highest number», «Gong-ting» – «Palace Pu-erh», «Lao Shu» – Pu-erh of old trees and «Da-jin-ya» – «Big Golden Buds». The variety of the source material determines a wide range of tastes. For example, Te-zi feels sweet with chocolate and noble wood shades. It is not associated as usual for beginners with not perfect taste of ordinary varieties of Shu Pu-erh: with the ground, raw snag, fish or cellar. Shu Pu-erh is not always an imperfect cheap substitute or imitation of Shen Pu-erh. This is just a new kind of tea, it also has outstanding varieties.
Which Pu-erh to buy, pressed or loose – it is not so important. The main thing is the quality of raw materials and the skill of its processing. Aged Pu-erh, old Pu-erh? First of all, the age of Shen Pu-erh is valued – it is the age that changes most strongly as it is stored. Over time, Shen Puer only gets better. In any case, there are two independent from each other parameters – the age and grade.
If the age of Pu-erh is really great not only does the price increase exponentially but also the probability of buying a fake. Any Pu-erh can be given time to just lie down, so if you love Pu-erh and managed to buy something really good – buy for the future, you will not regret it in five or ten years or more.
The taste of good Pu-erh: how to drink and brew Pu-erh
In ancient times, tea was not brewed in Yunnan, but people simply ate the tea leaves. Sometimes it is cooked there with garlic and pepper as a salad. People make soup including dried tea leaves. In Tibet people brew pressed tea mixed with milk, salt, spices and yak butter. Along with other Tibetan traditions, a thick drink of pressed tea mixed with milk and fat has spread through the cultures of many nomads, so there is no dogma about brewing Pu-erh, do as you like.
Pu-erh is an unpretentious tea, it can be brewed directly in a thermos or boiled in a pot. However, there are more cultured and refined ways, many of them described in the manual «how to brew and drink tea». If quite briefly, then follow a few recommendations:
Wash the Pu-erh well with the first brewing and drain it. Especially if it's Shu Pu-erh. Usually there's a lot of garbage in it.
Do not spare tea, especially if it is pressed tea. Put more in the kettle. It will take a long time to open up the leaves.
When the Pu-erh has already opened, it begins to become duller, and some notes of taste are lost. Increase the brewing time.
If the already opened tea is allowed to rest without water in a hot teapot for a few minutes, it becomes a much better taste than if it is spilled without a break.
The boiling water poured into the kettle should not bubble. It is good to use meltwater.
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